



When it comes to kids, trends come and go faster than any of us grown-ups can keep up with. Remember loom bands? Moshi monsters? They took the playground by storm, driving parents mad all over the country. These are nothing but mere flashes in the pan compared to the digital goliath that has captured the hearts and minds of kids everywhere. I’m talking, of course, about Minecraft. A digital world where you’re free to do pretty much whatever you want, it’s been a phenomenal success story. However, something unexpected was discovered recently - this digital pastime is helping children with autism. This is the story of how a small indie project is changing the way we’re thinking about gaming.

Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, cuts a somewhat divisive figure. Persson controversially sold to Microsoft following vocal criticisms of other tech giants’ acquiring indie projects such as Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR. The former coder and programmer now sits on his billion dollar fortune due to the unexpected success of his pet project. The game became the highest selling title in history, topping over 100 million sales worldwide, but it’s so much more than just a game - it’s a space to create. You start in an empty virtual world and use Lego-like blocks to build whatever takes your fancy, but what sets Minecraft apart is that other players can then interact with your creations. Oh, and there's also zombies which you need to avoid. This format struck a chord with kids, but how can this help with a condition like autism?

It ticks a lot of the boxes for their cognitive skills and interests and, perhaps most importantly, allows them to communicate freely in a safe environment. Many children with autism crave routine and repetition - their lives often need to follow a structure that does not change. Minecraft works along this repetitive cycle; you ‘mine’ a block, you move it, you build and you repeat. You can do this as many times as you want, in any way you want - you have the freedom to do anything as long as it follows the set structure. This sounds counter intuitive, but those who have experience with the game will understand how this is achieved.





So, it is this unique ‘freedom within a structure’ environment that seems to hold attraction, but it’s the potential for communication within the game that’s really setting it apart in terms of addressing developmental needs for children with autism. Within the virtual world, you don’t just explore and create - you can travel around with other players and talk as you go. This has broken down barriers to socialisation for autism sufferers, not only are the kids now chatting and expressing themselves more openly in a digital format - evidence suggests it's having a positive impact in the real world too. In an article by Keith Stuart in the Guardian, he describes how his son Zac would never talk about his day at school, he was quiet and reserved - something that can be quite common amongst children with autism. But after spending time in the digital world he would rush to tell his parents what he’d been up to:

“But he talks to us about Minecraft. He talks and talks. We were getting bored of it, to be brutally honest, but then my wife read an article that said if you listen to your children when they’re young, they’ll tell you more when they’re older. It’s sort of an investment of care. So we always listen, even though we don’t really get what the ender dragon is, or why it matters.”

Minecraft has changed the way we think about games. Before, a videogame was just a pastime - a waste of time, even, but now it’s being used in schools. Minecraft Edu is a ‘school-ready’ version of the game that is being used to teach maths, geography, physics - you name it and there’s a way to teach using the game. Its strongest attribute is that the kids actually want to learn using this method. When kids want to learn and keep learning, when they see it as fun and not a chore, special things can happen.

Markus Persson is not aiming to give off the impression that he designed the game to be anything other than that, just a game. However, what he’s created is changing the lives of millions of people all over the world. We still have a long way to go in truly understanding spectrum conditions such as autism, but in light of Minecraft’s success, maybe we’ve been looking for the answers in the wrong place all this time.