TYLER TERHARK

236 Chestnut Dr| 7015522303 | tyler.terhark@ndsu.edu

10/22/20

Mr. Bezos

1234 Malone St.

Oldtown, Mn 12345

Dear Mr. Bezos:

My name is Tyler Terhark and I attend North Dakota State University. I have encountered a problem in

todays society that includes us being so glued to our phone. That is why I have discovered a new and

innovating game that involves people to come together and interact.

The game is called Gang Gang and requires at least 6 people, but the more the merrier. Everyone sits

around in a circle with a spokesperson controlling the game. The goal of the game is to find out who the

gang members are before they kill all of the townspeople. It is exiting, interactive, and will keep everyone

on their toes.

Sincerely,

Tyler Terhark
 Sunday night. I prepare myself to get ready for the long week ahead. I crawl into bed and let out a

big sigh. 1:09AM scrolling through the never-ending videos of tiktok. Checking my Instagram feed knowing

that I wouldn’t see anything new. Swiping out of twitter and naturally going right back into the app. I

finally tell myself it’s time to go to bed. I set my phone right next to my head. A notification pops up; “Your

screen time went up with an average of 6 hours per day.” Wow. However, I think nothing of it. Our world

revolves around staring at LED screens in hopes of seeing or discovering something that fills us. Now to

some, six hours may not seem like a long time, to some, that may seem like a extraordinary amount. I

now thought to myself an average day for me. I wake up around 9:45, head to breakfast and then attend

classes for the day. I then proceed to head to lunch and have a short break before I head to lift. Most days

we will have football meetings and then follow that up for practice. However, we are in the offseason so

there is a lot more free time. All I have for the rest of the day is dinner and possibly academic hours. But

what do I and many young people of our time do? Scroll through social media and snapchat people a

picture of the ceiling to keep a pointless streak. This can lead to many negative effects. In fact, “…screen

time often leads to blurred vision, eye strain, and long-term vision problems like nearsightedness”

(Anderson and Wilkin). Nobody wants to deal with these problems but what can be the solution? Is this not

the normal in today’s world?

Now what if I used those 42 hours doing something productive? Or maybe interacting with the

people around me. Creating relationships, having fun, reading, meditating, or maybe homework for a

change. Unfortunately, those 6 hours has become societies norm. Although there won’t be a way to

complete abolish those 6 hours, my team and I, have come up with a game that is highly interactive,

keeps everyone on their toes, and overall fun for almost everyone.

The game is called Gang Gang. Everyone starts in a circle and is given a pair of gloves. When the

captain of the game decides to the start the game, everyone’s gloves will show a small icon on the wrist to

let everyone know who they are. Keep in mind you do not want to let anyone know who your character is.

The icon will then go away and everyone must disperse throughout the house, (really anywhere that allows

everyone to move about). In this game, you can either be a regular citizen, detective, healer, or a gang

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member. A citizen, sheriff, and healer all work as a team to find out who the gang members are. The gang

members goal is to try and kill everyone with more incentive to kill the detective and detective because

they have extra strength. The detective is able to ask the host if a certain person is gang member or not

per round. The healer is chosen at random someone that they want to save each round. After each night

(which should be every 10 minutes or so), everyone will come together, and the leader will activate the

code that will let everyone know who died that round. To make the game more interesting the leader

should make up a story on how this individual died to add dramatic effect. After the death, there will be a

discussion to who everyone believes is the gang member. The twist to the game is that nobody knows who

is who, which means that you can lie your way out of everything. If you are a gang member you can say

you are a healer so that no one wants to kill you or say you are the detective. Or maybe you want to form

alliances and team up. The only catch is, can you trust them? The options are limitless, and the lies can go

forever. The purpose of our game is to bring friends together in hopes of losing track of their stressful lives

and have some fun. There is nothing better than being a gang member and lying your way out of a sticky

situation and then coming out victorious.

This game is for teens and up, however we would like to target high school and college student

the most because according to ABCNEWS, “Teens spend an average of seven hours and 22 minutes on

their phones a day” (Jacobo). This is higher than any other age and we need to minimize that number as

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much as we can. I believe this game will get a high percentage of teens engaged and addicted. Everyone

loves to argue nowadays so now we will be able to argue in a healthy, fun, and mysterious way. Now,

what is the purpose of games? Games are not just something to do to pass time, but provide opportunities

to learn life skills, open our minds, and most of all: create relationships. For example, “Games provide

opportunities for kids to learn that honest winning feels better and makes better relationships than

cheating” (Hartwell-Walker). Everyone likes to win, but how will you let winning or losing affect you in

front of your peers? There are so many more valuable lessons to be learned in social games unlike

spending hours scrolling through social media.

I know, you are probably wondering what the product looks like and what to sell. The package will

include six pairs of our designed gloves. These gloves will let the players know what character they are as

well as shock them when they are killed. This offers something other than your average board game and

gets your more engaged as well as suspenseful with a small shock through the gloves. There will also be

deals where you will get a discount the more gloves you buy, that is why we only include six in our base

model. As for the design, I would like to create a visual that is inviting but screams mysterious. We believe

that when people are looking for a game, they only give every option a quick glance so we will need to

have a strong first impression. According to Arthur Dobrin, he states that “The sequence that we encounter

matters in how we judge subsequent information. The exaggerated impact of first impressions is related to

the halo effect, that phenomenon whereby the perception of positive qualities in one thing or part gives

rise to the perception of similar qualities in related things or in the whole” (Dobrin). This means that our

first encounter with anything, whether that be a person or image, impacts us greatly. We often come so

quick to judge people by their appearance without getting to know them, and that goes hand in hand with

games. The package will express mystery with dark colors but not too dark that it scares away younger

teens. Our font would look intricate which would allow someone to take a closer look to make out the

words, Gang Gang. This will in hopes, allow a viewer to take another glance at our game and read more

into it.

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 I have been inspired by a couple of games that have led me to my final product. The main game

that I took after was a game called mafia. However, this game insists on everyone sitting down which

leaves out much time for conversation and strategy. A huge game that everyone is playing nowadays is

called Amongus and is quite similar in the basics of the game. However, we are trying to stay away from

staring at our electronics all day that is why our game consists of moving around. I tried thinking of games

that seem to be drawing attention and that are on the upcoming and I continue to see games that are

more interactive that involve conversation. I have always been inspired by charades, in which involves

people working against each other to find out what the person is acting out. We are sick of all of these

games that restrict us to only sitting around a table for hours upon hours. Let’s get up, move around, and

create conversation because as we know, our society is lacking much of it. Our company strives to be

different and whenever someone is looking to play a game, everyone seems to think straight to a common

board game in fact, on BoardGameGeek, list of board games, there are over 120,000 board games alone.

We are looking completely take over and create more innovative games that involve movement and value

more deep thinking.

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 We understand that we will have some competitors and that people may get sick of the game.

That is why we will be creating different variations of the game. For example, around Halloween we will

sell different sets that include decorated gloves to that occasion. There will be a demon as the gang

members and ghosts as regular people. We can continue this for each holiday and each significant even.

This will allow people to have a variety of sets, change up with pace, and to keep them interested in as

well as satisfy others to get into spirit for whatever holiday. Not only will the characters be different but

there will be other tasks in these expansion packs. For example, in the Halloween pack, there will be

incentives. If you successfully scare someone and make them yelp, you will be given rewards that may

include, immunity from that round, ask anyone a question and they have to answer truthfully, get to heal

someone for the next round. For Christmas, the first person to go outside and make a snow angel gets to

choose from one of those incentives and so on. The options go on to make our game last through the

years and keep everyone hooked.

In conclusion we believe that our game will blow the market out of the water. With our intelligent

design and concept, it will catch the eye of many. Not only will everyone be enjoying our game, they will

be doing what our goal was: to stop the excessive use of phones. Our game will get teens hooked and in

hopes tell their friends; we trust word of mouth to do most of the advertising for us. There is so much

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upside to our product and so many more possibilities and variations down the road. Its new, innovating,

addicting, and what we strive to be: different. Now what do you say? Do not miss out on this opportunity.

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 Works Cited

Jacobo, Julia. “Teens Spend More Than 7 hours on Screens for Entertainment a Day ” ABCNEWS, 29 Oct.

2019, www.abcnews.go.com/US/teens-spend-hours-screens-entertainment-day-report.com

Hartwell-Walker, Marie. “Family Fun in a Box” Psychcentral, 30 Jul. 2020,

www.psychcentral.com/lib/family-fun-in-a-box.com

“Board Game Rank” BoardGameGeek, www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame/page/1

Dobrin, Arthur. “The Power of First Impressions.” PsychologyToday, 5 Feb. 2013,

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/am-i-right/201302/the-power-first-impressions

Anderson, David and Wilkin, Rebecca. “What Staring at a Screen All Day Does to Your Brain and Body”

BusinessInsider, 8 Feb. 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/screen-time-effects-health-vision-staring-

at-screens-bad-for-you-2019-1#:~:text=Most%20Americans%20spend%20more%20than,term%20vision

%20problems%20like%20nearsightedness.

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