Games to Teach Autistic Kids Social Skills: Market and Efficacy Verdict
Is there an untapped market for video games that teach autistic kids social skills? This episode walks through the companion whitepaper: the market is real (roughly $2.3B in autism therapy, $1.1B in digital therapeutics) but littered with failures, most notably Akili's fall from a $1B valuation to a $34M sale. The research points to a generalization problem: skills learned on screen rarely transfer to real interaction, and turning a preferred medium into overt therapy can undercut the motivation that made it work. The version with a fighting chance is a game-as-social-venue, co-designed with autistic people and sold to schools and clinics.