Neurodivergent perspectives on video games

In this thesis, I explore how video games can contribute to dealing with neurodiversity in our society in a morally responsible way. In the media and beyond, the term neurodiversity has become widely used. This concept indicates that people can think, feel, act, experience, and communicate in a multitude of ways, one way in principle no better or more desirable than the other. Although the terminology is gaining popularity, the critical potential of neurodiversity theory is far from being realized. Western society is built on certain norms regarding (cognitive) functioning, which require some people to adapt much more than others, regularly resulting in, for example, anxiety or depression. Additionally, some people have a higher support need than others, but this is still too often framed as an individual rather than a societal responsibility. Cultural expressions such as video games are pre-eminently a place where prevailing normative ideas about cognitive functioning (e.g., sociality, perception, and attention) are reproduced and/or challenged. In addition, the ever-growing game industry forms an increasingly fundamental part of the cultural sector. However, nuanced representations of neurodivergence in video games are still limited, and both game design and research on neurodivergence primarily work from a top-down approach that is limited to an instrumental and medical perspective. In this thesis, I therefore connect insights from critical disability and neurodiversity theory to video games to analyze how neurodivergence figures in different ways in this virtual and interactive cultural medium. I argue that through immersion, affect, and player choices, video games often add an additional moral layer that increases players’ involvement and responsibility toward the representation of neurodiversity. My research project is structured around three different research questions, investigating cultural representation, phenomenological understanding, and the speculative potential of video games. Following this focus, I analyze several single-player entertainment video games: Unravel, Celeste, Night in the Woods, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Stardew Valley, and To the Moon. How do these video games illustrate, resist, or open up the meaning of concepts such as play, empathy, pedagogy, and social justice? To this end, I analyze genre, form, content and player perspective. I consistently argue for putting the experiences of neurodivergent people at the center of knowledge creation and game design with respect to specific expressions of neurodivergence. In addition, understanding the workings of neuronormativity helps to counter stereotyping in the narrative and visual design of video games, and questioning prevailing beliefs about the default player can also enrich game design. My end goal with this thesis is explicitly ameliorative: my research aims to make video games and the gaming community a more inclusive place for anyone who cannot and/or will not conform to a neurotypical norm.