How could we have delivered on the idea of trust better in Birdlife? - 5/5/15

Okay so overall I feel like we learned a lot in this project, especially about trust and what it means and how to represent it.

The game started off as a survival and game worked it's way towards being a self made story version. I think trust is a very hard thing to represent in a game and overall not many if any of the groups managed to nail their representation of trust. I think a lot of things factored into this, firstly I feel that the idea of trust was pretty open to interpretation at first. I mean think about it, trust can be the trust you feel between your family members, you can trust in someone to take care of you. But what really, I feel, threw most of the teams off is that we were told that for trust to exist you must first have a reason to betray. In the beginning we were not aware that this was a necessary part of the game so a lot of our ideas had to change drastically around the 2 week mark.

This isn't such a big deal though as a lot of the work we'd done was still entirely relevant to the game. For example the flying, most of the assets and the world we had put together. It really only threw off my ideas as the game had to change completely from the original idea of survival and trust between a bird, it's mate and their child to a game about finding a chick in the wilderness and having to protect it.

Mechanically I honestly believe most of what we'd have needed to accurately portray trust in a game was there. For example there were rewards for betraying the chick and benefits to helping it. We also changed the idea of having the chick as 'your' chick. In the end it was just a chick you stumble upon which helped stop the player from feeling obligated to help it. Some ways I feel that we fulfilled the brief using mechanics would be having the ability to betray the little bird by leaving it behind and just focusing on yourself. If you did this your screen would be more colourful and you'd be able to fly higher and eventually leave the area. You were 'somewhat' punished for this when the chick died because your screen would lose colour but you would also be able to leave the area. Alternatively, if you decided to feed the chick you would be able to run faster on the ground, and once it was fully grown it would fly away into the distance never to be seen again. After this your screen would turn colourful permanently and your bird would always cheep a happy face due to the happiness it felt for the chick. These are two different win conditions, so it was totally possible to win either way. The trust mechanics was also fulfilled by having the chick follow you around when you called it. This could lead the bird into hazards like enemy crows or into cars which would both kill the bird. The chick has to trust you not to lead it into enemies or cars, similar to how parents hold their children's hands when crossing the road in real life.

Some ways we could have tackled the issues that existed at the end of game, the primary issue being nobody knew what the hell they were doing is firstly; we could've just added instructions to the game. Something like, "You were just stopping down in the park to get something to eat and you notice a small chick. The chick looks like it has fallen out of the nest above it and looks hungry. After looking around you notice that there are no other birds around. Perhaps it's parents have abandoned it. It is probably going to die if you leave it. If you help it, you will feel good for doing something nice for the chick, but if you focus on yourself, you will become stronger from eating and be able to fly better and eventually move on to bigger and better places. The choice is yours."

Something like that, presented in a cinematic story-type way, would have done wonders for the final experience of the game. Sure, it kind of feels like a cop out when you take into account we were deliberately trying not to have text in the game, but in the end, what is more important? Having the player understand your intentions or a personal goal that you can see no other way of fixing? I feel like being stubborn in this situation is unwise.

A lot of suggestions were given to us on the final display night. One of the best suggestions I feel like we had was that the player could start off in a nest of its own with a dead chick of its own, perhaps of the same colour of your bird. This would help explain the overarching theme of the game and help the player understand a few things: what chicks look like, what they sound and act like, and also that they are able to die. It would give the player an understanding of mechanics without actually showing any text on the screen. Unfortunately this amazing advice came after the assignment was done but we're going to keep working on it over the holidays hopefully.

Overall, I feel like we did a lot of good work in regards to trust and the idea and mechanics were all there to make this game an amazing trust based game, but we didn't quite get there. There were some things we could have done to sort this out like adding text and showing player scenarios before they entered the world, and unfortunately we didn't have enough time to think of and add these things but they are things that I definitely feel that I've learned a lot from, not just from a personal standpoint but from a designers standpoint also.

I really, truly believe that the things I've learned in this project will carry over to all of my future projects and I'm really excited to look back on this project and feel like it has helped me become a better designer.

Thanks for reading.