Over the last few years, developers have become more aware of how important representation is. More and more characters of diverse races, genders and sexualities have come to the forefront of mainstream games. But one minority seems to have been overlooked: neurodiversity, especially those of us on the autism spectrum.
The UKIE Games Industry Census 2022 stated that the sector has a higher proportion of neurodivergent people working within it than the working age population, with 18% of respondents stating they have at least one neurodevelopmental condition. While the video game industry has been open to accepting employees on the spectrum, there seems to be a lack of autistic characters featured within video games themselves.
Alice Cooper, a lead on Autistica's Autistica Play programme, is keen to see this change: "Not enough progress has been made in autistic game character representation and we still have a long way to go. A couple of characters that stand out as good examples are River in To The Moon and Overwatch's Symmetra, although it took a fan theory about Symmetra being autistic for the developers to confirm that indeed she is.