Throughout this course, we have been designing a game meant to teach children how to be inclusive of children with communication differences and disorders. Games and play help children learn and explore the world around them. We hope that by playing our game, kids will learn how to be kind to those with communication differences and help other children feel included and accepted!

All kids have some kind of play across cultures. We grow up playing games and playing with other children. It's how we make friends and explore the world around us. Playing helps kids practice social norms because lots of play mimics what they see in their life (Doebel & Lillard, 2022). Through role-playing games such as "house" kids will practice cultural norms of family. 

Playing games can also help kids see how their actions have consequences (Homer et al., 2020). Games often have feedback after there is a challenge. They can learn from that feedback if there is anything they should change for the next time the challenge comes up. Since games are set outside of the real world, they are in a low-stakes environment so they won't feel as discouraged if they do something wrong (Gee, 2005). They will be more likely to try again. Then, they can take what they learned in the game outside of the game after seeing how there are consequences to certain actions. 

Games can also be a way to help people develop empathy (Simonovits, 2018). Games have the chance for role-playing and being put in someone else's shoes. Kids can learn how their actions may affect someone else. Games can show children how their words have an impact. This is what we want to achieve with our game. 

The logic model we used as we designed our game was the Wise Intervention Logic Model. It starts at the maladaptive behavior, or the behavior that you are trying to change. For us, this would be negative attitudes towards others with communication differences. The model then goes to altered meanings, which is the process that changes behavior. For us, this is our game that will allow for players to learn how to interact with peers with communication differences in a low-stakes environment that has a growth mindset. It then ends with the self-enhancing cycle, which is the desired outcome. For us, this is positive attitudes towards others with communication differences and inclusivity of people with disabilities. 

We designed a narrative-based game to teach children how to communicate in inclusive ways. With the target demographic being elementary school aged students, we hope to give a younger audience productive experiences and tools for interactions with their peers with disabilities. 

It is a video game in which players get to make a new friend through a choose your own adventure format. 

Through gameplay, players meet characters with communication deficits in relatable scenarios (lunch, classroom activities, recess, etc.). Through interactions with the characters, players are prompted to interact with and learn how to be inclusive toward peers of all abilities.

In our game, the five characters each have a separate communication difference: Stuttering, Selective Mutism, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), speaking English as a second language, and having articulation issues (lisp). By interacting with our characters, we hope to give players experiences in a safe, risk-free environment, where they make mistakes and learn from them.