Trust Game
Download Game Guide (PDF)
Download Presentation Poster (JPG)
Description
Trust Game is a live-action game created in May 2008 for the game design class, Poetics of Gameplay, taught by Heather Kelley. It was held and iterated upon 3 times at Carnegie Mellon campus.
In Trust Game, players were asked to find a specific person within Carnegie Mellon campus by following clues to collect puzzle pieces. If they found the person, they would receive a prize. But there was a catch. One player was designated the mole in secret. All the players knew that a mole existed, but only the mole and the moderator knew who the mole was. If the mole found all the puzzle pieces first, only the mole would receive the prize.
This game was played through cellphone text messaging as the players moved around campus and took between 1-2 hours to play.
This game was created and ran with the collaboration of Lindsey Snider.
Theory/Concept
I was inspired to create a live-action game by Blast Theory's works, Can You See Me Now? and Uncle Roy All Around You. I was especially interested in creating a game that blurred the lines between reality and virtual reality and required a balance between two opposing forces.
Trust in virtual games is different. Without pairing a face to a partner, it's easier to trust and easier to pass judgement based on data alone. But take away that barrier and our understanding of trust changes. Trust Game attempted to play with people's trust of others in games. It was played as live action in ordre to allow us to look at the boundary of trust that is intuitively understood in virtual games play out in a live setting. We also placed a mole in the teams in order to force the players to balance teamwork with distrust.
Therefore, in the game, while the mole remained anonymous, the players had to enact a balanced level of trust and suspicion in order to play the game.
