 Good afternoon, you fresh-faced, beautiful person. How are you doing today? For anybody who is a frequent watcher of my channel, you may be a bit confused at why I am now a virtual character in a video game. Well, today we're going to be talking about one of my special interests, RuneScape. But in particular, old-school RuneScape. OSRS. RuneScape was first released in the 4th of January 2001, and it's made by a games company called Jagex. It's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and it is of the fantasy variety. Within the game of RuneScape, you can expect to do many exciting things, such as cutting logs from a tree, of course, fishing for sharks with your bare hands, which I cannot do at this moment, running across the rooftops of Gillinor, and hunting for small red chin chompers that explode if you accidentally click on them. It's very irritating. But if the art of skilling doesn't take you fancy, maybe you might want to try your hand at a bit of slayer. There are many monsters, creatures and people that you can kill on RuneScape, dropping a wide variety of things based on the role of the dice. RNG. People of the RuneScape community like to call this act PVM, Player vs Monster. But if killing virtual creatures doesn't take you fancy even further, you can actually kill other players in what is called PVP. Now, sometimes in the game these two worlds collide, and quite recently I've been doing a lot of PVM, Player vs Monster, in the wilderness killing some of the wilderness bosses. But one of the key attributes of this wilderness is that anyone can kill you at any point, and it is extremely anxiety-provoking. The only times that I've ever stepped into the wilderness is to complete some of these achievement diaries, and due to the recent release of the combat achievements, I've had to kill some of the wilderness bosses. RuneScape descriptions out of the way. Today I'm going to be talking about what makes RuneScape such an attractive thing for autistic people. And no, to any of you RuneScapers tuning into the channel, I am not being silly. I am not making a joke, because I know that within the gaming community, autistic and autism is very widely used as a... Well, for pretty much anything. Mostly negative things though. Hello everyone, and today we're going to be doing some astro-rune crafting whilst taking an autism test. So, without further ado, let's get into my top 5 reasons why RuneScape is attractive for autistic people. Number 1. By far the biggest reason why I gravitated towards RuneScape is its repetitiveness. Usually autistic adults like myself, we go through life, and sometimes just having something repetitive and mind-numbing to do while you're trying to chill out, occupies your brain and stops it from thinking about all the other stresses in life. Obviously a predilection for repetition. Very fancy. Some people that I know may watch me playing RuneScape, cutting trees, running across rooftops, fishing things, doing things that are very easy and almost factory-like. Doesn't seem very appealing, but for me it's been really useful as a coping mechanism. Furthermore, I actually started to get into audiobooks because of RuneScape. It turns out, listening to one of your favourite books whilst running on the rooftops of Gielinor is a quite pleasant experience. Much better than sitting and staring at the ceiling. Number 2. Input equals output. RuneScape is a very predictable game in some ways. Now I'm not talking about the drops, the things that you can get from monsters, those very rare items that you only see once in a blue moon. I'm talking about experience. Within RuneScape you have a multitude of different skills that you can level up at pretty much any time that you want. Some require money, some require a lot of tedious effort, and some you can click on one place and let it run for about 10 minutes. The thing that I really love about RuneScape is that the effort that I put in is always predictably rewarded. Sure, maybe if I'm going for a certain pet in the game, or if I'm going for a certain item, sometimes it's not so predictable, but due to the wide popularity of the game, people have developed drop rates on certain items, meaning that you have a rough idea of when you will get something. Even in things such as quests, there's multiple and various quest guides available on YouTube that you can watch at any time. They list the items that you need, the skills that you need, what you'll have to do, and you can go through it and you know exactly what is going to happen and when and how to deal with it. In life, input does not always equal output. It's often very much up to chance. It's very much up to different factors that you can't really control, but within RuneScape it's always like that. We autistic people tend to be a bit more logically driven in our behavior and thought patterns, meaning that things like RuneScape, where the amount of result that you get is equal to the amount that you put in, it's very soothing, it's very rewarding, it's very cathartic in a sense. Okay, that's a bit exaggerating. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But the point is, is that it's a very predictable environment and quite often we struggle with unpredictable things, like life, like pursuing something in the real life. It's very unpredictable and quite often we like to gravitate towards things that give the rewards, that give rewards or success or failure based on a certain set of principles. Not all of us, of course, but especially in the scientific literature, a lot of the research points to this sort of mechanism and why we like it so much. Number three, social interaction. Now, if you have a basic understanding of autism, you will know that autistic people tend to struggle a little bit in the social department. This is because autistic people are not exactly wired biologically to be good at social interaction. It's something that you kind of have to work on just like with other skills in life, whereas non-autistic people or neurotypicals may find it a lot easier to do this because it's more of an inbuilt mechanism. Games like Reanscape offer you an opportunity to play a character. It allows you to communicate with text. It allows you to build friendships with people that you want friendships with and ignore those that you don't. I couldn't remember in the good old days when people in the game used to have their own house and you could go into their houses and there'd be loads of people having a little house party. That was really great because that was my first experience of a party. Although removed quite heavily from how actual real life parties go, it still was a first for me. In my adulthood, I've worked on a lot of my social skills and I feel very confident in real life scenarios, but I still have quite a low social battery, meaning that socialising on a regular basis does tend to drain my energy quite a lot. Sometimes I just want to hop onto a game and text one of my friends while I'm playing, while I'm doing my mindless activities, and it's a very therapeutic thing for me. With the creation of new social platforms like Discord, which is made for gamers, if I'm feeling like I want to chat, I can always hop on a voice call with one of my mates. With the production of various social applications, things like Discord allow you to voice call with people in the game. There are many communities dedicated to the RuneScape Life and finding friends and like-minded people can be as easy as joining a clan. Yes, of course, the anonymous nature of social media platforms and RuneScape does mean that sometimes you can run into some arseholes, but in general, you just gotta do a little bit of weeding to find the good eggs. 4. Distraction Now, this may be a little bit of a negative, because quite often in life, things that distract us from productive things are often forters' bad things, you know, things that you shouldn't do. And honestly, there's a lot of people within the game who are actually addicted to playing RuneScape, and it can be a big problem for them progressing in life. But whenever people talk about the difficulties around gaming, I always point them to everybody's favorite friend, the television, or the phone if you don't have a TV. Watching a movie or watching a TV series is perhaps the least productive thing that you can do, unless you're watching a documentary or unless you're a film student and you're wanting to learn some new camera angles. This is because games actually give you a pathway to learning a new skill. Now, that skill may not be incredibly applicable, but it's still a skill. You're still learning something, you're still challenging yourself. With RuneScape, there is always something to do. There's collection logs that you can fill, combat achievements, regular achievements, quests, mini-quests, skills, mini-games, there's so much that you can do on RuneScape. Sometimes you may feel like it's really hard not to stop playing. It's really difficult to pull yourself away from the screen. The thing is, autistic people tend to struggle a lot with anxiety. We also tend to have a lot of mental health difficulties because of early life experiences with bullying and social isolation and ridicule. So having something that kind of takes your mind away from real life for a while and offers you an alternative and something to work towards and a new world to explore, it's a very inviting thing. You can do this from the safety of your house. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to travel anywhere. You can switch on your computer or whip your phone out and get straight into RuneScape. Sometimes a little bit of distraction is actually quite therapeutic, but if you do find yourself with a lot of addictive tendencies, maybe it's a good idea to steer clear of good old RuneScape. Number five, the last point that I'm going to be covering. With the popularity of the game, there are so many YouTubers who have started up channels talking about RuneScape. There are reddits and videos and podcasts and music dedicated to the game. And with all this content comes a lot of information. For me, one of the most attractive things about RuneScape is the wealth of information that you can absorb. Autistic people tend to gravitate towards certain things very heavily, meaning that we get very, very involved and focused on and willing to learn about anything to do with our special interest. Special interest is a little bit of an annoying term. Basically what it is is just a passion that someone has, but they're also autistic. So it's a bit of a weird one. But despite this annoying term, it does say a lot about a person, because in general, in life, people tend to follow a little bit of a, I don't know what you'd call it, a template for a person. You know, someone who loves rock and roll and loves the old metal. They're probably likely to like beer and like to play musical instruments and do things that are creative and anti-establishment like. Of course, that's just a stereotype, but autistic people tend to be a lot more pick and choose with their interests. Meaning that you can come across somebody who looks like a really macho man, but actually likes a little bit of salsa dancing. And their favorite TV show is SpongeBob SquarePants. There's a lot of variety in the interests of autistic people and I think because there is such a wealth of information and a lot of things to learn and a lot of videos to watch and a lot of things to do, it's a really attractive special interest. There is a lot of lore built into the Rainsgate game and I'm probably one of the minority here, but I really enjoy it. I really enjoy doing the quests. I really enjoy the challenges and rewards. I love doing things. Okay, going a bit loopy here. I enjoy the role-playing element of the game. Conquering big demons and battling through quests and making love with princesses. That's the kind of thing that I'm interested in. I know I'm drifting a little bit too far from the topic, but because Rainscape is such an intricate, complicated mass of stories and achievements and things that you can do, it really doesn't leave much room to get bored of the game. This is the reason why it's such a long-standing interest of mine. Even if I'm not playing Rainscape or just chilling or anything like that, I love to watch the YouTube channels. I love to learn how the bosses work. I like to know what the experience rate for certain things is. I just love learning about the game. Going so far to actually understand a lot of the later game mechanics for a lot of the crazy difficult bosses and not being able to do them. It's a bit useless, but I like learning about it. Anyway, that rounds up the video I really hope you have enjoyed. And if you liked this type of video, you can look forward to another one very soon. I'm going to be talking about the benefits that playing Rainscape has had on my life and possibly in a very future episode I'll be talking about the negatives. To all my Rainscape lovers, thank you very much for tuning in to listen to an episode that I've been wanting to make for a long time now. And to any of my autism related viewers, I hope that this has given you a good insight into why I love Rainscape and why I think that a lot of people on Rainscape, especially the high level ones, are probably autistic too. Social medias, of course, at Asperdisc Grove, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And if you are a Rainscape yourself and you're autistic and you want to come chat to me about Rainscape, then give me a message on my email address asperdiscgrove at gmail.com. Thank you so much to my Patreon supporters, specifically Mr Patrick Veddy for always supporting me with my work. It really does mean the world. And for everybody else, thank you for tuning in and I hope to see you in a later episode. See you later, folks!