Autism Serious Game Framework (ASGF) for Developing Games for Children with Autism

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired social communication and interaction, and by restricted, repetitive interests and behaviours. The mean clinical age of diagnosis is still four to five years, despite advances in knowledge about early signs of the disorder and is associated with substantial disability throughout the affected individual’s lifespan. There is currently no one standard treatment for ASD given that its symptoms vary across individuals although research indicates that interactive media including virtual worlds and serious games (that is, games whose primary purpose is education and training), can be effective. However, designing such virtual worlds and serious games is not a trivial task, and is time-consuming requiring expertise in game development/computer science, education, and knowledge in ASD. As a result, serious games are often designed and developed to address one specific problem/scenario that cannot be easily modified. Changes to scenarios require the serious game’s source code to be modified, which is a difficult and time-consuming process. To overcome some of the limitations currently associated with serious gaming, working with ASD content experts, I have developed the Autism Serious Game Framework (ASGF) to allow therapists who may have a limited (or lack any) technical/programming background and experience, to create serious games (or modify existing ones), specifically for children with autism. Preliminary testing with childhood autism experts indicates that ASGF will allow for the simple development of autism-based serious games, and will assist and help children with autism to develop skills and obtain functional gains, such as recognizing faces.