CS 247: Cruel 2B Kind Assignment
Teammates: Medha Verma and Steve Weyns
Initial Thoughts
My first thought as I was reading through the rules of the game was that I loved the intended outcomes of encouraging people to do random acts of kindness. I have thought about trying to create games with similar outcomes before and found that it is actually a surprising hard space to create in.
Likes
One thing that I liked about the game was how it got people to interact with others that were not even part of the game. I thought it was interesting how the game could supersede the initial players of the game to make other people laugh and partake in the fun as well. We ran the game in CoHo and at one point one of the players sat down at a random person’s table and complemented their clothes and then continued to have a conversation with the person obviously not part of the game in order to look inconspicuous. Once this particular player noticed someone else that they thought was part of the game they stood up and left in the middle of their conversation leaving the stranger fairly confused.
Another thing that I liked was the idea of the booty. I thought that this was an ingenious mechanic of the game that not only gave people more incentive to win and participate more but also left people with a little trinket from their game. I think that it is an interesting example of how the magic circle can encapsulate and change objects. For example, what would normally be considered a normal stick that you pass by thousands of on the way to class, becomes a prize and a token of value when it enters into the game.
Dislikes
One thing that I didn’t really like in the game was that it was kind of difficult to perform the tasks concurrently especially when team sizes got bigger. I found that when other people started joining forces when they had been assassinated, they naturally started going out and performing the assassinations individually. I think that if there was a way that each person got to execute their assassinations individually but still have each person get a turn it could be easier for people to execute in larger groups.
Things I Would Change
I thought that because we had only 5 people and we were playing in a limited space, it made it really difficult to be opaque about who was playing the game. Our entire game took place in one room, so if I were to run this game in the future, I think that I would try to recruit slightly more people and run it in a larger space.
Pictures
