Contextual statement

Piggy Rats is a multiplayer game that explores the concept of cooperation, trust and deception. The main theory explored is the prisoners dilemma, where there are multiple outcomes of a situation both positive and negative, depending on each players choice. I feel that this would be a good core gameplay mechanic so players will think about their actions towards other players and find out if others decisions will influence their own.

Other research has been about trust in other players, will they benefit from deceiving the other player? and will they care? We hope to find this out through stat tracking in the final app to see how players interact with each other through the game.

There have been some troubles getting the multiplayer aspect to work over the internet, but we are working towards a fix for that so that the players can easily connect and play when they want.

Something we would like to add to the game would be a roaming AI controlled cat which can stun the rats, so they are trying to avoid it while possibly co-operating with the other players, or they could even push someone else into the cat to stun them. This may be too complicated to add considering the problems already with networking.

If all goes to plan the final work would be presented on 4 iPhones so that the spectators can try the game out with others around them or online with strangers. The game is on the iPhone so it is easily accessible to players, and simple to play using the touchscreen, it will be fun to play and should encourage people to play it.