Cruel 2B Kind Reflection
We began our game by modding it to tailor for a 4 person game by removing most of the complicated rules. Confining our participants into a small space (CoHo), we have the rules set as such:
- 1 point is scored per person “killed”.
- Game is complete when either 30 minutes is up, or there is only 1 player left.
- Our 3 acts of kindness are all praises for a piece of clothing the person is wearing, being: Shoes, Clothes, and Hair.
Shortly after the game began, we noticed something quite funny and unplanned, in which 3 out of 4 of our participants all end up “hiding” in the corner, as seen in the picture below. It took them about 10 minutes to start talking and attacking each other, which we found quite amusing.
Jack, one of our participants (one furthest to the right), had a strong suspicion of who was playing the game, which prompted him to break the silence and asked the other person beside him (Ophir) if he was playing the game in which he replied “yeah, nice shirt”. Hearing this, Horace, the one in the green jacket, turned around and muttered “nice jacket” to Ophir, removing him out of the game. Right after, Horace started wondering around CoHo, walking back and forth multiple times in which Ryan, who was standing still in front of the collection counter, found him quite suspicious and decided to attack him.
“It’s sorta based on luck. If someone kills another in your proximity you would know” — Horace
One of the main feedbacks we got from our participants was that the game was too awkward, and it is very hard for them to just walk up to strangers and start complimenting them. Our participants also mentioned that CoHo is too loud and crowded, it was hard to walk around especially when there was a mini concert going on. Jack and Horace both mentioned that they wanted to find a spot to “hide” in the crowd, which prompted them to go to the same corner. Also, us taking pictures of them made it obvious that something fishy is going on.
In the end, everyone had fun despite the awkwardness. If we were to run this game again, we would definitely pick a larger venue to run the game on. Also, to discourage people from “camping” at the same spot, we would introduce bonus points as collectibles scattered throughout the venue to force people to move around more.
