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This article was published on April 9, 2019

Millionaire offers thousands for help planning real-life battle royale game — this should go well


Millionaire offers thousands for help planning real-life battle royale game — this should go well Image by: Steam

Someone’s apparently planning to recreate a battle royale match in reality, if an advertisement on a swank website is any indication. The unnamed millionaire is offering to pay a princely sum for help making this endeavor work, but I’ll tell them this, right now, for free: it isn’t going to.

The advertisement is on HushHush, an online marketplace that bills itself as being for the rich and luxury-loving of the world — expensive jewelry, rare cars, pretty much what you’d expect. The site also has a “requests” category, and in this case the request is for someone to help a millionaire recreate the battle royale experience in real life. If you’re interested, the job apparently pays around $59,000 for about six weeks of work.

The competition itself, at least what they’ve thought out so far, will last for three days on a private island, with 12 hours of competition per day. They’ll get food and camping equipment, and will presumably be allowed to move about freely during the 12-hour detente. The winner will get £100,000.

As for every other detail… well, it appears Richie Rich needs help ironing those out. Aaron Harpin, the site’s founder, says the client “wants to make the game a reality in the safest way possible” and says the HushHush concierge team requires “a talented gamemaker to help us make the event as realistic as possible.”

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So they want it to be a realistic simulation of a game in which people have to kill each other or die… but they also want it to be safe? Oh, that waiver is going to be a damned novel.

Again, I’m gonna give this advice for free (which is probably dumb of me, but here we go): it’s not going to really turn out like the battles royale in the books, movies, and games — if only because there won’t be the thrill of an exploding collar, a carpet bombing, or an ever-widening storm to keep things interesting. It’s high-stakes, don’t get me wrong, and seeing what people will do for money is always entertaining — if it weren’t, reality tv wouldn’t be a thing. But there’s still something a little … off about the idea of a bunch of actual people going to a rich person’s island and fake-killing each other for their entertainment.

I’m seriously hoping we’ve stumbled upon the early planning stages of a charity event, because otherwise this just seems kind of pointless and self-indulgent. I’ve seen this compared to the Hunger Games, but hell, at least the Hunger Games had a purpose — demoralizing a massive labor class, yes, but that’s still a purpose. If this must go forward, then at least let me see Uncle Pennybags get down there in the trenches with a pith helmet and a BB gun and take their chances like everyone else.

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