Community Corner

Who Died? Grosse Pointers, Lifelong Friends Make Personal Game Into App

The application is available on the Droid market now and the pair is working to have it in the iPhone market as well. The game focuses on notable deaths and allows users to learn the story behind the person.

Anytime Nora Glenn or Cathie Smith discovered a famous person had died, they would text the other a message. Over time it became a game of who would be the first to tell the other. 

Their families even began to get involved by alerting their respective mom or wife and ushering them to beat the other to notification. It was never morbid, they say, just a game of scooping each other. 

"I got Elizabeth Taylor," Glenn said. 

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"I got Amy Winehouse," Smith quickly piped in.

"I, unfortunately, got Steve Jobs," Glenn said. 

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"I got Muammar Gaddafi," Smith said. 

"Allegedly," Glenn reminded her. Both erupt into friendly laughter. 

"Our families started sending in tips," Glenn said. "So many people began getting involved, we thought we could create an app."

The app, They Are Dead, launched Oct. 30.

As fate would have it, the pair of lifelong friends met a man who creates apps for a living shortly after coming up with the idea to do it. They credit him for pushing them to pursue their idea. 

Initially they skipped their first meeting opportunity with a developer but when the man called them again saying the developer would be around again, they decided they might as well go meet him. 

After introducing the idea to the developer, market research showed nothing like their game was on the market. Then the work began. They had to include every detail—big and small—and were very hands on with the design of the game, its look, the rules and more, they said. 

With concerns about the game being misunderstood, the pair emphasize it is not a death poll or morbid game that celebrates death. Instead, the game allows players to read obituaries of notable people. They could be the easily recognizable famous people everyone would recognize but the game also includes people of less public recognition but who still deserve it, such as an award winning physicist, a Chicago crossing guard who had the post for decades and more.

The game is designed with four feeds—the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune—from which users are able to see the newest obituaries. Users then select one, send a notification to the game and earn points.

For each obituary a user selects, they also view the obituary of the person, allowing them to learn about a distinguished person, Smith said.

Users are only allowed to post once every 30 minutes and in December a few updates will make the competition anew each month. Users' cumulative score will still show but there will be a monthly competition to what user earns the highest number of points.

Points are doled out on a sliding scale. The first person to claim an obituary earns the most and then six others can claim it for fewer points. The seventh person receives the least number of points and anyone trying to claim it after that receives a message, "dead and buried."

The app launched Oct. 30 and has undergone several updates. The most recent update will take effect in December and will allow 10 people to claim each obituary and to change the game to a monthly competition. 

Glenn and Smith said they have about 70 registered users and 50 who have started playing the game, including one user from the UK. A total of 35 people have purchased the app, and ultimately, they are hopeful it will grow as more people find out about it.

The process has been a bit of a whirlwind for the pair, who are excited to see their idea come to life. They met at Our Lady Star of the Sea as little kids. Smith is a hospital administrator with degrees in nursing, speech-language pathology and audiology. Glenn has a background in public relations with a degree in speech communication and public relations. 

Both grew up watching their parents routinely read the obituaries and picked up the habit themselves. If it were not for the game, Smith said she never would have learned about the founder of Morten's Steakhouse—a person who is notable but otherwise would not have garnered the attention like that of a celebrity.

"We are very excited about it. We are proud that we did this," Glenn said. "We are very respectful of the dead. ... People are naturally obsessed with death. This is an avenue to (read the obituaries) in a more fun way."


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