Serious Game Design Blog

GAM2004: Design Blog

Police officers keep our country safe; their job involves protecting the people and bringing justice. The game takes place in a small town in London where the crime rate is high. The gameplay would be similar to Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar, 2013) but the rules and objectives would be totally opposite. Instead of encouraging the youth to commit crimes, they would experience police risking their lives to prevent a crime. The age rating of the game is PEGI 18 but the target audience are teenagers. I want the game to be entertaining and serious as well by showing the struggles of officers and solving the problems in a fun way. “Serious game: a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.“  (Zyda (2005), From visual simulation to virtual reality to games)

The serious game idea i came up with is that the player will play as a police officer.

Figure 1: Police will have the ability to make an arrest for aggressive or suspicious behavior like in True Crime: NYC (2005).

The gameplay would be similar to True Crime: New York City (Luxoflux, 2005) but in a small town in London instead of a city so that the game world is small and every character you interact with becomes someone to protect. Players will respond to reported crimes while they are patrolling or on their radio which will be the main mission. They will learn how police act when a crime is reported so that their respect for police officers increases and it would motivate them to be one as well.
I would focus on experience based learning for this game because people tend to not go for a police officer job due to its risk which is completely understandable. Westera talks about how serious games are focused on exploration to solve problems, i would use discovery as a serious gameplay element. “Many serious games offer an experience-based learning environment focused on exploration, discovery or problem solving that is devoid of instructional guidance.” (Westera, W. (2019) Why and how serious games can become far more effective) Since the primary objective other than learning is entertainment, the game would be an open world game and every character in it will be unique. The police officer will have a partner with him which would be a rookie officer. Player will shadow the rookie so that he builds a special relationship with him. The player can interact with every civilian and visit every public place in the town for investigation. Interacting with civilians will provide the player a quest which will be a side mission. 
Police officers will be designed such that they would be able to make arrests, handle and fire a gun and inquire with civilians. The enemy AI for this game are designed such that they are capable of shooting and running away with vehicles or by foot. They will have secret hideouts throughout the town so questioning people will be an important part of the game. Furthermore, players can upgrade their soft skills and hard skills by completing quests and main missions. These skills will start from 1 and finish at 10; the skills include: Interrogation skills, physical ability and driving skills. Players will be able to choose from different dialogue options through better interrogation skills. Physical skills would include punching, running and climbing walls to access enemy territories. With high driving skills, the police car handling would increase and the response time would be better.  However, these skills could also decrease if the player fails a mission or acts wrong. Acting wrong would include passing the red signal except in case of emergency, harming a civilian, giving a wrong fine and crashing the police car into another. This will add a grind factor and which would encourage the player to help people and act civilized. 

Figure 2: When interrogating, players will face a similar dialogue choosing mechanic in The Walking Dead (TellTale Games, 2012). However, some options will be locked if the interrogating skills are low, therefore, more options could be unlocked as they improve their skills.

A special relationship that the player will have is with his rookie officer. When talking about the player-game relationship, Gerogios suggests that games can use the player's emotions to keep them interested by the way the game responds to it. “Emotions are fundamental for players to deeply engage with games. Players’ responses in a game are affected by their emotional states. If, in turn, these states could be used to affect the way the game responds, the player-game interaction could be augmented and enriched by magnitudes.” (Georgios N. Yannakakis, Emotions in games (2016)) They can interact with him and give him instruction. These instructions would include making him drive, interrogate people or investigate a location without you or you can simply order him to follow you. However, the success rate of his work would be low; he is most likely to crash a car or gain no information from a location. His skills could be improved by completing quests together which would increase his success rate. The game is planned such that the police officer completes 50% of the game and the rookie completes the other 50%. When the game reaches its halfway point, there will be a mission which would kill the police officer. This would show the reality of this job to the players. The rookie carries on the legacy of the police officer. Players now control the new police officer who was previously a rookie and will shadow over his new partner who is a rookie. Moreover, the game will have a narrative element because the story will have such dialogues which would play with the players emotions. Players would learn about bonds and the importance of police officers. Another impactful part of the story would be the last mission; it would be the rookie officer avenging the death of his senior officer. This will have a satisfying ending to the game’s story and would encourage young people to consider to be an officer.

Figure 3: The game will establish a special bond between a police officer and a rookie officer which is a similar bond as Chris and Piers in Resident Evil 6 (Capcom, 2012). I’m trying to establish an emotional relationship with the player to his rookie officer and Resident Evil 6 does the same and their bond gets severed at the end unfortunately.

I would say that this game will be an art because it stretches the imaginations of a player by making them experience a risky job without actually experiencing it in real life. “We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let's invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art." - Clive Barker, Games Vs. Art: Ebert Vs. Barker (2007) In addition to this, the story would make them go through an emotional journey as it creates strong bonds along the way and some bonds are broken through corruption. Players might not be able to relate to the risky job but they might be able to relate to the story which could effect them personally. It would be a serious game because players would learn to interrogate, investigate and fight crime without actually being there.

References:

• Zyda, From visual simulation to virtual reality to games (2005)

• Westera, W.  Why and how serious games can become far more effective (2019)

• Clive Barker, Games Vs. Art: Ebert Vs. Barker (2007)

• Georgios N. Yannakakis, Emotions in games (2016)