EDMONTON (CUP) – As the sun sets on another Edmonton weekday, the night has only just begun for a group of 20-somethings. Some have been gathering every week for the past three years, while others, like me, are here for the first time. To a passersby, the only defining characteristic amongst us is a makeshift band of fabric tied around our arms. But everyone is here for the same reason: to play the game of Manhunt.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Manhunt is a game of strategy, speed and stamina, but at the same time, it’s a game we’ve all played at one point or another in the school yard or at a friend’s seventh birthday party. At its simplest, Manhunt is a hybrid of tag and hide-and-seek adapted to a large urban setting. Because of this, it’s easy for newcomers to pick up while still staying fresh to returnees. According to Adam Waldron-Blain, founder of the Edmonton chapter of Manhunt, the game’s simplicity is one of its biggest selling points.
“The way the game works, it sort of runs itself, because you don’t want to have to worry about rules,” he explains. “The point of Manhunt is that you just have to show up. Once you understand it, it works fine. You can’t even cheat, because there’s no possibility for that. Everything is just based on who you’ve seen already and who you’ve tagged already.”
Drawing a map in sidewalk chalk at the start of the match, Waldron-Blain outlines the boundaries of the play area, which moves to a different Edmonton locale every week. The rules are simple: one person starts the game as “it,” and has to capture others by tagging them. Once tagged, a player becomes “brainwashed,” and joins the ranks of the manhunters, growing and assimilating more players until there are none left, or, in certain cases, the time limit is up. The “it” is chosen through a process of rhyming elimination-in other words, “bubblegum in a dish” counting. Players are given a two-minute head start, and the game begins.
“There are a lot of different styles and different ways people take it. The biggest and most obvious divide is between people who hide and people who prefer not to hide,” says Waldron-Blain, who’s a runner himself. I’ve decided my best chances of survival are to stick with a veteran like him, who appears to have the speed of a gazelle, should danger arise. The size of our group begins to shrink as lone players break off, spreading out and searching for the best hiding spots.
“[The game] is very flexible, because the point of Manhunt is being in the city environment, and making your own fun-doing something in a way that you want to,” Waldron-Blain explains to me as we start to jog.
“Part of what’s good about Manhunt is, A, it runs itself, and B, people can basically do whatever they want, whether it’s being really hardcore about running and jumping over buildings, and stuff like that, or just hanging out with some friends, reading a newspaper or something. The people who come out are a big spectrum, from the people who are really athletic about it to people who are just out there on a lark. [We get] people with very different approaches with the idea of playing the game.”
Global operations
Edmonton isn’t the first city to host an official chapter of Manhunt. Five other Canadian cities host events from Vancouver to Halifax, and a couple of orders even stretch as far as Australia and England.
“The kids in Toronto started up an online community – just a bunch of friends. It was on a message board that I was a member,” says Waldron-Blain. “One day, it was just like, ‘let’s go play tag,’ and they decided to do it every week, and then they set up a website. It was just a thing that they had done when they were children, except that the rules do make a lot of sense.”
Since then, Waldron-Blain has played in Halifax, brought the game to Alberta in 2005, and has helped it to grow ever since.
“At first it was just me and a few of my friends, but we told people about it. Even in the first year, on the first night, we had nine people, and by the late summer, we had 80 or 90 people.”
Hostile territory
After 10 minutes, we’ve circled about half of the four-block radius, and in the distance, I can see the hunters already catching some early prey. With nothing but concrete and asphalt between us and certain brainwashing, we break into a run with the manhunters closing in. At this point, I learned the truth behind the phrase about how you don’t need to run faster than the bear – you just need to run faster than the other guys that it’s chasing – and I’m the next to fall to the growing mass of manhunters.
As the sky grows dark, the tension between players starts to settle; as more are captured, we become familiar with those on our side, knowing only a handful of agile fugitives remain. Most of them are likely nestled in a dark hiding place between a row of cars in an apartment garage, or leaping fences and bounding across empty lots to evade their captors. Although there’s some ambiguity over what areas of the city are fair game within the boundaries, Waldron-Blain has done his homework on the legal side of things.
“The way it works is that if it’s an implied public space, you can go into it until you’re told to leave. Sometimes it does include some indoor areas, although that can get touchy. Sometimes, [the public] is very polite and very nice about it, and sometimes they can be real jerks about it. It depends on what kind of place it is, and who they are, or what they’re doing. A lot of the time, we’ll just be asked to leave a place, or get yelled at, or some people will call the police on us. Sometimes, the police are very nice and understanding.”
Surprisingly, it’s not the police, but security guards who seem to have the biggest problem with Manhunt.
“Private security firms have to be worse than the police,” says Waldron-Blain. “The police have only been occasionally annoying; generally, they’re pretty nice about it. Private security on the other hand, they’re there to feel big about protecting their little tiny thing, so as soon as they see someone they can yell at, they’re all for it.”
Child’s play
Aside from a few minor run-ins with the authorities, players of Manhunt don’t face much public scorn. As Waldron-Blain explains, most criticism towards players comes from those who don’t understand the game and unfairly categorize it as a children’s game.
“I don’t think that’s what it’s really about at all,” he said. “What Manhunt is about is having a good time, and doing something that you know is going to be fun. It’s guaranteed because you’re in control of how you act in the environment you live in. You can create your own stories and do whatever you want. That’s what Manhunt’s about. It’s not about pretending to be kids-it’s just that kids do know how to have fun.”
