This is a total punt. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who offers this up on social issues going to bat for the same argument in favor of price-gouging DLC models, games shipped unfinished, or other things companies do to bolster their bottom line at the expense of their customers. When a particular position never hits the table except when it's in defense of exclusion, you can tell that it's not being offered in good faith.
What's the distinction? How is it philosophically consistent to accept DLC as a compromise with reality but dudebros being beyond the pale? They both affect the bottom line and I don't see why one is unnaceptable. I'm sure it would indeed be hard to find people to agree with me on that but that's the reality of an uncommon position (plus most people are idiots).
In reality there are lots of ways for more adventure games to get made, most without even particularly affecting the volume of shooters: maybe more people who aren't game developers could get into the industry to make adventure games. Maybe some people who work on shooters now because they think they're the only commercially viable games could work on adventure games too given proof that they can succeed. Maybe some companies could develop small-budget adventures as a way of diversifying their output on the side..
I don't mean to sound snarky but this does seem like a fairytale scenario to me. Where is the money going to come from to pay these new adventure game developers? Why should companies suddenly decide to take the risk? It might happen, certainly, but my point was that people shy away from criticising the existing games industry when pressed and talk about (somehow) expanding output instead. I wouldn't be against more adventure games myself, for what it's worth.
The point is, people who ask for this aren't hoping to shame or badger people into reluctantly writing in gay characters; they're hoping to move from a world where people think it's impossible to include them to one where they're just one of the normally viable options.
Definitely one of the challenges of representation is that each of these issues has some major differences. Even between race and sexuality, for example, you run into the issue of how race is usually quite visually obvious, while orientation only comes up if relationships are relevant somehow in the game (and usually won't be visible on a box no matter what.)
I do think neurodivergence is a particularly challenging area to represent given how poorly understood it is in general and how tough it is to depict mental illness without degenerating into parody. (Not to mention the whole mental illness vs. non-illness divergence issue.)
It effects me, too, and I'd rather see people with mental problems treated as people and acknowledged, rather than having a significant chunk of our media either a) pretend they don't exist or b) make them serial killers and villains. I don't think anyone wants to see it done poorly, but that's not the only way to do it.
I'd rather games be games, and artists be allowed to create the art that they want to create, which is always influenced by their own experiences. Art isn't created by forcing people out of their comfort zones. Art is created by people doing things around their own experiences.
I'd rather games be games, and artists be allowed to create the art that they want to create, which is always influenced by their own experiences. Art isn't created by forcing people out of their comfort zones. Art is created by people doing things around their own experiences.
Honestly, the best way to represent a disorder in a game is to have someone with the disorder in question to write the part, which makes this less about making people write something they haven't experienced and more about perhaps putting willing people who openly have mental disorders into game design positions.
It's only a fairy tale argument when you start from the maximally exclusionary position: that all content by its very nature will be about majoritarian figures, that all creators will naturally only be interested in such characters, and that therefore any time you ever see a woman, a gay person, a person of color, a neurodivergent person, in a game, it's some huge sacrifice by the creators that could only possibly exist as a sop to diversity.
I'd rather games be games, and artists be allowed to create the art that they want to create, which is always influenced by their own experiences. Art isn't created by forcing people out of their comfort zones. Art is created by people doing things around their own experiences.
This is super simplistic as it ignores all the research work some writers, designers or actors can do because they want to make something that goes beyond their experience.
I'd rather games be games, and artists be allowed to create the art that they want to create, which is always influenced by their own experiences. Art isn't created by forcing people out of their comfort zones. Art is created by people doing things around their own experiences.
Art is frequently about the artist being out of their comfort zone. Most good writers are always challenging themselves to exceed their grasp. And portraying realistic characters with mental illness isn't even outside the wheelhouse of developers, given there are numerous developers with mental illness.
By the way, no one's talking about forcing anyone to do anything. We're talking about the issue as a way to communicate with developers, some of whom would love to make games with more realistic portrayals of non-neurotypical characters.
It should be noted that mental disorder rights advocacy lags several years behind, but has followed an overall similar course to, LGBT rights advocacy ("autism pride" is even a thing). For example, autism is still at the stage where the general public views it as a disease that somehow prevents the sufferer from living a fulfilling life.
The idea of representing someone with a mental disorder in a game currently is less (or at, most, as much) about giving role models or relatable characters to those with the disorder as it is about showing the general public what people with the disorder are actually like -- they're not mostly psychopaths nor mute geniuses -- though both of those do exist. Most importantly, autistic people, 9 times out of 10, don't lead particularly tragic lives, despite their struggles with social interaction, unless the misinformed people around them turn it into one. Currently, though, very little media would show such a thing for autistic characters.
Gaming will never be considered art until we have a gay black Muslim female with autism as the main character.
Many characters have some sort of "insanity" as a character trait (Psycho Mantis, Lynch, etc.) but I'm not quite sure that's what you're looking for OP.
Many characters have some sort of "insanity" as a character trait (Psycho Mantis, Lynch, etc.) but I'm not quite sure that's what you're looking for OP.
"Insanity" does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and it's scattered between at least four or five different disorders (none of which include any form of the word "insanity" in the name) in the most recent International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), so no, that's not what I refer to.
I always thought a good way to incorporate something like this would be to have the protagonist be the carer of the person who has the disability. Some reasons:
Contrasts between what can/cannot be easily done between two characters.
More people can relate to a "regular" person looking on from the outside.
It expands how it can not only affect the individual but those around them. Family, friends, etc.
An example! Imagine if in The Walking Dead, Clem was your autistic daughter who has very little understanding of the crisis around her.
I always thought a good way to incorporate something like this would be to have the protagonist be the carer of the person who has the disability. Some reasons:
Contrasts between what can/cannot be easily done between two characters.
More people can relate to a "regular" person looking on from the outside.
It expands how it can not only affect the individual but those around them. Family, friends, etc.
An example! Imagine if in The Walking Dead, Clem was your autistic daughter who has very little understanding of the crisis around her.
The problem with this is that you risk doing what Autism Speaks does: Autism Speaks generally focuses exclusively on the caretakers of autistic children (not all autistic people require caretakers, anyway) to the point where their PSAs and films don't give the autistic person a voice at all, make it seem as though autism only affects children, make it seem as though the autistic person is "suffering" from autism, and even give the general public the impression that autistic people are subhuman. I'll say it now: Autism Speaks was the organization that, as I described on the last page, had someone in their higher-ups say in a short film, put out by Autism Speaks themselves, that she had seriously considered driving her car off of the George Washington Bridge with the autistic child inside after said child was diagnosed with autism, but didn't because she had a neurotypical child who needed her at home. She told this to the camera while the autistic daughter that she openly discussed wanting to kill was there with her in the room.
Spec Ops The Line; Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway: PTSD. Not many military games deal with that very important subject matter, and these games did it quite creatively.
It's really intense and effective. Was made from a game jam.
Auti-Sim attempts to simulate the experience of a child with autism, presenting an experience of auditory hypersensitivity on a school playground. The idea is quite simple: the player walks around a school playground, full of talking children. As they approach the children, the noise level increases, creating a total static of visual blur and audio distortion. This mechanic assaults the player at a primary level, and makes it quite difficult to stay around the other children for any extended period of time.
As a result, the player spends most of their time at the edges of the playground, isolated from the rest of the world. The silence then becomes as powerful as the sound. The game was created by a group of three people at the Hacking Health Vancouver 2013 game jam over a period of 48 hours, making it an impressive accomplishment to achieve in just 2 days.
The team behind Auti-Sim is currently looking to expand the game, adding other environments and making it more inclusive of the spectrum of autism, while still keeping it free to the public.
"Insanity" does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and it's scattered between at least four or five different disorders (none of which include any form of the word "insanity" in the name) in the most recent International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), so no, that's not what I refer to.
As I said before, I would like a sympathetic portrayal of someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder, preferably before he/she does anything that could label him/her insane.
Not sure how it would work in a game though depending on how severe the case is. Outside the narrative, I mean.
Spec Ops The Line; Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway: PTSD. Not many military games deal with that very important subject matter, and these games did it quite creatively.
Yep! I recommended Auti-Sim on the second page. It would be nice, too, to have a piece of media that includes a very common (as in, part of one of the core characteristics of autism) but rarely depicted in media mental effect of autism: restricted interests. I've mentioned this a few times now, and am still looking for a good source for expounding on just how deep these interests can be and the connections between them for various autistic people. If you walk into the house of a person who has an autism spectrum disorder or a family that includes someone with an autism spectrum disorder, at some point you're bound to find a stash of objects and a small library of informative books on the subject!
I really want a FPSer that actually acknowledges the dangers of head trauma and stop using a gun bunt or a kick to the head as a means of taking you to the next level.
The problem with this is that you risk doing what Autism Speaks does: Autism Speaks generally focuses exclusively on the caretakers of autistic children
Yeah I can see that being a problem. I'm sure there is room for both games to focus on the carer primarily as well as those that focus on the person with a disability or both. If the game is good and focuses more on the carer and the trials they go through then it is still exposure for those with autism. I just think it can be an effective means to include them into games and offer a more variety of gameplay, maybe. We can also juggle idea of the carer being interchangeable. As you said, not everyone needs a carer, so what if they both have autism and care for each other? It really comes down to what the developer wants in their game. The autism spectrum is also quite broad so while you might depict someone fairly accurately it can be vastly different to another person's experiences. Same for those of carers really. In fact, having a carer with the views similar to that you mentioned from Autism Speak might make for interesting scenarios in a game.
Forgive me if this comes off as foolish, but have you tried the grand strategy game Crusader Kings II? Every character on the world map has traits like "ambition, lustful, zealous, depressed, arbitrary, possessed" all traits have clear stat modifiers attached to them. The names of stuff are due to the fact the game takes place during what we'd call the middle ages.
A detail of the autism spectrum disorder that I find fascinating, which in and of itself wouldn't serve much of a role in a video game aside from if the developers really want to show how much work they put into the game, but which has implications that affect the entire disorder to the point of being a core aspect of it (that is, it's a major factor in the communication and social interaction deficits): people on the autism spectrum most often don't look into people's eyes; if they do, it often requires conscious effort on their part, or sometimes it's an indication that they consider the speaker an extremely close friend. More often, someone with an ASD will look at the person's mouth or, if they're really good at or intent on hiding it, forehead.
This is especially apparent if you look at where the gazes of autistic and neurotypical people move as they watch movies while being observed by eye tracking software:
No, this is not an epic laser eye beam battle, and the man on the right does not have a frog tongue
As you can see, autistic people generally prefer to look at edges of objects or anything mechanical, rather than characters, when watching movies. This has also led to this particular gem that I personally find pretty funny, when researchers observed where viewers were looking as two characters kissed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:
Yep, the light switch is mechanical enough to steal the show away from the actors, and I can only imagine that there's at least one Oscar-winning director out there somewhere who would tear their hair out if you told them this!
There's disagreement over why autistic people don't make eye contact, but a common theory is that looking into a person's eyes trigger the same brain signals in autistic people as threats do.
Whatever the cause, people with autism spectrum disorders prefer not to look into people's eyes, the result is that autistic people are prone to missing nonverbal communication signals sent through people's eyes, with the exception of ones that can be sensed in the periphery, such as winking.
In fact, it's kind of remarkable how little information people on the autism spectrum get from faces: there's studies suggesting that signals from the fusiform gyrus part of the brain (the part responsible for recognizing faces) are far weaker in autistic people than in neuro-typical people. With that said, though, the brain works in an alternate way to achieve much of the same information in the end: for example, the neurons responsible for emotional memory relating to the mouth are far more active in autistic brains than they are in neurotypical brains, whereas neurotypical brains have more activity in the part of the brain that relates to recognizing emotions in people's eyes. Still, it leaves autistic people prone to miss particular nonverbal cues, and this inability to recognize intricate social signs is why autism spectrum disorder people are so bad at face-to-face social interaction when they try to partake in it.
There's disagreement over why autistic people don't make eye contact, but a common theory is that looking into a person's eyes trigger the same brain signals in autistic people as threats do.
Whatever the cause, people with autism spectrum disorders prefer not to look into people's eyes, the result is that autistic people are prone to missing nonverbal communication signals sent through people's eyes, with the exception of ones that can be sensed in the periphery, such as winking.
In fact, it's kind of remarkable how little information people on the autism spectrum get from faces: there's studies suggesting that signals from the fusiform gyrus part of the brain (the part responsible for recognizing faces) are far weaker in autistic people than in neuro-typical people. With that said, though, the brain works in an alternate way to achieve much of the same information in the end: for example, the neurons responsible for emotional memory relating to the mouth are far more active in autistic brains than they are in neurotypical brains, whereas neurotypical brains have more activity in the part of the brain that relates to recognizing emotions in people's eyes. Still, it leaves autistic people prone to miss particular nonverbal cues, and this inability to recognize intricate social signs is why autism spectrum disorder people are so bad at face-to-face social interaction when they try to partake in it.
Perhaps this is an over-simplification of things, but an autistic friend of mine once told me what it was like to be autistic to the best of her ability to describe it in great detail, and after a lot of thinking about it, I asked her if a simpler way to describe it would be as though her brain were wired like a startled or frightened wild animal and that her higher brain functions were at odds with the more reactive animal instincts inherent in mammals. She was so happy, like I suddenly "got her". So I'm guessing that, at least for her and maybe others like her, that's where this comes from.
I found out later that Temple Grandin had come to similar (and more detailed) conclusions and wrote a whole thesis on the subject.
So I think that could be a part of why facial interactions are difficult or not preferred...? I make no claims to be an expert on the subject, though.
Perhaps this is an over-simplification of things, but an autistic friend of mine once told me what it was like to be autistic to the best of her ability to describe it in great detail, and after a lot of thinking about it, I asked her if a simpler way to describe it would be as though her brain were wired like a startled or frightened wild animal and that her higher brain functions were at odds with the more reactive animal instincts inherent in mammals. She was so happy, like I suddenly "got her". So I'm guessing that, at least for her and maybe others like her, that's where this comes from.
I found out later that Temple Grandin had come to similar (and more detailed) conclusions and wrote a whole thesis on the subject.
So I think that could be a part of why facial interactions are difficult or not preferred...? I make no claims to be an expert on the subject, though.
I also get the "higher brain functions are at odds with more animalistic instincts" feeling from time to time. Another accurate way of describing the disorder on the whole, particularly in describing what it's like to have a "restricted interest" is, as a neurotypical, imagine if your feelings and interests in people were completely swapped with your feelings and interests in machines and animals. It's very common for autistic people, especially those with restricted interests in vehicles or other machines, to have a much, much easier time remembering-- at times lengthy-- technical designations than it is to remember names. There are people I've gone to school with for years of whom I never remembered even a tiny part of their names, but it within a matter of days I had committed to memory that the fictitious locomotive AWVR 777 (along with its backup, AWVR 767) in the 2010 movie "Unstoppable" was a GE AC4400CW.
By this idea, I usually compare a restricted interest to a (platonic) love, while related objects also liked, like friends, but not quite as much as the subject of that concentrated interest.
I'm... not sure what your point is here? My point was that "well they're just looking to maximize their profit" is a bullshit defense. Obviously companies are looking to maximize profit, but that doesn't justify anything and everything they do.
[qupte]Where is the money going to come from to pay these new adventure game developers? Why should companies suddenly decide to take the risk?[/quote]
From underserved markets. There are people who want to play adventure games, just like there are people who want to buy and play games with more diverse protagonists. You make a game and sell it to these people.
Every medium seems to go through this, with execs who are overly risk-averse refusing to support projects that appeal to different markets. You look back three years ago and see everyone talking about what a bad idea Hunger Games was because no one wants to see an action film starring a woman.
Isn't all activism (good and bad) badgering, in a sense?
In an extremely, extremely broad sense, sure, but devs aren't sensitive flowers who are going to wilt if someone so much as intimates that they did something a bit wrong. There's a huge difference between calling someone a bigot because their game's lead is a white male and talking in the abstract about changes in representation within the industry.
I also get the "higher brain functions are at odds with more animalistic instincts" feeling from time to time. Another accurate way of describing the disorder on the whole, particularly in describing what it's like to have a "restricted interest" is, as a neurotypical, imagine if your feelings and interests in people were completely swapped with your feelings and interests in machines and animals. It's very common for autistic people, especially those with restricted interests in vehicles or other machines, to have a much, much easier time remembering-- at times lengthy-- technical designations than it is to remember names. There are people I've gone to school with for years of whom I never remembered even a tiny part of their names, but it within a matter of days I had committed to memory that the fictitious locomotive AWVR 777 (along with its backup, AWVR 767) in the 2010 movie "Unstoppable" was a GE AC4400CW.
By this idea, I usually compare a restricted interest to a (platonic) love, while related objects also liked, like friends, but not quite as much as the subject of that concentrated interest.
Perhaps, to relate back to the theory I posited earlier, those in the autism spectrum aren't so much "restricted in interest" but may be that they find things like vehicles, machines and animals to be "non-threatening" and thus puts the brakes on some of the behaviors found among those in the autism spectrum, thus allowing them the ability to commit such things to memory in ways they can't with people who are seen as potentially threatening? It would also explain why you would see some individuals who have "restricted interest" in history, because a description of a person in a book is also "non-threatening".
I'm just throwing ideas out there, though, and this thread is as good a sounding board as any, hopefully getting people who read it in a good frame of mind to wrap their heads around it with someone who actually has an intimate background on the subject.
Perhaps, to relate back to the theory I posited earlier, those in the autism spectrum aren't so much "restricted in interest" but may be that they find things like vehicles, machines and animals to be "non-threatening" and thus puts the brakes on some of the behaviors found among those in the autism spectrum, thus allowing them the ability to commit such things to memory in ways they can't with people who are seen as potentially threatening? It would also explain why you would see some individuals who have "restricted interest" in history, because a description of a person in a book is also "non-threatening".
I'm just throwing ideas out there, though, and this thread is as good a sounding board as any, hopefully getting people who read it in a good frame of mind to wrap their heads around it with someone who actually has an intimate background on the subject.
The term "restricted interest" is most certainly misleading, but that's how the DSM V talks about it. And indeed, it's nonthreatening because inanimate objects, chemical structures, machines, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, animals all behave in predictable ways. Social interactions are difficult to predict because humans behave in a way that can defy even their own logic.
I've remarked jokingly before that I prefer having a deep interest in the RMS Titanic over a romantic relationship with another person because, for example, Titanic doesn't get offended when I find out how much she weighs or how much (coal) she consumes, and she doesn't call me creepy when I gather as much information I can about her or pin plans and diagrams to her on my walls. (Note that I refer to the ship as "she" because ships are referred to as "she")
I consider it a cycle that I research things when I'm by myself, I'm by myself often because I have few friends, I have few friends because my "info dumps" have caused me strong animosity by my peers through much of my school life, and I info dump because I research things.
thought about it some more, here are the ones I could come up with:
Duck in Walking Dead, I can't remember if they mention what his condition is. Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain suffers from some anxiety disorder, which is also represented as a game mechanic. Madison Page supposed to have insomnia.
amnesia is a common cliche for a protagonist to have, so the player can be easily introduced into the world (psi ops, etc.).
Wow, great example! It was a very interesting take on dissociative identity disorder. Perhaps almost an empowering take on it, as well, since the game conceptualizes it for the player the same way the person with the disorder would: the character literally becomes the identity in every way possible.
Heck, one of those personalities is a man in a wheelchair, now that I remember it. Suda51's track record regarding representation of women and sexuality is spotty, but you gotta hand it to the man, he doesn't shy away from incredibly diverse characters in other aspects.
The term "restricted interest" is most certainly misleading, but that's how the DSM V talks about it. And indeed, it's nonthreatening because inanimate objects, chemical structures, machines, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, animals all behave in predictable ways. Social interactions are difficult to predict because humans behave in a way that can defy even their own logic.
I've remarked jokingly before that I prefer having a deep interest in the RMS Titanic over a romantic relationship with another person because, for example, Titanic doesn't get offended when I find out how much she weighs or how much (coal) she consumes, and she doesn't call me creepy when I gather as much information I can about her or pin plans and diagrams to her on my walls. (Note that I refer to the ship as "she" because ships are referred to as "she")
I consider it a cycle that I research things when I'm by myself, I'm by myself often because I have few friends, I have few friends because my "info dumps" have caused me strong animosity by my peers through much of my school life, and I info dump because I research things.
Well, I don't really see a problem with that, personally. Info dumps can be very rewarding, a good learning experience, though where you might lose me is a lack of diverse topics. I have a habit of Wikipedia-mining on occasion, but I follow the related articles, so I'm never on one topic for an overly-extended period of time, and I'm told I communicate the same way.
Well, I don't really see a problem with that, personally. Info dumps can be very rewarding, a good learning experience, though where you might lose me is a lack of diverse topics. I have a habit of Wikipedia-mining on occasion, but I follow the related articles, so I'm never on one topic for an overly-extended period of time, and I'm told I communicate the same way.
And that's pretty much what separates the narrow interests of an autistic person from general information addiction (though autistic people are prone to that at the same time): these narrow topics will be of interest roughly one or two at a time, either changing every few months or years or being lifelong, where the autistic person has the uncanny ability to read resources such as books about a very, very specific subject, memorize virtually every imagineable detail of it, and then still keep on searching for even more new information afterwards. Autistic people will commit tiny, to most people trivial, details of these objects to memory so that the information can be recited virtually anywhere later. In addition to information, they'll also seek out and frequently return to pictures, possible toys, models, or merchandise of or relating to it, or perform activities with it (for example, you can find a picture online of an autistic child obsessed with molecular structures, who uses ball-and-stick magnet toys to reproduce the structure of complex organic compounds).
Also unlike normal information addiction, these interests can be used to calm and comfort the person in distressing situations (such as uncontrollable social ones), especially if they can carry it with them, such as a toy version of a specific car, a model of a specific locomotive, or sheet music of a well-known work from a specific composer.
These interests can become major forces in people's lives, and as said before, visiting an autistic spectrum disorder person's house, especially if you see a room they frequently spend time in, will all but inevitably turn up a "stash" of things relating to that interest.
I'm still thinking about the idea of an autistic GTA character, and how it would be for a cutscene to show the inside of said character's house, bringing a supporting character into the room that has the main collection of objects relating to their interests, and how the neurotypical character would react.
It's a little tangential, but Borderlands 2 has a character with a stutter who prompted an email exchange that gave the folks over at Gearbox a lot to think about.
Switching gears for a moment, I want to point out this amazing email about a Borderlands 2 NPC named Karima, who is a chronic stutterer:
I was playing Borderlands 2 today when I came across the NPC Karima in the medicine man mission. At first I was a bit angry she had a stutter I was hit in the head with shrapnel from an IED in al-anbar Iraq and have problems talking because the stereotypes surrounding stutterers are not kind. Communication is one of the defining pieces of humanity and when you cannot communicate to those around you, they tend to view you as lesser. I cant tell my daughter I love her without struggling through those 3 little words. I quickly realized the mission was written such and clearly illustrated just how evil Hyperion is. She was a very sympathetic character. Whoever wrote this went 180 degrees away from what I thought was going to happen in this case. Thank you. In a game where bat shit craziness is the norm the writers injected a very subtle bit of humanity. For whatever reason, this really struck me. Thank you for taking the high road here. You skipped over cheap laughs here and in so doing made a big impact. Thank you.
Now, Ill be completely honest when writing the character of Karima, I did not intend to get this reaction. Karima stutters purely because, while you never meet her in person, we needed to give the player some sense that Hyperions presence had harmed her in some way. Giving her a stutter made her affliction clear, and allowed for an easy way to show the players actions had meaning after the first mission, she no longer stutters. Nobody comments on it or mocks her for it because it honestly never occurred to me. In fact, the only mockery Karima receives are gendered insults from a misogynist named Dave, who ends the quest by dying violently (because, like the bandits Ellie crushes to death, I take great pleasure in making bigots and sexists pay for their douchery).
After reading this email, however, I can say with some certainty that if Karima ever shows up again, she will have her stutter back permanently and we will continue to write her exactly as we did before. The knowledge that something we did (however unintentionally) touched someone in this kind of personal way is, to say the least, pretty damned great. This email showed me the power of inclusivity in all of its forms.
It's a little tangential, but Borderlands 2 has a character with a stutter who prompted an email exchange that gave the folks over at Gearbox a lot to think about.
Not tangential at all, really. This is precisely what I intended to discuss when making the topic. Borderlands 2 has a character who officially falls on the autism spectrum disorder, too, actually, though her autistic traits are (for reasons that relate to the game narrative) exaggerated to the point of total psychopathy.
Not tangential at all, really. This is precisely what I intended to discuss when making the topic. Borderlands 2 has a character who officially falls on the autism spectrum disorder, too, actually, though her autistic traits are (for reasons that relate to the game narrative) exaggerated to the point of total psychopathy.
Well, to be fair, a lot of characters in Borderlands are exaggerated to the point of total psychopathy because it's a bombastic comic-book-type universe whose claim to fame is having a bajillion guns and an intentionally obnoxious robot mascot. That and the fact that Tannis went through some serious trauma before you met her in the first game.
But yeah, Borderlands is a neat series when it comes to diversity and representation, sometimes in surprisingly subtle ways. Gearbox has a good approach that I would love to see show up in other places.
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder? Impressive! It's one of the five pervasive developmental disorders, those being the three autism spectrum disorders (autism, Asperger syndrome, PDD-NOS), Rett Syndrome, and childhood disintegrative disorder, and CDD is the rarest of them all, I think. Definitely a difficult disorder to represent accurately, and a difficult disorder for fans to otherwise diagnose on their own. As an aside, PDD-NOS gets its name from being just that: a pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.
The thought recently occurred to me of an additional way by which including an autism spectrum disorder character in a video game's case can serve a practical purpose for the game and its developers: it can be a method to highlight small, realistic details within the game's engine to the player. The character's info dumps can be a way of explaining small, especially unusual details so that when they get shown off within the game, players don't assume it to be a bug due to missing an explanatory developer's remark on Twitter or without giving a sequence away during a pre-launch press event, etc. Similarly, the interest can be used to, within the game, focus on tiny details that can be simulated by the game engine which players might otherwise miss completely.
For example, if a game's engine is detailed enough when it comes to fire propagation to even allow for the trench effect, the "flamethrower" aspect of the effect (the linked article refers to it as a jet of flame) can be brought up and explained by an autistic character with a concentrated interest in the London Underground, or subways in general, by way of talking about the King's Cross station fire, which led to the discovery of the trench effect. Without some form of explanation, a player might assume this to be a bug, just like the people tasked with simulating the fire originally believed until they performed physical tests.
Really fascinating thread. Off the top of my head nothing I have to say that hasn't been said, other then perhaps that from an artistic standpoint I'm incredibly interested in greater meaningful diversity in character driven games and that includes mental diversity.
I find it curious that despite there being fairly solid numbers on what percentage of video game players are a certain gender, race, or ethnicity, it seems as if such a tally was never taken in terms of how much of the video game-playing population had ever been diagnosed with specific mental disorders, even though, for example, it was found that autistic people generally play video games more often and for longer intervals of time than neurotypical people do (in the words of one article, "video game addiction is more common"). I figure this has to have some kind of impact on the demographics of video game players.
I find it curious that despite there being fairly solid numbers on what percentage of video game players are a certain gender, race, or ethnicity, it seems as if such a tally was never taken in terms of how much of the video game-playing population had ever been diagnosed with specific mental disorders, even though, for example, it was found that autistic people generally play video games more often and for longer intervals of time than neurotypical people do (in the words of one article, "video game addiction is more common"). I figure this has to have some kind of impact on the demographics of video game players.
I have to imagine you would be correct in this. It's definitely harder to tally up neurodiverse persons compared to more "obvious" physical traits such as gender, race and ethnicity, though, especially since many people on the spectrum may be undiagnosed.
I have to imagine you would be correct in this. It's definitely harder to tally up neurodiverse persons compared to more "obvious" physical traits such as gender, race and ethnicity, though, especially since many people on the spectrum may be undiagnosed.
Indeed, not to mention the exact opposite scenario: for example, girls with autism often read a lot of fiction literature and are more inclined to people-watch on playgrounds when they're young. These actions help them better emulate how to interact socially, which means that someone diagnosing them might miss that they're uncomfortable with social interaction, and thus come to the conclusion that they don't have one of the two (formerly two of the three) characteristics that outright define the autism spectrum disorders.
I also get the feeling that if the mental demographics of the video game population were studied, there would probably be trends based on genre. For example, outside of those who formerly had or plan to apply for a specific occupation, I wouldn't doubt that many simulator players (I refer to true simulators such as Ship Simulator, Railworks, Euro Truck Simulator 2, etc., and not joke simulators such as Goat Simulator, Surgeon Simulator, Rock Simulator etc.) at least show characteristics of, if not were diagnosed with, autism, its related disorders, or even disorders that autism gets mistaken for (simultaneous ADHD and OCD is a fairly common misdiagnosis for an ASD). I say this as someone with an ASD who owns lot of simulators. It would certainly solve the mystery that I hear posed so often: "Who plays these things?"
