Gremlins in the Wires: A Game of Telephone…with Glitches!
Gremlins in the Wires is a group game that teaches people about the principles of Chaos Engineering. Chaos engineers find weaknesses in distributed systems by testing real-world outages and then figure out how to adapt the system to deal with these outages. In our game, our goal is to pass a word through a line of players and get the same word on the other side before the opposing team. This game gets more complicated the longer you play because with each round there are more glitches that your team needs to deal with.
Teams
The game includes moderators and players. The players should be split into two teams, each of which will need a moderator. Each team should be arranged in a straight line around five to ten feet away from the other team.
Glitches
Glitches in computer systems is when something goes wrong that makes the system not function correctly. Just like what happens in the real world, in our game Glitch Cards are challenges that make it harder for the right word to get through to the other side.
Each moderator should have two of each glitch card:
- Code insertion(adding instructions to the target program and allowing fault injection to occur prior to certain instructions): You can’t say the word that you hear, but have to define the word to the next player until they guess it.
- Function-based chaos(runtime injection that randomly causes functions to throw exceptions): You have to say the word you overhear backwards to the next player.
- Partially deleted Kafka topics:You can only say the last three letters of the word.
- Failure of a datacenter:You can no longer talk. You need to now act out the word that you hear.
- Traffic spike on the airwaves:You need to draw out the word and the next person needs to guess it.
Play
Moderators decide together on a list of thirty words in the same order. At the start of each round, the moderator whispers the word to their team. Players then pass the word through their line. The last person to receive the word should shout it out. If they get it right, their team gets the point. If they get it wrong, the other team now gets to guess. If both teams do not get the right word, neither team gets the point.
After each round, the team’s moderator gives a random Glitch card to someone in their line. You can pass Glitch cards to other players, but once your team gets a Glitch card it remains in play for the duration of the game. Glitches will add up over time to make the game harder.
The game lasts until one team gets to ten points.
