My experience with students who deal with Aspberger's Syndrome and how they approach projects and problems.
This was not the only time I have dealt with an anxious situation, whether it was from my perspective or from that as an educator. I worked for an industry which is still full of developers who may or may not have been diagnosed with AS/ADHD. We find this space to be comfortable as we find like minded people doing like minded things. We built the thing that got us away from others who didn’t understand what we were going through as youths. We worked with those who we played DnD together with, who we listened to or played music with.
The concepts of complex problems can be overwhelming, and seeing how they can be broken down into smaller pieces is sometimes the most difficult block. When working on a video game production, there is a team who is dedicated to defining what will make a fun experience for someone to play. This was also back when the concept of a gamer was the same as a nerd, geek, and even a loser to others. Games were far from popular, and did not get to be popular until those same nerds got important jobs and made huge decisions.
It is my opinion and experience that when things become overwhelming, minds suffering with AS are just looking for a way to step away and become in tune with their own rhythms. This is why we read Tolkein, Asimov, and Herbert, or we collected He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers and Pokemon. This is why video games are seen as addictive to the gamer. It makes me curious if books were ever seen as an addictive means to separate from the real world.
My game idea is simple but I want to reflect my time with the program. The trick is to show work which never had the time to become fully fleshed out concepts. So, I am choosing items I was able to make on my own time which have been heavily influenced by the work I did with the program.
With the opening sequence being chaotic and noisy, with no distinct means of direction. The player will automatically move forward on the button press “go,” as it is a lane runner based game. The player will see a couple of large stone objects with symbols resembling those of peace, meditation, or relaxation. They will be color coded. Once the player chooses one, this becomes the piece the player will hunt for. The track the player rides on will ebb and flow and offer different stone types, but the player must choose the same one in order to fill the meter on the screen. The meter reflects the first stone chosen, and will fill once there is enough stones to create a simple measure in a song.
A loop is made and a set of new stones appear offering new notes to chase in the game. Song continues to build. Once the song is built, the player can continue to listen, surf, or can quit.
Notes begin to collect, and a path emerges. More fireflies, but a little less chaotic, and the music begins to make more sense. Pathways clear as more notes