Based on edutainment, 37 Mutual Entertainment launched special games to help autistic children assist in training

Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Wu Yao

Every year on 2 April, World Autism Awareness Day is celebrated. On this day this year, the domestic game company 37 Interactive Entertainment launched a special functional game to help children with autism overcome social barriers.

From having an idea to launching a game, the project took more than a year. In the view of the R&D team of 37 Interactive Entertainment, the smooth launch is just the beginning, and next, they will recommend it to the relevant parties in the society, so that this game can help more "children from the stars" (the title of autistic children) and help their social training.

Development of assistive training games for children with autism

Autism, also known as autism or autism disorder, is a representative disease of generalized developmental disorders. According to the "Report on the Development of Autistic Children in China" released in 2014, there were more than 10 million autistic people in China at that time, of which more than 2 million were 0 to 14 years old.

At present, there is no specific drug treatment for autism, and how to find an effective way to help children with autism is a worldwide problem that is being explored around the world.

Xiaoyu is an employee of 37 Interactive Entertainment, because of the needs of her work, she often pays attention to many scenes of innovative applications of games, and communicates with many institutions in different fields. In an exchange with a teacher of a traditional publishing house, Xiaoyu learned that the publishing house was introducing and publishing books in the field of autism training, and some of the books introduced were equipped with video games when they were distributed overseas, but most of these games were foreign languages or traditional versions, and were not suitable for domestic children.

At this time, she had an idea in her mind: whether she could use the games that children generally liked more to bring help and happiness to autistic children in China. "Our company has a social value co-creation plan, in which a key task is to use the company's technical advantages to do the research and development of functional games and solve some social problems." Xiaoyu said, "After further communication with the publishing house and research with some autism training institutions and experts, I submitted a project application, and the project was quickly recognized by the group, which gave me a lot of confidence." After that, we worked with publishers to plan game content, and through various channels, we invited parties in the field of autism, hoping that they could participate in it and make this product really work. ”

Lin Cheng (not his real name) is the father of an autistic child whose child was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of three. In order to let children grow up healthily, Lin Cheng insists on continuous institutional and family intervention training for children, and carries out integrated education in kindergartens. At present, children are in the first grade of primary school, and they are still adapted to the daily rules and procedures of the school, and their learning can keep up with the rhythm. Despite this, Lin Cheng admitted that children are still weak in terms of social rules and obedience, lack of collective consciousness, and lack of concentration in the classroom.

After learning that Sanqi Interactive Entertainment is trying to help children with autism in the form of games, Lin Cheng believes that this may be a good new direction. "Every ordinary child loves to play, and autistic children are no exception. Nowadays, traditional discipline culture education has added animation and games to allow children to learn in play and promote interest in learning. Therefore, the game for children with autism must also be able to attract children, and learning to improve social cognition and social rules in the game will be more acceptable than traditional preaching, and the child's memory will be deeper. Lin Cheng said.

Jin Jing, chairman and general manager of Naai Xing Cultural Education Consulting (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd., has been engaged in special children's education and consulting services for more than 20 years, and has a good understanding of the characteristics and needs of autistic children. In her opinion, games such as autism-assisted training have been applied abroad. I have brought autistic children who have attended international schools, and I have tried to use related games from abroad, and the effect is good. Therefore, after receiving the invitation of 37 Interactive Entertainment and understanding their demands, Jin Jing served as an expert guide for the project and provided full consultation for the follow-up research and development.

Multiple commissioning to enhance the functionality of the product

The first person to eat crab always has to face more difficulties and doubts. In order to make this game truly realize the role of auxiliary training, the R&D team of 37 Interactive Entertainment has done a lot of adjustment work in the optimization and adjustment of game details.

"The direction of development of light function games has been corrected several times." Xiaoyu said that at the beginning, the team's idea was relatively simple, hoping to make a game that could bring some happiness and auxiliary effects to these children, and it was already very satisfied. But after reaching out to the children, the team found that the original idea was too general. In fact, the role of functional games should be more focused on helping children in a specific aspect, such as helping them improve their cognitive ability to do things.

After taking "cognition of things" as the direction of research and development, the team found that children have greater problems in social aspects than cognition. In fact, the difficulty of making a social game is much more difficult than that of cognitive games, but the team resolutely decided to adjust the direction after consultation. Hope to really help some people with this game. Xiao Yu said.

In addition to the product content, considering that the target user is a special group, the background content and art style of the game also need to be paid great attention. For this reason, there have been many debates within the team. "In the past, the art team was involved in mostly commercial projects, and the users were adults, so at the beginning they did not have much understanding of such special groups, which led to a lot of problems when drawing various scenes, which needed to be repeatedly revised." Light rain is an example.

In order to let everyone have a deeper understanding and for future work to be closer to autistic children, Xiaoyu organized a painting exchange activity and invited project stakeholders to participate. The group visited the Special Education Department of Guangzhou Children's Palace and carried out painting exchange activities with artists of the Autism Spectrum of Special Artists Studio in the form of classroom volunteers.

After personal experience, the R&D team understood that many designs are not feasible according to the inherent way of thinking, and need to fully take into account the behavior habits of autistic children. After they read the relevant books, they combined some of the opinions put forward by experts to further adjust and optimize, so that the game products can really play a helping role.

In fact, the difficulties do not only come from within, as the first game for autism-assisted training in China, there are also different doubts and objections from the outside world. Some parents and experts are also worried that online games are easy for children to indulge, and it is undoubtedly more difficult for children with autism to control. Some experts also believe that the use of games to assist in the training of autistic children is more of a paper talk, and will not actually achieve any results.

However, when the team completed the construction of the first scene in the game and showed the sample to parents and experts, everyone responded very well, basically held a recognized attitude, and put forward a lot of valuable modification suggestions for the game. This gave the 37 Interactive Entertainment project team a shot in the arm. "Games are actually a product, a type of tool. Our company has also been hoping to give more play to its positive value through some practices, and use some advantages of the game to solve some social problems. Xiao Yu said.

Adhere to the unity of social and economic benefits

When it comes to online games, many people subconsciously associate it with teen addiction. In fact, the game is not just an entertainment tool, such as the function game of 37 Interactive Entertainment, which shows the function and attributes of another aspect of the game.

"Some parents have expressed concern that their children will become addicted to mobile phones or games. But in fact, children are naturally more likely to be attracted to electronic products such as mobile phones and tablets, which is not a problem with game software. Jin Jing said that the game is like a tool, how to use, determines the actual use of the effect. This game can help children with autism improve their social skills, but how to manage time is what parents need to guide correctly, and it is also another level of problem.

As an interactive and interesting medium, online games have an important and positive effect in assisting the rehabilitation training of people with autism disorder, which has been verified in the field of autism rehabilitation. For example, after years of research, heep hong kong, a well-known children's education and rehabilitation institution in Hong Kong, China, has developed a set of empirical and effective autism rehabilitation training guide books, and has supporting video games to benefit a large group of autistic children.

In Jin Jing's view, there are many ways to learn, and it is undoubtedly a better choice for children, especially a special group of autistic children, to have teaching methods that make them more willing to accept. "In fact, there are many games developed for children with autism abroad, and there are all aspects, and relevant domestic manufacturers can refer to and learn from them to develop game software suitable for domestic children on the basis of which."

In fact, not only autism, with interactive and interesting attributes, games have a broad application scenario in public welfare.

In order to further tap the positive value of the game. In September last year, 37 Interactive Entertainment released the "Social Value Co-creation Plan", which listed the development of functional games as one of the six major plans, and said that it would increase research and development efforts to further layout functional games that promote positive social value. Up to now, 37 Interactive Entertainment has launched more than 15 functional games such as "What is this garbage", "Disinfection Battle", "Qingfeng Man Rushing Rush" and so on, realizing the unity of corporate social benefits and economic benefits.

Jin Jing pointed out that from the perspective of children's education, games are a tool, a form that children like to hear, as long as it is suitable for children to learn the content, in fact, can be used in this form to "package", which is very necessary, so it is also hoped that more game companies will participate in the development of functional games suitable for children.