Am so disappointed. All that sneaking around this whole week living in fear to avoid assassination gone to waste.

First of all the game got canned, and second, found out my target was not even in the country! I didn’t even stand a chance.

Today is Sunday and I’m still recovering from the Saturday morning stake out! Woke up at 3:30am to pack my bag ready for battle. Snacks, newspaper, water, dossier, handphone, water pistol. Waited at his HDB block all morning only to see his mother leave the house and no sighting of Agent Ice_Cool_Dude.

Back to the first point. So what happened? Typical of the Singapore Police to rain on the parade. They should be renamed the Fun Police. Sometimes they just got to loosen up a bit, it’s just a game! Citing the reason why it was cancelled is because organisers should have applied for an Entertainment License (which honestly they wouldn’t have approved anyway).

Here’s an excerpt from the email sent by the “Shadow Government” (organisers) to all “Agents” (me).

Police involvement:
Assassins, we regret to tell you that the Singapore police has requested that we shut down the tournament.

We always work with the local authorities to ensure a safe and fun environment, and although this really sucks for us, we shall respect their wishes and close this tournament early at 00:00hrs Monday March 17th

What happens to you and the game now?
As much as we respect the police’s concerns, we also respect your experiences so far, working hard as a top notch assassin.

We want to give you, the remaining players, some sense of closure, so we will end the tournament 00:00hrs next Monday March 17th. So those of you who are close to your first or next kill, you still have a chance to tally up your score and and close out any pending assassination plans that you have.

After that, we will be forced to officially close down the tournament as requested by your police department.

What the hell happened?
In over five and a half years of our history, we’ve never had issues with the Police. In fact, we’ve had help from the police in cities like Vancouver.

Apparently, we’ve just learned yesterday, that the Singapore police had contacted our local partners to express their concerns…..
…… we would have done all we could to iron out the issue right then and there with your police so that we can provide our best game experience for you all.

We are filled with sadness at this unfortunate and regrettable turn of events. We loved reading your stories and how much ass you guys are kicking.

We are sorry, sad face.

Response from the local rep at http://www.streetwars.sg/

The Real Story – Singapore’s Not Ready?
What did life lack in Singpore? A little excitement and color? Well that was what we thought when we decided to bring this game to our sunny shores. We always wanted Singapore to be a vibrant city and this was a great game concept that we just had to try to bring over for everyone to experience.

After just a week of play almost everyone that we spoke to mentioned about what a great experience this game has brought to their life. How it brings out the best in people as killers and targets trade stories talk about each other’s experiences and meet new friends. It was our great pleasure to see so much excitement in the players and it was fun while it lasted.

After spending over 4 months trying to get this great game over to our shores it looks like luck has stuck out for us. This was a love affair by the local organizers personally and not comercial in nature. If you were to run a quick calculation you can see that it was run at a break even/loss contrary to popular belief that it was for profit.

Was the cancellation due to poor planning or lack of effort? Yes and No. We should have made 100% sure before commencing the game that was our fault and we apologize to you the players for that oversight. However, we did try, we had contacted the police on this issue a month before and got the round about on what was needed to run this event here. We had mistakenly assumed that if this was a private event taking place in the whole of Singapore with no mass gatherings where only 2 persons are playing at anyone time, that no permit would be required. We’ve all had orientation and other corporate games in and around singapore organized casually and those went without any issues so what’s the difference here, we thought? We were wrong.

After all that’s said and done, the police don’t have an easy job and we respect their decision to shut down the game. Our intentions were to bring this great game to Singapore, never to cause problems for anyone.

We all learn from our mistakes and we seek everyone’s understanding as we try to dig ourselves out of this hole. Stay dry guys.