Patreon-Exclusive Prototype! The Evolution of Trust
Added 2017-06-06 14:57:59 +0000 UTCFirst off, thank you for the wild response to the Fireflies project! It hit 1200 points on Hacker News and got a couple hundred retweets – not bad for a one-week side project.
As I mentioned before, I needed to take a break for a side project, because I was getting stuck on my main project. I'll be honest: I may have to reboot the whole thing. But before I do that, I'd like to share with you what I'd made so far! Here it is:
THE EVOLUTION OF TRUST (Turn on your audio!)
Two reasons why I want to share this Patreon-exclusive prototype: 1) as thanks for putting up with me, 2) to squeeze whatever feedback I can out of this current iteration! So please, be honest and let me know: what do you like about this iteration, and what don't you like? Topic, art style, gameplay, format, narrative, etc?
Your feedback will be tremendously helpful! I think the core reason I got stuck on this project is because I didn't send out more prototypes earlier for feedback. In the future, I'll be more conscious of giving you more Patreon-exclusive prototypes to play with!
. . .
Other updates: I'm speaking at two small workshops this month! The first one is this week, ComSciCon, a workshop on communicating science – I'll be on a panel about "digital storytelling". The second one is next week, Better Angels, an inter-disciplinary gathering of peeps dedicated to making politics less polarized, more civil and constructive.
But, as much as I don't like disappointing y'all, I have to be honest – this means The Evolution of Trust won't be released this month, as planned. (especially since I may have to reboot the project)
On the upside, I'll write & share what I learn from ComSciCon + BetterAngels! I know these workshops will inspire me in concrete, practical ways – and hopefully, by sharing it here, it can do the same for you. :)
'Til next time!
<3,
~ Nicky Case
P.S: I've been feeling kind of "meandering" recently, so I picked up this book: Designing Your Life. It's based off a Stanford course about applying design techniques & psychology to building yourself a more meaning-filled life! (Because it's based off a college course, it's more geared towards "work", but its lessons are equally applicable to life, love, family, friends, etc) I'm only halfway through, but if you've been feeling a bit lost recently, I recommend checking their TED talk out first, and if you like it, go get the book! We can all help each other design our lives, together~
Comments
Woah, thanks for the in-depth feedback, running me through your thought process! > Perhaps this lesson would have been more efficient if we actually lost money when we put it in the machine, so that both cheating would make our accounts stand still instead of going up slower. That's a great idea! Loss aversion can make the sting of betrayal so much more painful. > I realized I hadn't actually tested cheating enough. Perhaps I would learn different things by doing so. I replayed with that in mind. Hm, interesting -- maybe I should make it easier for people to go back & replay the parts they want. (which you can do easily in my "blog post"-style games, but not so much my "game"-like games...) > But I'm left with the same question you began with: why is trust declining in the world then? That's what the rest of the interactive will (hopefully) answer ;)
Nicky Case
2017-06-11 16:51:08 +0000 UTCI had seen your animated gif from before so I had an idea about what this would be. Here's what went through my head as I played it: Hmm, well, if I want to make money, I'll have to take some risk. I'll start with trusting them. Oh good, they gave me money back. I guess I'll trust them again. Wait, are they never going to cheat on me then? Yup, we're both at 10 gold now. I see, when people build a relationship of trust, it can become a powerful feedback loop. New person. I don't see why I should act different. I'll trust - hey! You stole my money! That's not nice. Two can play this game. Wow, you're still cheating? Fine then, I won't trust you until you give me my gold back. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Oh. I guess the lesson here is that we won't accomplish anything if nobody trusts anybody. Perhaps this lesson would have been more efficient if we actually lost money when we put it in the machine, so that both cheating would make our accounts stand still instead of going up slower. I was mostly trustful for the rest of the game, only cheating whenever someone would cheat on me first. At one point, a character I though wouldn't cheat on me did it. I realized it takes a lot to build trust but very little to break it. I realized I hadn't actually tested cheating enough. Perhaps I would learn different things by doing so. I replayed with that in mind. I met some people who never trusted me once I had cheated on them. I met people who were trying to gain my trust only to cheat on me. I tried cheating most of the way through the person with a pink hat, and they never stopped trusting me. Other than that, no big thought came to mind. But I'm left with the same question you began with: why is trust declining in the world then?
DominoPivot
2017-06-09 18:12:31 +0000 UTCYup! The plan is to, after the game, reveal the strategies (or I'll call 'em, "personalities") of the opponents you just went up against. Thanks for the feedback, Eli!
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:51:09 +0000 UTCThanks for the feedback! I *loved* Papers, Please – and actually, that makes me feel better about a worry I had: that having the game "only" present the same choice over and over again would be boring. But Papers, Please manages to pull it off spectacularly: just ACCEPT | REJECT. I doubt I can do this with as much finesse as Papers, Please, but it's worth a shot!
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:49:57 +0000 UTCYUP THAT'S MY VOICE IT'S TERRIBLE I'll probably stick with text in the end :P Ooh, I like the idea of appealing to people's loss aversion, by making them start WITH coins. Probably would be more meaningful than coins falling out of the sky. > This might just be an element of the rough draft, but it would be nice to have an easy way to replay that doesn't require going through the intro again. Yeah, that's one of the worries I'm having about this new format, (compared to Parable of the Polygons or To Build A Better Ballot) which is that the player has little control over the pace. Which is fine for, say, a horror game. But probably not a non-fiction where I'd like others to let the new ideas sink in. On the flip side, this new format gives *me* more control over the pace. Also more flexibility in laying out the graphics & text I'll try to come up with a better format, that can get the best of both worlds!
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:47:36 +0000 UTCThanks Eli! Yeah, this prototype is very limited so far. I like your idea about making it so you START with five coins, thus making the act of trust even harder, and the cost of betrayal even more upsetting! P.S: Haha, you got me – I always put bowler hats on my "bad guy" characters :P
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:42:26 +0000 UTCThanks Phil! And yeah, in hindsight I should've added the full outline in the prototype, to give people context of the "onramp to a bigger idea" I have planned! If you're curious, it's this: 1. Introduction — trust is declining, individually & institutionally 2. One-off Trust Game between 2 players 3. Repeated Trust Game between 2 players (what the prototype showed) 4. Ecology of Players — (reciprocity wins against most other strategies) 5. Evolving Ecology of Players — (reciprocity is also evolutionarily stable against other strategies) 6. How institutional factors affect the evolution of trust/distrust 7. Conclusion — what you can do on the individual level Thanks for asking, and thanks for the feedback!
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:40:44 +0000 UTCThanks for the feedback! And yeah I'm not too sure about doing voiceover – it takes a long time to record, it's hard to go back and make edits, the player can't read at their own pace, plus it's inconvenient for non-native speakers & hard of hearing. I might just stick with text, in the end.
Nicky Case
2017-06-08 11:39:40 +0000 UTCBuilding on Eric Willisson's Feedback maybe take a page from Papers Please's book (No pun intended) and make the failure to earn money detrimental to the player itself thus making the players desire to win active rater than passive. Also instead of having a linear line of opponents maybe have the other characters swap out after 3 turns and face other AI with the player being able to see the stats of these scenarios. So Maybe you have a completely trustworthy AI throughout most of the game but after 3 matches with untrustworthy AI it's faith in others dwindles. Good job so far though.
Tzvi Hirsch Wach
2017-06-07 02:20:58 +0000 UTCThanks for soliciting feedback! As always, I like your art, and the music seems good for this, too. Also, oh wow, is that your voice!? You don't communicate entirely through text and code?? Ahem, anyway, I found myself pretty confused at first, because I thought that I was spending coins from the same pool that the machine paid out into. Having coins fall from the sky kind of removed their value for me - I was being given some coins as the game continued, so it's not like it could end more quickly because I lost all my money by trusting too much. If I were designing this, I would have the player start with some number of coins (maybe 1, 3, or 5 maybe?) and have it also end if they ran out. Then you have to really trust the other player to give away your last coin. This might just be an element of the rough draft, but it would be nice to have an easy way to replay that doesn't require going through the intro again. I agree with the others that this is a really interesting idea and I hope you are able to reveal some good insights on it!
Eric Willisson
2017-06-06 22:41:18 +0000 UTCHmmm...Of course, this is the opinion of someone with no experience whatsoever, but here's what I thought playing it. I really liked it as an intro. As someone who played fair every single time, I'm not sure i got to see any of the strategies the other "players" really did, nor do I know if they have any particular strategies. I'd have loved to see my "score" (divided by five to be fair) compared and contrasted with the other player's "scores". Or see how different playstyles affected different playstyles, particularly where bowly is concerned, as he had my honest ass over a barrel. Also, just a note on bowly, not a good thing or a bad thing, but it reminded me of "We become what we behold", since bowler hat dude was the "antagonist" again. EDIT: Oh, actually! I might have something worth nattering about! I was thinking about what you actually lose when deciding to be kind to a cheater like Bowly, when I realized that I do lose something in this particular situation, but that isn't really examined or addressed within the game. It's an invisible consequence...or maybe just an unexamined one, but when you start the game, you have, by definition, five coins. IT says you start at zero, but you must have five coins to put in. So if you do act kind to a cheat, you're losing those. Maybe that was unstated for a reason, but it feels a little deceptive to not have it acknowledged in some way. Though maybe that's just my lack of trust that makes it feel deceptive. FULL CIRCLE!
Eli Jeschke
2017-06-06 18:07:35 +0000 UTCGood start! Quick feedback at this point is that the animation between selecting your choice and seeing result starts to drag out the further along you get. Also, if the experiment were with a human my strategy might change (I might expect their cheating ass to eventually start feeling guilty and start cooperating, leading me to be more persistent in cooperation). I don't know if the peeps are programmed to consider that kind of thing, or respond in any way to my decisions, so I'm constantly half-negotiating with whether or not I should be thinking along those lines, which is somewhere not particularly interesting/productive for my mind to be. Runon sentence aside: making that distinction clear might be helpful. And finally, I feel like this is a great onramp to a bigger idea, so I'm mentally pumped to start thinking about that, but then it just ends. Don't know if there _is_ some bigger idea to start talking about, or if you haven't gotten there yet. Just an FYI that the feeling exists in its current form. As always, keep up the good work!
Phil Dougherty
2017-06-06 16:41:54 +0000 UTCYes! The 'explanation' part is really missing but I guess it's because it's just a prototype. Liked the gameplay and art style though. Also maybe consider adding subtitles if you do a voice over? English is not my mother tongue and I had trouble understanding everything in your introduction.
LKMJ
2017-06-06 15:21:56 +0000 UTCGreat stuff! I liked that the different strategies of playing the game were made unknown during the game. It'd be nice to see other strategies, and maybe explicitly state the strategies after the game is finished.
Eli Levine
2017-06-06 15:12:17 +0000 UTC
