Coup

Coup was a moderately multiplayer pervasive mobile game of high chivalry, quarrelling aristocracy, and gruesome backstabbing. The main goal was to stay as high up in the feudal hierarchy as long as possible and at the same time gain renown and gold in tournaments before dying of old age. The hierarchy was formed by the players themselves; if you invite new players to the game you will automatically be their lord, at least for awhile. In order to climb up the hierarchy you could either try to overthrow your lord by force or try to persuade the higher ranking players to move you up in the hierarchy.

Reports

Coup Game Design
This document presents a game description for the Coup mobile phone game prototype. Purpose of this Document The purpose of this document is to provide a summarized and structured presentation of the contents and mechanisms of the Coup game prototype. (PDF, Oct 2006)

Coup & Insectopia Evaluation Report
Coup is a pervasive mobile game targeted for casual players that are interested in expanding social interaction (Holopainen and Harris, 2006). Coup is one of the WP 9 (Socially adaptable games) showcases in which the most important research issues are asynchronous cooperation, expanding social interaction, pacing, and viral invitation. In this paper we describe how these research issues succeeded in this game and also describe some other issues that came up in this evaluation. (PDF, Feb 2007)

Contact information

Jussi Holopainen
Nokia Research Center
jussi.holopainen(a)nokia.com

Webpage:
www.coupgame.org