Put two gamers on the mic at the same time ans you have a video game lovefest that would go on for days if we had room for it. Joe talks with Ian Hamilton, Ian Hamilton, fresh off his time at co-directing the Gaming Accessibility Conference to talk the latest in accessible gaming including the momentum accessibility is gaining in recent months, and a possible new event for gamers in Europe.
Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2018 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Transcript
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Hide transcriptTranscribed by Grecia Ramirez
Almost live from beautiful San Diego, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2018, featuring team coverage from across the Exhibit Hall and beyond, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Now, here’s Joe Steincamp.
JOE STEINCAMP: Hey, everyone. Joe Steincamp here, outside of one of the meeting rooms. In fact, we were just in, talking to Xbox just a moment ago with Ian Hamilton.
Ian, thanks for being on the program once again.
IAN HAMILTON: Thanks for having me.
JS: It’s been a while since we sat in a bar and talked about video games at all. Try and stay on task now, because God knows I can get off and talk about all sorts of gaming things for hours and hours, but –
AH: Which is the best kind of problem to have; right?
JS: Exactly. What a shame. What a shame. But you just successfully wrapped up the second Game Accessibility Conference --
AH: Indeed.
JS: And it sounds like it was another rousing success.
AH: Yeah. It was really, really nice. Big uptick in the number of people there and the range of companies that were represented as well. About two thirds of the companies there were –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- all like, big players in the gaming industry, which is --
JS: We got retweets from –
Ah: -- really nice to see –
JS: -- so you were getting a lot of tweets back on that, which I thought was awesome too.
AH: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: So you had a good audience. You had a line of speakers. Barrie was there, so let’s talk a little bit about who Barrie is and what he brought to the company.
AH: Barrie. Barrie Ellis. He is known as OneSwitch on Twitter. He is a long, long-time veteran in gaming accessibility. I don’t know how long he’s been doing it, but –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- but –
JS: More than either one of us want to admit; right?
AH: Yeah. Yeah. It’s measured in decades, anyway.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And his primary focus is switch accessibility. So accessibility switch is for profound motor impairment. And he also works part-time for SpecialEffect –
JS: Right.
AH: -- which is a charity out of the U.K. Who adapts – well, the primary focus is adapting controllers --
JS: Right.
AH: -- of people with physical disabilities.
JS: Two great follows, by the way, if you’re into that form of accessibility.
AH: Yes.
JS: Great.
AH: SpecialEffect and OneSwitch.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And – but also, as well as this, he is an accessibility historian. So he’s currently writing a book that he keeps threatening to finish but hasn’t managed to yet.
JS: We all – don’t we all?
AH: Yeah. But this thing – he’s quite convinced that this interest in the history of game accessibility is kind of his own, kind of, like, niche.
JS: Yeah.
AH: Eccentricity.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And other people aren’t that interested in it. But yeah. So in part to help him dispel that myth, we might actually get him along to the conference and give a presentation on it. And, yeah, it dispelled it quite forcefully.
JS: One of these days, I probably should talk to him about the Sega Saturn and the keyboard, and it was for internet, but one of the features was that it had a magnifier that you could use on the Sega Saturn controller to magnify text up to like, 8 or 9X, which was hysterical.
AH: I didn’t know that.
JS: Yeah. It was back in the web TVish days.
AH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: And so Sega thought they needed to have a competitor to Microsoft’s web TV –
AH: Yup.
JS: -- and so they had a keyboard modem for the Saturn, and – that it came with lights. Don’t ask me why. But that was the big thing of the time. And you could magnify things on the screen, because there wasn’t a lot of magnification, but that was on one of the Segas. And it was like, a very short run. So it was like, a packing kind of thing, but –
AH: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
AH: Yeah. I remember there was a MMO out -- something that used it?
JS: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
AH: What was it called?
JS: Was that Fantasy Star online?
AH: Yes.
JS: Yeah. Fantasy. Yeah.
AH: That had some interesting accessibility stuff in it, actually, that game.
JS: Sure, because there was symbols and stuff for being able to communicate.
AH: Exactly.
JS: Yeah.
AH: Which obviously, they’ve done that for – yeah. You can basically build your own custom symbol in which –
JS: Yeah.
AH: And the reason they’ve done that was to transcend language barriers, because the game was played on the same service by people who were in Japan –
JS: In Japan, in America.
AH: Yup. Exactly.
JS: Yeah. It was really cool.
AH: But also – that also has all these implications for people who are nonverbal and –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- dyslexic and all kinds of stuff.
JS: So Barrie did this talk about game accessibility in history.
AH: History. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: And then Sightless Kombat. Many people who follow the gaming industry or maybe follow my tweets might have seen me retweet Sightless a couple of times. He was there.
AH: Yup. So he was covering blind accessibility. So it was, in part, a story of a Homeric journey that he undertook around the states. He basically got a funding grant, a research grant, to basically fund international travel and find out interesting stuff that would be useful to bring back to the U.K. Obviously, it’s useful everywhere. Basically, he went –
JS: Sure.
AH: He traveled around various states in America, visiting big game studios –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- to open a two-way dialogue for him to educate them about blind accessibility and for them to educate him about blind accessibility as well so he could find out about general, kind of, attitudes and awareness and what kind of internal studio factors influence the possibilities of accessibility –
JS: Sure.
AH: -- and how, like, the companies set up. And infrastructure and stuff can impact that as well.
JS: It had to be a great learning experience, because, you know, what’s going on in Tiburon in Florida –
AH: Yup.
JS: -- is going to be way different than what might be happening in Rolling Rock, or –
AH: Yup.
JS: What’s going to happen differently at Capcom in Japan for Monster Hunter. And not just cultural differences, but the way that different regions approach disability of all kinds –
AH: Yeah.
JS: -- that had to be fascinating.
AH: And company structure as well. I thought that was an interesting angle he took in that. So, for example, comparing a studio, which has a very strong, like, top-down publisher –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- relationship.
JS: Yeah.
AH: So you got those kinds of characters coming down from above and then, through the various levels of management.
JS: Uh-huh.
AH: Comparing that to visiting Valve, which is completely independent and also has a completely flat corporate structure as well.
JS: A strange structure, if you want to put it that way, but yeah.
AH: Yeah. Indeed. But yeah. It was interesting that he was asking – going to these studios, asking them how, like, that structure impacted the way that they would work and stuff like that.
JS: Uh-huh.
AH: It was interesting as well. But then, of course, after that, he went into explaining how he games and just putting it – just – he went through a few mechanics, like racing games, first-person shooters, fighting games – and just gave, like, a simple, like, five bullet points for each of those genres.
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- like take-aways that developers could do to make them more accessible and –
JS: Yeah.
AH: Yeah. When those checklists were – when those bullet points were up on the screen, there was – there were a lot of people in the room frantically scribbling notes down, which is very encouraging to see.
JS: It sounds like it’d be really hard, doesn’t it? It’s so crazy. That’s awesome.
AH: Yup.
JS: And so many people are talking back and forth to one another. You know, we have a situation going on in the gaming industry where teams are – the Final Fantasy team was impressed by what was going on with Assassin's Creed, and that’s how there was a cross-over there. There’s so much mind-share going on, again, in the industry, where it felt like –
AH: It’s just --
JS: -- it was moving forward.
AH: It’s nice to see that accessibility is an issue that can kind of transcend the usual boundaries.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And there was some of that happening in the conference as well, so –
JS: Not a mutually exclusive or cordoned off kind of way.
AH: Yeah. Totally. Well, Sony were there, talking about their kind of workflows and processes that they’ve been leaning towards around accessibility, because they’re, like, a couple of generations in there with their accessibility thinking.
JS: Yup.
AH: And they opened their talk with a quote by Phil Spencer, saying, great job in the accessibility in Naughty Dog. It’s an important topic for industry.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And just for context, that’s the head – sorry. The head of Xbox --
JS: -- Xbox.
AH: -- praising a first-party PlayStation-exclusive title, which, you know. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen every day.
JS: Well, and who knows. Maybe it was an olive branch to get cross play to finally happen between PlayStation 4 and Xbox.
AH: Maybe. Maybe. But they went on in their talk.
JS: Yeah.
AH: It was nice. It felt, kind of, like passing it back.
JS: Yeah.
AH: So it threw out that talk that Sony gave –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- at least at this particular conference, they were like, highlighting, showcasing other games, like games from – not just from Microsoft, but also like, Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And it was really nice just to see that it was kind of like, an issue that people can come together over.
JS: And it was neat because Assassin's Creed Origins has that history mode that people – true, quote, unquote, gamers are taking a big, kind of, dislike to. But for cognitive people and people who just want to experience the game and just, the world-building, I thought that was really fascinating. So it’s a mode that doesn’t really involve combat. It just really involves more exploration and learning and puzzle-solving. And so there’s a lot of talk in the gaming community, as many of these people are settling down, having families, maybe undergoing disabilities themselves, that there are different types of game play. That it doesn’t always have to be run and gun, kill, kill, kill. There’s other ways. Celeste. You and I have talked a little bit about this on twitter back and forth.
AH: But look. These kind of attributes – well, there’s a really simple answer to it. They’re wrong.
JS: Yeah that’s –
AH: Because these are options, you know?
JS: Right. Right. Right.
AH: Like, if that player over there turns on that option and changes the way they experience the game, why do you care?
JS: Yeah.
AH: It doesn’t affect your experience in any way whatsoever. But that mode, that was interesting because that takes it – the one in Assassin's Creed takes it a lot further.
JS: Yeah.
AH: It isn’t so much difficulty options. It actually strips out nearly all of which you would regard as game play, and really, it turns it into something that’s no longer a game.
JS: Yeah.
AH: It’s basically – and the way it came about was actually from outside of the gaming community as well, it came out as a result of requests from teachers. Because what teachers are finding is that Assassin's Creed and the work that they put in – I mean the smart testing license accessory but –
JS: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
AH: But the work they put into creating these recreations of these periods in history and all the architecture and everything.
JS: Oh yeah. Yeah.
AH: The teachers were finding that kids were obviously really engaged – more engaged by Assassin’s Creed than the textbook.
JS: Right.
AH: But because Assassin’s Creed is a game about going around murdering people, they can’t bring that into the classroom.
JS: Sure.
AH: So they were essentially – there was.
JS: It’s a little hard to show Versailles while you’re running around stabbing people. Yeah.
AH: Yeah. Right. Exactly.
JS: Yeah.
AH: So what they were doing – the teachers were doing – were essentially playing a game at home, recording it, and like, editing down those recordings and playing little clips.
JS: Uh-huh.
AH: So they kept asking and asking, all these different educators from different places around the world.
JS: It’s almost like Mishitima for history. I like this. It’s good.
AH: Yeah. It’s –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- so they responded. And they said –Ubisoft. That was basically, like a dream project for them. They got response to this demand from the teaching community --
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- to basically make a mode that removed all the combat and just lets you explore – explore the game. And like, the amount of investment that goes into creating those words as well. Even if what’s left isn’t, by definition, a game, because there isn’t travel stuff –
JS: Right.
AH: -- that doesn’t – the fact that it’s not a game doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value.
JS: Right.
AH: It has huge value. A value in education, you know what I mean?
JS: Well as a low-vision player, I would get to know that world a little better instead of having to learn it on the fly. I know SpeedRunners wouldn’t agree with that, but for me, if I wanted to explore that without maybe, getting hit or putting myself or – in a trigger scenario –
AH: Yup.
JS: -- I can now just walk around and admire the graphics without having to worry about combat. That’s awesome.
AH: Even – I tell you what. Even within the main game –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- my favorite moment playing that game –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- was, it’s got a photo mode in the game.
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- that he can – at any point, he can pause the game, rotate the camera around, and take pictures and stuff.
JS: Uh-huh.
AH: So the game is quite, quite grim. The story line is quite dark –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- and it is constant, constant death and destruction all the time.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And I was just running through a field, and three cats started running behind me. So that was like, a really nice moment. Just like, having a break from this grim death and destruction. There’s cats running behind me.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AH: So –
JS: And it’s set in Egypt, so there’s a lot of cats, because –
AH: Yup.
JS: -- cats are worshipped animals in the Egyptian culture. Or, especially at this time in the game, so --
AH: Yeah.
JS: So – yeah. I know. I get what you’re saying.
AH: Because you often see, like, these individual cats around. But this particular field had three cats in it.
JS: Yeah. That’s a glitch in the Matrix; right?
AH: Well, no – so – right? I see Neo fenced in.
JS: Sorry. Sorry.
AH: So it’s been a long week.
JS: No. You’re tired. I get you.
AH: So these cats are in fields, so –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- so I just stopped running and was going to put the game in camera mode and take a photo. So to get the three cats in the shot, I pressed the Crouch button to get back –
JS: Oh.
AH: -- the character to crouch down.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And the character crouched down, and the cats all milled around his feet. And he reached out his hand and started petting the cats.
JS: Oh. No, way.
AH: So someone actually like, programmed that in specifically.
JS: Yeah. Thought that would be an action. That would happen.
AH: Exactly.
JS: Oh, my god.
AH: And that was beautiful. Like, that’s my biggest memory of that game.
JS: Yeah. And sometimes, it’s like that. I mean, think about Shenmue, where that started and where it’s gone from there. Because that was, you know, a meticulous attempted building a world where you could do some of that, go to a capsule machine, look at the thing that came out of the capsule, go to the arcade at a certain time to meet somebody, but then go and look at the train schedule. You know, it was –
AH: Yup.
JS: So, I mean, there was this meticulous world-building that, you know, we saw back in 1998 that later, people except GDT Dos and on and on and on, but really, the games industry has always been about iteration, always built on a foundation of what’s come before.
AH: Yeah.
JS: And now, accessibility seems to be a part of that more and more.
AH: Increasingly so.
JS: Yeah.
AH: Yeah.
JS: So that list. So Barrie was there, what else happened, if you don’t mind telling us briefly.
AH: Well, let me see. From the start. So started off with doing a general news update about the advances that have been happening and did a similar talk at CSUN today.
JS: Yeah.
AH: Then we had Karen Pelz Strauss, who is one of the top at the FCC and outside of that, has had a hand in the writing of pretty much every piece of accessibility legislation --
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- in the U.S. for decades.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And yeah. She helped to write CVAA.
JS: Wow.
AH: And CVAA is now –
JS: That’s happening.
AH: Yeah. Yeah. So – well, it’s been applicable to games from the start. But games have had, basically, a waiver, because games aren’t primarily – status of the law is about communications accessibility, accessibility of communication technology.
JS: Yeah.
AH: And because games – because the primary function of games isn’t communication, they were granted a waiver so they could have a bit of extra time to figure out how this kind of fits in with game playing stuff. And those –
JS: But we’re seeing that more and more, because more devices are coming with that, under that guise. So what Amazon is doing, what Microsoft is doing, everybody but Nintendo really.
AH: Well, Nintendo has guest communications functionality in the – it’s basically via an external smartphone app.
JS: Yeah.
AH: So they’re actually just making use of the –
JS: -- mobile to get them there. Yeah.
AH: Well, it means they can make use of the accessibility functionality within the device as well.
JS: Yeah.
AH: You can use, like, VoiceOver and TalkBack and stuff to help make the communication more accessible.
JS: Right. Right. Right.
AH: But the thing is, that’s a platform level, so the wave is expired for platforms a couple years ago. The waves are going to expire for games on the 1st of January.
JS: Wow. So really, not that far away.
AH: No. No. So basically anything that launches beyond the 1st of January, the communications functionality in it, if it has any, that must be accessible. And also, the means of navigating to, and identifying, that functionality has to be accessible as well. So that includes the people who are blind. So that’s coming in January.
JS: Okay.
AH: It doesn’t require games to be generally accessible. Just that special bit, but –
JS: Right.
AH: But it is helping like, broaden the conversation about accessibility issues go. And so that’s why Karen was there to talk about that.
JS: Yeah. Karen Stevens, for those who haven’t heard me talk about –
AH: Oh. No. This is a different Karen.
JS: Oh. Oh. Oh.
AH: It’s – so Karen Pelz Strauss from the FCC.
JS: Right. Right.
AH: Also, we had Karen –
JS: And then I was going to –
AH: The other Karen.
JS: The other Karen.
AH: Karen Stevens.
JS: I was transitioning, I’m sorry. So –
AH: Yeah. So Karen Stevens – so she talked a little bit about the work she did on blind accessibility through haptic cues in Madden, but primarily, she was there talking about her role that she’s been given. She is now the full-time, permanent accessibility lead for EA Sports --
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- and has responsibilities across all of EA. And that’s the first time, that I’m aware, at least, that there’s been a full-time, in-house accessibility specialist role within a studio publisher.
JS: And it was so wild to see all the success off of Madden then go right into UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship game had some stuff. And she was giving codes away to get testers on board.
AH: That was actually a coincidence.
JS: Oh. Was it?
AH: So I think that was just an illustration of where the industry is getting to in general --
JS: Okay.
AH: -- because that actually happened separately to Karen.
JS: Okay.
AH: That was a UFC developer who was contacted by a blind gamer and started working on it.
JS: Oh. All right. Okay.
AH: So obviously, they’re now working together on everything. They actually started independently.
JS: Right.
AH: So –
JS: And isn’t some of that coming over to FIFA too? She talked a little bit about FIFA, I think, on Twitter.
AH: The latest FIFA patch -- so that isn’t blind accessibility. That’s interface accessibility –
JS: Right.
AH: -- so making – it’s more about making the interface, the, like, navigating the menus and stuff more accessible to motor impairment kind of stuff.
JS: Right.
AH: But yeah. All these little things are –
JS: -- starting to build.
AH: Yeah. Exactly.
JS: Wow.
AH: Yeah. The ball is starting to roll down the hill faster and faster; right?
JS: So you’ve been timing this around GDC –
AH: Yup.
JS: -- which has worked out really well, because all those people are in one place at the same time.
AH: Uh-huh.
JS: That’s going to continue. I wish –
AH: Well, it’s spinning off now, as well.
JS: Okay. That’s –
AH: So that’s hot off the press.
JS: So tell me a little bit –
AH: So as of a couple of days ago --
JS: Okay.
AH: So basically, this time in particular, we had a ton of people, when the announcements that were being made about the conference, they’re like, oh. Why is it in America? Why can’t it be in Europe?
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AH: We don’t want to go over there. So we’re going to do a spin-off one in Europe as well.
JS: Okay. All right. Maybe time it around one of the PlayStation shows or one of the –
AH: No. It’s going to be – there are a couple of shows that it’s going to be timed around.
JS: Okay.
AH: It won’t be a PlayStation – it’s one of the industry ones.
JS: Yeah. Okay. Cool. That makes a lot of sense.
AH: Yeah. So that’s the first public announcement of this, so you got a story to break.
JS: Well, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. So people can go to the main web site, which is --
AH: Gaconf.com. So there won’t be anything on it for a while yet. We’re still figuring out the details –
JS: Yeah.
AH: -- but we do know is that it’s definitely going to be happening, and it’s going to be happening in probably, like, third quarter this year.
JS: Okay.
AH: But yeah. Stay tuned. There will be more information on that as we have it.
JS: And that’s possibly U.K., Germany, no idea yet? Just –
AH: It’ll be in Europe. We do know yet, but –
JS: Okay.
AH: -- we’re not going to say it just in case things change.
JS: No. No. No. That makes a lot of sense. And I can get my passport updated. No. I’m kidding.
AH: Indeed.
JS: So Ian, people can follow and learn a lot more, where is the best place to keep up with you and what’s going on?
AH: Twitter. So I’m pretty active on Twitter.
JS: Yeah.
AH: It’s @IanHamilton, underscore.
JS: Perfect. Ian, once again, I thank you for your time and I am so happy that the conference went well, and I’m chuffed that I just got this exclusive. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
AH: Yup. Indeed.
JS: Didn’t know that was going to happen. Once again, you can find out more about these things and, of course, a lot of things about gaming, if you follow me, RangerStation, all one word, on Twitter. But also, remember, you can go over to blindbargains.com, go down to the podcast section, and you can find this and so much more from CSUN 2018.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
