A video game designed to help “hikikomori” escape from their voluntary isolation. Young people, many of them teenagers, locked in the house for monthssometimes for years, to avoid any contact with the world external, often also with people in one’s own emotional sphere, sometimes even the family members. In Japan the phenomenon has been codified with a word “hikikomori” which means exactly “stay apart”. In Bologna, during the XV Convention of the National Consortium of Social Cooperation Cgm, the “Italian” data were released that highlight a negative trend. The Ippocampo Cooperative in Vimercate in the province of Monza, estimated over 60 thousand cases of serious social withdrawal (the so-called hikikomori) throughout Italy with an increase recorded especially in conjunction with the pandemic and the years immediately following. This is why in the Dumbo spaces the same cooperative launched a videogame designed to help these boys – mostly hikkomori are young males – and girls to emerge from their isolation.
Challenges related to school subjects
It is no coincidence, because usually, it is precisely video games that take up a large part of the time of young people “on the sidelines”
The videogame presented in Bologna is called “At school with avatars” and it is a tool designed to hook kids in their isolation by talking one lingua to them use. Inside the game they will have to face some challenges related to school subjects. Subsequently they will be involved in manual activities which will gradually lead them to meet their peers. The goal is to make them know between them and bring them out of isolation by creating a different metaverse.
Games inside Minecraft
“We are talking about a hybrid project – explains Maria Gabriola Chetta – because we are proposing the pilot project within Minecraft. We chose Bologna to present it because it seems like a important square and resonance. Well in the video game there will be tutor experts present with their ‘avatars’, who will speak in chat with the boys, also present with their ‘avatar‘. A way to gradually welcome them into the outside world. It means breaking down a first barrier. They will not have to show their faces. The game works within the platform Minecraft like a sort of virtual trivial. With separate environments: one humanisticanother scientificanother mathematical. Let’s take content that already exists on the web, such as an episode of “La fisica che mi piace” (Physics I Like).
Gradual live activities
At the moment it is therefore a pilot project. «We want to start with a few guys through the social workers – explains Chetta – In the various teaching subjects we will propose the topics of greatest interest to them to encourage them to come out of their shell and to arouse their involvement in the outside world. This videogame will also include sending material for the use of the kids, such as Lego or other more analogical games. In this step we will move from virtual to digital. And in a subsequent step we plan to have these kids meet the tutor e involve them in live activities like going for an ice cream or visiting an exhibition.” Social workers and schools will also be involved in the overall project. The timing for departure? «We are looking for a financing to be able to leave in October with the first group of kids.”
