At first glance, it may look like just another gamer getting ready to enter a virtual reality. But it’s actually Catapult Games CEO Dane Jennings demonstrating the latest updates to VRPD, or virtual reality police de-escalation, during a community meeting in Schenectady.
Jennings and his lead developer Gabe Langlois have been working on the project for more than a year. This is their fourth community meeting since they’ve announced this training simulation.
“Based on the last community session’s feedback, that was a major piece, was that it really needed to be a two player, as for all intents and purposes, experience because of the interaction that is going to happen when you need this training,” Langlois said.
They’ve taken feedback from Schenectady police, social justice advocates and mental health professionals, and created different scenarios, a wider variety of dialogue options, and incorporated more distractions for players to react to. Those in attendance admit the version has come a long way but isn’t yet ready for real-life testing.
“But I would love to see how the officer handles the crowd in addition to that, because it’s not realistic enough,” one resident tells the two developers.
Just a few days after their latest community meeting, Jennings and Langlois worked to implement assessments and observations. They’re adding more dialogue to a scene where a police officer is addressing a person with a knife.
“Maybe they’re filming, and it would add pressure to the officer that they would feel that sense of urgency,” Jennings said to Langlois.
The killing of George Floyd in May 2020 prompted the two developers to create VRPD as a tool to better respond to the community and increase trust of police within it.
“I had the idea that virtual reality can be part of the solution, and we started working on de-escalation training and haven’t stopped since,” Jennings said.
The pair spends about 40 hours a week fine-tuning the program. In the coming months, they’ll going to seek feedback from other communities in Albany, Troy and Saratoga Springs.
Once they feel VRPD is ready for implementation, they’ll apply for approval and hope police departments around the country can begin using it.
