Kin Social Media platform is a social media platform built specifically for use in larps.

I became frustrated with the lack of depth in the relationships we were supposed to portray in our games, and so I started thinking about how to create a low friction tool for players to use.

Originally the idea was simply to use fake accounts on Facebook or Google+, but these platforms quickly became very good at detecting and shutting down fake accounts, and so that became a non-starter.

So I created Kin, a social media platform with a penchant for drama. I believe ultimately it gave the games that used it a number of benefits:

  • Cohesive shared world building among players.
    As players could interact and among themselves define the world, so could they collectively outline the sandbox the game was in.
  • More war stories.
    Shared stories deepen relationships, and while a lot of things in Kin are still simulated they are still deeper (and to an extent, more real) than anything we simply agree on.

So … that’s Kin.

– Thomas