Brain Type: A Co-Located Game Designed for Social Presence
The Problem
With an ever changing modern social existence there has been a growing desire to find and cultivate community in our daily lives. Through dynamic living environments, shifting work/life culture, and an ever growing online side to life some argue over the collapse of the modern community. This discussion is alarming as times of great social change show a need for individuals to find community more then ever.
As more information technology gets created designers need to keep in mind not only how the user interacts with their creations, but how groups and society may interact with it as a whole. Furthermore designers need to recall the fundamentals of how groups of people work: imbuing elements of social psychology and computer mediated communication into their creations.
Often we have found the most impactful of community driven technologies to be on the periphery of the tech landscape. Taking a step away from task driven applications, social platforms, and AI assistance; experiences drive modern peoples understanding of how community may form and flourish. It is with top-down prosocial design in mind where positive social experiences can be created by designers, and impacts on modern communities can be made.
Our Goal
Our team set out using top-down prosocial design to create a co-located "arcade game": Brain Type! Aiming to bring positive community experiences to players in existing communities, and even nudge players in budding communities to find paths in growing the sense of connection between those around them.
Approach
Our approach involved a mixed team of experienced researchers, designers, and engineers transforming into a game development team! This transformation did not happen overnight, overtime we found the many differences between designing a game over designing traditional application and web experiences. In the process of creating our prosocial game we combined process of research and design:
- Literature review to explore the elements of social psychology and computer mediated design we wanted to focus on for our design: eventually landing on social presence as the main element we wanted to ensure was present in our game.
- Iterative game design that constantly balanced the core elements of a game: technology, story, mechanics, and aesthetic. Throughout the design we ensured that not only prosocial elements were coming through, but that the game was simply fun!
- Agile software engineering leading to a created video game. Being a mixed research and design team allowed us to iterate quickly on the game: jumping from different game mechanics to different aesthetics we were able to test our designs not only though Figma prototyping but through an implemented, fully interactable game.
- Mixed lab setting playtesting & player interviews through which thoughts on our games pro-social effectiveness was validated as well as sentiments on modern community and peoples was collected as well.
- Conducting "in the wild" playtests where our game existed within community spaces and was played without prompting our guidance. These playtests allowed us to see our game in a natural setting.
Our Solution
Brain Type is a video game designed to be played concurrently and/or asynchronously within physical community and group spaces. Brain Type successfully brings players in to a fun and ludic experience while also helping fulfill social elements that many players seek and desire in modern games.
As stated in the name Brain Type is an interactive typing game, that balances both player expression and player to player communication. Importantly the social elements of Brain Type are seamlessly wrapped into the gameplay mechanics of the game: having players come to the game with the desire for fun but leave with the satisfaction of community engagement.
You can play Brain Type on browser, or download it to play as an executable here: https://treblewtb.itch.io/braintype