P0: Cruel 2 B Kind
Clara, Nylah, and Zack
On a brisk Saturday afternoon, six Stanford students set upon White Plaza with a mix of trepidation, determination, and enthusiasm. Their goal? To kill with kindness.
Setup
Clara, Nylah, and I recruited seven friends to participate in a round of Cruel 2 B Kind from 2:00–2:30 on January 11th, 2020 . The date promised a clear forecast, and White Plaza is generally well-traveled around that time. We outlined an area to give six participants sufficient room to wander, yet small enough to ensure they would encounter each other within thirty minutes. The second floor of Tresidder also offered a vantage point from which we could observe the action unnoticed.
Modifications
We opted to use the base game without the booty variant. We felt that bringing an object might be daunting to some players, and we wanted to have a low barrier of entry to reduce the likelihood of participants cancelling at the last-minute (despite our best efforts, one player opted to instead go to office hours minutes before starting).
We gave our players the following three weapons:
A: Wish your targets a happy made-up holiday
B: Blow a single kiss at your targets
C: Mistake your targets for celebrities
We expected weapon A to be achievable for even the more timid players, and added the other two to make the late-game more interesting.
Gameplay
The game began quietly, with no kills within the first ten minutes. Players opted to keep to themselves and stick to the edges of the arena — in a post-game survey, players reported that the game was quite daunting without partners.
Eventually, Shana took the first kill. Her team quickly snowballed into four members. At 2:30, we revealed our vantage point to our friends and treated them to Starbucks to thank them for their assistance.
Cruel 2 B Kind as a Serious Game
Upon analyzing the core game, we determined that the learning outcome of Cruel 2 B Kind was to make players more comfortable giving compliments to strangers. In an informal post-game survey, players generally agreed that the bizarre nature of the weapons we had given them made it daunting to approach absolute strangers, but reported that the game was still quite enjoyable especially once they teamed up with others.
Conclusion
Cruel 2 B Kind is certainly unique in nature, and I can see how it would be even more fun with more players. I would love to organize a larger game where players started in teams to circumvent the awkwardness that arose from solo play. More natural acts of kindness might also help achieve the perceived learning objectives by giving players experience giving compliments that they might apply use outside the context of the game.
