“We’ve All Come Together”: A Board-Gaming Approach for Working with Autistic People

Board games offer autistic people an affordable, structured, and collaborative setting for practicing social skills such as turn-taking, cooperation, and theory of mind. This study argues that peer-driven, strengths-based board game play can serve as an engaging alternative to traditional social-skills interventions, allowing neurodiverse players to build cognitive and social competencies in an authentic context. The authors situate their work within a board game market that exceeded $7.2 billion in 2017 and grew substantially during 2020, and they note that autistic individuals are overrepresented among board gamers, suggesting that games already function as a meaningful social outlet for this population.

The research is qualitative and interpretative, drawing on two linked interventions. In the first, fifteen autistic children aged 10 to 15 played social deception and cooperative games such as Dixit, Codenames, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and Spyfall weekly over a school year in a UK school setting. Thematic analysis of focus groups identified three outcomes: deception games sustained engagement while building perspective-taking and lie-detection skills, play strengthened peer relationships and classroom cooperation, and games provided an enjoyable break from routine schoolwork that encouraged turn-taking and flexibility. A replication with nineteen autistic adults aged 21 to 61 at a community center extended these observations to non-school settings.

The adult study, which ran for twelve weeks with primarily Dixit and between twelve and sixteen participants per session, was analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis and produced three themes: stronger group cohesion and friendship, improved memory and adaptation across repeated sessions despite early difficulties, and greater independence and autonomy as reported by both participants and staff. Participants initially struggled with rules and independent decision-making but were eventually able to play without assistance, with peer contact identified as the most critical element. Memory and physical challenges constrained which games could be used.

The authors conclude that board games can foster social connectedness, cognitive development, and independence among autistic children and adults. Their evidence rests on self-report and staff observation rather than standardized measures, and the sample sizes and single-site settings limit broader generalization. The study was funded by Game In Lab.