'Auti-Sim' Game Simulates Life With Childhood Autism

In a playground filled with gleeful shouts, you approach a group of children. Suddenly, your vision turns blurry and pixelated. The echoing screams become raucous.

It's the experience of sensory overload, according to a new game called Auti-Sim. The simulation, created by a three-member team at the Vancouver Hacking Health hackathon, aims to raise awareness of the challenges of hypersensitivity disorder and help people understand how it can lead to isolation.
The closer you get to loud and active children, the more overwhelming the situation becomes. As you move toward quieter areas, the strain tapers off. Watch the demo here.

Taylan Kadayifcioglu (who goes by Taylan Kay), one of the game's programmers, says he was inspired by an excerpt from a documentary called Inside Autism. The clip simulates what it's like for a person with autism to take a trip though Walmart.

"It was striking how an ordinary, everyday environment could pose significant challenges," Kay tells Mashable.

"It was striking how an ordinary, everyday environment could pose significant challenges," Kay tells Mashable. He continues, "It made me think of the coping strategies and how they may be misunderstood and mislabeled by other people ... it was fascinating that they could impart some understanding and raise empathy with even that much. I thought it was a very clever attempt, and I thought I could take it a step further."
After posting the demo on indie game site Game Jolt, Auti-Sim received generally positive feedback.
"We have had quite a few people with autism thanking us for giving them a means of communicating what they are going through," Kay says. "We have had many people saying that through this experience they have seen themselves reacting in ways that they have seen [children with autism] do in real life."

The game also garnered criticism from those with autism who said the game didn't represent their experience with the condition. Kay explains it was a critique they expected to receive, since they had only 12 hours to develop the demo with help from a special-needs educator who served as "autism advisor." As a result of autism's wide spectrum, it was impossible to create one game that represented all possible experiences.

The team is in the process of expanding the demo to a full game, with ideas to add interactivity and more environments. Professionals in therapy, education and advocacy around autism will also collaborate. The game will serve as a teaching tool for the general public.

"Imagine teachers being able to provide better learning environments for children with autism, or siblings being better able to understand their brothers or sisters and feeling closer to them, or whole communities becoming more inclusive," Kay says. "The positive social impact of such projects can be huge."
Screenshot courtesy of YouTube, Taylan Kay
originally posted in mashable.com

What Does 2013 Hold for a Gaming Industry in Flux?

The last year was a turbulent and exciting one in gaming.
After Double Fine's record-breaking Kickstarter, a gold rush began as indies funded their dreams with the masses. Facebook reported 235 million of its users play games each month. Nintendo launched a console that faced "second-screen" entertainment head on. A live-action series about Halo was watched millions of times on YouTube. These are but a handful of trends that forecast the future.

Mashable spoke to 16 prominent figures across the games industry to discern what might be coming down the pike in 2013. Many of those quoted below talked about similar themes: freemium games, the rise of digital distribution, new console and tablet hardware, and crowdfunding for indie games. Read below to see their full predictions.
Do you agree or disagree with these forecasts? What do you think 2013 has in store for gaming? Share your predictions with us in the comments.

Warren Spector (System Shock, Deus Ex and Disney's Epic Mickey)

"I'm kind of just excited about sitting back and watching how the next year is going to shake out. I'm excited and I'm scared. It's not like the usual chaos. Gaming has always been chaos. There was always a new platform or something coming along to shake things up. Now, we still have all of that, but is Facebook the future of gaming? Probably not, but it's a part of it. Is mobile? Is the next generation of consoles? Is indie the future? Everything is happening, and nobody knows where we're going.
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Teen Media Consumption Soars to Almost 8 Hours/Day

If you feel your child is glued to video games, television or the Internet, chances are you're right – and you're not alone.
An updated study released Wednesday by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that children average 7.5 hours of media consumption per day, an a increase of almost two hours and fifteen minutes in five years. When multitasking – consuming more than one form of media at the same time – is taken into effect, the total jumped to 10 hours and 45 minutes, the Foundation found.


"How can we promote a healthy balance in kids' lives, between media and other important activities, whether it's spending time outdoors, or just spending time talking face-to-face with your parents?" Victoria Rideout, the Foundation's vice president and director of the study, said during a Webcast press conference on Wednesday.
The study has implications for several aspects of popular culture, she said, including whether or not kids' aptitude for multitasking was actually beneficial in a work world, and whether or not advertising guidelines for targeting children and teenagers needed to be adjusted.
The study was based on a survey of 2,002 students ranging from third through twelfth grade, ages 8 to 18, and conducted from Oct. 2008 through May 7, 2009. A subsample of 702 students also provided a more detailed look at media consumption through a media diary they kept. The surveys were conducted over a 40-minute period in the classroom.
What the survey found was that heavy media users not only self-reported lower grades then self-described "light" users, but that they also reported being less happy as well. For example, 51 percent of heavy media users reported that they received A's and B's in school, compared to 66 percent of light users. Thirty-two percent of heavy media users reported that they were often sad or unhappy, versus 22 percent of light media users. Not surprisingly, those that lived in households where parents attempted to limit media consumption consumed less media.
"My method is, I don't study, I just pay attention in class, as hard as I can. Studying is just wasting Xbox time," said one of the study's respondents interviewed on camera.
And what media are kids consuming? Overall, kids watched an average of 4 hours and 29 minutes of television per day, followed by 2 hours and 31 minutes of music. Computer time accounted for just under an hour and a half, with video games averaging 1 hour and 13 minutes per day. Print consumption and movies consumed 38 minutes and 25 minutes, respectively.
"It abosolutely rings true," Stephen Friedman, the general manager of MTV," said during a panel discussion following a press conference on Tuesday in Washington D.C. "We talk to our viewers every day, and this audience was raised connected, they're the chief technology officers of their family, their parents go to them to figure things out, and that really impacts everything we do, as they consume media differently."
In total, media consumption peaked at ages 11 to 14. Black and Hispanic students, however, reported that they spent far more time consuming media – an additional three and a half hours per day – then white students, for a total of about 13 hours per day.
But are kids couch pototoes as well? According to the Kaiser report, no – in fact, the kids reported spending an hour and 45 minutes engaged in some form of physical activity, including sports, dance, or going to the gym. Five years ago, the students reported spending just under an hour and a half in exercise.