An exceptional team helped Oncor bring a very special project to life. In 2017, Oncor partnered with Nonpareil, a nonprofit center in Plano. Its mission is to help adults with autism spectrum disorder live more productive and independent lives. Using these skills, students at Nonpareil created a video game based on Oncor's Super Safe Kids program that teaches children how to stay safe around electricity. 

“I learned not to give up," said Kyle Barton, Project Manager for Outsourcing Initiatives at Nonpareil. “Near the end of the development cycle, you hit a lot of roadblocks." 

Barton and his team employed innovative technologies to develop the game in which players must complete different tasks, like assembling a storm kit containing any essentials they would need in case of a power outage. 

“One of the things that allowed us to do that was leveraging the unreal engine, which we used to develop the game. It's a blueprinting system, which is a form of node-based programming, so instead of typing up lines of code, they're hooking together nodes," Barton said. “We found that this was a lot easier to teach our students, and we were able to engage a large section of our population." 

This spring, the team presented the finalized game to Oncor's Director of Transformation and Strategic Administration April Pinkston.

“I loved the fact that the graphics were so clear and animated," Pinkston said. “You are really experiencing the situations that really could occur after a storm event."

The video game will help engage our younger community members and foster communication with their parents during AskOncor events.

“Our plan is to utilize it via an interactive TV, where we have a podium or we have our staffers or one of the children visiting our booth to play the video game, but it's also displayed for everyone walking by to see and hopefully draw them in," Pinkston said. “It's an opportunity to educate our younger generation about safety protocols when it comes to electricity while we are talking to their adults about programs and tools that we have to offer."

Oncor made a multi-year, $100,000 commitment to the Nonpareil Institute to help its mission of providing technology and work-readiness skills training and helping adults with autism find employment.