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Building interpersonal trust through digital games

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Building interpersonal trust through digital games

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Content
Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games

by
Brian Pope Handy

Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
August 15, 2018

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 2 of 52
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Audience 4
A Shortage of Trust 4
Gamer Millennials 8
Prior Art 11
Physical Games 11
Digital Games 16
Small Groups 19
Prayer / Meditation 24
Established Designs 29
Technology Pros / Cons 34
Further Research 38
Physical Game Prototypes 38
Digital Small Groups Prototypes 39
Limited Communication Prototypes 40
Digital Guided Meditation 41
16-Button Prototypes 42
Simulation / AI Prototypes 43
Additional Tools 47
Prototypes Conclusion 47
Conclusion 48
References / Bibliography 49

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Introduction
How can digital games best develop interpersonal trust? Digital games have long been
tied to stereotypes of solitary activities in basements, isolated, and resulting in poor social skills.
Games as a medium inherently develop hands on skills though, so they might even be the best
platform to develop not only those relational skills, but skills for developing even deeper
interpersonal trust. This thesis project, Cute Animals & Tough Questions , does just that with a
game that uses trust building activities drawn from Catholic retreats, and implements them with
the unique advantages that a digital game affords. The result is a new digitally aided approach
to trust, as well as pushing what video games are capable of, all while answering the question of
how games can best handle this issue.

Fig. 1. Generational trust over time (Millennials in Adulthood)

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Audience
A Shortage of Trust
The need for developing interpersonal trust, especially amongst the modern Millennial
generation, is a significant and growing issue. Pew Research Center was quoted just four years
ago in a report on new issues facing the Millennial generation as saying that “just 19% of
Millennials say most people can be trusted, compared with 31% of Gen Xers, 37% of Silents
and 40% of Boomers” (Millennials in Adulthood). These trust issues are overwhelming and span
from institutional concerns to simply dealing with other individuals.
Huffington Post calls empathy “the most influential element in forming trust” (Newfield).
Social psychologists found this to be part of the trust issue when measuring empathy primarily
in this generation: “‘Additional analyses found that the declines in Perspective Taking and
Empathic Concern are relatively recent phenomena and are most pronounced in samples from
after 2000’” (Konrath). Empathic Concern here measures sympathy for the misfortune of others,
and Perspective Taking is about the intellectual approach of imagining others’ points of view.

Fig. 2. Decline of trust in last 40 years (Badger)

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This problem exists not only as an individual moment, but as a progression that
continues to be on a steady path into less trust each year. University of Michigan News
emphasizes the developments over the last quarter century, “‘College kids today are about 40
percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by
standard tests of this personality trait’” (Swanbrow) and goes into particular detail with claims
like “Compared to college students of the late 1970s, the study found, college students today
are less likely to agree with statements such as ‘I sometimes try to understand my friends better
by imagining how things look from their perspective’” (Swanbrow).

Fig. 3. Empathy declining over time (Konrath)
More concerning however, the tool most commonly associated with Millennials seems to
make this problem worse: technology. A New York Times article from 2010 referenced that:

Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it
diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even
in the same room. “The way we become more human is by paying attention to
each other,” he said. “It shows how much you care” (Richtel)

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With technology as a distraction, the end result is an inclination towards less social
situations and with more limited communication. While technology can bring text and images
over greater distances, things like context and subtlety or the limits of only text and often not
sound or video can lead to significant miscommunication.
Body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice are usually lost through digital
communication. Emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman highlights that this directly affects
our ability to trust based on time invested in these platforms:

To the extent hours are spent alone, relating to tech tools and shrinking the time
young people spend in face-to-face interactions, it could lower their [Emotional
Intelligence]. The human brain is designed to learn these lessons in daily life, and
if there are fewer opportunities, [Emotional Intelligence] skill levels could go down
(A Chat With Daniel Goleman)

As more hours are spent with technology every day, our chances increase of losing that face to
face communication, empathy, and trust. Connecticut College goes into detail with how
preferred means of communication impacts social skills:

We predicted that participants who used technological communication more
frequently or preferred it to face-to-face communication, would have lower social
skills and high social anxiety… Ultimately, communication preference strongly
correlated with poor social skills and high social anxiety, while a greater
restriction of technology in youth correlated with high social skills in college
(Brown)

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CBSNews covered similar subjects on how solitary hours with technology directly lead to
a loss of trust,

hackers and viruses and hateful posts eat away at trust. And sitting home
watching YouTube means less time out meeting others. “A lot of it depends on
whether we can find ways to get people using technology to connect and be
more civically involved,” Sander said. (Trust Issues)

While poverty and class divides may also be contributing factors, technology is
commonly highlighted as the core source of the problem, and a path away from social
communities and civic ties to geographical neighbors.
The solution however might best come from technology directly. Given the familiarity of
this generation with technology, it makes for an easier access point to new experiences and
ideas. News organization Education Week covers this when sharing psychology researcher
Brock Dubbels’ view:

A better approach, he suggests, is to integrate technology with education and
make the idea that you have to choose between them null and void. By
recognizing where student interests lie and tapping into that, teachers can begin
to develop a deeper relationship with students (Ash)

Dubbels goes on to highlight how it risks being a distraction, and that researchers are
still divided on whether it ultimately has a positive effect. Technology in the classroom engages
current students more though and can even bring unique advantages based on the platform,

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like video tutorials on Youtube. Dubbels continues, "All the teachers I spoke with observed a
[noticeable] increase in the level of engagement students exhibited with their projects when they
were encouraged to use digital media” (Ash). If technology as a platform is the problem, but not
expected to disappear in the Information Era anytime soon, then finding the best path to
address the issue with technology involved will solve the issue for the widest audience, and with
the most practical design. Rather than fight the market, the source of the problem can become
the solution.

Gamer Millennials
The audience that could most benefit from this technological solution then are
Millennials, a group that already engages in digital devices regularly and is looking for
entertainment from interactive experiences. A clear path to that entertainment is in the wide
reaching market of mobile games. Millenials are no stranger to digital games, with 97% of teens
today playing them (Lenhart) and other generations not being far off. The majority of adults
under 50 fall under this category, with 60% of ages 18-29 and 53% of ages 30-49 playing digital
games (Brown). Most people already play games in this space.
While ice breaker apps are common and help establish introductory levels of trust, digital
games that try to develop deeper levels of trust are hard to find. Local community activities more
frequently work towards developing this same type of deeper trust. These activities come from
religious groups, camps, clubs, and other established institutions with more experience working
towards lasting and deeper connections in their communities. Video games by contrast rarely
attempt to impact players in this way. It does not help that while religious groups commonly
push for deeper trust in their communities, religion itself has almost no real presence in the
video game industry. This ranges from the players all the way to the developers. A study of the

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game EverQuest 2 found twice as many atheists existed in its online audience compared to the
average population (Williams). On the development side of the industry, ACM similarly found
that 46% of UK undergraduate game design students affiliated with no faith (McGill). This may
be due to Nintendo’s strict aversion to faith as an early and major industry figure (Thompson,
Mehta) but regardless the effect is the same. Bringing the most significant elements then from
Catholic trust building exercises into games provides an approach that currently has almost no
presence in the industry (Thompson, Mehta).
Millennials as a whole are also moving away from organized religion, and with stronger
emerging queer and liberal spaces and academia’s distance from faith, passing along valuable
tools from within faith will continue to help people in new contexts to reach deeper levels of trust
(Downey, Wormald, Schapiro).
So while this audience may be fully capable of deeper trust, they are not looking for or
prioritizing it, and not inherently exposed to it as involvement in local club, civic, and communal
activities continues to drop. Political scientist Robert Putnam says that:

Americans have abandoned their bowling leagues and Elks lodges to stay home
and watch TV. Less socializing and fewer community meetings make people less
trustful than the ‘long civic generation’ that came of age during the Great
Depression and World War II (Trust Issues)

Appealing to a comfortable digital interface should facilitate sharing these experiences in
this generation and developing these deeper trust skills.

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Given that this is a widespread and not new, the response must first be to look at prior
solutions and see where they have succeeded and what is not yet recognized or applied from
past successes in the space of interactive activities developing deeper trust.

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Prior Art
Existing approaches to developing trust through interactive activities can be broken into
four categories major: physical games, digital games, small groups, and prayer/meditation. All of
these contain a number of unique approaches, leading to an extensive overview of the
capabilities of these activities. The focus here is on what types of trust can already be built
through existing interactive experiences, and how that is accomplished.

Physical Games
Physical games in this space usually center around conversation starters, but guessing
games and matching games can also lead to deeper levels of empathy, understanding, and
trust. Conversation starters usually focus on direct questions about each other, where guessing
and matching games veer more towards fun light hearted questions balanced with sometimes
guessing each others histories and tastes.

You can learn more about trust from a single game of Risk than a thousand trust
falls. You can get someone out of their shell more with a game of charades than
any amount of alcohol. You can learn about someone’s creativity by playing
Pictionary, their sales skills from a game of Apples to Apples, and their strategic
thinking through a game of chess (Vincent)

Conversation Starters are the most relevant genre of game - and though not particularly
flashy or exciting, they are the most effective of any core genre (digital or physical) in
accomplishing the development of trust. At its core, a conversation starter game is a series of
prompts that, if answered by the players, will lead to interesting discussions that the

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conversation would not have led to otherwise. Some interesting differences in this genre
between the various games are the escalation speed/granularity of the prompts (how quickly
they ramp up in intensity) and the intensity of the prompts (whether they are all in a serious
range, a silly range, and where and how wide that range is).

Noteworthy conversation games include:

1. 36 Questions of Love
One of the most famous conversation starter games of all time - this psychologist
developed set of ordered prompts is designed to have two parties fall in love by the end
of the one to two hours it takes to play. They dive incredibly deep in intensity, but take a
gradual and well paced path to get there. Overall considered a great success and one of
if not the most noteworthy game in the genre.

2. Table Topics
A well designed set of conversation starter cards, shuffled and kept in a clean, clear box.
There is no progression or escalation, but all the questions range from silly to a little
more serious. This game pushes players a little into intense territory, but is mostly just
interesting and does a great job on the coffee table for social gatherings.

3. Vertellis
The most bold game on this list. Recommended only for Christmas or Thanksgiving,
once a year, with one’s closest friends or family. It reviews the past year, the present, the

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future, and whether you are happy with all of it. The intensity is very high, and that is
more maintained than escalated. It is healthy and valuable, but fairly intimidating.

4. Hypothetically Fun
The polar opposite of seriousness while still having a serious element, Hypothetically
Fun is 80% light hearted questions. The prompts keep the game diverse and fresh,
divided into five categories: silly, stories, creative, thought-provoking, and personal. The
random order of cards leaves it with low intensity and no progression. Audiences who
dislike serious questions can be more easily warmed up with this diversity and balance.

5. Ungame
The oldest game on this list (from 1972) - it is a conversation starter game in its most
primitive form. The questions range from opinion pieces to serious questions to
unexpected Biblical concerns. The first half of the game is fairly light, then an hour in the
decks switch to questions on abuse, alcoholism, and death. It is mostly serious, and has
the single most jarring transition in intensity of any of these games. The randomized
cards keep it fairly steady for intensity otherwise, but one should expect the game to
change halfway through in a significant way.

6. The {} And
This modern psychology experiment almost appears to be a response to 36 Questions of
Love of more than twenty years ago. Where the 1997 game was designed to find love
between two people, The {} And project prompts seem to challenge the fears and
concerns of a relationship, to test it to make sure no concerns are growing under the

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surface. The 12 cards are randomly chosen from the deck, so there is no escalation, but
the intensity (fears of the relationship) is very high. By limiting it to one relationship
between two people, it keeps things slightly safer, but this project is certainly intense.

Guessing Games are also particularly relevant as a major form of game driven almost
exclusively by communication, where trust is developed most. Trying to discover or learn
something you don’t know is the basis of this style of game, with question and answer formats
to facilitate that. It stands out as unique in its cooperative nature (an uncommon trait in most
objective based communication games), in how it asks one to communicate their perception of a
thing, in the sliding difficulty of how hints are often allowed, and in the back and forth format
being so socially engaging. These make the genre hard to compare to games outside of it but
very effective at getting multiple players to communicate.
The games within the genre can be divided along three major axis: communication
limitations, data tracked, and subject matter. Communication limitations can force the player’s
hand into more interesting navigation of communication as a space, such as rules about not
saying certain (if any) words. Data tracked for the player can help them manage large amounts
of information beyond what is reasonable to expect them to track just by memory. Subject
matter is how personal the guessed material is compared to popular trivia, and whether the
subject will be predetermined by the game or determined by the players.
Communication limitations in guessing games fall mostly on a spectrum of how limited
that communication is compared to normal social scenarios. Taboo is fairly standard, limiting
only a few words from conversation and rewarding those who communicate regardless,
punishing those who forget and say forbidden words. “Yes or No” question games are still fairly
flexible with language but do not allow open ended questions. Both 20 Questions and

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Psychiatrist are good examples of this. Wordless games, like Charades, are entirely without
standard communication and require a significant amount of creativity leading to very
entertaining results.
Data tracking in guessing games inherently takes physical forms as it uses tools to help
the player manage large amounts of information. Battleship and Guess Who are the most
recognizable examples, but Go Fish also counts here. The former both use boards that
represent more than two dozen binary pieces of information per player, and that’s before taking
into account additional details like ship types and character traits. Where this would be a
challenge to keep track of without pen and paper, the game boards visualize it in a way that is
not only useful but aesthetically enhances the game. Go Fish similarly helps track large
amounts of data through making your potential pairs that you possess into something tangible.
Subject matter in guessing games is usually based on real world facts, as most games
use more popular trivia or common knowledge. By contrast, truth based guessing games
usually focus on learning more about the other players. Famous examples include Truth or
Dare, Two Truths and a Lie, and Never Have I Ever. Each game asks players to guess what
other players have done or not done in their lives, sometimes to learn what is fun and interesting
about them, other times to learn what they are hiding. You Think You Know Me is a recent card
game variant on this type of game.
Physical games only have one other category that appeared relevant to prior art: judging
games, which are a more subjective form of matching game. This genre, most known for Apples
to Apples, focuses on attempting to match your card with the card the judge puts down, then
having the judge arrange or eliminate cards based on their preferences and any additional rules
relating to the original judge card. This process reveals the thought process of both the judge
and the players, based on who chooses which cards. Totem, a card game about compliments in

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this genre, leans into this with a custom deck of various compliments and then asks you to
choose which most applies to the current judge. The judge arranges them based on what they
themselves feel is most true, and then the players and judge both explain their choices. It
similarly builds trust by expressing care for others, though is not a traditional matching game.
Physical games cover a wide range of the party game space with these titles relating to
intimacy, trust, and expression. Digital games are more common now though, and even with
similar genres, the digital equivalents have a long way to go.

Digital Games
Digital games rarely focus on face to face socializing, but commonly facilitate exciting
and fast paced communication in a way that physical games do not. The instant accessibility of
a mobile game in your pocket, the community of friends on a couch, and the mystery of a
hidden screen all contribute well to what this genre is capable of, but it is a movement that has
only just started to take form. Addressed here are the primary genres from the physical games
section: conversation starters and guessing games, but in the context of their digital
implementations to highlight how the digital platform changes these games.
Digital Conversation Starters today are mostly randomized lists of questions on a mobile
device, often consisting of selectable categories, navigational buttons or swiping between
prompts, with a random shuffle button. The genre is not particularly unique on digital platforms
yet, but a few titles from the Google Play app store have features that stand out.

● Conversation Starters (by Focus on the Family) allows selecting age and gender of the
target audience in a selection screen before the game to give appropriate prompts.

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● Beyond Small Talk (by Gail Heyman) includes a question history section, so past
prompts can be reviewed.
● Party Qs (by Party Qs Inc) features a “Submit a question” button so players can actively
contribute custom prompts to the deck.
● Let’s Talk About This (by hikuriware) takes full advantage of mobile devices screen
space by investing in the app’s motion graphics, complementing the text’s graphic
design to great effect. This makes navigating the experience as a whole very enjoyable.
● Questions-Game (by IntentionalApps.com) splits questions by personal relations: the
subject can be oneself, other players, or both.
● Questions in a Box (by SpreadTruth.com) uses text overlaid on photos similar to
Instagram and Snapchat stories. This is a great combination given that prompt lengths
usually resemble the short form factor of text in the other apps’ stories, and the image
provides reinforcement for the subject from the text.

All of these small contributions add up as we discover what traditional digital interfaces
can best facilitate this existing genre of card game. There is much to discover still, but an
awareness of even the small advantages so far can lead to better progress even sooner.
Digital Guessing Games, by contrast, are already beginning to successfully carve out a
unique genre in a digital platform. Real time responses lead to very high tension styles of play,
and mobile platforms are beginning to explore what party guessing games’ unique features are
as well.

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● Heads Up by Warner Bros. is likely the more famous piece here. It uses a timer and the
phone’s camera to automatically advance prompts for this variant on Taboo, recording
audience reactions to playback at the end for fun.
● Emoji Charades by GameCake utilizes second screen technology to have one player’s
emoji-only text instantly appear to everyone on a TV, as the prompt for everyone to
guess is only visible on the phone. It takes advantage of rapid information management
to provide only the most relevant 40 emojis for each prompt, making a more reasonable
subset of emojis to select between than the hundreds most phones have access to.
● Pac-Man Vs. by Shigeru Miyamoto uses second screen technology as well. This 2003
Gamecube + Gameboy Advance title plays a regular game of Pac-Man on the Gameboy
while three more players look at the Gamecube’s TV to play the ghosts with limited
views of the maze. Communication is necessary to find Pac-Man, as the ghost players
make guesses and confirm/deny where Pac-Man was last seen.
● Space Team by Sleeping Beast Games is a game of limited information across multiple
phones that, when communicated to each other, accomplishes parts of a goal within a
time limit. Its confusing words and tight time pressure lead to a hectic type of play.
● Jackbox Party Pack by Jackbox Games, as a series, includes all kinds of party and
guessing games centered around communication. “Fakin’ It” from Party Pack 3 is an
excellent example where different phones get different questions that everyone must
immediately answer out loud. The faker knows they have a fake question, but does not
know how far it is from the truth, and must improvise an answer that will hide their secret.
Both communicating through devices and getting private updates are key elements of
Jackbox Games’ unique use of technology relating to communication.

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● Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by Steel Crate Games follows a similar format to
other digital communication / guessing games like Pac-Man Vs. and SpaceTeam, but
uses the advantage of virtual reality’s headset privacy to have the player in VR totally
blind to what those outside of VR see and know.
● The Test by Lotum is a messenger game about guessing personal facts about the other
player after asking them to fill out short questionnaires. While not a face to face game
like the others on this list, it is noteworthy for its use of visualizing intimacy and showing
juicy progress bars every time two players “match” knowing one another’s answers. This
rewarding feeling ties directly that of a friendship strengthening, and complements the
real world positive effect of knowing each other better.

These digital guessing games are often more hectic and extreme, and not always about
guessing so much as just attempts at communication (which generally fall under similar
territory). Most radically differ from each other, and the digital genre has yet to settle into any
type of established space. Still, the gameplay is exciting even if the social requirements
compared to single player games make it harder to find an audience, and the future is bright for
this part of the field. There should be more to report here in the next decade or so even if trust
beyond basic communication needs is not particularly well developed yet.

Small Groups
Small group meetings are a face to face activity that encourage dialogue and discussion
about uncommon subjects, offering guidance and often some form of moderation, and are
usually founded on the idea of building long term or deeper trust. Religious small groups work
similarly to non-religious ones, but with the clear difference of a spiritual element. Given this

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project’s Catholic inspirations, this section will primarily focus on insights gained from the work
done in that faith and community.
Catholic retreats are essentially a trip away from life to go and reflect on it from a safe
distance. Usually a communal setting, these trips isolate the attendees from any distractions or
issues that may be affecting them in their day to day routines, and then ask the retreat members
to reflect on that. This involves carefully diving into reflecting on their lives and opening up
dialogue in safe spaces about how they are processing life currently, and how they might want
any of that to change. Though this project does not seek to evangelize Catholicism directly, the
Kairos retreat and USC’s Catholic Trojan retreat both highlighted what interactive experiences
were capable of for deepening bonds and relationships in a way that digital interactive media
and especially video games are not known for exploring.
Prompt based discussions are key to Catholic retreats. The format of many retreats
involves the obvious: prayer, worship, scripture, and religious services like a Catholic mass, but
the other major elements include prompts and journaling for reflection, icebreakers for bonding,
and small group discussions to get better at talking about the issues participants are dealing
with in life. These prompts can be anything from a retreat leader’s talk about their own life, to
scripture, to poetry or even games and song so long as it gives the attendee something to think
about and reflect on with their own circumstances. Small group conversations usually directly
follow one of these prompts to help participants engage with these thoughts in a social context,
which in turn can lead to helpful supportive dialogues and a better chance at developing trust
between the members of the group. Establishing a safe space is key here, so often small
groups are formed distinctly between people who are not already friends in the community. This
ensures prior relations do not limit the audience’s willingness to share or try participating, as
changing a relationship is often harder than starting off one in a new direction.

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Environment is key for creating the safe space needed to try more vulnerability and trust,
so retreats are often isolated from the world by location and request that users disconnect from
the digital world. Retreat leaders promise to pass along emergency contact information as
needed in order to balance real concerns with maintaining the safe isolation from daily life.
Small group meetings are limited to only 5 or 6 people usually so everyone’s voice is heard, and
each group meets with some distance from other groups as to not be distracted for these
discussions, lasting about twenty minutes each. Informed consent is established early on to
ensure everyone respects each others’ privacy for the entirety of the retreat, and retreats are
often designed so that if discussions expand in length, a small group can skip the next activity
and focus on that conversation. This is balanced with ample supplies of food, drink, beauty in
the surrounding environment, ice breakers, song, dance, and games to ensure all other needs
are met, making the emotional burden easier to bear. The difficult side then gives opportunity to
reflection and trying vulnerability, making it easier to attempt deeper trust.
Christian Life Community, implemented at many permanent religious locations like
Loyola Marymount University, explores the power of small group meetings in routine weekly or
biweekly one hour meetings. Essentially a longform version of retreats with fewer resources and
a shorter distance from the rest of life, CLC seeks to keep attendees reassessing their lives in
the trust of small groups across the course of each year. The context again is in faith, spreading
the good of God, God’s love, and processing one’s life towards good, but the applications range
beyond spirituality for generally developing trust and living actively. CLC small groups are
defined as “tight-knit communities that support each member though both the graces and
challenges of college life” (Loyola Marymount University). With one to two hour weekly
meetings, they are described as follows:

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Our CLC groups are small, usually six to ten members. We meet regularly in
order to develop friendship and a community spirit among ourselves by praying,
sharing some of our life experiences together, helping and supporting each other
in our Christian faith and our daily lives (Small Groups & Meetings)

Similar to many Catholic retreats, the layout of a CLC meeting is structured around
reflection and prayer in the context of spirituality and faith. Meetings usually begin with prayer,
followed by a short check-in with mindfulness on where the group has recently witnessed God’s
love: “How has God been present in my life since the last meeting? Where have I experienced
God's presence? When I felt disconnected from God?” (Small Groups & Meetings) Discussions
regarding recent life experiences, interpersonal issues, and reflection on a prompt for the
evening (whether scripture, a question, an idea to contemplate from the Church, or anything
else) follow and make up the bulk of most meetings. This helps establish deeper friendships that
allow for more comfortable discussions about harder issues, and routinely addressing this with
the same people each week helps build trust. The meetings are concluded then with a review,
and the Catholic concept of grace. The review reflects on the evening’s topics, and grace is the
Catholic act of allowing God to transform oneself into becoming closer to God (a concept
regarding an inability to achieve this type of good by oneself, and being vulnerable to allowing
God to help). This helps group members to understand what has occurred over the course of
each meeting, and open themselves towards becoming better individuals in the future.
Deeper friendships can distinctly come out of these meetings due to the routine activity,
the difficult but safe space, and the willingness of participants to try engaging with the material
that they are presented with here. It is always ultimately up to each individual to choose to
engage and be vulnerable, but these elements help facilitate that if the audience is open to it.

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Recreational events with each small group and the CLC community as a whole help to balance
these friendships into more than just that of serious conversations, so dancing, bowling nights,
and parties help create more well rounded bonding too.
The secular applications are relevant here as well, as these same activities are still
helpful regardless of one’s relationship with any type of spirituality. Reflection on daily
experiences and becoming an “agent of change” (Interested) in the context of life has wide
ranging applications to everyone.
Beyond religion, small groups in secular contexts have similarly developed roles in
society, local communities, and in helping people grow or develop their personhood and fullness
of life as well rounded individuals, capable of handling harder issues.
Get Empathy is a youth leadership program in local communities and schools designed
to build empathy. The core is that it “focuses on empowering young people to foster a culture of
empathy in their environments” (Get Empathy). The orientation around local action helps give
an iterative approach to implementing changes in one’s life, a hands on activity that more
frequently leads to personal development. Addressing the issue of "a growing lack of skills for
relationship building, empathy, and inclusion” (Get Empathy) allows the program to help develop
trust between members of these small group meetings. Emerging themes from Get Empathy in
particular include leadership, citizen engagement, creative expression, and building a culture
that fights against isolation. Together, this leads to larger communities that as a whole have
deeper trust and support for each other.
Support groups with similar focuses cover a wide range of subjects, including addressing
domestic violence, substance abuse, and providing therapy for individuals, groups, couples, and
families using tools like the twelve-step process. Groups like the Los Angeles LGBT Center
specifically provide counseling for “issues that feel beyond your control” (Desano). Other

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support groups and small groups handle even more issues, like the Latino group Hermanos
Unidos focusing on education with social interaction and service (Hermanos Unidos). Even
systems of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous build support and trust:

[They] discovered that new adherents could get sober by believing in each other
and in the strength of this group. Men who had proven over and over again… that
they could not get sober on their own had somehow become more powerful when
two or three of them worked on their common problem (Kurtz 45)

While not as focused on trust directly compared to helping advance one’s life out of
difficult issues or towards self betterment, trust is inherently developed in this type of support
group and with the collaborative effort of these communal activities.
All of these small groups work to build trust and community though between individuals
by developing safe spaces to listen and be heard, holding consistent meetings, and giving a
context for directly addressing these difficult subjects. Whether religious, secular, or focused on
addressing issues beyond just building trust itself, all of these approaches inherently lead to
deeper trust between individuals over time.

Prayer / Meditation
Guided meditation creates a similar prompt driven experience, but is more of a neighbor
to these other trust building activities due to its focus on personal rather than social
development. Meditation helps in developing mindfulness and general awareness too, and
prayer often covers similar areas with again the additional element of spirituality. Regardless of
the lack of social engagement though, the structures of prayer and meditation are similar

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enough that there is value to be gained in looking at both works here and their existing digital
conversions.
It should be highlighted first though that prayer and meditation share a significant
amount of overlap outside of their dividing element of spirituality, and the similarities are
noteworthy enough to be identified directly. Many forms of prayer fully utilize meditation at the
least, though often the two mostly overlap in intent and end results. Jean Kristeller observes this
in her work on spiritual engagement:

Not only do all current meditative practices derive from religious traditions, but
the purported effects of meditative practice, such as emotional equanimity,
heightened compassion for others, and engaging in ‘right action,’ overlap
substantially with what is generally considered religious or spiritual experience
(Baer 155)

These similarities along with the historical overlap lead to the conclusion that seeing both
together can lead to better understanding of how they impact the lives of participants directly.
Similarly, prayers in different faiths often overlap with each other: "Amongst the many
recognized types of Christian prayer... contemplative prayer is most similar to elements of
Buddhist and Hindu meditative practice" (Baer 164). By looking closely at one example then as
well as a broadly at the field as a whole, we can see both its depth and breadth.
The Daily Examen Prayer from Ignatian spirituality, given this project’s Catholic origins,
serves well as an example to show the depth of what prayer, reflection, and meditation are
capable of. This prayer, required twice daily in Jesuit tradition from Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual
Exercises, serves as the foundation for examining oneself in relation to God, love, and life. It is

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a guided prayer with a prompt structure for spiritual mindfulness, essentially reflecting on what
issues in life are addressable in the present to bring one closer to God.

The Five Steps of the Daily Examen: (The Daily Examen)
1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow.

This guided prompt structure focuses on self examination, attentiveness to emotions and
one’s relationship to God, and focusing on finding something that deserves change along with
how to enact that in the near future. Ignatius taught the wide ranging applications of this prayer,
saying:

God could be found at work in every situation, relationship and experience of
human life—in the daily stuff of working, raising children, caring for neighbors,
seeking justice in civic life, protecting the earth and building the human
community, as well as in experiences of friendship, of solidarity in a common
cause, in times of rejoicing and great happiness, times of sorrow and grieving,
and times of loneliness and fear (Ignatian Spirituality in CLC)

It was designed to build attentiveness, and help participants develop a more well
rounded personhood with the ability to handle all the issues that life presents.

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Guided Meditation as a whole expands these ideas of reflection and mindfulness to a
wider range of spirituality and other applications. Prompts are still the foundation, and similar to
retreats they can only guide reflection but not enforce it. That still falls on the participant and
how they are able to engage in the material, giving them only a chance to challenge themselves
with it. Delivery can come similarly in any form: prompts, questions, ideas, audio recordings,
video, spoken word, or anything that conveys some type of information. The differences here
are only how much the chosen medium and subject matter impact the participant’s ability to
interact with that content, compared to the delivery medium interfering with the user’s ability to
maintain a prayerful or meditative state. Small font size for a written prompt, for example, might
limit someone with bad vision from receiving the material effectively or without any strain.
Digital Experiences recently have provided opportunities to experiment with new ways to
deliver that material. They often act as aids to the meditative and prayerful experiences, as they
can still only deliver the content but not ensure the participant engages with it. Progress can still
be made here though, and noteworthy examples have emerged which attempt to develop how
prompts and their delivery can be enhanced. Digital pieces for prayer and meditation have also
made more progress as a field than digital conversation starters have, and are worth examining
in the context of what digital conversation starters can learn from them too.

● Reimagining the Examen, by Loyola Press
An Ignatian daily examen app that uses soothing music and soundscapes from a
randomized tracklist alongside serene visuals as a backdrop to the prompt material. The
prompts draw from Biblical passages tied to reflections on life similar to prior examens,
but a list of alternative examens allows users to quickly select a custom set of prompts

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for each session. The audiovisual experience helps create a notably calmer space for
prayer and reflection in any environment.
● 3-Minute Retreats, by Loyola Press
An older piece, these online Flash browser activities were a similar audiovisual
experience to Reimagining the Examen, but new prompts were released on a daily basis
to routinely provide fresh content. Sharing updates on a regular basis with a worldwide
audience created an interesting and exciting way to keep that sense of community, and
required comparatively little work on the part of the developers and authors.
● Headspace, by Headspace Inc
A mobile app in the guided meditation space with clean motion graphics, cute characters
in the UI to set a relaxing tone, and recordings of a calming voice to read out loud the
prompts. With custom options for different user experience levels with meditation (for
longer or shorter form sessions) the app allows users to put down their phone, close
their eyes, and focus on breathing and following the prompts. This mostly non-visual
interface shows potential applications for the coming field of Voice User Interfaces (VUI)
like Alexa and Siri on Amazon and Apple’s platforms respectively. Similarly, a small
group activity led by voice recordings would be an interesting experiment following these
ideas.

Further research on meditations covers a field wider than the scope of this paper.
Though this barely represents these works, this project’s focus on social spaces necessitates
only referencing it for its similarities and what can be learned at a basic level. Digital meditation
apps have full future though, and their unique capabilities equally warrant exploration and
expansion.

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Established Designs
Throughout all these prior pieces, common design choices and patterns began to
emerge that lead to deeper interpersonal trust. All of these ideas were integrated when possible
in the design of the final thesis game.

1. Safe Environment
Interruptions and a public or unsafe space hurts willingness for participants to be
vulnerable. Privacy is key, especially respected privacy, and attentiveness contributes to
this. A quiet and undistracting space also facilitates the environment here, so spaces like
sitting on a park bench, going on a hike, or finding somewhere quiet away from the world
always helps. Digital games cannot integrate the location around them into a mobile
experience yet, but portability allows it to be moved to a location that is a good match.
Currently this is not instructed as a requirement for playing the final game, but the
conversational expectations of the game imply it somewhat at least. Routine also helps
on this front, establishing more trust over time, but implementing a design for that did not
fit the game’s production schedule.
2. Informed Consent
Expansion of the safe spaces policy and ideas around informed consent were prominent
in any activity or game that successfully dove into deeper territory. Whether through
aesthetics setting the tone or through explicit statements, it was made clear to
participants that harder material was about to arrive, with a clear opportunity to opt out or
an understanding of what was about to come. Lots of consent, lots of content warnings,
and lots of choices allow for the audience to feel safe progressing or avoid certain paths.
The final thesis game uses a category selection screen and multiple introduction screens

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to give players fair notice on what type of material is coming, ensuring both users are
onboard for ideas before they are discussed. This happens both at the beginning of the
game as well as any time before especially sensitive material.
3. Immediately Set Tone
By establishing tone instantly, works can further reinforce informed consent by not
allowing participants to spend any time investing in the experience without being fully
aware of the type of material involved. Prompts do this for most of the prior art
referenced, by establishing early on the type of participation involved and expected. In
this game, starting with a mindfulness question (“Where did you see people care about
each other today?”) inspired by the Ignatian Daily Examen sets the tone, with
expectations on reflection and thoughts regarding oneself and others. This occurs while
users are still curious regarding what the experience entails, before discovering any
patterns, and allows healthy expectations to be formed early on with fewer surprises.
4. Prompt Clarity
Clarity in content delivery is key to setting the tone, and not interfering with the content
itself. For prompts delivered through any spoken or written language, wording and
vocabulary play foundational roles. This applies to excellence in craft with whichever
medium is used to deliver the prompt and however the prompt is formed, whether the
voice acting for voice readings or the graphic design of a visual interface. In this game,
care was taken to find inspiration for good material behind the prompts and to write them
well, but a dedicated role was not assigned to this and that may have helped form better
questions. Though small, the creation of prompts is the basis of a good conversation
starter or guided meditation experience.

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5. Gradual Incline
Developing trust over time is a sensitive process. Move too slow and participant
engagement can be lost, move too fast and parties might become uncomfortable and
leave the experience. Worse yet, every individual and every relation between two
individuals is unique, so there are no easy answers for the most effective speed here.
Rather, putting the dial in players’ hands can sometimes work best, but a healthy outside
encouragement towards more difficult territory is usually more helpful than a user guided
processes alone. Providing opt-out opportunities helps make up for any misjudgement
on where players’ willingness is on escalating prompt intensity, or to check in on the trust
levels between players at any given step. This game uses the cute animals guessing
game as a warmup to set a friendlier tone, helping counterbalance the difficulty of the
prompts and giving a more forgiving atmosphere in case the questions do escalate too
quickly, easing the user into the material. Flexibility in this range also helps, and many
retreats open with a statement saying “you get out of this what you put into it” so
participants feel they have a choice to opt in. Repeat meetings like CLC also build trust
over time with a more long term gradual incline, or any community maintenance after a
retreat, but scheduling limitations have kept these out of the game so far. Extreme care
must be taken here though with any randomization, as it risks dramatic and unintentional
escalations. The thesis game uses hidden flags for categories and intensity on each
prompt to ensure the random order is also controlling for subject matter and difficulty of
each question compared to each prior prompt.
6. Balance Serious with Fun
Evenly distributing the serious segments between the lighthearted and entertaining
elements of these experiences helps prevent emotional exhaustion, which is a real risk

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with so many hard questions so close together. Bojack Horseman is a surprising
example of pacing comedy with difficult content, ensuring the viewer is more emotionally
comfortable than not before delivering harder material. This game uses an escalating
difficulty of prompts interwoven with an escalating ridiculousness of “animal” noises,
dissolving into distinctly recognizable non-animal noises by the end. This keeps things
fun, refreshing, and exciting which counterbalances the prompts’ more challenging
emotional impact. The guessing game is easy while the conversation starters are hard,
and this balance gives users something for each side to stay well engaged with.
7. Difficulty Re-Establishing Friendships
Retreats and CLC meetings distinctly aim to establish new friendships rather than giving
new context to old friendships, largely due to the difficulty of transforming a friendship
into becoming open to these kinds of discussions comparatively. Starting a friendship off
with this expectation makes it easier to attempt this type of vulnerability. Groups of
friends often have a hard time changing the dynamic of those friendships, so for the
sake of this game where the prior relations of the players are unknown to the computer
itself (an issue social media integration could someday experiment with) the easiest way
to re-establish the relationship is in the safest environment possible: two players and no
guests. This leaves only one relationship to worry about, and while the game can work
with more players, that ends up creating a harder environment to try this vulnerability.
Past playthroughs have observed larger parties treating the game as a party piece rather
than taking the questions seriously, so currently the game targets two players first.
8. Touch
Though effective, touch is likely too intense to include with a current wider release. Early
prototypes showed strong positive results, and retreats and CLC parties were known for

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ice breakers and dancing that included light degrees of this, but societally this is tricky
territory. Even light impacts of oxytocin, the chemical of human touch, have a big impact.
Given its power and without the time to safely address it, touch is not used then as an
element at this time, but will always be considered for future bonding experiences.
9. Ending on Admiration
Concluding with admiration as an experience outro is a staple of many retreats and CLC
meetings, focusing on thanks, appreciation, and going back out into the world to do more
good. A positive note to end on reinforces gratitude between players for one another. It
commonly surprises participants to hear what others value about them, given especially
how uncommon such compliments are in the average friendship or social situation. By
passing along a sense of value that is rarely expressed, the experience concludes on a
strong positive note. For these reasons, the thesis game makes a distinct decision to
always end with a concluding prompt on admiring the other player, and commonly
concludes with a strong positive feeling between both participants there too.

These takeaways together can be used in any experience to develop further trust in a
safe form, and will likely be found in most future works that cover this territory. Using all of them
may result in the best effect, but any individual piece should have positive results on improving
trust in a safe and effective way regarding that part of the design. Further research would likely
find these elements existed elsewhere long before modern retreats, card games, and digital
pieces, but the effects will likely be consistent long into all future platforms and experiences too.

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Technology Pros / Cons
The 21st century Information Age platform of technology, by contrast, offers an
abundance of new opportunities and problems in its attempts to help develop interpersonal
trust. Unique discoveries and limitations were found exploring the affordances of this space, and
give a completely new option to develop trust by an alternative path, rather than being distinctly
better or worse. It has unique advantages and limitations, but they are worth understanding so
digitally aided trust activities can be used when they are the best tool for particular scenarios.

1. Communication
While communication through a device is fun and exciting for all the new appeal of a
colorful screen filled with real time text, the subtleties of communication like tone, facial
expression, body language, and context are all lost when doing most communication
through devices. Even having eyes on the screen instead of the other player is a
distraction from that communication - though it can be used to great effect when eye
contact is too powerful for the audience’s comfort level. The best results for this project
center around having the players communicate face to face as much as possible while
still being entertained enough to continue engaging in the experience, even if the
conversation side requires some effort.
2. Screen Distractions
The glowing, flashing, noise making screen of any digital interactive piece is commonly a
distraction from the world around us. This becomes a problem when the purpose of the
game is to encourage face to face communication, so the solution is to reduce the draw
of that screen as much as possible. Passive screens ready to be looked away from at a
moment’s notice, with minimal screen space to avoid occupying the user’s attention or

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view, and with content animated enough to be engaging but not so much as to be
distracting, together create an experience that is enjoyable to look at but prepared to fall
into the background at a moment’s notice. By keeping the experience ready to be
enjoyed but not actively trying to be seen, the game was able to be entertaining as
needed without being the main point of focus.
3. World Distractions
The real world, by contrast, is an ongoing distraction that can never be fully addressed
directly. While retreats escape from the world to find a quiet space, consoles are usually
in living rooms, PCs are often at solitary desks, and there are sadly no arcades in the
woods. Mobile then gives the best chance of finding a quiet place at least, but there is no
guarantee that this can be found. The experience then must be designed to passively
handle interruptions. For serious subject matters, that is a real concern. The emotional
tone, privacy, and vulnerability of a session can be hurt or lost. Aside from requesting
that the users find a quiet place, which again cannot always be accomplished, there is
not a direct fix to this issue and it remains something to simply be cautious with. It cannot
be expected that any session will remain wholly safe from interruption.
4. Hidden Interactions
Controlling what information is seen by who, and when, is a powerful feature of a screen
controlled by a computer. Asking one player to hide the screen from the other means
secrets and information can appear instantly and in elaborate detail, or even change
without the other player knowing. This privacy also allows players to give confidential
responses to questions between the game and the player, like what categories they are
comfortable talking about. This build of the thesis game has not experimented with that
yet, but it has good potential. These interactions allow for interesting relations between

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the two players and what information the game chooses to share, and that dynamic can
lead to better privacy for informed consent as well as creating good gameplay tension
between the players.
5. Information Management
The ability of a computer to quickly organize and process large amounts of information
might hold the most potential of any unique element in the digital trust building space.
The game keeps track of which prompts have been played, what categories the players
have selected, and what difficulty the game is currently at. It uses all of this information
to choose the best prompt from a randomized set each turn, keeping things unexpected
where possible and predictable where needed. What takes a human minutes to do in
shuffling and sorting, in addition to the effort needed to do it, takes less than a second
digitally. Battleship and Guess Who demonstrate what information management can be
like with a physical tool to assist in the process, but digital work expands exponentially
on this front. Again, this might be the area with the most potential in trust building apps,
and it will likely grow even more as these apps are given access to more information
about the two players. Social media and AI integration could do things like find common
ground and differences between players before they even begin a conversation, and
give them the best chance at deep trust on the most direct path possible.
6. Audio Generation
It is fairly straightforward that by setting an example for audio, and note that visuals can
work for this too, the game can demonstrate the need to listen in a fun way and have a
basic interaction to practice listening and paying attention. Tone, volume, and other
elements important to hearing someone else can all be double checked this way before
players have to put any work into being heard themselves, taking that burden off the

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players and putting it onto the device. The technology can help with some of the work
here, making it a lighter burden for players to try communicating themselves, and
especially if the sounds are inherently fun.
7. Instant Accessibility
The same portability that causes problems in the wrong environment gives this platform
the potential to start immediately in the right one. Instant accessibility with a mobile
platform means the game is always ready to go, and can follow the lead of when the
conversation is prepared to try this harder but fun territory, or when the environment is
right for the game whether the players prepared for it or not. It allows the piece to invade
areas where people may otherwise not play games, and reach new audiences at parties,
off on hikes, at meals, or anywhere a person and their phone might go.
8. Juicy Gameplay
Though distracting at times, the fun, flashy, juicy interactions of video games with
polished audio visual components are often inherently fun for these elements even by
themselves. Seeing rewarding animations and hearing cute noises in response to your
input is an inherently enjoyable experience, and most players light up when something
cool happens from something they did. When applied to a basic navigation interface of
prompts and menus, and when used with the alternative guessing game that this app
has, the experience becomes even more engaging. This makes the harder material
easier to consume as any interaction becomes a delight, and keeps the users more likely
to come back for more. Communication is important, but it must be fun in order to have
more users stay onboard.

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Further Research
Many prototypes in this project explored related spaces, but did not address the core
idea of building trust either as strongly or as directly. The results are still noteworthy though, and
worth considering for future exploration. Included below are the findings from each in hopes to
facilitate further work with each of these approaches.

Physical Game Prototypes
The origin genre for successful games to develop interpersonal trust, physical games
were the first place that prototypes emerged in pursuing this subject. Long before the concept
became a thesis, it composed multiple experiments in face to face prompt driven works.

● Question / Sharing Sherpa (Fall 2015 - John Billingsley, Stephanie Henderson)
Created for Tracy Fullerton’s foundational game design class, this card game acted as
an ice breaker that allowed players to dial up the intensity of the conversation starter
questions they were answering. Things started silly and progressed into more personal
questions depending on the interests of the group. It was widely considered a success in
accomplishing its core goal of smoothly helping players getting to know each other.
● Knitting Friendships (Spring 2016)
The foundational prototype to this thesis, Knitting Friendships was an attempt to bring
interactive elements from a Catholic retreat into a secular space to better understand
how those pieces worked. The game was a series of five pieces of paper featuring
prompts with cute photos on them. They covering the subjects of hometowns, family,
dreams, regrets, and admiration in that order. This accompanied an escalation of
physical touch with hands on hands, hands on shoulders, hands on heads, hands on

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backs, and finally arms around each other. The game would be played over roughly
twenty minutes. One player afterward called it “The closest I’ve felt to anyone else in
college” and while initially this feedback was taken as a sign to fear these interactions’
power, ultimately this became the primary obligation to pursue it further. The touch and
prompt driven gameplay led to deeper feelings of trust, and that proved to be the
physical foundation for this thesis.

Digital Small Groups Prototypes
The digital foundation that led to the final experience - these prototypes discovered the
fundamental problems behind attempting to conquer developing trust on a digital platform, and
subsequently found a few of the preliminary solutions.

● Kniitomo / Tocadachi (Spring 2016)
This first digital conversion of the Knitting Friendships prototype was inspired by the cute
character guides in Nintendo’s app Miitomo. Made for iPad, it asked players to use touch
for five prompts the same as the original game, but with an emoji character guiding
players through the process like a retreat leader leads small groups. The results were
flawed. Players enjoyed the character, but never looked each other in the eye, and felt
closer to the fictional character than to the other players. Having a guide who cannot
listen and having players facing the screen gave the players a communication
disconnect even while arm in arm. They would often not read each others’ body
language, and knew more about the onscreen events than about the people sitting next
to them.

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● FeelingsWeb (October 2017)
This prototype explored porting the core of Knitting Friendships into a portable digital
form. While pictures and touch were lost in the prototype, the ability to pull out the game
at a moment’s notice proved powerful. That portability and small form factor allowed for
an intimacy and a passiveness that the Kniitomo prototype did not have, and the lack of
fictional characters kept the focus on the real world. This led more directly to the final
game’s digital structure and form.

Limited Communication Prototypes
By far the most exciting genre explored, limited communication prototypes experimented
in the digital guessing game genre, and played with how communication through digital could be
made more playful by limiting or changing how messages were sent or received. Inspired by
social experiments like the reddit April Fools events every year, two major prototypes emerged.

● Anonychat (November 2017)
An anonymous local chat client for 3-4 players with laptops, Anonychat revealed how
thrilling it was to read body language, idle sounds, context, eye contact, and facial
expressions of others to determine who sent which anonymous message. This was the
game that necessitated reading tone and body language to know who said what.
Reading the room without saying anything out loud or with an identity created a thrilling
tension of secrets and playfulness. While high risk with the wrong crowd, a game
between friends played on knowing each other well enough to not need identities. It
resembled passing secret notes, but with the instantaneousness of a messenger app.
This also proved terribly distracting in classrooms. Physical keyboards were better than

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mobile keyboards for the rapid communication, as only the last message was ever
visible, so laptops made for an ideal and exciting way to play.
● Anonyboard (November 2017)
A precursor to Anonychat, this prototype acted as an anonymous bulletin board.
Targeting second screen experiences with mobile devices and a TV, players would
anonymously post to a single board for everyone to see. The end result converted well to
Anonychat’s faster laptop-only interface, but the televisions visibility had an interesting
effect in attracting passerbys into the experience. Players joining and leaving was a
much more fluid dynamic.

Digital Guided Meditation
Focused on leading a mindful or prayerful experience, these prototypes revolved around
how digital platforms impact self reflection. Using both traditional text prompts and
experimenting with peaceful audiovisual environments to explore, these pieces tried to help the
user stop and think about their life.

● Guided Meditation (February 2016)
Inspired by the Catholic 3-Minute Retreats online flash pages, this prototype created a
relaxing audiovisual experience with text to guide the reflection process. Its prompt
material was inspired by the Ignatian Daily Examen, and this was the first prototype to
explore how Catholicism was related to interactive media, and was ultimately successful
in getting participants to stop and experience a state of contemplation.

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● Reflection Adventure 1 - Reflection and Meditation (February 2017)
The only reflection prototype to experiment with the relation of direct avatar manipulation
to single player meditative spaces, this piece used calming animated background videos
and juicy navigation controls to create a calming but engaging navigation of space. It
was inspired by Orisinal games (Orisinal.com) and attempted to hit the feeling of flow
that games like Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, and Journey are all known
for. That feeling of flow came from contemplative moments navigating calm ingame
locations, and created a space for mindfulness and meditation that was unguided in its
form. Simple controls with video content already known for creating reflective
environments (flowing water, wind in the leaves) was an effective approach to achieve
this.

16-Button Prototypes
Aimed at traditional gamers and console gameplay, this prototype played with how a
standard game controller and genre could be used in a couch co-op equivalent of small groups.

● Feelings Game (October 2017)
The only prototype this thesis project had that explored this area, Feelings Game was a
top-down Zelda-like 4 player navigation experience. It involved cute characters
(placeholder sprites ripped from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past) for each player
running around the screen as direct manipulation avatars. Players explored the
environment and discovered conversation starters in large text on the ground designed
to encourage open discussion. The relation of players to navigation, hitting exploratory
flow like the Reflection Adventure 1 prototype, and finding conversation starters proved

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surprisingly effective. Communication was not as intense as face to face given that
players all faced the screen, and was better for an audience uncomfortable looking each
other in the eye, but still got players to open up more than usual for traditional gaming.
While not best for reaching the widest audience, as a gamer-only approach this could
lead to an excellent later piece in building trust with local multiplayer gaming. The only
issue was a conflict of fantasy and reality, as players did not know if they should answer
the questions as their characters or as themselves. A solution could have been the use
of real world photos or an avatar creation process, but it would have risked players not
taking things seriously from the start. Either way, this showed the potential to address
traditional gaming this way, and showed unique positive results for less intense forms of
communication.

Simulation / AI Prototypes
Interactions that simulated a social situation were a major phase of this project, and
ultimately the largest section to be abandoned at an early stage. The goal was to artificially
create the equivalent of social interactions so that socially awkward players could practice
communication skills and build confidence before trying them on other people. This found that
humans and social interactions as a whole were far too complex to represent with any modern
computer experience, and AI could not help yet. Results showed interesting potential, but most
of this will be better once accessible AI can handle interactivity that feels more human.
Social perception variables played a key part in many of these prototypes, as each game
attempted to represent human emotion in some data driven form. Ingame variables were used
to represent happiness, sadness, anger, closeness, trust, and more. Choices about your
relation to other characters could have been real gameplay, but these connections would need

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to constantly change in many ways at once. Mirroring how most interactions happen
subconsciously in real life would have involved the complicated expressions of language, tone,
facial expression, and other forms of communication. Dating sims and Mass Effect seemed
severely limited by comparison, and it would have taken a lifetime to develop our abilities
expressing ourselves ingame the same as we do through the bodies we already have. Learning
how to do the same through a game controller or any external device would not be reasonable.
These prototypes found some interesting middle ground, but certainly did not accomplish that.

● Reflection Adventure 2 & 3 - Work & Life (February 2017)
With emoji avatars running around a house, digitally bumping into or passing by other
characters was the only way for a player to express themselves in this game. AI
characters represented by emojis would smile if they enjoyed your presence or frown if
they were not interested. The player goal was to keep everyone happy while balancing a
workload, and though the tension and interactions were interesting, the player skills
developed were limited and gave no equivalent to real world social experiences. Having
nameless characters made things feel fairly removed, and balancing work with life was
not particularly fun. The emojis were excellent for quickly prototyping emotional
expressions, but subtle expressions were not possible with them.
● Reflection Adventure 4 - Cancelled (March 2017)
A prototype was intended for this number, but cancelled due to time constraints.
● Reflection Adventure 5 - Facial Expressions (March 2017)
Using a webcam, this prototype experimented with facial expression recognition from the
Affdex library to determine what emotions the player was currently expressing. The data
was then used on an avatar ingame. That avatar was in a conversation with another

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 45 of 52
character, who while attempting to tell a serious but dramatic story, would get upset at
the player if they smiled or laughed. No microphone was used to determine actual
laughter, but anything other than a serious or concerned face led to an objection from
the non-player character. Results were inconsistent, and the technology felt primitive.
Requiring a facial expression to start the game did encourage players to open up more
though, compared to the stoneface that most players have playing games. Concerns
included the technology having racial discrimination, as past libraries had apparently
only been tested on lighter skin participants before release, but those issues did not
appear to be a concern with this more modern library. With Snapchat and Apple both
pushing for more Augmented Reality (AR) applications and platforms, we should see
more reliable and interesting technology to experiment with here soon. The gameplay,
combined with time pressures, led to very exciting results when it did work and had
feelings notably closer to the excitement of a real life social interaction.
● Reflection Adventure 6 - Social Roguelike (April 2017)
This roguelike randomized adventure game had an overworld for navigation and
encounters that most resembled battles in a JRPG, except it focused on the challenge of
choosing which emotion to express rather than what attack to use. The randomization
kept content exciting, and dealing with the statistics of an encounter in deciding a
response led to good feeling gameplay. Though fairly artificial, navigating that many
variables at once did at least feel as interesting as a real roguelike. The duality of
avoiding conversations on a physical level and then navigating them on an emotional
level was also interesting. Even with layered systems like how another character’s
displayed emotions differed from their internal emotions, the prototype felt particularly
artificial and game-like, and again did not achieve the results needed to teach any real

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 46 of 52
social experience. This was the last single player prototype, and all following prototypes
switching to in person multiplayer experiences as a result.
● Closeness (Spring 2016)
An older prototype, Closeness explored physical proximity between characters and how
using the word “No!” impacted that space. It abstracted how social interactions related to
the distance between two characters. An AI followed around the player, but pressing a
button to shout “No!” would cause them to move away for at least a little while. The more
the player shouted, the further the AI would move, until they left the room completely and
did not come back. There was no indication as to whether this closeness was a good or
bad, but it experimented with how our words can create distance in our relationships with
others, and how there can be permanent impacts of that.
● Bedtime Stories (Fall 2015)
This nonspatial experience also explored the use of the word “No!” as a social
interaction, but with branching narrative paths for a type of real time conversation. The
player could shout “No!” at any point as a bedtime story was being told, and the narrator
would change the story in response to this. The goal was to have high complexity for a
very short experience, but it ended up too long to be effective even in a 30 second form.
Overly ambitious, it quickly broke in playtesting and led to this approach not being
investigated further. Like how Mass Effect 1 discarded its “interruptions” system in
development, making a piece with more fluid choices than Choose Your Own Adventure
books ended up leading to exponentially expanding content. Even this short form of
gameplay was too long for this many options in player choice. Until content generation
becomes magnitudes faster, whether by tools or AI content generation, a truly constant
flow of even binary choices every few seconds that are not recombinatory will be too

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 47 of 52
large for any game development, even experimental or independent work. Perhaps
crowdsourcing can address this if it has cheap production values and minimal direction,
but an artistic vision is out of scope for any reasonably sized project for now.

Additional Tools
The IOS Scale (Inclusion of Other in the Self) was a particularly noteworthy tool that was
not used to any real effect in these prototypes, but was of relevant interest. This single question
psychology test can be used to measure how close people feel to each other. A series of
increasingly overlapping circles similar to venn diagrams are shown, and participants are
individually and privately asked to select which pair of circles best represents how close they
feel to the other participant. Time constraints did not allow for any prototypes that used this, but
future analytics or prototypes would both benefit from trying this approach to understanding
player trust.

Prototypes Conclusion
All of these prototypes could lead to interesting future titles. The space of building trust
beyond local mobile conversation starters is significant, and there are many ways this field could
be expanded. More games need to look outside of traditional games for inspiration on this front,
but bringing those ideas back into traditional or known genres could change what this field is
capable of. For trust building in video games, all of these paths are highly recommended for
further work and research.

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 48 of 52
Conclusion
Not only is it possible to build trust through digital games, but it now exists and works.
The final piece is a digital conversation starter that falls away passively to the conversation, but
provides juicy interactions and deftly manages large amounts of data and customization. This is
a direct path to how trust building activities can benefit from a digital interactive medium. Video
games are capable of this in unique and interesting ways, and are even the best option in many
circumstances where more information management is needed. By drawing on prior art well
outside the field too, and both implementing the interactive elements of those fields and using
the advantages of technology as a platform, the end result can be a strong new development for
fields inside and outside of games. Consider the wide range of what games are capable of then,
adopting interactive elements from other fields and sharing the unique elements that games can
provide, and one can see that this project has only addressed the one issue of trust out of an
entire world of interactive possibilities.

Building Interpersonal Trust through Digital Games Page 49 of 52
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Creator Handy, Brian Pope (author)

Core Title Building interpersonal trust through digital games

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 08/15/2018

Defense Date 08/15/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Catholic,Catholicism,Christian life community,CLC,conversation starter,Games,guessing game,interactive,Kairos,Meditation,millennial,Millennials,mindfulness,Mobile,mobile game,multiplayer,OAI-PMH Harvest,parlor game,Prayer,reflection,retreat,small group,social,Trust,trust building,video games,vulnerability,wellness

Format application/pdf (imt)

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Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member), Watson, Jeff (committee member)

Creator Email bhandy@usc.edu,blinkstale@gmail.com

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