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# Shockers Bluff is your new dinner party ice breaker
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/shockers-bluff-your-new-dinner-party-ice-breaker/
- Published: 2014-07-01T13:37:42.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-26T10:36:07.000Z
- Description: If “Feel the Pain” is your favorite Dinosaur, Jr. song, then you’re in for a treat. Michael Hand of the Revision3’s show DIY Tryin‘ has put together a devious game concept that will surely upset everyone you know and likely send another to the hospital. Titled Shocker’s Bluff, the concept is simple.
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: News, danger, Play, shocker's bluff, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

If “Feel the Pain” is your favorite Dinosaur, Jr. song, then you’re in for a treat.

Michael Hand of the Revision3’s show *[DIY Tryin](http://revision3.com/diytryin/?ref=killscreen.com)‘* has put together a devious game concept that will surely upset everyone you know and likely send another to the hospital. Titled [*Shocker’s Bluff*](https://github.com/palmdalian/ShockersBluff?ref=killscreen.com), the concept is simple. Three players hook themselves up to be with electrodes and connect them to a computer. The computer shocks two of the three participants but not the third. The goal is for a fourth person, ostensibly, to figure out who the faker is. Drinks and merriment ensue.

![](https://killscreen.com/previously/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/shockers_bluff_code.jpg)

Connecting games to physical feedback is one thing. We have haptic systems everywhere, but the desire to inflict actual pain on players is something few designers deign to do. *[Painstation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PainStation?ref=killscreen.com),* created by Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff of the artist collective[//////////fur//// art entertainment interfaces](http://www.fursr.com/?ref=killscreen.com), was one of the few exceptions. A giant hulking box of unhappiness, it was a standard game of *Pong* that would punish you for errors with a series of burns, shocks, and slaps. [As Pippin Barr wrote](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/essays/hurt-you-so/?ref=killscreen.com), games like *Painstation* and *Shocker’s Bluff* are less about the physical sensation:

> *Our experience becomes a kind of “pain tasting” experience. We’re interested to find out what each pain is like, not so much tolerating it as swilling it around our nervous systems like connoisseurs.*

This form of “touching the hot stove” is actually connected to our childhood desires to seek out risky play. Ellen Sandseter, an early childhood researcher at Queen Maud University, [has found that kids naturally are drawn to six types of risky play](http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP092572842.pdf?ref=killscreen.com) including exploring heights, handling dangerous tools, exploring solo, and, of course, just being near something dangerous. (See more in [Hannah Rosin’s excellent Atlantic feature](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/?ref=killscreen.com).)

That’s good to know. And you can explain that to friends when you’re hooking them up to *Shocker’s Bluff*. They’ll understand.