Adviser Games announces ‘Squid Game’-style event

The Adviser Games will host three game days this year with events in Melbourne on Thursday, Sydney in May, and a new Squid Game-style event slated for October in Brisbane.

Co-creator of The Adviser Games Conaill Keniry told ifa that the games’ primary purpose is to allow advisers to network while engaging in professional development (PD).

“It’s a game format similar to the Amazing Race. Advisers arrive, they get put into teams, and they are set challenges, and they’re going to be travelling across Melbourne CBD and the inner suburbs,” Keniry said.

“So you’re in teams competing against other teams, not only talking about the challenges, but they also get to talk and interact about the industry in general.

“From previous conversations we’ve had with advisers, one of the things they’re looking for from these types of events is more time networking with advisers, and doing it in a more fun and engaging manner, as opposed to sitting around a round table with distributed meal drops and slides.”

The Adviser Games will be running again on 16 May in Sydney, before launching a new game format in Brisbane as the Adviser Squid Game on 17 October.

Speaking on this, Keniry said the shift to a Squid Game format is part of an effort to make the events “a bit more fun and colourful”.

“We were looking for something that maybe caught the imagination of advisers where they can have a bit of an idea of what we’re going to do, but also have no idea of what it’s going to be,” he said.

“I think people understand the format of the Amazing Race, which is teams travelling around trying to get to a destination.

“With Squid Game, the format is more like, ‘Hey, we’re going to start with X number of advisers and work their way down to one.’”

Noting the extreme nature of the inspiration behind this format, Keniry said: “You can do the same thing with less murder.”

“Round one starts with everybody and then during that round, you cut down on how many advisers are in that round and then you just go through five or six rounds,” he said.

“In the Squid Game [series], the first game was ‘red light green light’, where they had to move forward on the green light and stop on the red light and if you move forward in the wrong one, you’re out of the game.

“I’m thinking about the first game being ‘compliant or not compliant’. So you say something, and if it’s compliant, they can walk forward. And if it’s not compliant, they can’t. And if they walk on the wrong one then they’re out of the round.”

Keniry said there are plans already in the works for future events.

“I plan to do a different major style every year, obviously overlapping across calendar years,” he said.

“We’ll do three lots of the ‘Amazing Race’ and then we’ll do ‘Squid Games’ and then something different after that.”

The Adviser Games inaugural event was held in October 2023 in Brisbane.