Tips to support your neurodiverse team

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The pandemic brought around a lot of change, and those who had maybe never considered themselves as neurodiverse were suddenly taken out of their comfort zone and faced with new challenges, new ways of life, and a whole lot of time at home with their own brain.

This has contributed to neurodiversity becoming a huge topic of conversation in the games industry.

I'm Hannah Corcoran, an associate producer at Auroch Digital with a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Psychological Research Methods. I'm a trained mental health first aider and a neurodiversity consultant. I also have OCD and ADHD. Neurodiversity has surrounded me my whole life, but it can be a tricky subject to understand.

Put simply: neurodiversity means the different ways brains can work and how they interpret information – not all humans are the same and not all humans think in identical ways. Just as we all have different interests, skills and motivations, we also all have totally different brains.

When it comes to the games industry, it's thought that around one in five people working in the industry is neurodivergent – a higher percentage than in the general UK population.

But why is it that so many neurodiverse folks find their way into games? Despite huge numbers, there's been very little research done to discover the correlation between neurodiversity and games industry careers, but it's thought that video games as an activity suit neurodivergent brains, so it's not hard to see how a love for playing them can result in a career.

So, with lots of neurodiverse brains working in the games industry today, how can managers and studios support their neurodivergent teams? Here, I