Cambridge Business Association
Kindness Is Cool
Article

Kindness Is Cool

“Kind Words” aims to change a toxic internet culture, one anonymous note at a time.

Tom Rehagen
Experience Magazine, 2022
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Engaging
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

An award-winning indie game – Kind Words – has created a gentler, safer and more empowering place on the internet, and the players have been loving it. The game allows you to share your worries anonymously and get sympathetic replies from strangers around the world. Kind Words’ smart design eliminates the danger of online bullying, while facilitating safe sharing and deep empathy. Experience Magazine writer Tony Rehagen describes the game and explains why and how it might be tapping into the current zeitgeist.

Summary

Kind Words creates a gentler, more empowering internet experience ​– and users love it.

Kind Words is a new type of online experience that capitalizes on the positive aspects of virtual interconnectivity and acts as a gentler social media platform. Priced at $4.99 and released in 2019, the game garners 1,200 unique users per day. Kind Words won the British Academy Games Award for “Game Beyond Entertainment” and collected rave reviews from players.

The game takes place in a cozy virtual bedroom, where your avatar sits at a desk by a window, writing electronic letters to the sound of soothing lo-fi music. You write an anonymous message expressing what worries you or simply venting. Within hours or even minutes, you receive a sympathetic response from another player.

You can reply to other people’s letters or send an encouraging...

About the Author

Tony Rehagen’s writing has been featured in Popular Mechanics, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and Pacific Standard.

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