Cruel 2 B Kind Seattle

The Hill is Ours!!!

Originally uploaded by dreamline.

Last Saturday, I ‘won’ the first Seattle instance of ‘Cruel 2 B Kind,’ the Benevolent Assassination Game. I’m very interested in ARGs in general, so I was really looking forward to playing this limited time/scope version for a while.

The essence of the game is that players go around complimenting people, and these compliments serve as weaponry against other players. When defeated, players join the team that defeated them. This rapidly causes teams to grow and become larger, and the number of teams to become smaller. To onlookers, it’s an interesting and hopefully pleasant experience, and hopefully a good counterpart to the usual Seattle Chill.

My initial strategy was to stay at the borders of the site while the initial killing spree of compliments took off. I saw S-’s team in disguise a few dozen yards away from me, and sent fake dodgeballs out to attempt to get them to leave their fixed position to attack me (allowing me to sneak up behind them.) After I got bored of that, I went over to the main part of Cal Anderson park.

After a couple minutes in the park spent talking to various people about the game and not finding any players (but hearing large teams off in the distance), I started walking in to the main part of the field. I walked around the game for a while, using ‘internalized ki’ to reduce my normal presence level.

Eventually, it ended up with a team of about 50 walking towards me (one of three left in the game), and so I hid as comically as possible figuring that I would just be captured easily and join them. However, because the team was large and non-focused, they didn’t manage to attack in even a vaguely coordinated fashion, so I defeated them all with a challenge.

Since I was now team leader, we came up with a strategy to keep that from happening to us, which was good because one of the other remaining teams met us again and again (and we tied each time, which was funny.) I enlisted people to watch the front and back of the group, and we went up on broadway greeting people and eventually ended up on teletubby hill.

We faced off against the other group with us on teletubby hill in the park and them about 20 meters away. We regaled them with ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Red Rover,’ and then walked towards them to make the final attack. It was pretty funny, and the picture in this post is from right before the end.

So, I guess I made the single largest capture in the game, and my team was the biggest at the end. This was very amusing. I ‘won’ primarily because I had a huge amount of fun playing the game. I got to lead a group of 60+ people down broadway wishing people ‘Happy Handshake Day,’ and did a lot of fun running around. It also required me to engage leadership skills to keep the team organized as it walked, in a way I usually don’t in Seattle.

As far as ARGs go, this was a great activity to demonstrate the power of games. I went home and read a book on the subject of play. It was all in all an interesting time.

I’m very interested in organizing these sorts of events, and also using them for training and the like. But, it’s great to have the chance to just participate and play in one of them, and I’m very glad that Brady and Jen organized it.