British water-pistol game draws frowns

London - British police have condemned a huge role-playing game where contestants travel all over London armed with water pistols looking to "assassinate" other players, saying it could spark terrorism alerts.

"StreetWars", which is described on its website as a "3-week long, 24/7, watergun assassination tournament", begins on Tuesday in the British capital.

The game, which has already taken place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Vienna, involves players hunting down targets whose details they have been given and then squirting them with water to eliminate them.

But angry police say the appearance of people behaving suspiciously, armed with what could look like real guns, risked sparking major alerts in a city where four suicide bombers attacked the transport system last year, killing 52 commuters.

"The sight of people carrying what appears to a be a firearm on the London Underground system one year after the tragic events of July 2005 will cause passengers and staff genuine fear," British Transport Police said in a statement.

They warned they would come down hard on any players who caused trouble.

London's Scotland Yard also poured cold water on the game, saying it could divert essential resources.

"A seemingly innocent bit of fun can escalate with armed officers responding to what potentially is reported as a life-threatening situation," a spokesperson said.

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How much fun would that be it would be awesome. wow i would love to that in a whole city. Or a paintball game in a whole city

They should only be allowed to use the usual brightly coloured and see-through recognisable water guns. Problem pretty much solved.

since when do water guns actually look like real weapons?
sounds like fun anyway, and i agree, it would be far better with paintball guns.

Played this when i was at uni - but it wasn't just water pistols - Email bombs, bananas, replica weapons and fake bombs (cardboard boxes marked 'Bomb' with an alarm clock in it, if you hear it you are out, or foodmixers with out the lid on - on timers - if you get splatted...).

I was winning but the game ended prematurely when a police man saw a friend of mine running into the student bar with a replica pistol and arrested him. Luckily for us he didn't call in an armed response unit, which is what he should of done.

The guy running the game and the guy who was caught got into a lot of trouble

some waterguns look Very real, so much they started making the more real looking ones have these orange plastic tips marking it as a toy gun.

Aha, i want to be in one of these so badly. They've taken place in big cities like LA and NYC. They have a site too So be updated, streetwarz might come to your town.

Yeah that looks so real:

[attachmentid=27034]

Yes but ones like these do which is the danger

which is why they should use the type like coldethyl posted- nobody's going to mistake that for the real thing.

Quite. Unfortunately It only takes one person to think it was cool to run about with a replica waterpistol, let alone people acting suspiciously with last years events in london still fresh in people's minds.

Just insane. I was reading a story on the BBC yesterday about target shooting and how it's being done in England and wow... The reader's responses to the story were shocking and amusing... One guy went as far as totally dismiss the idea and mehing it all.

Let the people have their fun.

See i agree if they stick to the fore mentioned guns its fine. But again paintball would be fun imagine a paintball game where your in teams of 50 or more and you have an entire state to play in like NSW in Australia or Oregon in the US

That would be scary... lol, and i paintball!

Exactly. Or just use a hair mister....

The game does sound fun but to little kids that don't know better between the real and the fake ones then this shouldn't be allowed.

They should have this game here in Toronto.

Oh... back about 10-12 years, I was in a massive LARP (live action role-playing), except it was fantasy/medieval based. Wandering around in town with garb on and practice swords etc. We got some funny looks, one lady even gave my group $10 because "you (sic) put on such a good show!" We were really trying to get the magic amulet away from the opposing team.

If people would use some commone sense and use the fake looking guns, they could go have their fun.

Has anyone seen that add i think its for the Playstation where everyone usues the fingers as a gun. and they are in a shoping centre shooting people. I will look for it later. But anyhoo the add was banned cause some dude in the real world cocked his finger at someone and was arrested or something

That advert was for the Xbox 360. To my knowledge, the advertisment wasn't officially banned, but Microsoft marketting suits decided not to release it because they were confident it would get them into some kind of trouble.

Of course, I could be wrong.

ahhh cause i had seen it a few times on tv here in oz just wondering

All Sounds great fun, as long as people stick to the obviously- water-pistol type thing. Would Love To Be Involved, but wouldn't like all the complaints of non-players getting soaked around London

that would be so fun!!! hunting people down through a city to shoot them with a fake gun was a good idea

i think they should build a fake city or go to one that doesnt have much police activity so then they could do the thing, and hire people to stay there an go outside and stuff