Game2: Winter is an upcoming reality television show that will run from July 1, 2017 to April 1, 2018. Participants, 15 men and 15 women, will have to build shelter, provide food for themselves, and endure the forces of nature to survive nine months in the taiga. The winner of the show receives 100 million rouble ($1.65 million) and if there are more than one, they will share the money evenly. Game2: Winter was involved in a big controversy because of a rule that stated that “[e]verything is allowed. Fighting, alcohol, murder, rape, smoking, anything,” but redaction later explained that contestants will be eliminated from the show and face police if they do not follow the laws of the Russian Federation.
Requirements are very simple: you must be 18+, “mentally sane” and deposit money if not voted in by viewers. Prior to entering the forest, each individual will be trained to encounter bears and wolves, learn survival skills for the winter and go through the required stages of the show. Some challenges participants will partake in include confronting wild animals and criminals released from prison.
The only weapons available are knives and the chance of death is explicitly enumerated, thus everyone must sign release of liability for multiple waivers beforehand.
The official website currently offers opportunities for investments and sponsorship by media partners, votes for participants and subscriptions, but will eventually open up more pages when the show begins.
Yevgeny Pyatkovsky, a Russian millionaire, is the brain behind the show. Pyatkovsky has provided flippant responses to a handful of outlets, notably, The Siberian Times. He understands the show will have its contingencies and openly says “[t]his is the raw Siberian taiga: anything can happen, and we might not be on time to solve an emergency.” Although he knows physical interaction can occur at any given moment, he does not plan to intervene.
Game2: Winter is the first to have taken a survival show and bring it to its limits; Pyatkovsky says “[t]here is nothing like this show in the whole world. No one has done it as a real thing where people will actually have to use every skill they ever gained, social, physical, psychological, to survive.”
We’ve witnessed aspects of dystopia instilled in political systems, social norms and culture, but this reality television show takes it to the truest level with an uncanny resemblance to Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games. The unpredictability and 2,000 live cameras are raw yet terrifying, especially in a competition that will inevitably contain violence, gore, suspense, and more. Game2: Winter presents an interesting question concerning one’s stance of morality and how the elements of entertainment can potentially disguise the qualities that quite literally define a dystopia.
Will you be watching?
