Serious Business: live game design
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A security guard steels his resolve in Zombie LARP
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Festive undead monsters at You'd Better Watch Out
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Confectionary relocation specialists in The Gobstopper Job
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A zombie shambles past two terrified players
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The Serious Business team locks and loads
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The merchandise looks good enough to eat
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A White Knight super-zombie on the hunt
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The hungry dead mass at the window
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Hunters interrogate a wounded vampire
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Research documents for the Covenant of Silver
Serious Business is a live game and LARP design partnership. We make and run high-action live games around the UK with a focus on getting as many people involved and active as possible. We encourage emergent stories based on player choices, and reward team play, innovative ideas and quick thinking. We use systems rather than branching pathways to create immersive experiences where every decision counts, and we run active scenarios that get people involved, playing and having fun.
About Us
Serious Business is a partnership based in London, made up primarily of creative lead and freelance games journalist Grant Howitt (@gshowitt) and game designer and speed-of-light news wizard Mary Hamilton (@newsmary). We work closely with a dedicated team of experts to produce and run our games.
Why Choose Us
We offer a flexible game creation service, ranging from straightforward run-and-gun combat to mad, wide-eyed terror to multi-layered tactical planning to more in-depth mystery scenarios - but whatever happens, we cut down on the "standing around talking" bit of live action games and skip straight to the "having fun" bit. We've been designing live games since 2006, and we know what makes for a fun experience. We work closely with clients, venues, crew and players to create experiences that are enjoyable for absolutely everyone involved.
Science Museum: The Trial
As part of the Science Museum's ZombieLab event, we ran a live interactive exhibit which puts players in the shoes of the Community Jury Initiative. In a world where the zombie condition is real, infectious and curable, we'll be asking visitors to pass judgement on a cured ex-zombie and a zombie-killer. Find out more about The Trial here.
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter: Hunting Club Live
In partnership with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, we created a game to tie in with the release of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter on Blu Ray. Taking over the MetalWorks club in Islington, we led teams of 30 to 60 brave prospective vampire hunters in last-ditch attempts to defend the grand opening night of their newly-formed Hunting Club from waves of hungry undead.
Adapting what we've learned from years of live game action, we created a game that allowed players to experience action, research, terror, tactical planning, and a fair bit of theatrics in a two-hour experience. We made a system that adapted to player choices, and ran two very different sessions thanks to the different decisions and priorities of the two player groups. Find out more about Hunting Club Live here.
The Gobstopper Job
The Gobstopper Job encourages people to take a proactive approach to confectionery logistics, using bombs, guns and disguises to pull off a sweet shop heist. We ran Gobstopper for the first time at Bristol's IGFest Fringe 2012. Find out more about The Gobstopper Job here.
Zombie LARP
Zombie LARP is the UK's first bespoke portable zombie apocalypse. We run large outbreak scenarios and spine-chilling small-group survival games, using NERF warfare and a lot of fake blood. We've been filling unusual buildings with zombies and getting people to fight their way out since 2006. In total we've run 12 or so events with player numbers from 3 at a time to 125 at once, using three different systems tailored to individual player groups and venues. Find out more about Zombie LARP.
Build-a-Game sessions
Thanks to our specialist equipment, we offer a unique service to clients - we can rock up to your conference, convention or place of work with a bag full of NERF guns and get people creatively shooting at each other in minutes. In our Build-A-Game workshops we lead a crowd of potential players in designing a full, original ruleset amongst themselves and then refine and iterate it over the course of an hour or more of play. Players at Gamecamp devised a hostage taking game, while Kitacon-goers made a bomb-smuggling team game - and there's plenty of opportunity to develop something unique using our system and copious armoury.
Public Speaking
Want us to talk about live games in a more formal setting? We can do that, and have done so in the past - as well as joint appearances with lots of NERF guns at two Gamecamps, Mary has spoken at The Story 2011, at Develop 2012 and at London IA, while Grant has run games and spoken at Bit of Alright. We mostly speak about live game theory and design, storytelling in games, emergent properties of game systems and the inner workings of foam-based weaponry.
