How fantasy worldbuilding could be the path finder to social resilience?
How fantasy worldbuilding could be the path finder to social resilience?
How fantasy worldbuilding could be the path finder to social resilience?
By Sinay Salomon & Zoe Rowen
August 11, 2020
Summary
Our solution is a narrative social simulation game which uses interactive dialogue to help people on the spectrum manage their anxieties about social situations and develop better resilience.
Set in a high fantasy world of magic and technology, the player develops relationships with a closed community of characters stuck in a temporal dislocation.
Nola the artificer offers the player character a hug as a symbol of interaction which is rejected by the play, challenging the player's boundaries.
Repeatable dialogues allow the player to 'dry-run' various social situations before they might encounter them in the world.
Doing so helps the player understand what kinds of feelings, thoughts and motivations other people in these situations realistically could have.
By aiding the player's 'theory of mind', they learn to handle anxiety about how a social situation could go wrong or how someone will react to them.
Player flow is regulated primarily by altering how much information about the interaction and the speaker is revealed to the player during a dialogue.
As the player gets better at reading this information, it is reduced so the player has to use body language, tonal, environmental, and narrative cues instead. While a playthrough has some narrative linearity, the characters are simulations adding a dynamic element to dialogues and an uncertain path through the story.
While the project presents a number of design challenges, such as player motivation within a gamified teaching tool and user experience for neurodivergent players, there are two of particular importance: what are we teaching and the representation of autism.
While not the primary goal of the project, it would be a bonus if a neurotypical person playing the game experienced an insight into autistic reality.
Reference
Salomon, S., & Rowen, Z. (2020, August 11). How fantasy worldbuilding could be the path finder to social resilience? Retrieved August 17, 2020, from https://www.ludogogy.co.uk/article/current-neuroscience-meets-advances-in-technology-for-people-on-the-spect/