A new video game challenges players to experience the neurotypical world as someone who is neurodivergent (e.g. autism, ADHD, dyslexia). Video by the University of South Australia
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00:00Hi, I'm Dr. Susie Emery, I work at UniSA as a lecturer in games and digital media.
00:05So the game Life Resounding is designed to explore being neurodivergent in a world that's
00:11designed and created for neurotypical people.
00:13As neurodivergent people it's kind of hard for us to exist within this world that has
00:17been designed by neurotypical people and to neurotypical standards.
00:22So what the game does is it kind of puts you in the perspective of somebody who's growing
00:26up neurodivergent in this world and lets you kind of feel and experience some of those
00:32challenges and how they might affect you as a neurodivergent person, how your emotions
00:37are impacted, how your actions are impacted by the way in which you're living in a space
00:42that your brain wasn't designed for.
00:44I was lucky enough to work as the game designer and also as the environment designer, which
00:48means I got to design the game itself, all of the cool interactions and the story within
00:53it, but also I got to make the environments, which is a really fun part of the design process.
00:59Within this project I am a programmer and technical artist, I am responsible for a lot
01:03of the gameplay programming and the user interface implementation, trying to bring the vision
01:09of our designer to life.
01:10The game is about growing up with and experiencing the life of a neurodivergent from being a
01:15toddler to moving into school life, being punished for not paying attention in class
01:20and progressing into the workforce and trying to deal with a world that is designed for
01:24neurotypical people as somebody who is neurodivergent yourself as the character.
01:28A lot of the gameplay mechanics reinforce this idea through the game hijacking your
01:33camera trying to make you look out the window rather than writing lines in your diary as
01:37a punishment, to trying to put rubbish in the bins and constantly turning around seeing
01:43the rubbish is there again.
01:44Some of the challenges we've encountered have definitely been around how we can implement
01:48the design and how we can best represent the neurodivergent experience.
01:53We have had a lot of back and forth in how we would need to code the game and the gameplay
01:59mechanics to support that the best that it can, how we can make sure that the mechanics,
02:03the narrative, the sound all comes together to really sell the message that we're trying
02:08to get across.
02:09So I'm really lucky that I got to use something called the MetaMidi toolkit in this game and
02:13what this allowed me to do was to as well as communicate the emotions of a neurodivergent
02:19person in this world through the environments and the interaction of the game, we could
02:23use that to kind of communicate that in the audio as well.
02:27So what I feel like that does is give you a much deeper sense of some of the emotions
02:32that the character in the game is feeling through the use of sound and the way in which
02:36the MetaMidi toolkit allows us to change and adapt that sound in response to emotions.
02:42This project is important to me because it feels like there is a message behind it.
02:46It feels like it's trying to raise awareness and can act as a sort of tool of empathy that
02:51enables people who don't understand this neurodivergent experience to have a different perspective,
02:57to actually experience what it is like to grow up in a neurodivergent mindset in a neurotypical
03:03world.
03:04I'm really hoping that neurotypical people play the game to gain an understanding of
03:08what it's like to be neurodivergent.
03:09I'm hoping that neurotypical people will play and maybe just consider a little bit
03:14about what it might be like to grow up in these spaces that aren't designed for you.
03:18And I'd also really like neurodivergent people to play it and maybe relate to some of the
03:22things and go, oh yeah, I do remember that is what that was like or, you know, it's pretty
03:27similar to my experience and just open dialogues around our lives and growing up in those spaces
03:32and how that's affected us.