About
Empire began as a game
“Empire” is a team-building exercise that is great for breaking the ice at parties, get-togethers, and other social gatherings. The game itself is very simple. One player is designated “the reader,” and the other players each anonymously write down a name on a slip of paper. Once all the names are written, the reader reads them aloud. Players then take turns guessing who wrote which name. If a player’s name is guessed, he or she joins the “empire” of the player who guessed them, and can help them remember names. The game ends when one player has everyone else in their empire.
One day, after playing many rounds of Empire together, we had an idea. What if we developed characters out of the names we invented for Empire and wrote stories about them? From that point on, we saved the names to an ever-expanding list, which we continue to reference as we create a collective narrative about our fictional universe. Nearly all of the names in our stories were birthed in a game of Empire, and the stories contain many references and inside jokes shared between the creators.