I participated in Cruel 2B Kind with Ada, Alyssa, Isabelle, and Marielle on Club Penguin. The decision to move it to Club Penguin was originally fueled by the rainy weather, but added a whimsical component to the gameplay that would’ve been more difficult to achieve otherwise (but not impossible). I had never played on Club Penguin prior to this, so there was a bit of learning that needed to take place. Additionally, for a few participants (myself included), parts of the UI did not show up which added to the chaos; some of us couldn’t find the map, and having never played before, this made it pretty difficult to orient ourselves. As a result, we decided to limit the play space to the central town area seen above. We played 2 (and a half) rounds with the classroom rules. It was really fun to come up with celebrities to mistake people for and come up with fake holidays to wish people (seen below).
The sudden spur of people chatting nonsense on Club Penguin did cause some confusion for other players unaffiliated with our game though.
Interestingly enough, even after we stopped playing, people seemed more willing to chat and converse with other users on the site, which was cool to see. Another benefit of playing on Club Penguin was that (at least initially) we didn’t know each other’s usernames so we would erroneously compliment or mistake other users for celebrities in attempts to “attack” them, only for them to reply “huh?” at which point we’d realize they were not part of our group. This goofy anonymity would have been lost had we played in person. I wonder if/how any tabletop games we create could leverage this same anonymity component in-person for added fun. The anonymity did add some confusion though, because it was not immediately clear if another player would recognize that they were being attacked. In person, social cues, sound, and body language would help to communicate this, but online, these cues can be easily missed.
