'Killing' gamers with kindness

(continued from previous page)

Part of the fun of "Cruel 2 B Kind" is trying to guess which groups are participants. After all, the area just north of Times Square--the game was held between 48th and 58th streets--is teeming with all kinds of groups on a warm Saturday afternoon in September.

And that's why we would frequently see a band of people, shouting something like "Keep on truckin'" in unison, only to be met with blank stares and hesitant "thank-yous."

Though, it wasn't that hard to tell who was playing. Indeed, it seemed to break down on purely demographic lines: The vast majority of players were white, between 20 and 40 years old and seemingly middle class.

As the group got larger and larger, confusion grew about whether the mob was in fact a single team or whether someone had screwed up. It was no longer entirely clear who was the vanquished and who was the undefeated leader.

After about 45 minutes, the group began to wonder if something had gone wrong with the game. No new instructions had arrived by text, and we had not found a team we could kill or who could kill us.

One player on my team, noting the lengthy period with no advance in the game, said to his friend, "The masses are hungry for blood."

Then, without warning, two other, much smaller teams engaged in a quick skirmish in front of us. One killed the other, and then they all congratulated each other. "Nicely done," everyone shouted.

A few minutes later, word arrived by text message that time was up and the game was over.

We began to walk north on Broadway to the awards ceremony, and along the way, I ran into the game's co-organizer, Bogost.

Bogost told me that he and McGonigal had tested "Cruel 2 B Kind" many times before, but that none of the trials had been like Saturday's game.

"One of the hardest things to test is the dynamic of the game with a large group," Bogost said. "It's easy to test with five to 10 people. But getting a group of 50 to 100 friends together is pretty hard."

Bogost then told me that the plan is to make "Cruel 2 B Kind" available for anyone to play, and that the design is such that players could log in to a central server and run the game themselves.

Back in Central Park, I talked to Eric Zimmerman, the CEO of game design shop, GameLab, about his experience playing "Cruel 2 B Kind."

"I thought the game was solid," Zimmerman said. "My experience of the game was really fun...We spent the whole time hiding from people, and blending in with huge mobs and that was completely fun. We just decided to survive. We were hiding in groups of people waiting in line for musicals."

Zimmerman said one nice thing about games like "Cruel 2 B Kind" is that it forces people to re-imagine the use of public spaces.

"You don't (usually) think of a line of people waiting for a musical as a place for soft cover," he said. "It not only makes the game rich, it transforms the experience of how you move through a city."

After the awards ceremony--I must report McCarthy and I did not merit a prize--McGonigal told me how she had "puppet-mastered" the game from a Starbucks in the middle of the playable stretch of Broadway.

"We had a glass view, so we could see the teams going by," McGonigal said. "At first, the teams were in pairs, and then they'd get bigger...You see the kills happening, and you see the server logs (on which the kills are registered)...So the nicest thing about running reality-based games is that you get that (immediate) feedback."

[airwalkery2k]

Recess!

I wish I knew about this 8 years ago when I still had recess to enjoy each day. If I got my friends to play a game like this, the teachers would feel that suddenly all the kids have become good little angels, when really we would be pretend-killing each other.

I guess when I have children I will tell them about this game.

[Jerry Dawson]

The kill-all-line was....

Get a life. How could they have missed it.

[Jerry Dawson]

The kill-all-line was....

Get a life. How could they have missed it.