How To Design Autistic-Friendly Games
How To Design Autistic-Friendly Games
How To Design Autistic-Friendly Games
By Marie Dealessandri
February 15, 2023
Summary
Creative director Nick Lang notes the lack of attention toward autistic gamers is surprising considering that gaming can be a "Huge resource and source of comfort" for people on the spectrum.
"The main purpose for us was to create a game that was specifically designed for autistic people, with autistic people involved at every stage," Alison says.
"So you won't find every option that you can think of in our game. The ones that are there are there because they've been thought through specifically [at] every single stage that we [went] through. A huge control centre... That's too much in itself, potentially, for an autistic person. So it's not overwhelming them at any stage, even if that's at the accessibility options stage."
"We built three or four prototypes which we tested with autistic people to get an idea of what they liked, but also what they find difficult and frustrating in games, and in life in general, and trying to build all of that into what we did," Nick explains.
"The main purpose was to create a game that was designed for autistic people, with autistic people involved at every stage".
You [can] video the front of your office, going up in the lift, the desk where they will sit and show all the people that they're going to be sitting around. That's recommended practice. So we've just incorporated that into our game, which is something that a lot of games need to do."
"We'll be soliciting as much feedback as we can get from the first game and then we'll be incorporating that with new technologies for autistic people. So think about eye tracking for example - we haven't worked out what we're gonna do with it, but we kind of know that it's going to be something that's going to be exciting for us to use."
Reference
Dealessandri, M. (2023, February 15). How to design autistic-friendly games. GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved February 22, 2023, from https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-design-autistic-friendly-games