Multiplayer gaming and autism: Social communication through repetitive behaviours

Abstract The popularity of online multiplayer gaming among primary‐school students, including autistic students, has rapidly increased over the past decade. Social characteristics and interactions of autistic students have been a focus of research, but less attention has been given to the relationship between online multiplayer gaming and social communication, and repetitive behaviours. This paper reports on a case study that described three students' at‐screen behaviours with Minecraft and peer face‐to‐face interactions with Minecraft resources. Video‐recorded observations were conducted in home and school sites. Empirical evidence from multimodal interactional analysis demonstrated that Minecraft enabled autistic students to engage socially in a strengths‐based way with benefits for communication, socialisation and collaboration. Recommendations are made for teachers to consider using online multiplayer games in multimodal ways that support students' effective use of social communication by targeting their repetitive tendencies.