Concept

Trust in Me is the result of an assignment at the Game Design course at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK. The restraints? It had to base on one of four given fairy tales, and it would be put on display at an exhibition at the international animation film festival Fantoche in Baden, Switzerland.

Trust in Me is based on a lesser known fairy tale by the brothers Grimm: The Wolf's Dream. It tells of a wolf that one day hears a voice in his ear: it tells him that somewhere, there is a large feast to be found, and that this voice would guide him there. The wolf then follows this voice, but gets tricked by several other animals on his way – so badly in fact, that he in the end returns to his cave badly bruised and half dead.

This story got me thinking: don't put many of today's games a voice into the ear of the player in order to help them and make the experience of playing the game as frictionless as possible? However convenient this may be, it requires one thing: trust. Trust that this voice, this companion, animal, fairy or whatever form it takes on will not misguide the player. Hardly any games break that trust – Portal is one of the very few, where the kind and guiding voice later turns out to be your opponent¹.

Of course, they will not break that rule with good reason: playing against the game (designer) can make a really frustrating experience.

Furthermore, the narrative aspects have become more and more important in today's games. There is hardly any game anymore that just puts level after level without at least trying to connect them in a more or less coherent way. Most AAA games pride themselves with an epic overarching story, and they have an interest that the players will be able to follow this story to its end. That means that even the most untalented player must have a chance; yet a challenge should still remain. Enter the assistant, the voice in the players head, that guides him through the game and tells him when to push what button in order to get through the game with as little hiccups as possible. A game like Riven that was unapologetically difficult, and left the player standing on a group of islands without any help and any idea what to do, would not be possible today.

But then again: who says that the point of a game is to blindly follow its voices? Maybe more players should break free from the railroads the game designers lay before them and just set out to explore the unknown wilderness that are the backwaters of the levels ...

Trust in Me is exactly doing that – and is therefore perfectly suited for the exhibition environment. As a stand-alone piece it would be clearly too short and frustrating. As part of an exhibition, it can, however, serve as a way to ignite a discussion about how the need to tell a story has taken precedence over playing a game, about how the player is forced to react to inputs the game drops him like a dog owner drops treats for his dog, in order to make the story advance a step. Who is the puppet hanging on the strings now, the avatar or the player?

The question Trust in Me poses, in the end, is simple:

Are you playing the game, or is the game playing you?