Bit Heroes Connect

Project Overview

Bit Heroes Connect connects youth with police officers in community settings. Made in partnership with the York Regional Police and Hewlett-Packard, the game is designed to get youths 8 to 12 years old playing with police officers by leveraging Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality technologies combined with social and progression mechanics in a massively multiplayer experience.

Video Summary

The Problem

The York Regional Police expressed that they needed a way to connect with youth before the age of 13 when they stop engaging with officers. They find it increasingly difficult to have their messaging -- anti-bullying, autism awareness, and much more -- reach youth due to social disconnect, among other things. Officers still hand out black and white pamphlets with their messaging only for it to be scraped moments after they leave.In such scenarios, youth are very attentive when the officers are presenting if only because they carry a gun on them. In effect, these interactions do not leave a lasting positive impression.

Project Vision

To connect youth with officers before the age of 13 when it becomes very difficulty. My goal was to create positive points of contact between youth and officers. Establishing common ground before teenage years enables youth to be more receptive to messaging and opens communication between both parties. To do this, I designed a game which creates implicit behaviour in players to foster the right social context for a connection to be made.

Game Design

Promote Teamwork

To create a connection between officers and youth, I knew I needed to create a sense of togetherness and comradery. To achieve this, the game is massively cooperative. The minute-to-minute gameplay is driven by progression. The player-to-player and officer-to-player interactions promote teamwork by rewarding participants for sharing what they have collected. The positive-sum nature of this element reinforces this behaviour as positive.

Establishing a point of contact

A timer mechanic creates a moment wherein the player is highly encouraged to ask an officer for help in the game. In North America, it is exceedingly rare for youth to engage with officers. The norm is for officers to ask questions first, creating a one-way communication dynamic. The timer mechanic creates a scenario where the opposite is encourage. The context of the game enables this to feel right as it is directed by the game and sets a precedent for future behaviour.

Accessibility

Bit Heroes Connect is meant to be taken with officers to classrooms, school assemblies, and public events with as possibly hundreds of simultaneously playing. This posses 2 major design problems; how does one accommodate such a wide variety of player skills and abilities, and how does one provide players with the tools required to play?

Mobile devices were chosen to address the volume of players. Officers have access to a number of tablets for their community centres and for events. Some schools have access to mobile devices for educational purpose. Some youth have devices of their own or their guardians may provide theirs, particularly at public events. Combined, this enables the game to reach very large groups.

The game is designed to be frictionless so to accommodate a wide array of players with varying degrees of experience and abilities. I chose to take advantage of AR as it allows control using the physicality of the device itself. Knowing how to control a camera with a phone is common to many people and so as a basis is intuitive to many. The skill gap of learning this is also quite small. For input, only tap is used. I had intended to use various gestures but playtesting results showed it was too much for the limited 15 minute play session. Since taping is the most fundamental feature of mobile devices, it makes for a simple, low friction input method that is easy to learn.

Progression

A lot of effort was put into creating a complete experience in 15 minutes. This is critical since the game relies on events which rarely occur more once for any individual. Leveraging incremental game mechanics, condensing the timeframe to fit within the allotted 15 minutes, allows the game to have a satisfying arc in a short amount of time. The game's economy was tuned such that every few minutes introduces a new element which hastens progression in order to make the game feel exponential. Framing techniques and other psychological concepts were used so that the game always made the player feel like they had agency despite time-critical elements controlling the flow of the game under the hood.

Papers

I wrote an essay on psychological motivators while working on Bit Heroes Connect. Much of the design is informed from it.

Promoting User Agency in Games Using Psychological Motivators

December 19, 2017 - My award-nominated college thesis paper on the intersection between games and psychological motivators.

Devlogs

I wrote some development logs while working on the project. Below are blog entries abbout various aspects of this project.

Trials and Tribulations of Bit Heroes Connect

April 1, 2018 - A retrospective on Bit Heroes Connect, my community outreach college thesis game project for the York Regional Police.

Designing a General Appeal Aesthetic for a Young Demographic

February 16, 2018 - After a few weeks comptemplating the aesthetic design, I discuss my rationale for how I am targeting the youth of 2018.

My Thoughts on Accessibility and Safety for Physical-Digital Hybrid Games

October 13, 2017 - I discuss my thoughts on how accessibility is integral to the play experience and how the physical setting factors in for player safety, too.

Awards

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  Winner
  Toronto Digifest 2018

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  Semifinalist
  Adobe Design Awards 2018