Cruel 2 B Kind in Cal Anderson Park on 4/21

Come to Cal Anderson Park on April 21st to play a game with 100s people. The game is Cruel 2 B Kind.The goal is to make the other players surrender to you. Your weapons are acts of kindness such as compliments. Your team grows with each surrender until there are mobs of people walking around complimenting each other. It’s a delightful game invented by Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost. We are going to be the first to play it in Seattle.

You can sign up for Cruel 2 B Kind on the Cruel Game website. You can sign up in a team or by yourself. You should read the rules. In the days before the game the “weapons” will be announced via email and SMS. We will be playing the Booty Variant — everyone brings a piece of Booty and surrenders it when they succumb to another player. Rules will be posted around the park so that people can play even thought they didn’t formally sign-up.
The Seattle Cruel 2 B Kind sign-in will begin at 1:30PM on 4/21, the game will begin at 2PM and the game will end around 3PM. We’ll find a bar to go to or just plop down for a picnic. The playing field will have the following boundaries:

North – Denny
South – Pike
East – 12th
West – Broadway

Here’s how the inventors describe it:

At the beginning of the game, you and a partner-in-crime are assigned a secret weapon. To onlookers, it will seem like a random act of kindness. But to a select group of other players, the seemingly benevolent gesture is a deadly maneuver that will bring them to their knees.

Some players will be slain by a serenade. Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer.

You will be given no information about your targets. No name, no photo, nothing but the guarantee that they will remain within the outdoor game boundaries during the designated playing time. Anyone you encounter could be your target. The only way to find out is to attack them with your secret weapon.

Watch out: The hunter is also the hunted. At the beginning of the game, you and your partner will also be assigned your own secret weakness. Other pairs of players have been given your secret weakness as their secret weapon, and they’re coming to get you. Anything out of the ordinary you do to assassinate YOUR targets may reveal your own secret identity to the other players who want you dead.

As targets are successfully assassinated, the dead players join forces with their killers to continue stalking the surviving players. The teams grow bigger and bigger until two final mobs of benevolent assassins descend upon each other for a spectacular, climactic kill.

Will innocents be caught in the cross-fire? Oh, yes. But when your secret weapon is a random act of kindness, it’s only cruel to be kind to other players…

I hope that you decide to come out to play. BTW, the game is being organized by Brady Forrest and Serena Batten, but as you can tell from the description the game doesn’t really need any organization. See you at Cal Anderson