Game changer: Canadian programmer at forefront of reimagining how video games are made

Toronto AI company wants more female developers in the video game industry Brie Code from Tru Luv joins us to talk about how her company is creating a different kind of game that doesn't just rely on fight or flight type of scenarios.

TORONTO — As coronavirus lockdowns have seen a rise in people playing video games at home, there is a renewed push for games that do not put danger and adrenaline at the forefront, and one Canadian developer is leading the way in reimagining how they are made.

Brie Code, founder and CEO of Toronto-based AI company Tru Luv, told CTV's Your Morning that she creates games that follow the "tend and befriend" principle rather than the "fight or flight" game mechanics players are familiar with.

"This is something that's used in video games to create what we call engagement -- when someone wants to play. But only about half of people have a fight or flight response to stress, or about all of us half of the time…" Code said in an interview on Tuesday.

Code said the tend and befriend principle is more prevalent in women who are stimulated by a "mutually-beneficial outcome to a socially significant situation." Instead of fighting other characters, for example, Code explained that she creates games that encourage players to help other characters instead.

"If you experience this (tend and befriend) response to stress instead of wanting to fight and win, you want to take care and to connect and to find solutions that work for everyone. What my studio is doing is looking at what are interactive experiences built on these kind of behaviours," Code said.

Tru Luv has already created #SelfCare, a game-like app that the company calls a digital companion. As the name suggests, the game is about taking care of one’s mind and body, leaving users feeling calm and connected.

"What we were testing in that experience is, is it possible to create an experience that instead of using rising tension over time, which is the gamification model -- a sense of growing challenge or growing danger, growing fear of missing out -- can we create an experience of deepening connection and would people find that interesting?" Code said.

While it has game-like elements, there is no winning or losing. Code said the goal of #SelfCare is simply to feel better.

"We hear things like, 'It's the most calming app I have it's like it put me in a trance' [and] 'I feel as if the little avatar is looking out for me as much as I'm looking out for them'," Code said.

When she was developing #SelfCare, Code said she did not want to create a video game that increases difficulty with each level. She wanted to create something that made users feel calmer after an objective is completed.

"We created a set of kind of mini games -- we call them rituals -- and instead of getting harder and harder as you play them, they follow different curves for metaphors for deepening connection so things like going from messy to tidy, or awkward to smooth, or disconnected to connected instead of from easy to hard," Code said.

Code said she was "blown away" by the response when #SelfCare launched in 2018. The app now has more than 2 million downloads.

"I knew there was something there because of the science underneath, but no one believed us at the time so I was thinking like 'Ok, let's get this out into the market and see what happens. Try to get a few thousand people in our audience to work with to figure out this model'," Code said.

"Instead what happened is we had 500,000 downloads in the first six weeks with no advertising. And we were absolutely flooded and still are flooded with emails and reviews from people saying that this really works for them," she continued.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 41 per cent of U.S. video game players are women. However, the International Game Developers Association says that women make up only 5 per cent of core content creation roles in the gaming industry.

Code said her company is working to change that, starting by including female players in a video game’s development.

"From the beginning, we do a co-design process where we invite people in our target audience right into the centre of the design process," Code said. "We don't just sit in a room and look at numbers and do AV testing to figure out what the audience might want, we include them at every step."

Code added that Tru Luv does qualitative analysis as well as quantitative analysis when developing its games. Additionally, the company keeps developing games after they’re in players’ hands.

"We released the product before it was done and we work with feedback from the audience to get them what they would like and what works for them," Code said.

"We kind of looked at taking this audience seriously at every step of the process and we're kind of reinventing the way that games are created."