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A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism fre

A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism frequently there are feeding issues, but what's going on in the "simulation" is very not clear to me. Similarly, I don't understand the decisions related to the driving environment: it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions. Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself. Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary is a skill that's harder (as I understand it) for those on the autism spectrum, but I don't think that makes every application equivalent to masking.

s777 1y ago
> like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I can relate to this in that I barely have any energy in the mornings to do anything no matter how early I set my alarm, then end up skipping everything except the bare minimum to function, or maybe less depending on if I happen to have more energy that day.
- timcobb 1y ago
  Is there a connection to autism there?
  - s777 1y ago
    Not sure, it's just my experience and I was diagnosed autistic at an early age
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Autism has become a culturally dominant force that's displaced other kinds of neurodiversity almost completely. All kinds of people have to "mask" aspects of themselves to get along. Black people have to talk white, Asian people have to present themselves in a way white people think is assertive. Gay people have to stay closeted. Just try academia when you grew up in a working class family. The "simulator" paradigm pretends to promote empathy but it actually does the opposite.
    - true_religion 1y ago
      What other kinds of neurodivergence is it masking? You did give examples, but only for ways it perhaps fails in promoting empathy for groups with similar problems.
      - exmadscientist 1y ago
        I, personally, just really really hate how many people use "neurodiverse" as a synonym for "autistic". I am not neurotypical but am very much not autistic, and I'm far from the only one.
        aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        Indeed using the term "neurodiverse" only makes sense if you also want to include, for example, psychopaths (another form of neurodiversity) in the group that you want to describe.
        true_religion 1y ago
        I don’t see any reason not to include psychopathy. It’s not a synonym for evil: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...
      - Aurornis 1y ago
        I don't think masking is necessarily the right word, but when people start self-diagnosing themselves they often miss the correct problem in favor of what's popular on their social media feeds. Right now, Autism and/or ADHD are the two that are most prevalent on social media. Many people, especially younger people who spend a lot of time on Reddit, TikTok, or other sites, see these diagnoses trend with vague descriptions about what they entail. When they encounter struggles, they recall those vague descriptions, make a connection, and assume their life problems are due to the diagnosis. It's not uncommon to read accounts of people who describe their symptoms as textbook social anxiety or depression who will nevertheless insist they have "AuDHD" as self-diagnosed via their social media consumption. It can actually be hard to break them out of one preferred diagnosis and get them going down the right path to address the problem. An example: Someone develops an eating disorder, but they read on Reddit that forgetting to eat and having low energy for schoolwork can be a symptoms of ADHD. They self-diagnose as ADHD and avoid addressing their very obvious eating disorder problem. They might even get insulted when someone suggests they have an eating disorder, insisting that the other person must not understand ADHD. This pattern isn't unique to autism or ADHD. It's common to all trending internet diagnoses. You will find communities where everyone convinces themselves they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Doctors who treat those two conditions are currently rejecting referrals at a high rate due to extreme self-diagnosis via TikTok. The people self-diagnosing with those conditions usually do have something wrong, but they've latched on to one explanation that doesn't fit and they won't let go because they think it explains everything about them.
  - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
    Ya, I'm curious about this as well. I'm not a morning person, and certainly am always just-scraping-by until about 1 pm. But is this some mild autism? Or is this just how I am? Or is there even a sensible distinction between those two phrases?
    - dpark 1y ago
      > But is this some mild autism? Everyone seems to self-diagnose as slightly autistic these days. “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.” I think this is maybe related to imposter syndrome. “There are people who can easily do this thing that I struggle with. Maybe I’m not qualified./Maybe I’m autistic.”. This thought process assumes others aren’t struggling and also tends to look to those who excel rather than the average so it’s biased anyway.
      - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
        Ya, I tend to agree. In fact, even if I _do_ have something, I think I'd rather not know. Whatever it is, it isn't too severe, so a diagnosis would mostly be helpful for getting medication. I have my own coping strategies and am able to navigate through life pretty much like everyone else, imperfectly but still making it. Having a diagnosis would not help me in this situation. I know some people feel that having a diagnosis can make a difference, and perhaps it is more important if you have something in an extreme form. But idk if I have something, and even if I do, I don't think the label would help me
      - Timwi 1y ago
        > “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.” I would love to live in a society in which everyone is allowed to have personal quirks and their own personal stuff to deal with without being judged for it and without needing a label like “autism” to excuse it.
        tpmoney 1y ago
- anthomtb 1y ago
  I feel like setting your alarm earlier, thus reducing the amount of sleep you are getting, may be the wrong thing to do.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Yup, getting up earlier only works if you go to sleep earlier, too. But that's not for everyone, some people are just night owls.
derefr 1y ago
> like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. If you're talking about what happens after the first day, I think it's not due to any of the "stats" but rather because your first day is long and so you're running late on the second day, and for whatever reason you have nothing ready-to-eat at home. (Might be related to that option to go to the grocery store that you probably didn't take.) In other words, it's seemingly a narrative-driven obstacle. > it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions. Could be a rental car. Though my guess here is that the author actually comes from a place where the combination of culture and socioeconomics means they commute via public transit; and so they're actually trying to translate their experiences of the social impingement of public transit into analogous experiences when driving. (Personally, I think a better translation would be being stuck in gridlock, or getting on a highway via an onramp where you keep getting cut off, etc, where there's an autistic itch there to get the other human drivers to realize that, when driving, they should "realize they're all cogs in a global optimization problem and so drive as predictably as possible, in order to decrease burstiness and so increase throughput, even at the expense of their individual perceived end-to-end latency.") > Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself. AFAICT the "masking" gauge seems to be some rolled-up combination of 1. an odd domain-specific form willpower ("spoons" but you can only spend them on masking-related tasks, and when depleted you can't mask even if you still have motivation to do other things), with 2. a measure how close others are to deducing from your behavior that you are in fact on the autistic spectrum. (As if that's something you could ever expect to keep your coworkers and boss from realizing about you over years of continuous interaction.) I say this because of the interaction I encountered about coming to a charity event, where literally being explicit about how you have a problem dealing with that kind of social situation... decreases the "masking" gauge. If it was purely #1, I'd expect the gauge to go up. It's only under interpretation #2 where it would go down. (Or maybe you could describe the "masking" gauge in classical D&D terms as a WIS stat where masking attempts are Will-based saving throws?) Honestly, I'd like to just see the source code for this. I'm surprised it's not linked; I feel like reading the source (hopefully with a lot of code comments about why the given heuristics were chosen) is the obvious "next step" to the game communicating what it wants to communicate.
tcdent 1y ago
You have definitively diagnosed yourself as not being on the spectrum. Hard to describe, but there is a tendency to self-sabotage (for lack of a better term) that you have to take into account. Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment. This is correlated with the amount of energy and attention you have to give to processing your environment, much like the health bars in the game UI.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  What if you're like gay and always struggling to stay in the closet?
  - MrDarcy 1y ago
    Then you’re like a closeted gay autistic person. Speaking for a friend.
  - jancsika 1y ago
    Did you play the game? If I'm understanding it correctly (a big if), every single time the author is forced to leave out edge cases when talking to management it is a form of masking. They have to suppress their natural urge[1] to list the edge cases, and come up with a more appropriate message based on a non-intuitive guess about the salient points their interlocutor wants to know. That implies active work to mask that is almost certainly measured in hours per day, across nearly every domain of communication and human interaction. How many hours a day does the average employee spend talking to coworkers about their sexual preference? Edit: 1: An urge probably backed up by a good faith, well-reasoned, ethical understanding of the literal words that the manager spoke to them!
- jancsika 1y ago
  > Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment. But in the context of the beginning of a game, people without autism are probably confused. Why isn't the car's environment already tuned to the character's exact specifications? I get some of the potential reasons why after playing the game for a bit. But I still would have liked to see a callback to this. E.g., if I drive to lunch with coworkers I could choose to mask by letting the passenger tune the radio. Then the next morning I get a painful sound when I turn on the car. Ah, I get it now! That seems like more satisfying gameplay-- maybe the game already does it and I died too early to see!
jasonsb 1y ago
> A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism frequently there are feeding issues, but what's going on in the "simulation" is very not clear to me. I lost interest after the breakfast question. For someone who’s physically fit (which this person likely is) skipping breakfast shouldn’t cause a noticeable drop in energy. If it does, then there may be more going on than just autism.
- 12345hn6789 1y ago
  You don't feel it immediately. Notice the bar doesn't reset the next day. You don't feel breakfast immediately but your workout later in the day and tomorrow will be affected by this.
- serf 1y ago
  you also don't fall asleep at your desk as a response to a birthday party in the office early in the morning after a good nights' sleep, but if you play a one-sided game in this that's what happens. it's not a reality simulator, incredibly few video games are. the whole thing seems like a conflicted struggle between "I want to make a game" and "I need to get my points across", often to the detriment of the game-part. It's an interesting concept though.
  - curtisblaine 1y ago
    > It's an interesting concept though Why? It's a multiple choice game with different outcomes. Hardly groundbreaking.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      I think the subject matter makes it interesting conceptually, not gameplay. Execution matters regardless, but not all innovations are in mechanics of gameplay.
    - hluska 1y ago
      Can you name another multiple choice game about this subject?
bbwbsb 1y ago
Of course you don't get it: you're not autistic. Did you expect to get it? There's what's that quote about good art disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed. Eating is very stressful for many autistic people because of trauma and lack of (non-enmeshing) support in childhood. They don't learn how to make a comfortable environment for themselves or that it is even possible. Every meal becomes stressful. Force feeding or depending completely on others. Masking goes so deep, it's just not possible to easily convey with words, because after a lifetime of masking you don't even notice all the things that you do that count. "Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary" has a hidden part. Presenting what behavior? To whom? Presenting autism-coded behavior around autistic people is stress-free.
- anakaine 1y ago
  This is absolutely spot on.
- alex77456 1y ago
  I am, and ironically it prevented me from being able to enjoy this; too many inaccuracies and absolutist perspective frustrated me. Like others said, skipping breakfast should not be that big of a deal for a reasonably healthy adult, we didn't evolve having 3 meals a day. Intermittent fasting is a thing too. 'Masking' parameter misses the point in my opinion. Picking what I would personally realistically do (having adapted over the years) causes it to drop to 0 over a few days. Picking what i think author wants me to pick, same result. Yet somehow I managed not to get fired in 3 days irl. I get it, it's an illustration of 'autism is hard' for 'normies'. But it was painfully close to being realistic/enjoyable too. Not to say it's not useful, ADHD popups were 10/10, general vibe was spot on, will probably forward it to a few friends; it's just not nuanced enough to not annoy me personally. One of rare times where I can be blunt honest and hopefully not come across arrogant.
  - tpmoney 1y ago
    > Like others said, skipping breakfast should not be that big of a deal for a reasonably healthy adult, we didn't evolve having 3 meals a day. Intermittent fasting is a thing too. I haven’t played the simulator but I wonder if it’s also trying to account for more than just the physiological effects. A friend of mine has autism, and we were getting together one day. On the way over I suggested getting some food since it was close to dinner time. They agreed, gave me some items and I bought us some food. When I arrived they were amped up and excited to show me something. I set the food down, and I ate while they were showing me this thing that had them all excited. They ate some of the food too, but were clearly distracted and not all that hungry. No big deal. But a few hours later I noticed they’d gone real quiet and seemed down or anxious about something. Turned out they had been worrying for the last hour that they had offended me because they didn’t eat all the food and they knew they weren’t going to eat all the food because they were going through a phase where eating in general was just a difficult thing to want to do and so were eating just the minimums they needed to not have other problems. The entire later half of their evening and their excitement over their new thing had been badly deflated all because of a decision / need to not eat all the food on offer. Never mind that this was nothing new for them. Never mind that I could easily see myself skipping food just for the excitement they were experiencing before factoring in any sensory phases. Never mind that it would be a truly shit thing for me to be offended because they only ate some of the greasy fast food I picked up for us. No this simple and normal act caused them an hour of stress and anxiety over worrying if they’d crossed some social line for doing something I didn’t even notice until they said something. But it doesn’t matter whether I noticed. Their brain latched onto the “you did something abnormal, people might have noticed, now you need to analyze everything that’s happened to figure out what you next move should be” train of thought and it would not let go. So at least from what I’ve seen, choosing to eat or not can have impacts beyond just “hungry”
anaisbetts 1y ago
> Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions. I think the point is that for autistic people, a lot of things in their day-to-day life that randomly happen and can't be controlled for, can be the equivalent of just, random people walking by and punching you in the arm all day. Each individual punch might not hurt, and describing the incident to a neurotypical person is probably met with "Eh, that doesn't sound that bad". An entire day's worth leaves you with a pretty sore arm though.
nedt 1y ago
I guess the personal vehicle is fine as long as you don't drive in traffic. Maybe you try cycling on your typical route to work to be more immersed in the traffic and all the stress it causes.
SwtCyber 1y ago
It's trying to give a feel, not a textbook definition
robertpateii 1y ago
Having to select self care and breakfast every morning (and meds on some routes) is a good reminder for me of the importance of those things in the long run of a whole day. I don’t think I’m any farther on the spectrum than the average software developer, but it’s still a daily decision to be made. (Of course for those people with different breakfast patterns - you still have a best approach for yourself that you must decide to follow every morning.) Similarly for the masking meter, I don’t know what it feels like exactly to have mask. However isn’t it hard, in varying degrees, to constantly determine and go through with the right forward-looking choice in real life? My guess is what’s a challenge for some is also a heavy toll on others. Habits help with much of the daily decisions, but are of course their own challenge to implement and maintain.
blablabla123 1y ago
Autism with adults is rarely presented and very individual anyway. I like to see such issues like some wound. Sure you can continue your daily chores. But if you accidentally rub against it, it gets worse and worse. Eventually you need to make a longer break so it doesn't get infected like crazy. The whole masking thing isn't about skill. (Like in the intro, the guy is in fact even outgoing at times...) It's rather that you need to run behavior with software instead of hardware acceleration. Possible but it sucks. That being said, the whole thing with falling asleep at the desk is a tough manifestation. For me it's less drastic but gets me into problems in the long run.

s777 1y ago

> like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I can relate to this in that I barely have any energy in the mornings to do anything no matter how early I set my alarm, then end up skipping everything except the bare minimum to function, or maybe less depending on if I happen to have more energy that day.

timcobb 1y ago
Is there a connection to autism there?
- s777 1y ago
  Not sure, it's just my experience and I was diagnosed autistic at an early age
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Autism has become a culturally dominant force that's displaced other kinds of neurodiversity almost completely. All kinds of people have to "mask" aspects of themselves to get along. Black people have to talk white, Asian people have to present themselves in a way white people think is assertive. Gay people have to stay closeted. Just try academia when you grew up in a working class family. The "simulator" paradigm pretends to promote empathy but it actually does the opposite.
  - true_religion 1y ago
    What other kinds of neurodivergence is it masking? You did give examples, but only for ways it perhaps fails in promoting empathy for groups with similar problems.
    - exmadscientist 1y ago
      I, personally, just really really hate how many people use "neurodiverse" as a synonym for "autistic". I am not neurotypical but am very much not autistic, and I'm far from the only one.
      - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        Indeed using the term "neurodiverse" only makes sense if you also want to include, for example, psychopaths (another form of neurodiversity) in the group that you want to describe.
        true_religion 1y ago
        I don’t see any reason not to include psychopathy. It’s not a synonym for evil: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      I don't think masking is necessarily the right word, but when people start self-diagnosing themselves they often miss the correct problem in favor of what's popular on their social media feeds. Right now, Autism and/or ADHD are the two that are most prevalent on social media. Many people, especially younger people who spend a lot of time on Reddit, TikTok, or other sites, see these diagnoses trend with vague descriptions about what they entail. When they encounter struggles, they recall those vague descriptions, make a connection, and assume their life problems are due to the diagnosis. It's not uncommon to read accounts of people who describe their symptoms as textbook social anxiety or depression who will nevertheless insist they have "AuDHD" as self-diagnosed via their social media consumption. It can actually be hard to break them out of one preferred diagnosis and get them going down the right path to address the problem. An example: Someone develops an eating disorder, but they read on Reddit that forgetting to eat and having low energy for schoolwork can be a symptoms of ADHD. They self-diagnose as ADHD and avoid addressing their very obvious eating disorder problem. They might even get insulted when someone suggests they have an eating disorder, insisting that the other person must not understand ADHD. This pattern isn't unique to autism or ADHD. It's common to all trending internet diagnoses. You will find communities where everyone convinces themselves they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Doctors who treat those two conditions are currently rejecting referrals at a high rate due to extreme self-diagnosis via TikTok. The people self-diagnosing with those conditions usually do have something wrong, but they've latched on to one explanation that doesn't fit and they won't let go because they think it explains everything about them.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  Ya, I'm curious about this as well. I'm not a morning person, and certainly am always just-scraping-by until about 1 pm. But is this some mild autism? Or is this just how I am? Or is there even a sensible distinction between those two phrases?
  - dpark 1y ago
    > But is this some mild autism? Everyone seems to self-diagnose as slightly autistic these days. “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.” I think this is maybe related to imposter syndrome. “There are people who can easily do this thing that I struggle with. Maybe I’m not qualified./Maybe I’m autistic.”. This thought process assumes others aren’t struggling and also tends to look to those who excel rather than the average so it’s biased anyway.
    - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
      Ya, I tend to agree. In fact, even if I _do_ have something, I think I'd rather not know. Whatever it is, it isn't too severe, so a diagnosis would mostly be helpful for getting medication. I have my own coping strategies and am able to navigate through life pretty much like everyone else, imperfectly but still making it. Having a diagnosis would not help me in this situation. I know some people feel that having a diagnosis can make a difference, and perhaps it is more important if you have something in an extreme form. But idk if I have something, and even if I do, I don't think the label would help me
    - Timwi 1y ago
      > “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.” I would love to live in a society in which everyone is allowed to have personal quirks and their own personal stuff to deal with without being judged for it and without needing a label like “autism” to excuse it.
      - tpmoney 1y ago
anthomtb 1y ago
I feel like setting your alarm earlier, thus reducing the amount of sleep you are getting, may be the wrong thing to do.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Yup, getting up earlier only works if you go to sleep earlier, too. But that's not for everyone, some people are just night owls.

derefr 1y ago

> like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. If you're talking about what happens after the first day, I think it's not due to any of the "stats" but rather because your first day is long and so you're running late on the second day, and for whatever reason you have nothing ready-to-eat at home. (Might be related to that option to go to the grocery store that you probably didn't take.) In other words, it's seemingly a narrative-driven obstacle. > it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions. Could be a rental car. Though my guess here is that the author actually comes from a place where the combination of culture and socioeconomics means they commute via public transit; and so they're actually trying to translate their experiences of the social impingement of public transit into analogous experiences when driving. (Personally, I think a better translation would be being stuck in gridlock, or getting on a highway via an onramp where you keep getting cut off, etc, where there's an autistic itch there to get the other human drivers to realize that, when driving, they should "realize they're all cogs in a global optimization problem and so drive as predictably as possible, in order to decrease burstiness and so increase throughput, even at the expense of their individual perceived end-to-end latency.") > Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself. AFAICT the "masking" gauge seems to be some rolled-up combination of 1. an odd domain-specific form willpower ("spoons" but you can only spend them on masking-related tasks, and when depleted you can't mask even if you still have motivation to do other things), with 2. a measure how close others are to deducing from your behavior that you are in fact on the autistic spectrum. (As if that's something you could ever expect to keep your coworkers and boss from realizing about you over years of continuous interaction.) I say this because of the interaction I encountered about coming to a charity event, where literally being explicit about how you have a problem dealing with that kind of social situation... decreases the "masking" gauge. If it was purely #1, I'd expect the gauge to go up. It's only under interpretation #2 where it would go down. (Or maybe you could describe the "masking" gauge in classical D&D terms as a WIS stat where masking attempts are Will-based saving throws?) Honestly, I'd like to just see the source code for this. I'm surprised it's not linked; I feel like reading the source (hopefully with a lot of code comments about why the given heuristics were chosen) is the obvious "next step" to the game communicating what it wants to communicate.

tcdent 1y ago

You have definitively diagnosed yourself as not being on the spectrum. Hard to describe, but there is a tendency to self-sabotage (for lack of a better term) that you have to take into account. Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment. This is correlated with the amount of energy and attention you have to give to processing your environment, much like the health bars in the game UI.

PaulHoule 1y ago
What if you're like gay and always struggling to stay in the closet?
- MrDarcy 1y ago
  Then you’re like a closeted gay autistic person. Speaking for a friend.
- jancsika 1y ago
  Did you play the game? If I'm understanding it correctly (a big if), every single time the author is forced to leave out edge cases when talking to management it is a form of masking. They have to suppress their natural urge[1] to list the edge cases, and come up with a more appropriate message based on a non-intuitive guess about the salient points their interlocutor wants to know. That implies active work to mask that is almost certainly measured in hours per day, across nearly every domain of communication and human interaction. How many hours a day does the average employee spend talking to coworkers about their sexual preference? Edit: 1: An urge probably backed up by a good faith, well-reasoned, ethical understanding of the literal words that the manager spoke to them!
jancsika 1y ago
> Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment. But in the context of the beginning of a game, people without autism are probably confused. Why isn't the car's environment already tuned to the character's exact specifications? I get some of the potential reasons why after playing the game for a bit. But I still would have liked to see a callback to this. E.g., if I drive to lunch with coworkers I could choose to mask by letting the passenger tune the radio. Then the next morning I get a painful sound when I turn on the car. Ah, I get it now! That seems like more satisfying gameplay-- maybe the game already does it and I died too early to see!

jasonsb 1y ago

> A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism frequently there are feeding issues, but what's going on in the "simulation" is very not clear to me. I lost interest after the breakfast question. For someone who’s physically fit (which this person likely is) skipping breakfast shouldn’t cause a noticeable drop in energy. If it does, then there may be more going on than just autism.

12345hn6789 1y ago
You don't feel it immediately. Notice the bar doesn't reset the next day. You don't feel breakfast immediately but your workout later in the day and tomorrow will be affected by this.
serf 1y ago
you also don't fall asleep at your desk as a response to a birthday party in the office early in the morning after a good nights' sleep, but if you play a one-sided game in this that's what happens. it's not a reality simulator, incredibly few video games are. the whole thing seems like a conflicted struggle between "I want to make a game" and "I need to get my points across", often to the detriment of the game-part. It's an interesting concept though.
- curtisblaine 1y ago
  > It's an interesting concept though Why? It's a multiple choice game with different outcomes. Hardly groundbreaking.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    I think the subject matter makes it interesting conceptually, not gameplay. Execution matters regardless, but not all innovations are in mechanics of gameplay.
  - hluska 1y ago
    Can you name another multiple choice game about this subject?

bbwbsb 1y ago

Of course you don't get it: you're not autistic. Did you expect to get it? There's what's that quote about good art disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed. Eating is very stressful for many autistic people because of trauma and lack of (non-enmeshing) support in childhood. They don't learn how to make a comfortable environment for themselves or that it is even possible. Every meal becomes stressful. Force feeding or depending completely on others. Masking goes so deep, it's just not possible to easily convey with words, because after a lifetime of masking you don't even notice all the things that you do that count. "Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary" has a hidden part. Presenting what behavior? To whom? Presenting autism-coded behavior around autistic people is stress-free.

anakaine 1y ago
This is absolutely spot on.
alex77456 1y ago
I am, and ironically it prevented me from being able to enjoy this; too many inaccuracies and absolutist perspective frustrated me. Like others said, skipping breakfast should not be that big of a deal for a reasonably healthy adult, we didn't evolve having 3 meals a day. Intermittent fasting is a thing too. 'Masking' parameter misses the point in my opinion. Picking what I would personally realistically do (having adapted over the years) causes it to drop to 0 over a few days. Picking what i think author wants me to pick, same result. Yet somehow I managed not to get fired in 3 days irl. I get it, it's an illustration of 'autism is hard' for 'normies'. But it was painfully close to being realistic/enjoyable too. Not to say it's not useful, ADHD popups were 10/10, general vibe was spot on, will probably forward it to a few friends; it's just not nuanced enough to not annoy me personally. One of rare times where I can be blunt honest and hopefully not come across arrogant.
- tpmoney 1y ago
  > Like others said, skipping breakfast should not be that big of a deal for a reasonably healthy adult, we didn't evolve having 3 meals a day. Intermittent fasting is a thing too. I haven’t played the simulator but I wonder if it’s also trying to account for more than just the physiological effects. A friend of mine has autism, and we were getting together one day. On the way over I suggested getting some food since it was close to dinner time. They agreed, gave me some items and I bought us some food. When I arrived they were amped up and excited to show me something. I set the food down, and I ate while they were showing me this thing that had them all excited. They ate some of the food too, but were clearly distracted and not all that hungry. No big deal. But a few hours later I noticed they’d gone real quiet and seemed down or anxious about something. Turned out they had been worrying for the last hour that they had offended me because they didn’t eat all the food and they knew they weren’t going to eat all the food because they were going through a phase where eating in general was just a difficult thing to want to do and so were eating just the minimums they needed to not have other problems. The entire later half of their evening and their excitement over their new thing had been badly deflated all because of a decision / need to not eat all the food on offer. Never mind that this was nothing new for them. Never mind that I could easily see myself skipping food just for the excitement they were experiencing before factoring in any sensory phases. Never mind that it would be a truly shit thing for me to be offended because they only ate some of the greasy fast food I picked up for us. No this simple and normal act caused them an hour of stress and anxiety over worrying if they’d crossed some social line for doing something I didn’t even notice until they said something. But it doesn’t matter whether I noticed. Their brain latched onto the “you did something abnormal, people might have noticed, now you need to analyze everything that’s happened to figure out what you next move should be” train of thought and it would not let go. So at least from what I’ve seen, choosing to eat or not can have impacts beyond just “hungry”

anaisbetts 1y ago

> Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions. I think the point is that for autistic people, a lot of things in their day-to-day life that randomly happen and can't be controlled for, can be the equivalent of just, random people walking by and punching you in the arm all day. Each individual punch might not hurt, and describing the incident to a neurotypical person is probably met with "Eh, that doesn't sound that bad". An entire day's worth leaves you with a pretty sore arm though.

nedt 1y ago

I guess the personal vehicle is fine as long as you don't drive in traffic. Maybe you try cycling on your typical route to work to be more immersed in the traffic and all the stress it causes.

SwtCyber 1y ago

It's trying to give a feel, not a textbook definition

robertpateii 1y ago

Having to select self care and breakfast every morning (and meds on some routes) is a good reminder for me of the importance of those things in the long run of a whole day. I don’t think I’m any farther on the spectrum than the average software developer, but it’s still a daily decision to be made. (Of course for those people with different breakfast patterns - you still have a best approach for yourself that you must decide to follow every morning.) Similarly for the masking meter, I don’t know what it feels like exactly to have mask. However isn’t it hard, in varying degrees, to constantly determine and go through with the right forward-looking choice in real life? My guess is what’s a challenge for some is also a heavy toll on others. Habits help with much of the daily decisions, but are of course their own challenge to implement and maintain.

blablabla123 1y ago

Autism with adults is rarely presented and very individual anyway. I like to see such issues like some wound. Sure you can continue your daily chores. But if you accidentally rub against it, it gets worse and worse. Eventually you need to make a longer break so it doesn't get infected like crazy. The whole masking thing isn't about skill. (Like in the intro, the guy is in fact even outgoing at times...) It's rather that you need to run behavior with software instead of hardware acceleration. Possible but it sucks. That being said, the whole thing with falling asleep at the desk is a tough manifestation. For me it's less drastic but gets me into problems in the long run.