Come Out and Play festival

Two teams faced off Saturday in Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost's game, "Cruel 2 B Kind," one of several featured during Come out and Play, the three-day celebration of street and live-action role-playing games held in New York. Daniel Terdiman covered the event for News.com

"Cruel 2 B Kind teams send "kindness" text messages (such as "Have a spectacular day") to an opponent in the hope that the greeting matches the opponent's designated weakness. If there's a match, the message recipients are Killed with kindness and must join the winning team in its quest for more kindness victims.

If there's no match, the targeted team responds by texting "You're too kind" to the attackers, and both teams move on.

Related links:

-- 'Payphone Warriors' call on New York streets - In "Payphone Warriorss," teams of four players spread out from Manhattan's Washington Square park in a mad dash for dominance over the area's many pay phones. The idea was that at each new bank of pay phones, a player would pop in a quarter, call a prescribed number and then punch in his or her team's code.

-- Gaming on the streets of Manhattan - The inaugural Come Out and Play Festival, which ran from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon and aimed to bring the world of games out of the living room and into the streets.

emily | 7:52 AM | SMS and the Arts |
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