"Autistic Dad" has created a safe little world for all children |
Minecraft is an open role-playing game with themes of collection, creation, construction, and adventure. The program automatically generates a variety of vast and unique land where players can sing alone. You can also work with other players to build your own home.
However, for autistic children, the social interaction on the Internet may be the same as in the offline world, making them nervous and anxious. To this end, a community of players called Autcraft has made a custom transformation of My World to create a safe virtual playground for autistic children.
In the game, the cabins built by the Autcraft community |
The small world of "Autistic Daddy"
In fact, the community itself was created for children with autism and their families. Founder Stuart Duncan is an autistic person himself, and the older one of his two children also has autism.
In 2013, Duncan found that in the online world of speech violence and bullying, many parents of children with autism had to struggle to support each other, hoping to find a place for their children to play with confidence. As a result, Duncan built a My World server, which is open to children with autism and their families. In the game, he was affectionately called "AutismFather". Today, this tiny little world has become a big community with more than 9,700 users.
In the process, they are showing a somewhat filtered and organized social environment. As the online and offline worlds collide, more and more social activities will appear here.
In the game, several players are playing near the birth point of the character |
In previous research, I worked with members of the Autcraft community to better understand how the community works, such as how they guard their safety while playing with children with autism. I found that they used a series of software to modify the "My World" game itself (this is called "add module") and set social structure or rules.
Autcraft takes advantage of the game world and provides four key aspects of support for autistic children: it creates an organized world for kids, creating a secure social space that allows them to filter out in many different ways. Do not want things and help them release their imagination.
Organized playground
In My World, the game world has been organized from the start—the game has many boundaries, and there are various rules that players need to follow. On this basis, the Autcraft community also uses additional software plug-ins to make the game world easier, especially for younger children.
For example, players can draw a small piece of land of their own, and only they and their chosen friends can build in this area. This ensures that other players cannot change your house or work without your consent.
Secure social space
Building on this “physical” foundation, the Autcraft community has also developed a social foundation that not only has regulations that every community member should follow, but also a number of codes of conduct built around friendliness and help. The community uses game tools to solidify these behavioral habits into the game world. For example, they built a "community box" mechanism so that players can leave items they no longer need to other players in need.
"Community Box", where players can save items they no longer need, and let other players in need take them away |
In this way, Autcraft turns the game world into a secure social space. Children come here to play with friends after school – often they are friends they only know in the game, not friends in real life. The play experience in the game is like a playground. Some children are building their own houses, some are playing hide and seek, and some are just chatting while chatting.
Filtered and filtered interactions
As a game, My World filters and simplifies things through many ways that help autistic players. The game character is basically a rough representation of people in the game world. All communication is done by controlling the action of the character (such as jumping or giving an item) or by text information. They don't have facial expressions, and they don't have much body language (usually people with autism are confused about this kind of interpersonal relationship).
Although sometimes text chat is very difficult to deal with (even for researchers like me), it is still a screened interpersonal interaction that can alleviate the pressure of social behavior on children with autism. It also brings more fun.
People with autism often need to adjust their sensory intake to suit their condition. In My World, the brightness and volume of the game can be easily adjusted, and players are free to change what they receive by moving their characters. For example, I have seen a player burying the role of ta into the ground, so that the screen brightness of ta will be darker, let the visual senses take a break.
The Autcraft community has also built a number of virtual sensory rooms that offer a variety of sensory intakes and atmospheres, from bright and colorful rooms with cobweb decorations to rooms that offer moderately dark closed doors to comfortable books. The hall room...all kinds of.
A sensory room filled with rainbow colors and cobweb texture |
Creative place
For many players, just as important as interaction is releasing their imagination.
In Autcraft's server, I've seen buildings that look like giant pink pony, statues that are as tall as buildings, TARDIS, and everything you can think of. Community members sometimes work on their own, but they also work together to form teams to meet construction goals.
I interviewed some children with autism who are willing to take on the leadership of the team and have led their friends to build a huge castle and create the entire village. For children who have difficulties in communicating, making friends, and attending classes in the classroom, this is quite a great thing.
What will happen in the future?
"My World" is like a virtual playground in the real world. It allows players to have deeper involvement and deeper learning.
This is especially true for autistic children in the Autcraft community – kids use a convenient game interface to help them with social games, and there are no barriers to their offline activities.
As physical space and virtual space continue to merge, the filtered social and activity style will become something that everyone is used to. We can foresee that the difference between “virtual” and “real” that is now very vague will disappear completely in the future, and a world like Autcraft will become a part of life.
END...I hope every child can grow up happily