Ezra: video games, creativity and the youngest testimony of the 3rd Meeting

The youngest testimony of the 3rd Asperger World Meeting was not a long talk: it was a few-minute video by Ezra, 13, a member of the Asperger para Asperger Virtual Social and Educational Club. And it left one of the clearest ideas of the day.

Creativity as a strength

“Because I have Asperger, thanks to this condition, it's helping me a lot to be more productive with creativity. Not many people like being creative, and being creative is a very important thing.”

Ezra makes video games: he designs worlds in great detail and draws on what happens around him — a goal in a football match, for instance — to turn it into a mechanic or a scenario.

The club as a place to show and improve

His account puts a finger on something that keeps coming up in the community: the lack of a place to show what you make.

“When I have no one to show my projects to, I show them at the club, because all my friends are interested. They give me feedback, they tell me what I could improve or add, and that makes my projects better.”

He has no formal development team, but he does have “my friends at the Asperger club who give me feedback all the time.” The special interest stops being something done alone and becomes a reason to belong — the same idea that appears in Amina Donskaya's talk about photography and in the music of the Meeting.

A message for other kids

“Making video games is very productive: it helps you improve your creativity, think harder, create stories, and even make music. You can create whatever comes into your head.”

Ezra donated to the cause of the Meeting. His initiative — presented then as Imaginamos — is now called Projectopia.

Why it matters

In an edition devoted to suicide prevention, a teenager saying that his condition makes him good at something, and that he has a community that celebrates it, is exactly the kind of protective factor the professionals talked about.