Back to Reality – A Game of Trust

Trust is an important factor in interpersonal relationships.  A trust fall, a trust-building game often conducted as a group exercise, is a popular trust-building exercise where people deliberately allow themselves to fall and have to rely on the other members of the group to catch them. A good demonstration of a variant of such activity was portrayed in the movie Mean Girls, in which a person would stand at an elevated position and allow themselves to drop. But this is also potentially dangerous, requiring a great level of trust and for the team to ready themselves even before the act takes place.

Last weekend, me and my partner-in-crime, Raze, took to the world of video games to discover just how different the rules are when it comes to playing a separate role to the bond we have in our everyday lives. Basically, one rule applied, either help each other to victory, or screw each other over.

The first game we picked was turn-based two player game Silhouette, in which one player has to play the ‘creepy killer’ and the other assumes the role of the victim being hunted down. The game takes place in a mansion and the killer must reach the victim and stab them to death before they manage to find the key and escape the house. The game works well in creating feelings of panic and tension, and the camera’s top down position feels almost claustrophobic.  Each of us would have a short period of time in which to take a turn moving.

The game works well in creating feelings of panic and tension

The game starts with six seconds each turn, counting down with heartbeats until the turn is over and so on, until the players come in close range to each other and the heart-rate increases, the time to make your move dramatically decreasing the closer they get to each other. We reacted to it very differently. Raze played the merciless hunter, and dove headlong into the chase, whereas I adopted caution and was hesitant in my moves. However, as soon as the chase started, I would get excited and hammer away at the keyboard in a competitive manner. On role-switch, as victim, I would feel a slight unexplainable guilt and although I’d do my best to get away, part of me felt like I wanted to be caught, which is very bizarre.

To counteract the hunter vs. hunted role we played the obvious happy-go-lucky choice, Super Mario Wii U Coin Battle. The goal is simple, to collect as many coins as possible. Mario is fun, fast-paced and naturally the rules are basic, so it was just a matter of one of us trying to throw shells at the other or gunning straight for coins. In conclusion, I suck at Mario games, so this was a no-brainer who won. This kind of meant that I didn’t try very hard, though, and Raze is always a stubborn player, and he would go guns blazing (except not really as there are none).

Of all of the games we tried, my favourite had to be BattleBlock Theater, and although we didn’t get around to playing all of the vs. Modes, we had some serious fun with the modes we did play. The game itself is highly enjoyable in multiplayer, but the battle arena modes were where it got serious. Naturally, I was terrible at the timed modes, but Raze went all out. The difference between this and the Souls mode was quite diverse though, as my competitive side kicked in and I tried to kill Raze’s character every way I could in order to win.

In both Mario and BattleBlock Theater versus modes, the mechanics of the game don’t change much from the co-op, but the difference is vast. Although there are still enemies involved, the game greatly dictates the way you play in working to screw each other over. The funny thing is, the actual multiplayer story modes in games such as Mario and BattleBlock Theater brought out the soft side in us, and working together and supporting each other came into play greatly, which is a far cry from the idea of potentially screwing your gaming partner over.

There are countless games out there in which one player is supposed to outdo the other, and this was just a small selection of them, but it definitely got us thinking on just the contrast between how videogaming portrays trust and how a player reacts to their role in the game. As real-life relationships go, it’s funny how it can bring out a different side of us. I like to be the one to go along with situations, and am not at all a competitive person, which is true to how I usually game in some respects, whereas Raze is definitely the most merciless of the two of us when it comes to gaming, and is completely the opposite in real-life. When it comes to playing games together, I think need to learn how to drop my sensitive side, and just royally kick his ass.