On Stranger Trails, or: How to Apply the Hiker’s Nod to Game Design

The Hiker’s Nod

Is there a game design principle that matches up to the phenomenon of instinctively nodding/saying a quick hello in passing to otherwise complete strangers on (non-busy) hiking trails?

This almost universal unwritten rule to provide recognition to fellow hikers, and respond in kind, is a minimal way to signal “I see you and mean you no harm, let’s keep walking“. It’s an etiquette that ends the moment people cross back over from sparsely populated trails to civilization, standing in stark contrast to a modern variant of civil inattention¹: look at your phone, ignore everyone else, pretend they don’t exist.

In Norway, for instance, this behavior is so ingrained in hiking culture that the only way to avoid the nod to others on the trail is to deliberately prevent even the smallest glimmer of eye contact. If you accidentally glance at their eyes as you pass, and eye contact is established, you will both nod/greet one another. The unlikely failure to do so will doom either/both parties to self-doubt and imposter syndrome: “What am I doing here… Am I even a real hiker? Can people see me??“

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Some existing games out there do brush up against this concept, though maybe without quite hitting the mark. Let’s examine a few:

Journey – A Game of Chirps

In Journey you can share random and anonymous experiences with other players you meet during the game, and it includes a type of virtual nod in the form of “chirping” sounds that you can use to communicate or to charge the scarves of players you meet.

^{Played through entire game two times (and unlocked white cape) while waiting for another player to show up so I could record chirping between players in action, but turns out multiplayer doesn’t work on the Epic Games Launcher version of Journey. Bummer.}

However, when we look at the chirp and associated co-op gameplay, there are some fundamental differences compared to the “hiker’s nod”. The former can provide mechanical benefit or communicate intent, and even get you invested in the success and progress of your traveling companion. The latter, on the other hand, carries nearly zero utility or information beyond a simple, mutual acknowledgement that you are both engaged in a similar activity in a shared space, and you are okay to leave it at that.²

Sky – A Candle Economy

We can’t mention Journey in this context without also referencing its spiritual successor, Sky: Children of the Light! Where Journey stuck to low-friction anonymity from start to finish without ways to escalate or formalize bonds between players, That Sky Game went in a different direction.

It treats random encounters (with up to 8 players at a time) as the start of potential friendships, where initial greetings become invitations to social contracts with escalating levels of intimacy and trust. Socializing is encouraged and welcomed (and monetized).

Very cool, but the premise of the hiker’s nod is grounded in non-committal interactions with zero expectations of those leading anywhere, while lighting a stranger’s candle in Sky is rarely just a passing greeting.

The Trail – A Mixed Bag

The vibe you initially get from the hiking game/actual walking simulation The Trail when encountering other characters on the path is promising. That is, until you realize that all characters you see out and about on the trail are just asynchronous encounters with simulated players, based on names and appearance of players who have previously played the game.

Although the game provides virtual nods through its quick-emotes, like “Hello” and “Thanks”, that can be used on the trail and at campfires, this ceases to be meaningful as soon as you understand there are no real people on the receiving end, and all responses are scripted and automated (at least, until Eden Falls/player towns, but at that point the premise of the game changes radically).

On top of that, everyone in The Trail is moving in the same direction, either overtaking or getting overtaken by you, which means you never experience those moments of walking along a relatively empty trail before coming face to face with a stranger heading in the opposite direction.

Secretly nodding at people’s backs as they pass you by, without them even noticing, is presumably not effective as a greeting.

Red Dead Online – Hat over Hat

There are other games that tip their hat towards the “nod on the trail”, such as the literal hat tip in Red Dead Online or the culture of crouch-spamming in survival/extraction shooters to indicate you’re not hostile (at that moment).

However, on the hiking trail the nod is an expressive action voluntarily done (mostly) as a casual greeting, where one party will (probably) not push the other off a cliff even if they fail to reciprocate, while the hat tip and crouch-spam are instrumental actions³ done in attempt to de-escalate situations or as necessary acts of self-preservation⁴.

Where Emotes Play

In fact, there’s no shortage at all of multiplayer games that include ways to greet players, often via emotes, some of which even require multiple participants to execute. Examples of the former include nearly every MMO released since ~1996, most of which allow players to trigger animated, text or audio greetings via emote commands (/wave, /nod) or dedicated UI wheels.

Examples of the latter include AFK Journey (hey, another game about going on a trip!), where you can initiate a multiplayer emote that anyone nearby can take part in, but which leaves you literally “hanging” with your hand up in the air if no one joins in.

Or Where Winds Meet, with its multitude of multiplayer emotes, some of which are free-for-all/opt-in, and some that won’t run unless accepted by another explicitly invited player (who can also outright reject said invitation).

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Game Design Learnings

With both the hiker’s nod and these game examples fresh in mind, let’s look at design patterns we can use to craft scenarios or game mechanics, especially for virtual worlds/games with persistent shared environments, that intrinsically encourage transient, low-stakes moments of mutual recognition without promise of extrinsic rewards, without expectations of further interaction and without the potential sting of rejection.

Encouraging such behavior, even if the interactions are unlikely to (on their own) result in long-term social bonds from potentially one-time encounters with players, could still have positive long-term effects. It would create a stronger sense of a shared journey and strengthen the feeling of mutual awareness and co-existence in the same virtual world. As players you would appreciate and validate through that shared virtual nod that you are participants in the same space or activity⁵, while also serving as a form of psychological relief that feeds into the concept of collective solitude⁶, of playing alone together: “I am not alone, and neither are you!“

Just existing in the same space is not on its own a guarantee for the emergence of social connections between people. You could consistently take the same bus to work as someone else every day for years, or live two doors over from a neighbor whose face you remember, and still have had no direct interactions with them in that time. While a repeat encounter in the same environment may generate recognition, it does not in itself promote sociability.

But small, guided micro-gestures like the virtual hiker’s nod could help support sociability by “breaking the ice”, so to speak.⁷ It can act as a non-verbal handshake that establishes goodwill, while lowering the barrier for players to engage in conversation after repeat encounters or in dedicated social hubs.

Mechanics of a Virtual Hiker’s Nod

To cultivate that social dynamic without trapping players in unwanted commitments, the execution of a virtual hiker’s nod mechanic should adhere to specific constraints. It must allow the interaction to be non-committal, where nothing significant happens unless both players agree to engage, which acts as a natural constraint on the exchange to reduce the anxiety of entering into a potentially embarrassing social situation with no clear exit, and absolving the players of any faux pas from not “returning the nod”.⁸

It should act almost like a “swipe right”-lite, where the primary purpose is a fleeting, mutual social interaction rather than a lasting personal relationship.

One caveat: If a player’s intent to engage in the micro-gesture is not signaled clearly, and other players don’t participate as a result, there’s a risk that players will abandon the feature altogether.⁹ A potential solution to reduce that risk is to introduce a tiered structure to the interaction, combining an automated baseline micro-gesture that always plays, with escalation of said gesture through opt-in participation from both parties.

For this concept of ephemeral recognition (let’s call it Non-Committal Symmetric Reciprocal Acknowledgement Exchange, or NCSRAE for short) to achieve the intended effect, it must operate at a no trust/low trust tier¹⁰, and I’d also argue that its mechanics would need to remain neutral and egalitarian, with no affordances towards increasing socioeconomic differences based on the nod or greeting itself, i.e. no microtransactions for flashier virtual nods, and no XP or currencies earned.¹¹

Finally, it should be a safe, low-stakes and optional interaction between actual players, ideally taking place in low population density areas, where participants would share in a common experience equally, as a brief reciprocal moment of human connection.

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References:

1. Civil Inattention (Erving Goffman, Behaviour in Public Places, 1963) – Social convention in dense public spaces where people minimally acknowledge each other’s presence without signaling any intent to initiate a social interaction ↩︎
2. Phatic Communication (Danijela Radovanovic, Massimo Ragnedda, Small Talk in the Digital Age, 2012) – Digital micro-interactions used to signal availability, recognize presence and maintain social bonds without exchanging substantive information ↩︎
3. Instrumental vs Expressive Actions (Talcott Parsons, The Social System, 1951) – Instrumental actions are performed as means to an end (survival, tactical advantage), while expressive actions are ends in themselves and driven by social intent ↩︎
4. Instrumental Action in Survival Games (Marcus Carter, Fraser Allison, et al., Fear, loss and meaningful play: Permadeath in DayZ, 2017) – In high-stakes survival games, severe mechanics like permadeath or loot loss convert social gestures into tactical de-escalation maneuvers to mitigate existential risk and gauge hostility ↩︎
5. Virtual Co-presence (Shanyang Zhao, Toward a Taxonomy of Copresence, 2003) – Psychological sensation of really existing with other people in a virtual space and being mutually aware of one another ↩︎
6. Collective Solitude (Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee, et al., Alone Together? Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games, 2006) – The phenomenon where players intentionally choose to play alone together in shared virtual environments, appreciating the presence of others without the hassle of formal grouping ↩︎
7. Social Fitness and Co-presence (Troy Daniel Glover, Designing for Social Fitness: A Relational Model Linking Urban Environments to Social Wellbeing, 2023) – Co-presence does not automatically trigger social engagement. Shared environments require deliberate behavioral cues or micro-gestures to bridge the gap between awareness and sociability ↩︎
8. Cringe-safe Design (Kate Compton, Chelsea Howe, Cat Manning, Ziba Scott, May Ling Tan, Kelly M Tran, Toolkit for Cringe-Safe Social Interactions, 2025)  –  Social design that tries to balance human social needs against perceived social threats such as fear of negative judgement or social trapping ↩︎
9. Social Exchange (George C. Homans, Social Behavior as Exchange, 1958) – Sociological framework proposing that social behavior is an exchange of non-material goods, where individuals cease initiating exchanges if the perceived costs (time, vulnerability, embarrassment, etc.) consistently outweigh the social rewards (approval, recognition, etc.) ↩︎
10. Trust Spectrum (Raph Koster, The Trust Spectrum, 2018) – Design framework examining trust and dependence in multiplayer settings. The low-trust end of the spectrum is characterized by parallel play without a requirement for deep interdependence ↩︎
11. Spontaneous Communitas (Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, 1969) – Describes a temporary, unstructured state where all members of a community share a common experience as equals, stripped of normal societal ranks or wealth ↩︎