He Built an AI Sniper Game… Then Gave Away the Prompt

In this episode I sit down with the evil genius, who built an entire custom app using AI.
And we're giving you the prompt FOR FREE!
You take our prompt, implement it in your context, and you have a fun, custom sniper game for your next summer camp, winter retrat or d-now!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 We're giving you this game’s code!
00:40 The Sniper Humble Beginnings
03:27 How We Used Sniper
06:20 Can we build a custom app using AI?!
08:25 What Does Custom AI App Builder this Cost?
12:55 Some Features or Potential glitches to be aware of
14:55 Our Sniper Rules
17:15 Sniper vs. Assassin
18:15 Final Words of Wisdom?

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TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00.929)
Well, what's up everyone? Here I am with the world's biggest Mavericks fan, Ben Hurlburt, willing to lose bets no matter how bad they are.

Ben Hurlburt (00:05.998)
That's right, you know it. Google it, it, and you'll than your favorite player.

Ben Hurlburt (00:14.03)
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:15.775)
That's also true. But me and Ben actually worked together at Cross Creek Church, which is great. And I didn't know that Ben was a genius at artificial intelligence. So before we dive into all that, why don't you just tell me where you first started playing the original inception of these sniper games and...

Ben Hurlburt (00:23.746)
Have a

Nick Clason (00:41.601)
how like what the rules are and like all that type of stuff in case, know, someone wants to use or utilize this in their like own ministry context.

Ben Hurlburt (00:51.468)
Yeah, so I started this. I didn't start this, but I started playing the game of sniper at Texas A when I was in college. honestly, it wasn't even a game. was it was just a bunch of friends in a group chat.

who thought it was really funny whenever we would see each other in person as a, like not in our normal context. So like we all went to church together, but A has a huge campus. So we thought it was really funny whenever we see each other on campus. So we just like take a picture of each other from like really far away and then not say anything like to them in person. We just sent the picture of them and it was kind of like, yo, they were there and where'd they go? And it started off just kind of, you know, like, ha ha, I saw you in person. And then it got a lot.

more competitive as it went on. People didn't want to be sniped, if you will. We had certain buildings where it was like, no, don't snipe me in there. I could be doing something with, I could be on something job related, because you've got all these job fairs and stuff like that all the time. So people didn't want to be distracted. So it kind of morphed from this just kind of funny, ha ha, I saw you in person to getting

really really competitive and while it never became like a fully fledged game it always the sport management major in me always saw like the untapped potential for like some crazy stupid like game that people could play on their phones and actually like you know you're still kind of behind the screen but it's all about what's actually happening in front of you so yeah

Nick Clason (02:28.375)
Yeah. All right. So the basic premise though, is you have a group of people, a pool of players, so to speak, and your goal is to capture them via a picture of using your cell phone. Like basic, simple, right? Yeah, so easy. And then like enter fall 2025, where we work. Because we're the youth ministry and we're the only fun ones, it's our job to run

Ben Hurlburt (02:33.326)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (02:40.0)
Right. Yeah. So easy.

Ben Hurlburt (02:50.093)
Thank you.

Nick Clason (02:57.227)
fantasy football for the whole staff. we have like, for context, we have, it's not just like a Yahoo league of like eight people. There's like 30 people in three different leagues. And it's like a big thing, which reminds me that I still need to send a recap email about the end of the season. But I've really fallen off here at the end of the year. But we're playing, what'd say?

Ben Hurlburt (02:59.424)
Right, of course.

Ben Hurlburt (03:07.662)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (03:18.798)
It wasn't close. Yeah, sorry. I was like, it just wasn't close. Like, you just ran away with it.

Nick Clason (03:23.753)
Yeah.

And we got to figure out, and we tried this year even, right? We threw a wrinkle in it to try to make, because what we're describing is there's three different leagues and the leagues compete against each other. And every year one league jumps out into like first place of like the points and that's it. They stay. And we don't know how to like make it closer, make the race like actually interesting, which this sniper game was our attempt to make it interesting. So like,

Ben Hurlburt (03:41.218)
And they stay. Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (03:48.471)
Okay.

Nick Clason (03:54.823)
Essentially, we created, what did we call, do we call them assassins in the league? There were two dormant players in every league that, yeah, they drafted players and then they held them hostage, because it's all points-based, so it's not like wins and loss-based. If I drafted someone in Ben's league, for example, that player's points didn't count toward the league total overall. However,

Ben Hurlburt (04:19.566)
Thank

Nick Clason (04:21.951)
we have this big conference that happens in the middle of the fall, like the first week of November. We invite a bunch of other pastors and church planters to our campus and the entire staff is sort of pulling it off together. And so we were like, what if we created a sniper game to release these held hostage players into the overall player pool? Because like, for example, and again,

the Colts fell off too, just like I fell off in fantasy football. Like Jonathan Taylor at this point was the MVP of the league. And then, yeah, but since then has done nothing, just like the actual team. so anyway, we're like, well, what if we give Jonathan Taylor's points, Saquon Barkley's points, whoever was on these, these hostage, you know, players back into the pool and the way that you release them is by playing this sniper game. And we were like,

talking it out, right? And I was like, it'd be really cool if I didn't have to like manually score this because I do have to manually score the fantasy football. Like I have to go in, have to write everyone's score into a spreadsheet and let Excel do its thing. And you were like, what if we built our own custom app using AI? And I like laughed at you. I was like, we're not gonna be able to do that. Like, what do you think this is? Like the year 3000? Like, no.

Ben Hurlburt (05:45.186)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:47.959)
And I think one night you abandoned all of your husband duties and you just went, yeah, you're like, I'm gonna prove that this can happen. So tell us that story.

Ben Hurlburt (06:02.424)
So I think we were just sitting there watching, my wife, Makayla and I were sitting there watching some movie and I just, don't know, I just, the entire day I was sitting there thinking like, I swear I can pull this off. Like, this isn't going to be that hard. And the movie didn't really, and the movie didn't really have me locked in. So I was like, yo, you cool if I just like look at this for like five minutes or something, Makayla? She was like, yeah, as long as it's only five minutes. And then it-

Nick Clason (06:14.074)
It's gotta be a way, yeah.

Nick Clason (06:26.611)
And five minutes turned into what?

Ben Hurlburt (06:28.93)
Five hours. yeah, so I just basically started doing some research online, trying to like find a way because like, I'll be so honest, like I can't like generate code. Like I wouldn't know the first thing about any of that. Like I'm a sport management major for God sakes. But yeah.

Nick Clason (06:48.221)
and a worship leader and a youth pastor. Like, we don't know what we're doing, yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (06:52.398)
Expertise is not in that field. you know, so I was like, you know, I know what I need though. Like I can see the app in my head, like digital native. Like I know what this thing needs. So I was like, let's just see if one of these like AI app like things work. AI app generator things works. And it did. Base 44, dude. It was insane. I just started cooking like just.

Nick Clason (07:11.884)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (07:20.832)
like create like four different tabs like make sure that like each one has this specific function. I even you even get a like color designer I was like yo this is great for the graphic design I'm part of my part of my brain I scratched that itch so yeah I mean

Nick Clason (07:37.143)
Now, bass, bass 44, is it free or is there a free version of it or how like, yeah, so talk about that a little bit.

Ben Hurlburt (07:42.016)
No.

Ben Hurlburt (07:45.902)
I think there is a free version of it. The only problem is, and there were a couple of important things, is once you create the app, it's not like something you can download on the App Store. It's weird what the definition of app is, at least in my head, considering I'm thinking of the App Store. But it's everything is like, it's more so of a website than it is actually like an app as we would think it. So part of the reason that like,

Nick Clason (07:57.569)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:10.987)
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (08:15.948)
I felt the need to have to pay for it is that the URL might not remain in your possession.

And it could be in the middle of the game, right? Like somebody else that is on base 44 with the subscription could come up with the URL or just anybody who creates a URL in general. could be taken. So I was like, nah, we have to pay for that. That alone is worth it. And the other one is you could give it more prompts. It opens to more statistics things.

Nick Clason (08:54.347)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Hurlburt (08:57.644)
like being able to analyze like actually how the app is performing as opposed to just like typing in what I would like for it to do.

Nick Clason (09:04.617)
Yeah, and I think too, if I remember right, you were able to build it and you were able to see it, but then in order to allow others in it or something like that, like we needed to unlock it behind some sort of paywall, which I think, mean, like for example, I think the cost was in the realm of like 20 something dollars, right? So like.

Ben Hurlburt (09:27.921)
right yeah

Nick Clason (09:30.389)
And we use this for three days, like the same length of like a winter retreat or like a D-NOW or like a summer camp. So if this was something that A, you you allowed your students to have phones and most of them did have phones, but then B, you had that same amount of time, like you could unlock it for just a couple of dollars, right? 20 bucks, whatever. And then use Ben's prompt, which I've included link in the description. Go check it out if you want to go grab it, to build something.

you with your, you and you tweak it for yourself with your own context and whatever in mind, but like, build something for $20 that's custom that can be used exclusively by your people. Like Ben said, it wasn't like an app store app, but it was like a web app. Right. And so you just, yeah. you sit in it, like there was some, glitched a little, but bro, I mean, people used it. Like some people were absolutely like spamming this game, like the entire conference. Like every time I checked it, there was activity. It was.

Ben Hurlburt (10:11.404)
It works really well.

Nick Clason (10:26.775)
And it was a really fun way to infuse a little bit of life, right? Because not everyone at the conference used it. I think that's the other thing was like, if you wanted to do something like this, could maybe let students sign up for it and only the ones signed up are playing it. And it just happens in the background. You do the rest of your programming for your Dean hour, your winter retreat, and whoever has the phone or whoever is able to or.

Ben Hurlburt (10:33.346)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:52.053)
your student leadership team or your staff or like there's all kinds of different adaptations because that's we had church planters and other pastors and we didn't invite them or even let them know that it was happening unless they saw us like take our phone out and like sneak behind a wall to try and take a picture. So it's a great way to build camaraderie with a smaller subset of people you know if that's something you want to do and that's that's exactly what happened like in our context.

Ben Hurlburt (11:17.388)
Yeah, no, it was honestly a lot of fun. I think some of the glitches came from stuff that you could probably take care of in person, like Nick was talking about. one of the worst things was that in my head I was like, yo, I don't know if somebody fully gets that.

participating in this app means that somebody could take a picture of you at any point in time. And I was like, I don't want to get any invasion of privacy. Like that wouldn't be great. so I had this, like, you had to opt in button and whenever like,

Nick Clason (11:45.909)
Right.

Ben Hurlburt (11:52.782)
Sometimes it wouldn't, like it couldn't click. One of our friends, Miranda's phone, it just wouldn't scroll down to be able to click opt-in because of the version of her iPhone was a little bit older. something like that though, that I did on the app could have totally been something that in person, if your students are playing it, you can just have them be like, yo, I'm like.

by agreeing to play this game like I'm just gonna happen. Another thing too is, and this was probably the best thing about this app, and I know I was thinking of just for adults, but for students could also be a thing. You can program the app to shut down.

at certain times of day. And I didn't really test it out a lot, I mean, just given what it was capable of, might even be, you might even be able to like geo locate where the app is functioning. At a minimum, you have control over when the app is up, when the app is down, you can just shut it off. And you know, you have like, just like a kill switch at all points in time, which is like housed through like your base 44, like,

like home site. So like if you don't want your kids playing that once they've left the church, like they won't if you make that call. So yeah.

Nick Clason (13:08.288)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (13:18.359)
Yeah. And like, and then just for, for everyone else's sake, like here's how we put the rules in, right? Like here are the rules that we tried to operate by. So it was a three day conference, then put like a start, a start and stop time on those three days. Uh, so that people weren't like getting tagged at home, which I don't know that anyone in our staff would have done that, but you never know. People get crazy. Um, we said,

Ben Hurlburt (13:26.382)
you

Ben Hurlburt (13:43.266)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:46.071)
We said you were not allowed to play the game during main sessions or breakouts, so main content times. And the other thing that was cool was you could report a photo. if I took a picture of you while you're leading worship, for example, someone can report that and negate the points that it would have given to that team because...

Ben Hurlburt (13:54.051)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (14:01.512)
Okay, I can do that,

Nick Clason (14:12.683)
they were doing it outside of the boundaries. And so that was another thing was there was like a self regular, or not like a self, but like a team regulation, right? Kind of woven into the app. And again, Ben wrote all that into the code or into the prompt there. And so, and then we also said like bathrooms and offices were off limits. So you had like your safe zone, which remember like our team, like our students team, like all, how many are there? Six of us? We were all playing and we were all just like,

Ben Hurlburt (14:38.893)
Thanks a lot.

Nick Clason (14:41.895)
hold up in our own offices because we were all killing each other. And so we all just like went to our office to like gain safety. And then like I'd like be walking to the bathroom, like holding my phone like at people so that like they wouldn't like take pictures of me. And like one time I came out of the bathroom and like our resident and intern, they like used it against me. Like the resident was like, Hey, can you come here and look at this for a second? And so like I walked towards him and then the intern was like behind me and like

Ben Hurlburt (14:46.167)
I'm

Nick Clason (15:11.905)
got me taking a picture or got a picture of me. Like those two turds, totally got me. And then I think was the last one was you couldn't be looking at the camera.

Ben Hurlburt (15:17.57)
Yes. Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (15:23.498)
you can't be like, you can't be looking at either the person taking the photo or I mean, they're right there or the camera.

Nick Clason (15:29.289)
Yeah, so you can basically have a shield if you look at if someone's trying to take a picture of you you catch them with your eyeballs like that doesn't count.

Ben Hurlburt (15:38.018)
Yeah, it wouldn't be any fun if like you and I were just like sitting here like talking and just like taking a picture of the whole time. Yeah, but I will say like one thing that like I know that assassin is like really really popular. One thing I do like about sniper apparent like opposed to assassin is that once you're out an assassin like

Nick Clason (15:42.436)
Spamming each other with pictures. Yeah, exactly

Ben Hurlburt (15:59.968)
unless like someone like brings you back to life or some weird like immunity thing happens like you're out. And like I remember playing Assassin in college twice and one time I made it pretty far but the first time like I had like a friend that get let into my house like on the first day and I was just like well I was so excited to play this and now like like

Nick Clason (16:06.251)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:21.537)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (16:22.892)
dead like there's nothing I can do so like I would say that sniper gives you the opportunity like kids keep playing like and I get it I'm telling you it got competitive at work like the younger people on staff were going crazy over this thing so yeah

Nick Clason (16:31.446)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:41.471)
Yeah. Yeah. It was super fun. agree. Anything else that you learned that you would maybe do differently or any words of wisdom if anyone were to try to take your prompt and put in base 44, either on the creating of the app side of things or just the gameplay side of things that maybe we discovered throughout the game. We'll make an adjustment on this next year if we did it or something like that.

Ben Hurlburt (17:09.098)
well, the first thing is that prompt that like you're going to get is like the initial starting prompt. likely if you're going to want to go a certain direction with it, you, you might need to add some tweaks. I can't remember everything that's in it right now. but like,

There's a lot that that is in it, but you will inevitably need to make some changes make some tweaks In order to like get this thing up and running so in some way it's definitely like it's it's yours like you created it but one thing I would say is like put yourself and Like the best Jesse Eisenberg social network

Nick Clason (17:37.078)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (17:53.71)
programming mindset that you can for two hours and then just never flip back into it and whatever you come up with will be a really great game, really great product. So, yeah.

Nick Clason (18:04.043)
Yeah, I will say one thing that was helpful for us, I felt like on all sides, gameplay sides and administratively keeping score was we forced people, remember we forced people to use their actual name as their handle rather than like Dragonslayer17 because if you're Dragonslayer17, but I have no clue that that's your name, I can't know to tag you. And so you don't have to do that, but that was something that I...

Ben Hurlburt (18:14.465)
You

Ben Hurlburt (18:20.278)
That's right.

Thank

Nick Clason (18:33.463)
I required them, I was like, if you don't use your actual name as your handle, I won't give you points because I'm not gonna be able to chase down everyone's hair, brain, screen name that they come up with, you know, from their AOL instant messenger days.

Ben Hurlburt (18:46.917)
Yeah, I just remembered like a whole side of this whenever like we had it so that

When you took the picture of somebody, can't just like take a picture and upload it. You have to be able to tag them. Like there's a drop down. You can type into it and pull up somebody's like, like account name. But the fun thing to it that I felt like we could have dived into more. And I don't know if other people did was I had a whole social media function to it. as opposed to like the picture just going in and just registering as a point.

Nick Clason (18:59.797)
Right.

Nick Clason (19:20.726)
Right.

Ben Hurlburt (19:21.644)
kind of went into this Instagram-esque feed where other people, that was where you could report the post, where we like talked about that. But you could also like comment on them if they were funny, you could like them, react to them. And I thought that was a cool way to like keep people ingrained, especially given how much people on social media anyway, so.

Nick Clason (19:28.289)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (19:42.815)
Yeah, no doubt. And that, yeah, you're right. I would, that's where I'd log in and I'd be like, Holy smokes. Like Eli and Miranda have been like doing nothing but playing this game. So.

Ben Hurlburt (19:50.392)
Right.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Nick Clason (19:55.553)
But shout out to them. So all right, anything else? Anything else that we're missing before we cut people loose to go make this game for themselves?

Ben Hurlburt (19:57.688)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (20:04.312)
I'm sure there are, if it feels intimidating, don't.

Just, mean, honestly, Base 44, it was so easy. Like I, and if it didn't do what I wanted it to do, I'd be like, you didn't do what I wanted you to do. Try it again. like it, 95 % of the time that fixed the problem. So it was, it was so user friendly. It's chat GPT, but it makes an app for you. So it, mean, we're not paid, this isn't a sponsor, but I would totally use base 44. It was so simple.

Nick Clason (20:35.637)
Yeah, and Bass44, if you're listening, sponsor us.

Ben Hurlburt (20:39.214)
That would be great.

Nick Clason (20:40.439)
All right, everyone. Well, until next time, and as always, Ben, thanks for being here. See you guys soon.

Ben Hurlburt (20:46.702)
See you guys!