Former Survivor contestants and fans are embracing live and online reality games inspired by the show's format
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These fan-made games replicate the strategy and challenges of Survivor and have grown in popularity since the pandemic
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Participants say the games foster community and personal growth
After six days of voting out her fellow contestants and starving in the wilderness, Marya Sherron was hungry and exhausted. But her producer had a special reward in mind for the remaining castaways: a helicopter tour.
After waiting her turn and strapping on a pair of headphones, Sherron, 52, lifted up into the sky. As she looked out at the sprawling property where they played their game, the Indiana native felt “a gust of peace.”
“It felt like, ‘Whatever happens, I see that you've worked hard and you've made it this far — just sit back now and take this in,' “ Sherron tells PEOPLE. “I'm smiling just thinking of it. It was unbelievable.”
But Sherron wasn't recalling her time on CBS'sSurvivor, where she placed 16th on season 42. Rather, she was talking aboutSurvive, a live reality game created by fan Nikki Neises, which takes place in McHenry, Ill., over the course of eight days.
Survivorfirst launched in 2000, kickstarting a golden age of reality competition. The series is based on a simple premise, following up to 24 starving and marooned people who are forced to vote one another off the island. The last person standing wins $1 million (or, in the case of season 40 and the currently-airing season 50, $2 million).
After more than 20 years and 50 seasons,Survivorshould be fading away. But the fandom surrounding this dinosaur of reality TV is more active than ever. Edits of the most popular players dominateTikTok. In cities across the country, fans and former players host themed watch parties anddrag shows.Survivorplayers continue to crop up on TV, fromDeal or No Deal IslandtoThe Traitors. In May 2026,Rob Has a PodcasthostRob Cesterninohosted a sold-out live tapingto 1,500Survivorfans in New York City and debuted his first book,The Tribe and I Have Spoken, which blends show history, strategy and Cesternino's personal story.
PEOPLE's 50 Seasons of Survivorspecial issue is available on newsstandsand Amazon now. The three-hourSurvivorfinale airsWednesday, May 20, at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
But that isn't enough for the most rigorous of viewers. For fans that can't — or won't — go to Fiji, other watchers have created simulated games, both online and in-person (ORGs, or “online reality games,” or LRGs, “live reality games”). The experience emulates the strategy, physical competition and even starvation sometimes. A growing number of former players have competed in the fan-made games, seeking to meet others with similar interests, grow personally or avenge their experiences on the CBS show.
“For people who love games,Survivoris probably the purest, best game,” saysStephen Fishbach, who competed on seasons 18 and 31 ofSurvivorand is the author of the reality television thrillerEscape!, “Whether you are camping outside [in an LRG] or you're in your apartment on an ORG, these are a way to participate in a layer of this really complex social strategy game.”
Dial-up beginnings
The beginning ofSurvivorin 2000 coincided with the explosion of the internet, and soon enough, fans began to gather online to chat about the show.
Adam Klein, who won season 33 of the show and now runs acoaching businessforSurvivorhopefuls, first found out about online games in 2002, whenSurvivor: Thailandwas airing. While playing aSurvivorfantasy league on Yahoo! Sports, someone commented about their game, and Klein quickly fell into the world of early ORGs, which were largely played on chat rooms.
“It was my hobby in middle school,” he says. “I would get home from school, do my homework, get into chat rooms and vote strangers off on the internet.”
It came full-circle when Klein auditioned forSurvivor: Millennials vs. Gen X, which aired in 2016. During the casting process, Klein realized he'd played an online game with one of theSurvivorcrew members, a man named Lloyd. In Klein's final casting interview, Lloyd was present — as was hostJeff Probst, executive producer Matt Van Wagenen and 25 to 30 other executives. Klein realized his chance.
“I'm like, ‘Do you know how you can know that I'm the biggest fan to ever play? Because I kicked Lloyd's ass in the final two of the game when I was 12 years old and he was probably, like, 35,' “ Klein recalled, laughing. “I apologized later to Lloyd. But playing online became part of my casting story.”
Over time, onlineSurvivorgames went from social strategy in chat rooms to organized leagues with their own apparatuses. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, online shows likeSequester— which was created byBig Brotheralum Audrey Middleton — and games organized entirely on Discord, an instant messaging platform, abounded.
Cesternino, who played on seasons 6 and 8 ofSurvivor,credits the COVID pandemic with ORGs' sudden rise in popularity. With lots of free time, a longing for connection and no newSurvivorseasons in sight, fans jumped at the chance to connect with other viewers and test their wits.
“[The pandemic] really gave people the tools to be able to do more online reality games,” Cesternino says. “That was really the jump-off where there were so many people I know that were in month-long online reality games.”
In a typical ORG, there isn't a survival element. Rather, it's all about the “outwit” portion ofSurvivor's mantra, “outwit, outplay, outlast.” Immunity idols can be “hidden” in cryptic code, with players messaging producers to see if they've successfully cracked them; challenges can be quick, online games, likeGeoguessror Tetris.
Contestants must strategize with each other over messaging platforms like Discord, while tribal councils take place in a separate Discord channel or on Zoom. Depending on the game, the ORG can last days or weeks — all while participants balance their real work and personal lives.
Though castaways aren't starving in the wilderness, Fishbach — who runs an online game, “Blood on the Clocktower,” withSurvivoralumni — says ORGs can, in some ways, be more difficult.
“InSurvivor, I can look down the beach and see, ‘Those two people are talking. I know what's happening over there.' It can ground you in the physical world,” he says. “But in an ORG … people can be talking and you have no idea about it. The paranoia just becomes exponential.”
The IRL element
AsSurvivorevolved from Klein's chatroom days, the fanbase did too. After he started podcasting aboutSurvivorduring season 18, Cesternino started a Facebook group where fans could talk about the show and form connections. There, the idea for the firstRHAPlive show, which took place in 2014, happened, and fans began meeting each other in-person.
At the same time,Survivoralums began putting on their own mini versions of the show. During the 2010s, Bob Crowley, who won season 17, put on the Durham Warriors Survival Challenge, a three-day, outdoor competition benefitting the Durham Warriors Project. Season 10 contestant and Houston city council member Jolanda Jones organized the Houston Survivor Challenge, a charity version of the game which benefitted the U'Jana Conley Foundation for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.
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But Fishbach traces the beginnings of LRGs to college campuses. At the University of Maryland, Austin Trupp created the first college game,Survivor: Maryland, of which season 1 was filmed in 2012 and released online in 2014. Fans onYouTubeeagerly watched as college students met in classrooms to strategize and competed in challenges on the lawn (though the participants continued to live in dorms, not camp outside). Now at least 23 colleges have their own versions, according to onelist. (This reporter competed in two seasons ofSurvivor: Northwesternduring junior and senior years of college.)
Since college versions cropped up in the mid-2010s, LRGs have exploded, not only on campus. Now there are versions in cities across the world, lasting as short as one day or as long as a week at a time. Melanie Bartlett, 48, who co-founded and currently runs the LRG CastingInstagramandwebsite, estimates that there are at least 200 active games globally, from Australia to the Cayman Islands.
Typically the games attractSurvivorsuperfans who haven't gotten their ticket to Fiji yet. In a normal year, casting director Jesse Tannenbaum and his team sift through 25,000 applications, perBackstage, whittling them down to just 18 players per season. Over 20 years, just 751 individuals have appeared on the show. But fan-made LRGs are a way to get that same experience or, at least, close to it.
For those who don't want to camp, there are one-day games, in which players run through all the elements of a traditional 39- or 26-daySurvivorgame in just 12 hours. Tour guide Ryan Hergenreder, 25, runsSurvivor DC, a one-day game held five times a year.
Though Hergenreder and his nearly 50-person production team keep all the traditional elements — tribal councils, challenges and themed twists — of the show, he says they're more focused on building a local community than being overly competitive.
“When we're picking our cast, we actually don't care if someone is good atSurvivor. It is not one of our priorities at all. Ours is just for fun and creating community,” he explains. “Are they gonna wanna join the production team? Are they gonna come to our watch parties? Do they wanna come to the brunches we do every week? It's more about creating a DCSurvivorgroup than it is about theSurvivorgame itself.”
But for those who crave the survival element, there are multi-day games, which take place at sites from Maine to Tennessee. Bartlett uses her PTO from her job as an office worker to travel around the country playing these games. While some let participants start with a bag of personal items, typically, cast members are only given a pot, rice and flint — and little else. There is, however, usually a medical team to take care of any players who need it, she says. Players vote each other out and participate in challenges until there's a Sole Survivor.
“One of the games that I played, it was pretty wet and rainy the whole time. So we all went the first four days with no fire because no one could make the fire,” Bartlett recalls. “The last day, we got a reward and it was three pieces of fruit to split between six people. We were so hungry that it was the best bite of apple I ever had.”
For these participants, though, the experience of pushing yourself to the physical and mental limit is more than worth it. After her first game,Survivor Philadelphia, Bartlett was hooked — and she hopes to pass the joy onto others. It's become a true family activity, as she brings her daughter, mom and brother along to games, where they help out on production or play alongside her.
“We're just doing this for bragging rights, but you're also proving something to yourself,” she says. “There's a beauty in watching somebody push themselves.”
A hands-off approach
ORGs and LRGs have become so ubiquitous that formerSurvivorcontestants themselves are getting in on the fan-made fun.Bianca Roses, founder ofRoses PRand a contestant onSurvivorseason 48, competed in her first LRG, Hergenreder'sSurvivor DC, in March 2026. After 12 hours of intense competition, she won the entire game.
The experience was cathartic for the self-described “overachiever,” who was eliminated fourth in her CBS season. After that, she went into a “dark place” — something thatSurvivor DC, in a small way, helped ease.
“I am the oldest daughter. I am a founder of a business. I just don't deal with failure very well and I felt like a huge failure,” she says. “I went [intoSurvivor] with this very hard exterior of like, ‘This is how it has to go,' and that is absolutely not what happened. I went out so much earlier than I could have ever imagined.”
She adds, “When I think about the way I playedSurvivor DC, there was literally zero preparation. I just went in to have fun. … [Afterward] I told [Hergenreder], ‘This was like a very healing experience for me.' “
Sherron, meanwhile, started watchingSurvivorwith her son, who has autism. The series was something they bonded over, and he told Sherron that if he ever wanted to appear on the show, she had to do it first.
After sending in a video, she was cast for season 42. But she was in the middle of grief — her brother, Kious Kelly, became the first nurse in New York City to die of COVID in March 2020, according toThe New York Times. When she ultimately flew to Fiji a year later, Sherron wasn't ready for the game's intense strategy and was voted out third.
But by that time, Sherron had already noticed a change in herself. “The first night when we slept on the beach, I wouldn't lay down. I was holding my knees because the ground was moving with all those hermit crabs and I was terrified. Like, I wasnota survivor,” she recalls.
“But day five, I remember laying there on the bamboo and looking up. There's this big spider, and I just pulled my buff over my face,” she says. “I was a different woman. I was, all of a sudden, unbothered and fearless.”
The experience motivated Sherron to continue exploring her newfound love for survival. “I'm good at this. I actually like being outside. I'm rediscovering myself,” she says. “It isn't so much, for me, redemption from what happened on CBS'Survivor. I think it was that a flame had been lit, and the LRGs keep taking me to the next level.”
In fact, Sherron — who has competed in seven LRGs, most taking place over multiple days, since her 2022 stint onSurvivor— was so inspired that she wrote a book,LRG Nation, about various games across the country. In it, she interviewed Neises, whose LRG featured helicopters as a reward for hungry and tired contestants. She's also filmed a corresponding documentary, which she aims to debut next year.
Despite many of these games using similar concepts from CBS'Survivor, the network has taken a largely hands-off approach to the players. As far as any of the sources interviewed for this story know, no fan has ever gotten a legal letter from Paramount demanding they change their game's name or approach, “to their credit,” according to Fishbach.
“I feel like most brands would step in either to shut it down or take it over,” says Fishbach. “Both ways, they're gonna destroy this beautiful, organic thing that's ultimately a huge celebration of the game that you've created.”
In the meantime,Survivorfans across the country and the world will continue to play their versions of the game. “There's a beautiful level of love and homage given to this format,” Sherron says. “People call it ‘fake reality TV' all the time. It's so much more than that.”
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