The "script murder" game is not only popular in China, but the genre is loved by many people around the world. A cast of actors plays the suspects, and the participants solve the case. In fact, murder-inspired board games, card games, interactive books and party games have been around at least since the so-called golden age of British crime fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, which saw the rise of legendary authors like Agatha Christie.
Sam Emmerson, creative director of Moonstone Murder Mysteries in London, a company that creates and runs immersive mysteries, says people like the puzzle aspect of it, and the improvised exchanges with the actors: "It's the reputation that murder mysteries have built up these days, as being a fun thing to go to. " After all, real-life violent crime is every person's worst nightmare. "If it was a real-life situation, and someone's been murdered, that's not a fun subject. You're in this sort of alternate reality where we're very casually solving the death of a human being. "
The enduring popularity of these games presents a mystery of its own: What motivates ordinary, law-abiding people to spend an evening investigating fake bloodshed, and hunting pretend murderers? One simple explanation might be curiosity. But that is not the full story. Instead, murder games follow a surprisingly complex set of psychological rules. They allow us to learn and practice important mental and emotional skills, and can even teach us not to overlook important evidence.
"The basic idea is that we are using them as a way to simulate threatening plots, and then play around with how we would respond to that," Coltan Scrivner, a behavioral scientist says. The response could be behavioral, or even just emotional, in terms of handling the fear. He calls such games "scary play", and compares them to play-fighting among animals, which prepares them for real-life fighting, but also hunting or tracking down the target.
