“He loves to make up stories to help deal with his environment” - Max’s Autistic Journey
So…Autism is…an RPG?
That was the first thought I had when watching gameplay footage of Max’s Autistic Journey. At first, I found the analogy problematic and troubling. But then the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me.
As an autistic person, I am constantly fighting my environment and the stimuli around me. My autism[1] makes me feel constantly invaded by loud sounds, strong tactile sensations, and confusing social interactions. Once one battle ends, another begins. It becomes tiring, grinding through the social environment of spawning grounds, but with time and practice, I gain “experience points” and learn how to cope in healthier ways. My inventory is limited, and I collect whatever I can find along the way as I never know when or my stats may need a boost. I never thought about living with autism as similar to playing an RPG, but the metaphor can help make sense of my experiences. It’s a metaphor I wouldn’t have considered if it wasn’t for Max’s Autistic Journey.
That said, this game left me with mixed feelings. I have great admiration and respect for the creator of this game, who based the main character Max off his autistic son. The creator’s intentions are clear and I don’t see anything particularly destructive about his representation. That said, this game made me think more about neurodiverse representation in gaming: how the medium is a great canvas for conveying neurodiverse experiences, but how far we still have to go to do this effectively and respectfully. In this article, I’d like to explore what works well in Max’s Autistic Journey regarding representation, as well as what could work even stronger--and ultimately, what I’d like to see future games explore when it comes to neurodiverse representation.
This game is creative in how it explores autism, and there were many elements that I found effective and relatable. First, Max’s world is reinterpreted in terms of his special interests. One of Max’s special interests is clearly video games (references to Five Nights at Freddy’s and Mario pervade his landscape, though dinosaurs are also very dominant), so an RPG structure for the game makes sense and is a creative way of lending insight to Max’s perspective. I couldn’t help but think about what I did in my novel Post-High School Reality Quest, where the protagonist sees her world as a text adventure game. Because of this, the novel is literally told in a text adventure format, her life being narrated by this seemingly omniscient Text Parser. This device helped me show my protagonist’s anxieties and doubts, as well as her nostalgic longing for the past. Mechanics like these can lend insight into a protagonist’s world and worldview, helping the player or reader engage with their perspective.
I also found the anxiety meter in the game rather relatable. Rarely do outbursts come out of nowhere; usually there is a build-up, whether we’re aware of it or not. This visual meter reminds us of this, showing us just where Max is in relation to his anxiety. I appreciated the naming choice of “anxiety meter” over something problematic like “insanity meter” or even “autism meter.” The names we use for devices in games matter; like other elements of a game, they can teach us how to perceive the world around us. My only disappointment with the anxiety meter was that it seemed to be a missed opportunity. While I haven’t completed the game, from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like there’s a way to actually top the meter, which mitigates the stakes and tension of the device. What if we could perform behaviors that increase Max’s anxiety meter and ultimately lead him to having a meltdown? How might this impact gameplay and progress? What if the player had to weigh decisions carefully as not inadvertently max out the meter? My life is a constant exercise in resource management, and as this is a common game mechanic, not only would it work effectively for gameplay, it would help model some of the realities of living on the spectrum.
This leads to my ultimate critique of the game: it tells us about autism instead of showing us, or letting us feel a piece of living with autism. Players get little fact cards that tell us about Max and autism—and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with the information, it’s not very palatable in its passive form. What if the mechanics, the game design, let us experience a taste of compartmentalization instead of being told about it?
A few years ago, I went to see a live performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in New York City, which features an autism-coded protagonist. In this performance, the protagonist Christopher navigates a metro station for the first time, and the show creatively portrays his overstimulation with the use of lights, loud noises, and moving figures. I remember crying in my seat when I saw this, because the effect was powerful and relatable. It effectively conveyed what my life is like, encountering new, overstimulating environments. The show didn’t tell us that Christopher was overstimulated; it used the sensory experience on the stage to have neurotypical viewers feel and participate in overstimulation.
A game has so many opportunities to create a similar effect. For example, what would happen if actions filled up a “tired” meter, and created consequences of overstimulation as playtime increased? What if the game volume became louder or harsher without player control? What if the player’s view became distorted, making NPCs and environmental objects feel like they were closing in? What if it became harder and harder to move, requiring a player to put more effort or pressing a button more frequently to move? This would be compelling, and it would not be telling a player what it might feel like to be autistic, but giving them a way to experience a taste of it for themselves.
The problem I have with a game like Max is that we’re viewing autism from the outside. This is exemplified in comments I noticed on play-through videos asking questions like: “Why does [Max] keep saying ‘in fact?” There are a lot of reasons why Max might do this. It might be a verbal tic. Some people on the spectrum find pleasure through vocalization and repetition of vocalization (this can include echolalia, a condition of repeating quotes and phrases that aren’t the speaker’s own). Or Max might just like the feel of familiarity and structure it brings. Or he might have learned it and mass-applied a social rule about using the phrase “in fact.” Or it could have been poor writing on the part of the developer, and hold no significant meaning at all. It’s hard to say. We as players can’t be sure how to interpret this because Max is still foreign to us.
As much as the game might try to make us Max, we’re not Max. Instead, we’re observing him from a distance. We’re given facts about Max. The barrier still exists. And for a game like this to be compelling, that barrier needs to be thinned down as much as possible. Hellblade, in contrast, is a game that utilizes sound to make the player hear the voices in Senua’s head. The voices give us as players conflicting instructions, making us in turn feel conflicted—who do we trust? It literally puts us in Senua’s head so that we can feel Senua’s experience on an intimate level instead of telling us “Senua has schizophrenia, which causes her to sometimes hear voices.”
I never feel like I’m in Max’s head. The closest to this that I feel is when we go into RPG battles. When the landscape changes from literal to figurative and imaginative, this is a good step in the right direction. The landscape turns to reflect Max’s internal reality. It’s irrelevant whether this is literal or not, because it’s real to Max on an emotional level. And the more real that’s made for us as players, the more we can connect with Max’s story.
Video games have such a unique opportunity for neurodiverse representation and education on neurodiverse needs. Unlike a book or podcast, a game places us as active participants in a given situation. Playing a game, we can have greater empathy for experiences outside of our own. Effective moments in gaming linger with me long after I finish playing--but so do ineffective moments. In the book publishing community, a movement has started for own voices books--books authored by individual’s lived experiences in marginalized groups.
When considering Max’s Autistic Journey, it’s important to acknowledge that it was created by an individual not on the autism spectrum, and I can’t help but wonder how the game would be different if it was created by someone on the spectrum. As video games continue to develop as an art form, my hope is that studios and independent creators will actively involve diverse experts in the development process. Having more neurodiverse writers, artists and consultants contributing to games will only open up more possibilities and new interesting perspectives in gaming.
[1]: Everyone’s journey on the autism spectrum is different. By describing my experiences I am only speaking on my experiences with autism, not on autism at large.
Meg Eden Kuyatt is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently “Selah’s Guide to Normal” (Scholastic, 2023). Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal and Instagram at @meden_author.