Cruel 2 be Kind — Vincent, Mathew
Cruel 2 be kind, although extremely entertaining to observe, is an especially hard game to set up. It is difficult because the players must be unaware of everyone else in the game. This means that for the purpose of the game it is impossible to go up to a set of strangers and ask them to play because then the group would all know each other. Additionally, it makes it difficult to recruit friends as most of my personal social circles overlap. Although the participants did not know for sure who was in the game, they were able to guess pretty easily. As observed in our game session, the members easily found each other by finding other people who had a relationship with me.
Despite the difficulty in recruiting a set of people who were unaware of each-other’s participation status, the actual game set-up was simple in terms of materials. We simply told each game member to show up at COHO at 8:30 and to not come up to us until they were assassinated. We also messaged them the three acts of kindness which were, complimenting someone’s smile, telling someone that they should be proud of themselves, and giving someone a hug. It was hilarious to observe the participants especially when they went up to strangers who were not in the game. It was also interesting to see that some people were extremely proactive and aggressive in their attitude towards approaching people in COHO. Others were more observational. However as the winning teams grew, and the groups of people wandering COHO instead of working became larger in number, they became more noticeable in comparison with everyone else working.
We orchestrated the game with simple verbal compliments rather than other acts of kindness. However, it would be interesting to have the time to run a longer game, without any time constraints with challenges such as buying your target a coffee or help your target open the door. Because these weapons take more planning, the game would have to be much longer. It was hard to design the game so that it could definitely be completed by Tuesday.
If I had to run the game again, I would modify it so that all the participants know who each other are. I would give each participant a personalized weapon that had a key word in the compliment. I would also give them the word that they will be assassinated by. When a participant hears this keyword, they know that they have been killed and at that point would tell the assassin thier target and weapon. This would change the game so that it becomes much more of a game of chance as well as a puzzle in trying to avoid your personal assassin. It is similar to the assassin modification where everyone shakes hands and the assassin scratches the palm of its victims. It would also make the logistics of getting everyone together without being aware of each other much easier. However, it would also get rid of the very entertaining element of people attempting to assassinate bystanders who are not participating in the game.
