Games Inclusion Lab: Accessible Games with Neurodivergent Adults Through Iterative Play and Design

The Games Inclusion Lab (GameIN) action research project, conducted by Lusófona University researchers in Lisbon, examines how an iterative co-design approach can produce playful, accessible games for neurodivergent adults, specifically autistic people and people with intellectual disabilities. The central premise is that games should be developed in frequent contact with everyday contexts rather than for a predefined target audience, with the aim of promoting play that people can share regardless of their individual skills. The paper argues that therapeutic framing has often overshadowed entertainment for these audiences, producing exclusion, and positions playfulness and "CoLiberation," a collaborative state of shared enjoyment, as alternatives.

The study draws on monthly sessions, thirty in total, held with three groups across two NGOs in Portugal, involving 28 neurodivergent participants aged 19 to 54 (mean age around 30) alongside support workers, who acted as collaborators rather than subjects. Sessions were observed by research team members and filmed with 360-degree cameras. The resulting games kit combines a common Monster Lab theme across three formats (board game, physical, and mobile), along with two adapted commercial tabletop games, Speed Cups and TEAM3. Playtesting shaped concrete changes, including removing cards with overly complex illustrations, replacing competitive free-for-all rules with cooperative and team-based variants, and dropping sensory-deprivation mechanics that participants rejected.

Findings for the mobile version indicate that six of the participants who completed Monster Lab 2.0 did so independently, three needed minimal help, and two could not complete the harder levels without continuous support. The authors note that self-reported enjoyment may be inflated by the participant population's tendency to be agreeable, and they explicitly caution that verbal feedback must be cross-checked against observation grids. The paper's own limitations include a small, regionally concentrated sample and the absence of longitudinal data on sustained engagement, which the authors plan to address in a version 3.0 release and wider dissemination.