Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Cruel 2 B Kind – “Street Games” and You
How do you get random New Yorkers to be nice to each other on the streets? You make a game out of it. Players of Cruel 2 B Kind “assassinate” each other by by using kind phrases as weapons – and they’re getting plenty of attention.
It used to be that the Internet was about creating social interactions that paralleled the real world. But now, as the reach of social networking sites has expanded far beyond archetypal “basement-dwellers” and into hyper-social communities such as college students and clubgoers, the name of the game is using the Internet to enhance existing real-world social interactions – and to create uniquely new ones (Meetups, Flash mobs, Team Dating).
Cruel 2 B Kind doesn’t really have much of a commercial interest behind it, but if you have a brand to spread, you could do worse than associating yourself with a low-to-no cost social event involving thousands of people. Facilitating memorable real world social interactions will do far more for your brand than creating the one billion and fifteenth wacky Flash game.
The Come Out And Play Festival, a three day event featuring nearly thirty different games like these, happened this past weekend. Funny, I don’t see any corporate sponsors involved. Why weren’t you there?
Leave a Reply