March 8, 2023 • 52 mins
Mark Miller speaks with Brandon Cole (aka superblindman on Twitch). Brandon Cole is a man of many hats, including streamer, blogger, voice actor, podcaster, and more.
Today, he and Mark talk about their mutual love of video games and dive into what makes a video game accessible. Learn about:
- The navigational assist accessibility feature in games like God of War: Ragnorok
- Why Brandon started a Twitch channel
- How, when he was a kid, Brandon memorized and could recite all of the movie Aladdin
- The enduring impact of Brandon’s work on The Last of Us 2
- And hear Brandon do an ogre and demon voice!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(bright uplifting music)
(00:00):
- [Voiceover] Welcome to TPGi's
"Real People, Real Stories" podcast,
where you'll find interestingand diverse stories
from folks working to make theworld a more inclusive place.
(bright uplifting music)
- Hey, welcome to "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGi.
I'm your host, Mark Miller,
(00:21):
thank you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor,
if you're enjoying "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
share it and tell someone about it.
Hey, even link to it fromyour accessible website.
So I am here with a veryinteresting and exciting guest,
and I'm really excited to talk to you
about one particular thing,
(00:42):
which you'll find out in a minute,
but my guest today is Brandon Cole,
and Brandon Cole does quitea few interesting things
and uses assistive technologyand alternative access
and all that in somesuper interesting ways.
But I'm gonna dive right into what...
Well, before I do that, Brandon,
tell us a little bit, inyour words, about who you are
(01:03):
and then I'm gonna save thisthing I wanna talk to you about
for a few minutes.
- Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
So I am Brandon Cole, I ama creature of many hats,
as Mark said.
I do a lot of things.
I'm primarily a professionalaccessibility consultant,
I work in the video game industry.
Which is a pretty cooljob, let me tell ya.
(01:23):
But I'm also a podcaster, a blogger,
a streamer of video game content,
and even a voice actor on the side,
along with the occasionaldabble into other things,
including audio descriptionnarration and more.
I do a lot.
- That's a list.
- It's a list.
- That's a heck of a list.
- And I love it. I loveevery minute of it.
(01:44):
- I bet you do, I bet you do.
So here's what I wanted to dive into,
because, I mean, you'veled right into it, right?
Video game consultant.
- Yup.
- And it's interesting, let me just go off
on a quick tangent here,
because I don't know, have youever been to CSUN, Brandon?
- I have not been to CSUN.
It's one of the conferences
(02:05):
that I think I should go to someday,
but I still have not gone to that one yet.
- So, for the audience, what CSUN is,
and the reason whyBrandon knew what it was
off the top of his head eventhough he hasn't been there,
is it's the largest assistivetechnology conference...
assistive technologyconference in the world,
that happens in Anaheimcurrently every year.
And why I brought it up, Brandon,
(02:26):
is because I was doing a session
or listening to a session at CSUN
and I met somebody in that session,
it was a woman who was low vision,
and we started chatting kindof in the hallway afterwards,
and our whole conversation turned to
the accessibility of video games.
- Ah-hah.
(02:46):
- And to what's possibleand what's not possible
and all that kind of stuff.
And this was probably, I'mgonna say over five years ago
at this point.
But the reason why I bringthat up is to illustrate
how important it is that wethink about accessibility
in video games.- Yeah.
(03:06):
- And how glad I am that there's a market
for somebody like you toconsult on video games
and that that's being looked at.
And I know since I've hadthat conversation with her,
other people were thinking about it too.
We thought we were brilliant, right?
Like, "They should do all that stuff,"
we're coming up with ideas.
And it turns out, otherpeople were already on it.
So there's that.
(03:30):
There's been awards given tovideo games and stuff like that
but you put something here,
because my son came home for Christmas
and he brought with himhis video game console
that he had had in a closet
until God of War Ragnarök came out.
(Brandon laughs)
He pulled it out of the closet,
he plugged it into one of our TVs here,
(03:50):
he had the whole week off
and I believe came closeto completing the campaign,
I think he had to finishit a little bit afterwards.
But can you talk to meabout God of War Ragnarök
and the accessibility of it,
and just indulge me in my full-on geekness
and talk about how justcool the game is, period?
- Yeah, 100%.
(04:11):
First of all though, I want to say
it's funny that you say thatconversation with that woman
happened about five years ago,
because five years agoI probably was working
at that time on one of mybiggest projects of all time,
which was Last of Us Part II.
- Like I said, we found out
we weren't unique in ourthoughts pretty quickly.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But you know, I'm dealingwith web accessibility
(04:32):
and the accessibility of applications
and all that kind of stuff,
so this conversation about gaming
was sort of a unique one for me.
- It was a different one, yeah.
- You know?
- Yeah, I totally getthat, I totally get that.
But God of War.
God of War Ragnarök has a tonof accessibility features,
and I'm actually reallyhonored to say this,
but the majority of theblind accessibility features
(04:52):
in that game,
are based on my preexisting work
for The Last of Us Part II.
I did not directly work on the game,
but weirdly I also kind of did,
because my DNA is all over it.
The features I helped designexist in that game as well.
So the primary feature
(05:12):
that helps the blind complete the game
is navigational assist.
And what that does is, pressing one button
sends out a little ping,
that basically does two things.
It turns the cameratowards your objective,
which then also turns thecharacter towards your objective.
And then if you just move forward
after pressing that button,it's R3 on a PS5 controller.
(05:35):
If you just move forward,you'll be walking towards
the objective you're supposed to reach
to progress the story.
That system is not just basic,it turns you towards walls
and then you walk into the wall;
no, it's actually a smart system,
where if you have to complete a puzzle
or do a couple of grapples
to get to where you need to go to,
it will lead you to those
so you can get to the actualspot you need to reach.
(05:58):
So that's kind of the primary thing,
but there's other things too,
including screen narration of most menus.
I will say that Ragnarökis a little incomplete
in this area.
Ragnarök does notnarrate all of its menus.
It does narrate most of them,
but doesn't narrate the character menus,
like choosing your skillsand setting up your gear,
and equipping new gear,and things like that.
(06:20):
Those things do not narrate.
It is a pain point that I have expressed
to Sony Santa Monica multiple times,
and I'm hoping that theyfix it in a future patch,
because there is a pretty bigpatch coming in the spring,
and I'm hoping they include
some more accessibility fixes in that.
But...
- Can you talk to me alittle bit about, like,
(06:41):
just in detail, nothaving that feature there,
how does that kind ofdisrupt your gameplay?
- The problem with not having it,
is it puts the blind ata tremendous disadvantage
that I do not like.
As a consultant myself,
I'm trying to create spaces for the blind
to be as close to, equalto the sighted as possible
(07:03):
in a game.
My whole philosophy is I'm not trying
to necessarily make an easy mode.
I'm actually not saying,"Just make the game easy
so we can complete it."
I'm okay with a really hard game.
But I'm trying to make it sowe have the same information
and we can play on the samelevel as a sighted person.
- I think that's a great point,if I can just interrupt you.
(07:25):
- Sure, sure.
- And one of the reasons why,
is in the work that we do
in talking aboutaccessibility all the time,
the concept of equivalency,an equivalent experience,
is something that we...
Brandon, it's a hard concept, right?
For somebody who hasn't- It is
- got there and thought about it.
And I've been in talks for abusiness related type website,
(07:47):
where they've said, "Oh,that feature's terrible,
and nobody uses it anyway,
that's why we didn't botherto make it accessible."
- Yeah, I get it.
- It's like, okay, well then remove it.
Or allow people withdisabilities to experience
how horrible it is too,
because the idea, thedrive is equivalency,
(08:09):
and not making judgments aboutwhat we think other people
should and should not see-
- Or use.
- Or use, or have access to or whatever.
Anyways, I just wanted to saythat's a really good point,
and it's something thatwe see across the board.
And I completely got youwith the video games.
I mean, my video game playing
(08:31):
is almost exclusively aroundfirst person shooters,
and equivalency in thatcase would be probably hard,
it's probably hard.
- Yeah, it'd be very difficult.
- But even more necessary.
- But yeah, I'm one of those people too,
when I talk about working on this stuff,
and people tell me things like that.
Like, "Well man, a firstperson shooter would be hard."
(08:53):
I'd be like, "Still wanna doit, I'd still work on one."
- Yeah, still, it's gotta be done.
- Like, I still wanna makethat happen for people.
I set my goals, my careergoals are genre-based.
So that's how I've been thinking.
I started adopting this pretty early on.
So when I worked on TheLast of Us 2 I said okay,
I did it, I gave peoplean action adventure
(09:14):
that's fully accessible.
Now I wanna give peoplea first person shooter.
Now I wanna give people a giant300 hour role playing game.
Now I wanna give people an MMO.
You know, these are thethings that I wanna do.
- So what about firstperson shooter online?
Like where they're playingagainst other people.
Have you dug into that one at all?
- It is a conversation I've had many times
(09:36):
but I haven't worked on one just yet.
But again, I want to,because the challenge
of making that work issomething that I wanna overcome,
and I want to find a way.
It is a very difficult concept,
because you have to figure out
how you can make something accessible
that is incredibly fast-pacedand incredibly reactive,
(09:58):
but also not make it unfair to the sighted
or vice versa, you know?
- Because you're essentially,
I mean I think a lot of the salt of that
is essentially what sighted people
would consider to be cheats, right?
Like, oh here's an aim bot,this is gonna aim for you.
You know?
Obviously if you're blindyou can't visually aim
like a sighted person can.
(10:18):
So you've gotta havesome method to do that.
- I have ideas,
I have ideas to kind ofget around that idea,
but it kind of doesn't matter.
The internet is theinternet, unfortunately,
and there are people who look at
what I did with The Last of Us 2,
a single player game where you're
not competing against anybody,
and they make fun of itbecause they call it cheating.
(10:39):
- Yeah.
- There are entire videos-
- Do you feel comfortablesharing some of your thoughts
on, like, how you would solvethe first person online?
- Yeah, so one of the ideas I had
is kind of based loosely on the concepts
that audio games created.
So there's a lot of games out there
that are only audio.
Games that are made just for the blind,
by the blind usually.- Great, yeah.
(10:59):
- And some of them have come up
with some pretty coolconcepts for things like this.
Like aiming, for instance.
What I would come up with is a system
where the player would have to be facing
in kind of a 360 degree general direction.
They would have to generallybe facing their opponent.
(11:19):
And when they pressed aim,
it would not necessarily auto-aim,
but it would provide them a sound
that would orient themtowards their opponent
if their opponent wasn'talready making sound.
Like, because, in games these days,
every enemy makes a significantamount of noise, you know?
So if their opponent wasn'tmaking any particular sound,
they would be oriented by this sound
that would play for them.
(11:41):
It could potentially be positional.
So like if the enemy was to their left,
the sound would be coming from your left,
so you'd turn in that direction.
You could also use pitchto kind of ensure they get
a real lock right on the center of them.
And then once they'vecentered on that enemy,
once they've found the center position
where they're facingtheir correct direction,
only then does the game actually help them
(12:03):
with the vertical aspect.
Because right now, where we are right now
with audio technology,
some developers are trying to use 3D audio
to indicate verticality,
but it's just not quite there yet.
So the way that I would handleit with today's technology,
would just be that you use a sound
to locate the center, to center an enemy,
(12:23):
and only then would the game help you aim
by helping with the vertical part.
As long as you werelocked on to the center.
- Gotcha.
So I'm just gonna restate this
to make sure I'm understanding it right.
Because what I find interesting
is the capabilities of sound.
Basically what you're saying is
today what we're workingwith is a stereo sound,
(12:45):
which by nature can orient youhorizontally, left to right,
you can hear something to be like,
"Oh, that's further to myleft or further to my right."
But, there's no sound dimensionthat goes up and down,
the stereo, no matter howyou slice it up it's limited.
- Like I said, there are attempts at that.
Like, the PS5 does have a 3D audio engine
(13:07):
that does attempt to do that,
it just doesn't do asuper great job of it.
You can tell with the PS5
if something is above or below you,
but it's kind of binary.
Like if it's above you, nomatter how far above you it is,
it just sounds like it'sabove you generally.
- Gotcha.
- You don't know if maybe the enemy
(13:27):
that's shooting down atyou is up on a high roof,
and you don't know thatthey're on that high a perch,
you just know they're above you somewhere.
- They're above you, yeah.
You could be shooting at the ceiling.
- Right.
- Or shooting, just-
- You could be shooting at the ceiling
of the room that you're in, right.
But I will say this,
I will say that it's notonly stereo these days.
We have reached a point where I do think
360 virtual surround is pretty good.
(13:50):
Excluding up and down,the virtual surround sound
that can indicate things all around you
in a 360 degree field, that'spretty good these days.
- Yeah, I agree with that.
Well, and when I said with stereo,
I was actually thinkingphysically, you've got a speaker.
I mean, you and I are bothwearing headsets right now
and we've got a speaker in our left ear,
a speaker in our right ear.
(14:11):
So by nature of justthe physical orientation
of those two speakers,
you've gotta become real creative
if you're gonna make somethingsound like it's up or down.
And then to your point itsounds like they're struggling
with how do you make itsound like it's slightly up
or slightly down or whatever, you know.
- Yeah, right, right.
Like I said, it seems to justbe one above you position,
(14:31):
and one below you position.
So yeah, it's difficult.
But I think that would be thesystem I would use for now.
It would definitely be an experiment,
but it's something that I wanna try
with a developer one day.
- Oh, I hope you get it.
That's sounds really good.
And I like your ideas about aiming.
I think that, to me inmy limited knowledge,
it seems to be on track.
I would imagine you wouldhave to build a system
(14:52):
and then just stress test it
until you ended up with,you know, a blind person
successfully competing againsta bunch of other people
on a map.
- Yeah, I think that the wayit might have to be approached
is very early in developmentwhen the game itself
is very basic
and it's just a functionalmultiplayer shooter.
Even if a lot of stuffis still missing from it
(15:13):
and they just play test theheck out of the basic version
just to see if this works, you know?
- For sure.
And guess who would get toplay test that, Brandon?
- I would.
- You, you.
- That's part of what I do, yeah.
- Do you know what I can'tdo all day long at work?
Play video games.
So you've, like, beat me out.
- I've perfected work.
(15:34):
- What's that?
- I have perfected the idea of work.
- You've perfected the idea,
I like where your head's at with that.
So heading back to God of War Ragnarök,
like we missed a big piece of this.
You don't just play this game,
and as you said, it's notjust that your DNA is on it
from previous work,
but you actually have a Twitch channel.
(15:54):
- Yes, yes.
- So talk to me a little bit about...
Like, start with like, why theheck would you want a Twitch?
Like, why would you want a Twitch channel,
why would you share?
What is your motivation forbeing involved in all of that
and kind of, what does it do for you?
- Well, actually, that's agreat way to word that question
because the way that I view Twitch
and the way that I view my channel
(16:15):
is that it feeds intoeverything else that I do.
So I have that channel toshare gameplay of games
with other blind people,
to show them what games they can play,
even if they're not aware of it.
Because you'd be surprised,
you'd be surprised at how manypeople come to my channel,
that are blind,
but haven't been following me before
(16:37):
and haven't beenfollowing the gaming media
that talks about it,
or haven't been following audiogames.net
looking at forum postsand things like that.
Just have kind of been out of the loop.
And they witnessed me playing a video game
and they go, "Oh, wait, you can play this?
How can you play this?"
It happens a lot.
- That's amazing.
- But even more than that,there's two other purposes too.
(17:01):
I also wanna show sighted people
what the blind are capable of.
I consider myself anadvocate for accessibility
as well as a consultant,
so I do try to kind ofget the message out there.
And I'm one of those people
that will do it one person at a time.
I'm one of those people where,if a sighted person comes in
and asks me a questionabout how this works,
how that works, how I'm playingthis, how I'm doing that,
(17:23):
and I answer it, which I will,
and then five minutes lateranother sighted person comes in
and asks the same question.
Guess what?
I will answer it.
And if I don't answer it-
- You don't get annoyed at all.
You're never like, "Okay, enough guys."
- No, because it's a different person,
and it's another chanceto open someone's eyes,
pun absolutely intended,
(17:43):
(Mark chuckles)
to the world of accessibilityand how blind people
are just trying to play gamesthe same way that they are.
So I don't get annoyed with that.
And honestly, sometimesI am super into the game,
but the good news about that is,
I've developed a communitythat gets my philosophy,
that understands what I'm trying to do.
So for some reason if I forget to
(18:05):
or if I can't answer a question,
usually the rest of mychat will do it for me.
- Somebody else, somebodywill come up with-
- Yeah, they'll be like,"Yeah, this is how he does it.
Look at the VOD, look atthe video on demand archive,
you'll see exactly hisexplanation was earlier."
And then a lot of times I have a guy
that will take my explanations of things
and make highlights out of them
(18:26):
so people can watch them later.
- Oh, that's really cool.
- But that's not it, there's one more,
there's one more purpose, though.
- Okay, go for it.
- In my opinion, this is the coolest one,
because this is the one thatreally ties it all together.
Because of my work, becauseof the work I've done
on video games themselves,
that has created forme a bunch of contacts,
(18:47):
it's opened up the gaming industry to me.
I'm basically considereda respected figure
in the game industry, whichis a really cool thing to say.
But anyway, because ofthat, some of my audience
are game developers fromthese different companies.
Some of these big AAA companies,
people from those companiescome into my channel
to watch me play games.
(19:09):
- Oh, fantastic.
- So it's for them too.
Even if it's not theirgame that they're watching,
the point is, if they get ideas
from seeing the things that I'm doing
and seeing the thingsthat I'm playing, great.
Because ultimately, every winis a win for accessibility.
It doesn't matter wherethey got the ideas from.
If they get inspired byseeing me play some other game
(19:29):
that isn't theirs
and they go, "Oh, thisis how we could do that,"
that's perfect.
That's exactly what we want.
- And I bet they get excited,
I bet it's better thanreading a spec or something,
they see it and see you do it
and see your emotion andexcitement and your followers,
and they probably do it with alittle more enthusiasm, yeah?
- Yeah, that's the whole idea.
(19:52):
It's happened multiple times.
People will watch me play their games,
people watch me play other people's games,
and it will get them thinking,it will get them talking
about it too.
I get questions from them too.
Like, "How is this working?"
Like, "What kind of system isthis? How are you doing this?"
I'll answer those just as eagerly,
just so they can understandhow this all works
(20:13):
and what is possible.
Because that tends to bethe biggest selling point
when I talk to new developers
that haven't experiencedblind accessibility in a game.
Just convincing them ofwhat is actually possible,
and what we actually need
versus what they thought we would need.
They're often two different things, so.
(20:34):
- Yeah, and I think one, in my experience,
if you show a developer or somebody in UX
how people are using their stuff,
they always get really excited.
I mean, you know, ability aside,
if they just look at howsomebody's interacting,
how somebody's enjoying,
(20:55):
how somebody's strugglingwith or whatever,
it always fires up their mind
to improve the experience,enhance the experience, you know?
- Yeah. That's one of the reasons I do it.
- So I think that's brilliant,
that that channel's thereand available for them
to do just that for howsomebody who's blind
is experiencing their game.
- Yeah, exactly.
(21:15):
- It's incredible.
The other thing that I wanted to just say
is that your earlier point
when you were talking about
the reason why you havethe Twitch channel,
and that you were willingto talk to people.
(21:36):
Like, I think that that'ssuch a fantastic quality,
and I think actuallyputting a forum out there
that encourages that,
encourages people to come to you and say,
"Jeez, this is somethingI don't understand
and I haven't seen before
but I'd like to understand it."
And from a personal standpoint,
when I was in college, Itook a series of classes
(21:58):
around theater and acting.
I'm sure you can relatea little bit to that one.
- I did, I can.
- We'll get into thatin a minute too, right?
But in one of my theater classes,
the first one that I took,
the professor, there was twoprofessors running the class,
and one of them was blind.
And one of the bestthings that he ever did,
is he had one-on-onemeetings with the students
(22:20):
right in the beginning of the class,
and one of the things or oneof the purposes in that meeting
amongst the sort ofstandard academic stuff
was, "Hey, now is your chance,ask me anything you want
about me being blind."
And I can remember sittingthere and being like,
"How'd you get here today?"
- (laughs) Right, yeah.
- And he explained to me that,
(22:42):
"Well, obviously I don'tdrive, but I live in..."
This was at University of New Hampshire,
so he lived in a town nearbycalled Dover, New Hampshire,
and he took the bus in and explained
kind of how that worked for him.
So I had questions like thatall the way down to, like,
"Do you have a concept, likeif somebody says triangle,
like I imagine a triangle,what happens in your brain?"
(23:05):
And he explained that as a child
he had a little bit ofvery low vision sight,
so he actually has the mental image
of basic things like that.
- I do too, actually.
- What's that?
- I do too, actually.
Even though I've never actually had sight,
it is-
- Yeah, go ahead, answer thatquestion, that's a good one.
- Yeah, like even though ifyou have never had sight,
(23:25):
it's still possible to form mental images
based on things you'veexperienced in some way.
So I have felt a triangle,
so if asked what a triangleis, I can picture a triangle.
Now, of course it's colorless,
you're only getting the shape in my mind,
because I don't have a concept of color.
It just is what it is.
You can try to explaincolor to me all day long,
it doesn't matter.
There's no way, if you haven't seen it,
(23:47):
that you can conceptualize color properly.
It's just, you can't.
But I can get the shape.
And that goes for anythingthat I've experienced
in some form.
- Yeah, and what'sinteresting to me is that,
and I think this isacross the board, right?
Even amongst people whoare sighted to a degree,
but you say, "I can picturea triangle in my mind."
(24:08):
- Yeah.
- Is that the same thingas when I say I can picture
a triangle in my mind?
Are you actually...
And as sighted people, wehave something to relate to,
because I can look at a triangle,
and when I close my eyesI'm looking at a triangle
in my brain.
And so that's what I would be...
There's no way to answerthe question, Brandon,
but that's where my young mind was going.
- I get it. I do get it.
- Yeah. How do I do that?
(24:29):
And to the same point,two sighted people saying,
"That is blue."
We can recognize the color is blue
and both agree if shownsomething blue that it's blue
and communicate that it's blue.
What we can't do is we can't say that
the way we see that inour brain is the same.
(24:49):
They may be actually seeing in their head
what I see as red.
- It's possible, yeah.
It's absolutely possible.- It's possible.
So it's not even just asighted/blind kind of question,
it goes deeper than that.
- Yeah.
- We're getting a little tangential here.
So to bring us back, talkingabout this acting stuff,
(25:11):
you do a lot of...
In your list at the top of the podcast,
one of the things you saidyou do is voice acting.
- I do, yeah.
- Can you talk to me alittle bit about that,
how you got into it, whatkind of stuff you do?
How does that all work?
- Well, how I got intoit goes all the way back
to my very, very young childhood years.
(25:31):
I was a huge Disney fangrowing up as a kid,
and one of my favorite movies of all time
is the Disney version of Aladdin,
the old one, the 1995 one.
- Gotcha, yup.
- And I just loved RobinWilliams as the Genie,
and that was my inspiration right there.
(25:53):
He was the first one.
He wasn't the only one thatinspired me to wanna do that,
but he was the first one that made me go,
"Wow, I wanna do this."
- That's great.
- For a long time, thatis all I wanted to be,
was an actor.
And I memorized the entiretyof Aladdin, the whole movie.
There was a point in my life
where I could probably just do the movie.
(26:15):
Like, (laughs) the entire thing.
- Unbelievable.
- I can't do it anymore,I've lost some of that,
but I still remember quotes and stuff.
That was who I wantedto be for a long time.
And that never completely went away.
So I was really, really honored in 2014
when I got the opportunity.
I did some voice actingfor a volunteer group
(26:39):
earlier than this,
probably about 2006,2007, 2008, around there.
Volunteer audio drama groupcalled Darker Projects,
who, we made no money, it was a nonprofit,
it was just we loved making audio drama,
so we just did it together.
And I think the content is still online,
Darker Projects content is still online.
(26:59):
So if you wanna hear really, really-
- Darker Projects, isthat what it's called?
- Yeah, Darker Projects.
- Do me a favor, if you can find that
and send it to the producer, Dara.
- Yeah.
- Because we'll put that in the show notes
so people can find it.
- Yeah, if I can find it I will.
If you wanna hear my really old stuff.
I even took a crack at audio production.
- Of course we do.
We wanna see what you were like
(27:20):
before you perfected your craft.
- Yeah, I mean it'sokay, but it's not, like,
it's not gonna blow your mind.
- Yeah.
- But I even took acrack at audio production
in one episode.
I not only acted in it but I produced it,
so that was pretty cool.
- That's awesome.
- But then, I kept kind of...
I was still into it a lot.
(27:43):
So in 2014, let me stepinto 2014 for a second.
- Okay.
- I was really, really honored-
- We need, like, a WaybackMachine sound effect
or something.- A Wayback Machine, right.
(Mark imitates machine chiming)
- Okay, we're there.
- I was really honored to be...
I was already going to GDC,
I went to the Game DevelopersConference that year
to be on a panel aboutaccessibility in games,
and mobile games specifically.
That year I was not in this career.
(28:06):
This was before I started with the career
that I'm on right now.
Actually, on this panel, I wasjust the gamer perspective.
That's all I was.
I was just someone that they knew about
because of my blog, they foundout about me from my blog.
And they invited me justto speak as a blind gamer
about the accessibility of mobile games.
And that's all it was.
But while I was there,I met the audio director
(28:31):
of a game called Pillars of Eternity.
It's from Obsidian Entertainment,
and it is a really, really big,really, really awesome RPG.
I love it.
I can't play it, unfortunately.
- That's a role playing game,
for you non-extreme geeks out there.
- It is a role playing game.
So I met the audio director over lunch,
just kind of coincidentally.
(28:51):
And I talked to him about why I was there,
you know, my panel and all that stuff.
And then I just got intojust general discussion
and I happened to mentionthat I've always wanted
to voice act in a video game.
And he's like, "Well, actually,
you've got a pretty good voice,
and we need actors, so you wanna?"
(29:13):
And I was like-- There it is, serendipity.
- Yeah.
- That's unbelievable.
- Yeah, so I can now proudly announce
that in Pillars of EternityI am several, several voices.
Including a voice you canchoose for your character
when you create your character.
If you choose the voicelabeled "Benevolent Male"
that is me.
(29:33):
- (laughs) That's you?
- Yes.- Benevolent Male.
- Benevolent Male.
- That's like straightup Bob's Burger stuff,
where you're just like, "I'm gonna do
half the characters here."
- I was not even closeto half the characters,
but I was several voices.
I was an ogre.
I was a demon at one point.
I was a civilian that was ina house fire at one point.
(29:57):
- So let's entertainpeople a little bit here.
Can we hear your ogre?
- Yes. You can.
- Okay.
- Okay, so keep in mind, before I do this,
keep in mind that after I did this,
this was put through some voice processing
to make me sound even larger.
- I got you.
This is called Unprocessed Ogre.
(30:18):
- This is Unprocessed Ogre.
- Unprocessed Ogre.
- Crush them!
- Excellent.
- That's the Unprocessed Ogre.
- That's the Unprocessed Ogre.
And then now, I was a bigBuffy the Vampire Slayer fan,
so I've gotta hear your demon.
- I have several different demon types.
- Oh.
Several demons is even better.
(30:39):
- Several demons.
The first one is kind of basically like...
Again, without any voice processing,
it's something like-
- Cold. Cold demon rightout of the freezer.
- I shall rule this world.
- Ooh. I like that one.
- Things like that.
That's the idea.
- That's great.
(31:00):
- Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
- Well, first of all, before I continue
to make you do things like that.
(Brandon laughs)
The one thing I want to say
is you mentioned Robin Williams,
and I think it's very interesting
that he was your inspiration,
because, I mean, I was ahuge Robin William fan,
like I picked him up at Mork & Mindy,
and I followed his standup,
(31:22):
and I think a lot of peopleof my generation were.
And he just had an...
You know, his wit andthe way he was able to,
to almost battle with comedy.
That was really what he could do.
He could spit back and forth,
and it was like a rap battleor something like that,
but from a comedic standpointwas absolutely unbelievable.
(31:43):
- But he could do it with a serious person
on the other side.
Like, he didn't care, the other person
didn't have to be funnybecause he would just-
- No.
But he could do it withsomebody funny as well.
Like, he could go back.
It was unbelievable.
But anyways, I just wantedto make the point of like,
the number of people,
he inspired you from avoice acting standpoint,
(32:04):
the number of people that he inspired
from a comedic standpoint,
and the number of peoplehe probably inspired
from just the standpointof wanting to be in acting
or whatever.
Like, what an amazingperson and just incredible.
He's been so much to all of us.
So it was just reallyinteresting for me to hear
(32:24):
that that was who inspired you.
- He will be forever missed.
- And he will be forever missed.
I mean, what is that story,
actually speaking of Buffy,
I think he was workingwith Sarah Michelle Gellar
at the time that he...
- Oh wow.
- ... he passed away.
I can't remember what theshow was they were working on,
but it was somethingtogether that they were-
- I think it was coming back to TV.
(32:46):
- It was something for TV.
And I almost wanna say it was a drama
but I could be wrong about that.
- Yeah, I'm not 100%.
- Yeah, I'm not 100%, but anyways.
Neither here nor there.
So what I was gonna ask you,
that was your break sothat you could take-
- That was the break. (laughs)
- That was your break sothat you could take a rest
between ogre and demon.
(33:07):
So you clearly have voices.
Are there any impressions,like famous voices
that you are able to do
that we just can't end thispodcast without hearing?
- I mean, I can do impressions.
I don't know if any ofthem are good enough to say
that you can't end thepodcast without hearing them.
- I'm gonna declare that thereis one like that and then-
(33:29):
- I have imagined for a long time
that I could be the next Goofy for Disney
if I was hired to be Goofy for Disney.
- All right, let's hear your Goofy.
- Hi guys, ah-hyuck!
- (laughs) That's perfect.
So do you listen to these things
and then just sit there and practice?
(33:51):
- Not in the way that you think.
- Or is it more, is itquicker or more natural?
- It's more...
I mean, I do technically practice,
but I don't do it in the waythat you might be thinking
that I do it.
Like, I don't spend anhour in front of a mirror
or anywhere.
I don't spend time exclusively practicing.
The way that I do it
is I just keep doing it over time.
(34:11):
I'm always practicing.
Like, I'm generally-
- It's just part of yourgoofy day that you just-
- Yeah, I'm generally a silly person,
I just do voices at random sometimes,
and, you know, that's me practicing.
- We talked about thatbefore the mics heated up
about how silly you are.
Haven't disappointed, this has been great.
- If you watch any of my archived footage,
any of my streams, I willjust get weird sometimes.
(34:33):
I mean, I actually have,on my Twitch channel,
there is a point redemption reward.
So if you watch my Twitchchannel for long enough,
you get these things called Breakpoints.
Just for watching you get these.
And if you get 10,000 of them,
you have the ability to make me do a voice
for the rest of the stream.
(34:53):
- Oh, that's fantastic.
- That was once used against me
to turn me into Jar Jar Binksfor the remainder of a stream.
And it was a memorable experience.
My own fiance did that to me.
- That had to be afriend of yours, because-
- My own fiance did that to me.
My fiance did that to me.
- Okay, that tracks, that tracks 100%.
- He redeemed the reward
(35:14):
just to see what that would be like.
- So it's a Breakpoint, right.
Also a great movie.
Does that mean that you cando a Keanu Reeves impression?
- It's not based on the movie.
- I just tied it to the movie.
I just six degrees to Kevin Bacon
your Break Point reference.
- No, it's actually a wordplay.
(35:36):
So my fiance and I started a movement
called Break Down Walls.
- Mm-hmm.
- And right around that time...
The movement, by the way, is the idea is
to break down the barriers
between blind and sighted gamers
and just people in general,
just break down all the barriers
and be humans to each other.
And right around the same time,
Twitch developed a channel point system.
(35:57):
When Twitch released that,
they allowed people to name the points
whatever they wanted to name them.
So what I did was I builta whole theme around this.
So like, for instance,
the reward where you can change my voice
is called Voicebreaker.
The reward where you choosethe next person that we raid,
thus creating new connections,
(36:19):
is called Wallbreaker.
- Got it.
- You know, it's differentthings along that theme.
It's all about breaking down walls.
So we just kept with thetheme for the channel points.
- Yeah.
I really like that concept.
And one of the reasons why I actually
dove into your voice workthe way that I did here
is because I think an important point
or important concept here,
(36:39):
because we're talking abouthow you, as a blind individual,
are consulting and helping video games
become more accessible and usable
by other people who are blind.
But just because you're blind
doesn't mean that you're not doing work
that somebody who's notblind might be doing, right?
- Sure, sure.
(36:59):
- Like that voice work,
like it leads to those other things.
And I know that becauseof the industry I'm in,
you know that because it's your life,
but I just think it's an important concept
to kind of have thatout there in the world,
that everybody has thingsthat they can specialize in
and talents and thingsthat they're good at,
(37:20):
and conditions that maybe theyshould be doing something.
But at the end of the day, it's all just
human beings doing allsorts of different things.
- Yeah, just like with me andaudio description narration.
That's a field that is verymuch open to blind people
because it is for them,
but at the same time, a lotof audio description narrators
are also sighted.
(37:41):
The concept of blind people
doing professional audiodescription narration
is kind of relatively new.
It's not completely new,I'm not the first one,
but, you know, I'm doing that too,
and I daresay doing apretty good job of it,
and it's good.
It's good.
I've done a lot of...
And also, that ties together
(38:03):
with the rest of my work too,
because a lot of what I'vedone for audio description
has been video game trailers.
So a lot of companies nowadays
have started releasingtrailers for their games
with audio described versions,
and when they get professionalaudio description companies
to do those trailers, they need narrators
for those of course,
and I've been picked to be more than one
(38:23):
of those narrators.
- Was God of War Ragnarök, doesn't that
have audio description in it as well?
- It does have audio described trailers,
but the audio descriptionwas done by text-to-speech,
which typically I don't like,
but at least it was there.
- At least it was there.
But I think, as my son was playing it,
because I've gotta tell you,
my son is a developer anda big gamer and all that,
(38:47):
and he's playing God ofWar Ragnarök upstairs
while I'm downstairs and he's yelling,
"Dad, you've gotta come see this,
gave all the accessibility features."
And he's got the audio description on
and all of this kind of stuff.
And by the way, he develops an app
and he sends me hispersonal testing results
from accessibility,
and he's like, "Lookat how good this was."
(39:09):
- That's awesome.
- Like, oh, go, yes.
But anyways, he was very excited, being...
My son is somewhat of anevangelist for accessibility
and he was very excited to hear.
I'm thinking back to when I did this,
but it was the audio description,
I think he called me up to say,
(39:29):
"Look, they've audio described this."
- Yeah.
To be clear, though, the audio description
is not in the game.
God of War Ragnarök doesnot have any in-game
audio description.
- It's the trailers, yeah.
I think it was the opening trailer.
He's like, "I'm starting thisgame, you've gotta hear this."
- Yeah, the launch trailer has it,
and a few trailers before that had it too.
But yeah, it is TTS but it's actually,
it's fairly well-written,
(39:50):
it's just described by text-to-speech,
which I don't typicallyprefer, but there you go.
- Yeah.
Like you said, the effort's there,
and that's where we needto start, is by, you know-
- Yeah, at least they did it at all.
- Yeah, I know.
A lot of people think about perfect.
And it's like eh, don'tthink about perfect.
Think about let's getit started, let's do it.
(40:10):
- Well, I do think peoplehave a right to proclaim
their dislike of something
if it doesn't meet the standard
that they think that should be met.
- Of course.
- But, you know, I'm alsoan advocate for that.
I can't say a whole bunch about this,
but some of my careerhas come from the fact
(40:31):
that I spoke out about something
not being the way it should be.
- I agree with that.
I think it's just more the concept of like
it's at least occurring.
Like let's start with donothing is not an option.
- Right, right.
- Start it, do a bad job at it,
and then be willing toimprove based on feedback
(40:51):
and so on and so forth.
- Exactly, exactly.
- But it's a journey.
It's an absolute journey.
So I think you're right onall accounts there, for sure.
So tell me this, right.
I could sit here andtalk to you all day long,
but we need to kind of-
- (laughs) I mean, thatmakes me feel good.
- We will do that at some point.
- That does make me feel good.
- But I would be curious,
(41:12):
like I'm really impressed with how
the work that you're talkingabout and that you've done
and how far video gamesactually have gotten.
Back in five years ago at CSUN
when I was having that conversation,
I was almost worried that therewouldn't be attention on it,
and like I said, quicklylearned that it was different,
(41:34):
and then subsequentlybecame sort of impressed
with the attention that's been put on it.
And then also recognizehow long we have to go
before we're anywhere closeto there, whatever that is.
- Every game being accessible.
(laughs) Yeah.
- So what do you see...
Two part question here, what do you see
as your next big hurdle,
(41:57):
the next big thing thatyou wanna get past,
solve and accomplish?
And then the same question
for just sort of accessiblevideo gaming in general.
- That's an interesting question.
Honestly, I can't really answer
the second part of that question
because, let me put it this way,
(42:19):
I do have work currently.
I am working with a coupleof clients right now,
and because of that I havethese wonderful little things
called NDAs.
- Gotta be careful.
- Which is basically my life these days.
My life is comprised of NDAs
and occasional bits of fun.
(42:40):
So I can't talk about that stuff,
because one of those thingsI think would be the answer
to one of your questions,
because, you know, like I said,
I'm trying to bringpeople new experiences.
So what I would say is-
- I'm happy to wait untilthat video game comes out
and I hear about it.
- What I will say is I'mworking on a new experience
that does not exist in the blindAAA gaming space currently.
(43:01):
My own personal hurdle,
I want to find a way to grow,
I want to expand my platform,
I want to reach more people,
I want to reach more game developers,
and I want to ensurethat I continue to have
as much work as I do right now.
I'm lucky to have it,
because the problem is Iam currently freelance.
So if this work goes away
and I reach a point wheresome developer somewhere
(43:23):
isn't reaching out to me,
which luckily hasn't happened in a while,
but if it does, I have toconsider the fact that it might,
then I'm just not making any income.
- Right.
- So...
- If you're not growing,you're shrinking philosophy.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
So to that point,
then if somebody'slistening to this podcast
(43:46):
and they're like, "I'm so inspired,
I love what Brandon's doing,
I would love to be a part of it,
I'd love to help him,I'd love to make sure...
I'd love to help him achieve his goals
and continue his mission."
What would be the one thingthat somebody could do for you?
Would it be follow you onTwitch or would it be...
(44:06):
- I mean, follows are great.
I mean, if you wanna follow,
if you wanna watch the content, do that.
I'm perfectly happy with that.
Twitch, YouTube, all those things.
Check out hundreds of hoursof me playing video games
if you want to.
- Got it.- That'd be great.
I still haven't hit 1000YouTube subscribers,
so if I could hit that.
- 1000 YouTube subscribers.
- That would be amazing.
(44:26):
That is kind of my-
- You guys heard that, go subscribe.
- Go subscribe.
- I'm talking to the audience.
Hang on a second, Brandon,
I'm gonna talk directly to the...
- Do it.
- Go subscribe to his YouTubechannel, let's get that...
1000 is doable, right?
What number are you at right now?
- We're at about 660, I think.
So we're about 340 left.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
(44:47):
All right.
- 1000 YouTube subscribers means
that I can monetizethe videos that I make.
And that would prompt me to put
a little more emphasison the YouTube channel.
Right now I use it, but I useit as primarily an archive
of my streams.
Which is fine, people do like that,
but I'm thinking that whenI hit 1000 subscribers,
there may be incentive forme to maybe start making
(45:07):
other types of contents forthose subscribers if there's...
You know, the thing is,
and this is one of the hardtruths that I have to...
That it's true.
And maybe I'm too honest for my own good.
But this is the hardtruth of things right now.
I am a busy enough personthat I can't put a lot of time
into anything unless I can profit from it.
(45:31):
- Oh, that totally makes sense. Yeah.
- It might sound like, I'mnot trying to be selfish,
I'm not trying to be greedy,
it's just that I've reached a point
where I am trying to makesomething of this business
that I've formed,
and I'm actuallyofficially a business now.
And I'm trying to make something of this
and so I have to focus on thethings that help me do that.
(45:52):
- Yeah.
I always explain that as sustainability.
If you want this personto continue this behavior,
they've gotta be able to sustain it,
which means they've gotta beable to pay the bills with it.
- Yeah.
- It's that simple.
- So the follows are good.
Just getting the word out is good.
Like, just let people know who I am.
If you are a game developer,if you know a game developer,
(46:13):
hey, I'll help them too.
Like, you know, whatever you like.
You can check out mywebsite, brandoncole.net,
my blog is there, myconsultancy page is there,
so I can be hireddirectly from my website,
so that's a thing.
You know, all of it, allof it is important to me.
I'm typically never thetype to just directly say,
(46:34):
"Give to me monies. You givedollar, I do thing for you."
No, I'm typically not theperson to ask for that.
I mean, there are ways to do that,
because of course I'veset up ways to do it
if you wanted to donate directly to me,
but when asked how people can help me out,
I'm never gonna really bring those up.
Because the primary thing that I wanna do
(46:55):
is continue to be an advocatefor people and accessibility
and continue to talk topeople and about the things
that I'm doing as far as I can,
and let people know what's going on
and just keep helping people.
Just, yeah, just do all of that stuff.
- I got it.
Well, I'm happy for that tobecome sustainable for you.
- Yes, that's the idea, that's the goal.
(47:16):
- So that you can continue doing all that
and you're not worryingabout how to separately
pay bills and put food on the table
and all that kind of stuff.
- I will say that thingsright now are fairly good.
So I'm not in any kind ofdesperation situation right now.
I have a lot of work right now,
things are going very well.
So, if we don't hit- That's wonderful.
- the 1000 subscribersimmediately, that's fine.
(47:37):
- Things are going well.
I think the message isthings are going well,
I'd still take 1000 subscribers.
- I'll still take them.- Not lose sight of that.
- If they'd like to subscribe,I'll definitely take them.
- Wonderful.
Well, listen, like I saidI can keep going here.
Maybe you and I shouldtalk again at some point.
- Sure.
- Maybe contact us whensome of these games
(47:58):
that you can't talk about right now,
some of these new things come out
that you can't talk about right now,
when that happens ping usbecause I'd love to hear
about some of those things,
because it's incredibly fascinating to me
and I think other people,how these things get solved.
I and a bunch of others are appreciative
that you're around to solve them.
(48:19):
- Whenever we can announce,
which I don't even know when yet,
but whenever we can announceI'll be happy to let you know.
- That'd be great.
And please make sure, youmentioned a bunch of websites
and your YouTube channeland all that kind of stuff.
Please make sure that Dara has that
so that we can make it easier for people
just to go to our shownotes and grab that.
Very, very great talking to you, Brandon.
(48:40):
Very, very cool.
I was a hardcore '90s gamer
when games first wentcompetitive on the internet.
I had a problem, I had toback off of it quite a bit,
but if I do go back to it,it's first person shooter,
so work on that please.
- I want to.
- Yeah.
(49:01):
Listen, you and I have a goal now.
- Yeah. Oh, I've had it-
- The goal is for youand I to either compete
to play side-by-side,
if it's team based like death match or-
- Or shoot each other in the head.
- ... against each other orboth, D, all of the above
in a first person shooter.
That's the goal, I want you tomake it happen for you and I.
(49:21):
- That's a good goal, I like that goal.
I'm gonna do my best to make that happen.
- It's nice to have somebodyelse in your goal, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- All right, man, well thank you so much.
Anything last minute you wannasay before we sign off here?
- I think just that you never know...
Yeah, this is what I'll say.
When you do something inlife, that even if you know
(49:47):
what reasons you have for doing it,
you never know how that thingwill affect other people.
The fact that I get to say,
that I get every couple of weeks or so,
I get a thank you for thework that I did years ago
on The Last of Us 2, thatI still get those today,
(50:07):
that I have affected people'slives in this major way
is an incredible reward.
So when you're thinking aboutdoing something that is huge,
when you're thinking about taking a risk,
I took a risk, I left a full-time job
to start doing this full-time,
this career that I'm doingnow, I left a full-time job.
Think of not only howsomething might affect you,
(50:30):
not only how somethingmight affect your friends,
but think of how it might affectpeople all over the world.
And maybe that will inspireyou to take that leap
if that's what you need,
and follow your dreams.
You know, it might sound corny,
but the thing is, it really can work.
And I'm living proof.
That sounds corny too, but it's true.
(50:51):
It's 100% true.
I get those stories, I getthose talks from people,
and it humbles me and I'mhonored to do this work
because I'm doing it forpeople all over the world.
It's hard to accept that that's the power
that your name has at any given point,
but it can be real.
(51:13):
And if you think that youcan do that for someone
or do that for a whole bunch of people,
if you have ideas, get them out there
and start making that thing happen.
Because you never know.
You never know.
- Well, that's great wordsto end the podcast on.
So I am not going to dive in there
other than to say thankyou so much for being here.
(51:35):
What an inspiration, whata great conversation,
and I appreciate youindulging the geek within me
during the conversation.- No problem at all. Any time.
Any time.
That's what I'm here for.
- All right, well this isMark Miller thanking Brandon
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- [Voiceover] This podcast hasbeen brought to you by TPGi,
(51:56):
the experts in digital accessibility.
Stay tuned for more "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
(bright uplifting music)
(bright uplifting music)
(00:00):
- [Voiceover] Welcome to TPGi's
"Real People, Real Stories" podcast,
where you'll find interestingand diverse stories
from folks working to make theworld a more inclusive place.
(bright uplifting music)
- Hey, welcome to "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGi.
I'm your host, Mark Miller,
(00:21):
thank you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor,
if you're enjoying "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
share it and tell someone about it.
Hey, even link to it fromyour accessible website.
So I am here with a veryinteresting and exciting guest,
and I'm really excited to talk to you
about one particular thing,
(00:42):
which you'll find out in a minute,
but my guest today is Brandon Cole,
and Brandon Cole does quitea few interesting things
and uses assistive technologyand alternative access
and all that in somesuper interesting ways.
But I'm gonna dive right into what...
Well, before I do that, Brandon,
tell us a little bit, inyour words, about who you are
(01:03):
and then I'm gonna save thisthing I wanna talk to you about
for a few minutes.
- Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
So I am Brandon Cole, I ama creature of many hats,
as Mark said.
I do a lot of things.
I'm primarily a professionalaccessibility consultant,
I work in the video game industry.
Which is a pretty cooljob, let me tell ya.
(01:23):
But I'm also a podcaster, a blogger,
a streamer of video game content,
and even a voice actor on the side,
along with the occasionaldabble into other things,
including audio descriptionnarration and more.
I do a lot.
- That's a list.
- It's a list.
- That's a heck of a list.
- And I love it. I loveevery minute of it.
(01:44):
- I bet you do, I bet you do.
So here's what I wanted to dive into,
because, I mean, you'veled right into it, right?
Video game consultant.
- Yup.
- And it's interesting, let me just go off
on a quick tangent here,
because I don't know, have youever been to CSUN, Brandon?
- I have not been to CSUN.
It's one of the conferences
(02:05):
that I think I should go to someday,
but I still have not gone to that one yet.
- So, for the audience, what CSUN is,
and the reason whyBrandon knew what it was
off the top of his head eventhough he hasn't been there,
is it's the largest assistivetechnology conference...
assistive technologyconference in the world,
that happens in Anaheimcurrently every year.
And why I brought it up, Brandon,
(02:26):
is because I was doing a session
or listening to a session at CSUN
and I met somebody in that session,
it was a woman who was low vision,
and we started chatting kindof in the hallway afterwards,
and our whole conversation turned to
the accessibility of video games.
- Ah-hah.
(02:46):
- And to what's possibleand what's not possible
and all that kind of stuff.
And this was probably, I'mgonna say over five years ago
at this point.
But the reason why I bringthat up is to illustrate
how important it is that wethink about accessibility
in video games.- Yeah.
(03:06):
- And how glad I am that there's a market
for somebody like you toconsult on video games
and that that's being looked at.
And I know since I've hadthat conversation with her,
other people were thinking about it too.
We thought we were brilliant, right?
Like, "They should do all that stuff,"
we're coming up with ideas.
And it turns out, otherpeople were already on it.
So there's that.
(03:30):
There's been awards given tovideo games and stuff like that
but you put something here,
because my son came home for Christmas
and he brought with himhis video game console
that he had had in a closet
until God of War Ragnarök came out.
(Brandon laughs)
He pulled it out of the closet,
he plugged it into one of our TVs here,
(03:50):
he had the whole week off
and I believe came closeto completing the campaign,
I think he had to finishit a little bit afterwards.
But can you talk to meabout God of War Ragnarök
and the accessibility of it,
and just indulge me in my full-on geekness
and talk about how justcool the game is, period?
- Yeah, 100%.
(04:11):
First of all though, I want to say
it's funny that you say thatconversation with that woman
happened about five years ago,
because five years agoI probably was working
at that time on one of mybiggest projects of all time,
which was Last of Us Part II.
- Like I said, we found out
we weren't unique in ourthoughts pretty quickly.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But you know, I'm dealingwith web accessibility
(04:32):
and the accessibility of applications
and all that kind of stuff,
so this conversation about gaming
was sort of a unique one for me.
- It was a different one, yeah.
- You know?
- Yeah, I totally getthat, I totally get that.
But God of War.
God of War Ragnarök has a tonof accessibility features,
and I'm actually reallyhonored to say this,
but the majority of theblind accessibility features
(04:52):
in that game,
are based on my preexisting work
for The Last of Us Part II.
I did not directly work on the game,
but weirdly I also kind of did,
because my DNA is all over it.
The features I helped designexist in that game as well.
So the primary feature
(05:12):
that helps the blind complete the game
is navigational assist.
And what that does is, pressing one button
sends out a little ping,
that basically does two things.
It turns the cameratowards your objective,
which then also turns thecharacter towards your objective.
And then if you just move forward
after pressing that button,it's R3 on a PS5 controller.
(05:35):
If you just move forward,you'll be walking towards
the objective you're supposed to reach
to progress the story.
That system is not just basic,it turns you towards walls
and then you walk into the wall;
no, it's actually a smart system,
where if you have to complete a puzzle
or do a couple of grapples
to get to where you need to go to,
it will lead you to those
so you can get to the actualspot you need to reach.
(05:58):
So that's kind of the primary thing,
but there's other things too,
including screen narration of most menus.
I will say that Ragnarökis a little incomplete
in this area.
Ragnarök does notnarrate all of its menus.
It does narrate most of them,
but doesn't narrate the character menus,
like choosing your skillsand setting up your gear,
and equipping new gear,and things like that.
(06:20):
Those things do not narrate.
It is a pain point that I have expressed
to Sony Santa Monica multiple times,
and I'm hoping that theyfix it in a future patch,
because there is a pretty bigpatch coming in the spring,
and I'm hoping they include
some more accessibility fixes in that.
But...
- Can you talk to me alittle bit about, like,
(06:41):
just in detail, nothaving that feature there,
how does that kind ofdisrupt your gameplay?
- The problem with not having it,
is it puts the blind ata tremendous disadvantage
that I do not like.
As a consultant myself,
I'm trying to create spaces for the blind
to be as close to, equalto the sighted as possible
(07:03):
in a game.
My whole philosophy is I'm not trying
to necessarily make an easy mode.
I'm actually not saying,"Just make the game easy
so we can complete it."
I'm okay with a really hard game.
But I'm trying to make it sowe have the same information
and we can play on the samelevel as a sighted person.
- I think that's a great point,if I can just interrupt you.
(07:25):
- Sure, sure.
- And one of the reasons why,
is in the work that we do
in talking aboutaccessibility all the time,
the concept of equivalency,an equivalent experience,
is something that we...
Brandon, it's a hard concept, right?
For somebody who hasn't- It is
- got there and thought about it.
And I've been in talks for abusiness related type website,
(07:47):
where they've said, "Oh,that feature's terrible,
and nobody uses it anyway,
that's why we didn't botherto make it accessible."
- Yeah, I get it.
- It's like, okay, well then remove it.
Or allow people withdisabilities to experience
how horrible it is too,
because the idea, thedrive is equivalency,
(08:09):
and not making judgments aboutwhat we think other people
should and should not see-
- Or use.
- Or use, or have access to or whatever.
Anyways, I just wanted to saythat's a really good point,
and it's something thatwe see across the board.
And I completely got youwith the video games.
I mean, my video game playing
(08:31):
is almost exclusively aroundfirst person shooters,
and equivalency in thatcase would be probably hard,
it's probably hard.
- Yeah, it'd be very difficult.
- But even more necessary.
- But yeah, I'm one of those people too,
when I talk about working on this stuff,
and people tell me things like that.
Like, "Well man, a firstperson shooter would be hard."
(08:53):
I'd be like, "Still wanna doit, I'd still work on one."
- Yeah, still, it's gotta be done.
- Like, I still wanna makethat happen for people.
I set my goals, my careergoals are genre-based.
So that's how I've been thinking.
I started adopting this pretty early on.
So when I worked on TheLast of Us 2 I said okay,
I did it, I gave peoplean action adventure
(09:14):
that's fully accessible.
Now I wanna give peoplea first person shooter.
Now I wanna give people a giant300 hour role playing game.
Now I wanna give people an MMO.
You know, these are thethings that I wanna do.
- So what about firstperson shooter online?
Like where they're playingagainst other people.
Have you dug into that one at all?
- It is a conversation I've had many times
(09:36):
but I haven't worked on one just yet.
But again, I want to,because the challenge
of making that work issomething that I wanna overcome,
and I want to find a way.
It is a very difficult concept,
because you have to figure out
how you can make something accessible
that is incredibly fast-pacedand incredibly reactive,
(09:58):
but also not make it unfair to the sighted
or vice versa, you know?
- Because you're essentially,
I mean I think a lot of the salt of that
is essentially what sighted people
would consider to be cheats, right?
Like, oh here's an aim bot,this is gonna aim for you.
You know?
Obviously if you're blindyou can't visually aim
like a sighted person can.
(10:18):
So you've gotta havesome method to do that.
- I have ideas,
I have ideas to kind ofget around that idea,
but it kind of doesn't matter.
The internet is theinternet, unfortunately,
and there are people who look at
what I did with The Last of Us 2,
a single player game where you're
not competing against anybody,
and they make fun of itbecause they call it cheating.
(10:39):
- Yeah.
- There are entire videos-
- Do you feel comfortablesharing some of your thoughts
on, like, how you would solvethe first person online?
- Yeah, so one of the ideas I had
is kind of based loosely on the concepts
that audio games created.
So there's a lot of games out there
that are only audio.
Games that are made just for the blind,
by the blind usually.- Great, yeah.
(10:59):
- And some of them have come up
with some pretty coolconcepts for things like this.
Like aiming, for instance.
What I would come up with is a system
where the player would have to be facing
in kind of a 360 degree general direction.
They would have to generallybe facing their opponent.
(11:19):
And when they pressed aim,
it would not necessarily auto-aim,
but it would provide them a sound
that would orient themtowards their opponent
if their opponent wasn'talready making sound.
Like, because, in games these days,
every enemy makes a significantamount of noise, you know?
So if their opponent wasn'tmaking any particular sound,
they would be oriented by this sound
that would play for them.
(11:41):
It could potentially be positional.
So like if the enemy was to their left,
the sound would be coming from your left,
so you'd turn in that direction.
You could also use pitchto kind of ensure they get
a real lock right on the center of them.
And then once they'vecentered on that enemy,
once they've found the center position
where they're facingtheir correct direction,
only then does the game actually help them
(12:03):
with the vertical aspect.
Because right now, where we are right now
with audio technology,
some developers are trying to use 3D audio
to indicate verticality,
but it's just not quite there yet.
So the way that I would handleit with today's technology,
would just be that you use a sound
to locate the center, to center an enemy,
(12:23):
and only then would the game help you aim
by helping with the vertical part.
As long as you werelocked on to the center.
- Gotcha.
So I'm just gonna restate this
to make sure I'm understanding it right.
Because what I find interesting
is the capabilities of sound.
Basically what you're saying is
today what we're workingwith is a stereo sound,
(12:45):
which by nature can orient youhorizontally, left to right,
you can hear something to be like,
"Oh, that's further to myleft or further to my right."
But, there's no sound dimensionthat goes up and down,
the stereo, no matter howyou slice it up it's limited.
- Like I said, there are attempts at that.
Like, the PS5 does have a 3D audio engine
(13:07):
that does attempt to do that,
it just doesn't do asuper great job of it.
You can tell with the PS5
if something is above or below you,
but it's kind of binary.
Like if it's above you, nomatter how far above you it is,
it just sounds like it'sabove you generally.
- Gotcha.
- You don't know if maybe the enemy
(13:27):
that's shooting down atyou is up on a high roof,
and you don't know thatthey're on that high a perch,
you just know they're above you somewhere.
- They're above you, yeah.
You could be shooting at the ceiling.
- Right.
- Or shooting, just-
- You could be shooting at the ceiling
of the room that you're in, right.
But I will say this,
I will say that it's notonly stereo these days.
We have reached a point where I do think
360 virtual surround is pretty good.
(13:50):
Excluding up and down,the virtual surround sound
that can indicate things all around you
in a 360 degree field, that'spretty good these days.
- Yeah, I agree with that.
Well, and when I said with stereo,
I was actually thinkingphysically, you've got a speaker.
I mean, you and I are bothwearing headsets right now
and we've got a speaker in our left ear,
a speaker in our right ear.
(14:11):
So by nature of justthe physical orientation
of those two speakers,
you've gotta become real creative
if you're gonna make somethingsound like it's up or down.
And then to your point itsounds like they're struggling
with how do you make itsound like it's slightly up
or slightly down or whatever, you know.
- Yeah, right, right.
Like I said, it seems to justbe one above you position,
(14:31):
and one below you position.
So yeah, it's difficult.
But I think that would be thesystem I would use for now.
It would definitely be an experiment,
but it's something that I wanna try
with a developer one day.
- Oh, I hope you get it.
That's sounds really good.
And I like your ideas about aiming.
I think that, to me inmy limited knowledge,
it seems to be on track.
I would imagine you wouldhave to build a system
(14:52):
and then just stress test it
until you ended up with,you know, a blind person
successfully competing againsta bunch of other people
on a map.
- Yeah, I think that the wayit might have to be approached
is very early in developmentwhen the game itself
is very basic
and it's just a functionalmultiplayer shooter.
Even if a lot of stuffis still missing from it
(15:13):
and they just play test theheck out of the basic version
just to see if this works, you know?
- For sure.
And guess who would get toplay test that, Brandon?
- I would.
- You, you.
- That's part of what I do, yeah.
- Do you know what I can'tdo all day long at work?
Play video games.
So you've, like, beat me out.
- I've perfected work.
(15:34):
- What's that?
- I have perfected the idea of work.
- You've perfected the idea,
I like where your head's at with that.
So heading back to God of War Ragnarök,
like we missed a big piece of this.
You don't just play this game,
and as you said, it's notjust that your DNA is on it
from previous work,
but you actually have a Twitch channel.
(15:54):
- Yes, yes.
- So talk to me a little bit about...
Like, start with like, why theheck would you want a Twitch?
Like, why would you want a Twitch channel,
why would you share?
What is your motivation forbeing involved in all of that
and kind of, what does it do for you?
- Well, actually, that's agreat way to word that question
because the way that I view Twitch
and the way that I view my channel
(16:15):
is that it feeds intoeverything else that I do.
So I have that channel toshare gameplay of games
with other blind people,
to show them what games they can play,
even if they're not aware of it.
Because you'd be surprised,
you'd be surprised at how manypeople come to my channel,
that are blind,
but haven't been following me before
(16:37):
and haven't beenfollowing the gaming media
that talks about it,
or haven't been following audiogames.net
looking at forum postsand things like that.
Just have kind of been out of the loop.
And they witnessed me playing a video game
and they go, "Oh, wait, you can play this?
How can you play this?"
It happens a lot.
- That's amazing.
- But even more than that,there's two other purposes too.
(17:01):
I also wanna show sighted people
what the blind are capable of.
I consider myself anadvocate for accessibility
as well as a consultant,
so I do try to kind ofget the message out there.
And I'm one of those people
that will do it one person at a time.
I'm one of those people where,if a sighted person comes in
and asks me a questionabout how this works,
how that works, how I'm playingthis, how I'm doing that,
(17:23):
and I answer it, which I will,
and then five minutes lateranother sighted person comes in
and asks the same question.
Guess what?
I will answer it.
And if I don't answer it-
- You don't get annoyed at all.
You're never like, "Okay, enough guys."
- No, because it's a different person,
and it's another chanceto open someone's eyes,
pun absolutely intended,
(17:43):
(Mark chuckles)
to the world of accessibilityand how blind people
are just trying to play gamesthe same way that they are.
So I don't get annoyed with that.
And honestly, sometimesI am super into the game,
but the good news about that is,
I've developed a communitythat gets my philosophy,
that understands what I'm trying to do.
So for some reason if I forget to
(18:05):
or if I can't answer a question,
usually the rest of mychat will do it for me.
- Somebody else, somebodywill come up with-
- Yeah, they'll be like,"Yeah, this is how he does it.
Look at the VOD, look atthe video on demand archive,
you'll see exactly hisexplanation was earlier."
And then a lot of times I have a guy
that will take my explanations of things
and make highlights out of them
(18:26):
so people can watch them later.
- Oh, that's really cool.
- But that's not it, there's one more,
there's one more purpose, though.
- Okay, go for it.
- In my opinion, this is the coolest one,
because this is the one thatreally ties it all together.
Because of my work, becauseof the work I've done
on video games themselves,
that has created forme a bunch of contacts,
(18:47):
it's opened up the gaming industry to me.
I'm basically considereda respected figure
in the game industry, whichis a really cool thing to say.
But anyway, because ofthat, some of my audience
are game developers fromthese different companies.
Some of these big AAA companies,
people from those companiescome into my channel
to watch me play games.
(19:09):
- Oh, fantastic.
- So it's for them too.
Even if it's not theirgame that they're watching,
the point is, if they get ideas
from seeing the things that I'm doing
and seeing the thingsthat I'm playing, great.
Because ultimately, every winis a win for accessibility.
It doesn't matter wherethey got the ideas from.
If they get inspired byseeing me play some other game
(19:29):
that isn't theirs
and they go, "Oh, thisis how we could do that,"
that's perfect.
That's exactly what we want.
- And I bet they get excited,
I bet it's better thanreading a spec or something,
they see it and see you do it
and see your emotion andexcitement and your followers,
and they probably do it with alittle more enthusiasm, yeah?
- Yeah, that's the whole idea.
(19:52):
It's happened multiple times.
People will watch me play their games,
people watch me play other people's games,
and it will get them thinking,it will get them talking
about it too.
I get questions from them too.
Like, "How is this working?"
Like, "What kind of system isthis? How are you doing this?"
I'll answer those just as eagerly,
just so they can understandhow this all works
(20:13):
and what is possible.
Because that tends to bethe biggest selling point
when I talk to new developers
that haven't experiencedblind accessibility in a game.
Just convincing them ofwhat is actually possible,
and what we actually need
versus what they thought we would need.
They're often two different things, so.
(20:34):
- Yeah, and I think one, in my experience,
if you show a developer or somebody in UX
how people are using their stuff,
they always get really excited.
I mean, you know, ability aside,
if they just look at howsomebody's interacting,
how somebody's enjoying,
(20:55):
how somebody's strugglingwith or whatever,
it always fires up their mind
to improve the experience,enhance the experience, you know?
- Yeah. That's one of the reasons I do it.
- So I think that's brilliant,
that that channel's thereand available for them
to do just that for howsomebody who's blind
is experiencing their game.
- Yeah, exactly.
(21:15):
- It's incredible.
The other thing that I wanted to just say
is that your earlier point
when you were talking about
the reason why you havethe Twitch channel,
and that you were willingto talk to people.
(21:36):
Like, I think that that'ssuch a fantastic quality,
and I think actuallyputting a forum out there
that encourages that,
encourages people to come to you and say,
"Jeez, this is somethingI don't understand
and I haven't seen before
but I'd like to understand it."
And from a personal standpoint,
when I was in college, Itook a series of classes
(21:58):
around theater and acting.
I'm sure you can relatea little bit to that one.
- I did, I can.
- We'll get into thatin a minute too, right?
But in one of my theater classes,
the first one that I took,
the professor, there was twoprofessors running the class,
and one of them was blind.
And one of the bestthings that he ever did,
is he had one-on-onemeetings with the students
(22:20):
right in the beginning of the class,
and one of the things or oneof the purposes in that meeting
amongst the sort ofstandard academic stuff
was, "Hey, now is your chance,ask me anything you want
about me being blind."
And I can remember sittingthere and being like,
"How'd you get here today?"
- (laughs) Right, yeah.
- And he explained to me that,
(22:42):
"Well, obviously I don'tdrive, but I live in..."
This was at University of New Hampshire,
so he lived in a town nearbycalled Dover, New Hampshire,
and he took the bus in and explained
kind of how that worked for him.
So I had questions like thatall the way down to, like,
"Do you have a concept, likeif somebody says triangle,
like I imagine a triangle,what happens in your brain?"
(23:05):
And he explained that as a child
he had a little bit ofvery low vision sight,
so he actually has the mental image
of basic things like that.
- I do too, actually.
- What's that?
- I do too, actually.
Even though I've never actually had sight,
it is-
- Yeah, go ahead, answer thatquestion, that's a good one.
- Yeah, like even though ifyou have never had sight,
(23:25):
it's still possible to form mental images
based on things you'veexperienced in some way.
So I have felt a triangle,
so if asked what a triangleis, I can picture a triangle.
Now, of course it's colorless,
you're only getting the shape in my mind,
because I don't have a concept of color.
It just is what it is.
You can try to explaincolor to me all day long,
it doesn't matter.
There's no way, if you haven't seen it,
(23:47):
that you can conceptualize color properly.
It's just, you can't.
But I can get the shape.
And that goes for anythingthat I've experienced
in some form.
- Yeah, and what'sinteresting to me is that,
and I think this isacross the board, right?
Even amongst people whoare sighted to a degree,
but you say, "I can picturea triangle in my mind."
(24:08):
- Yeah.
- Is that the same thingas when I say I can picture
a triangle in my mind?
Are you actually...
And as sighted people, wehave something to relate to,
because I can look at a triangle,
and when I close my eyesI'm looking at a triangle
in my brain.
And so that's what I would be...
There's no way to answerthe question, Brandon,
but that's where my young mind was going.
- I get it. I do get it.
- Yeah. How do I do that?
(24:29):
And to the same point,two sighted people saying,
"That is blue."
We can recognize the color is blue
and both agree if shownsomething blue that it's blue
and communicate that it's blue.
What we can't do is we can't say that
the way we see that inour brain is the same.
(24:49):
They may be actually seeing in their head
what I see as red.
- It's possible, yeah.
It's absolutely possible.- It's possible.
So it's not even just asighted/blind kind of question,
it goes deeper than that.
- Yeah.
- We're getting a little tangential here.
So to bring us back, talkingabout this acting stuff,
(25:11):
you do a lot of...
In your list at the top of the podcast,
one of the things you saidyou do is voice acting.
- I do, yeah.
- Can you talk to me alittle bit about that,
how you got into it, whatkind of stuff you do?
How does that all work?
- Well, how I got intoit goes all the way back
to my very, very young childhood years.
(25:31):
I was a huge Disney fangrowing up as a kid,
and one of my favorite movies of all time
is the Disney version of Aladdin,
the old one, the 1995 one.
- Gotcha, yup.
- And I just loved RobinWilliams as the Genie,
and that was my inspiration right there.
(25:53):
He was the first one.
He wasn't the only one thatinspired me to wanna do that,
but he was the first one that made me go,
"Wow, I wanna do this."
- That's great.
- For a long time, thatis all I wanted to be,
was an actor.
And I memorized the entiretyof Aladdin, the whole movie.
There was a point in my life
where I could probably just do the movie.
(26:15):
Like, (laughs) the entire thing.
- Unbelievable.
- I can't do it anymore,I've lost some of that,
but I still remember quotes and stuff.
That was who I wantedto be for a long time.
And that never completely went away.
So I was really, really honored in 2014
when I got the opportunity.
I did some voice actingfor a volunteer group
(26:39):
earlier than this,
probably about 2006,2007, 2008, around there.
Volunteer audio drama groupcalled Darker Projects,
who, we made no money, it was a nonprofit,
it was just we loved making audio drama,
so we just did it together.
And I think the content is still online,
Darker Projects content is still online.
(26:59):
So if you wanna hear really, really-
- Darker Projects, isthat what it's called?
- Yeah, Darker Projects.
- Do me a favor, if you can find that
and send it to the producer, Dara.
- Yeah.
- Because we'll put that in the show notes
so people can find it.
- Yeah, if I can find it I will.
If you wanna hear my really old stuff.
I even took a crack at audio production.
- Of course we do.
We wanna see what you were like
(27:20):
before you perfected your craft.
- Yeah, I mean it'sokay, but it's not, like,
it's not gonna blow your mind.
- Yeah.
- But I even took acrack at audio production
in one episode.
I not only acted in it but I produced it,
so that was pretty cool.
- That's awesome.
- But then, I kept kind of...
I was still into it a lot.
(27:43):
So in 2014, let me stepinto 2014 for a second.
- Okay.
- I was really, really honored-
- We need, like, a WaybackMachine sound effect
or something.- A Wayback Machine, right.
(Mark imitates machine chiming)
- Okay, we're there.
- I was really honored to be...
I was already going to GDC,
I went to the Game DevelopersConference that year
to be on a panel aboutaccessibility in games,
and mobile games specifically.
That year I was not in this career.
(28:06):
This was before I started with the career
that I'm on right now.
Actually, on this panel, I wasjust the gamer perspective.
That's all I was.
I was just someone that they knew about
because of my blog, they foundout about me from my blog.
And they invited me justto speak as a blind gamer
about the accessibility of mobile games.
And that's all it was.
But while I was there,I met the audio director
(28:31):
of a game called Pillars of Eternity.
It's from Obsidian Entertainment,
and it is a really, really big,really, really awesome RPG.
I love it.
I can't play it, unfortunately.
- That's a role playing game,
for you non-extreme geeks out there.
- It is a role playing game.
So I met the audio director over lunch,
just kind of coincidentally.
(28:51):
And I talked to him about why I was there,
you know, my panel and all that stuff.
And then I just got intojust general discussion
and I happened to mentionthat I've always wanted
to voice act in a video game.
And he's like, "Well, actually,
you've got a pretty good voice,
and we need actors, so you wanna?"
(29:13):
And I was like-- There it is, serendipity.
- Yeah.
- That's unbelievable.
- Yeah, so I can now proudly announce
that in Pillars of EternityI am several, several voices.
Including a voice you canchoose for your character
when you create your character.
If you choose the voicelabeled "Benevolent Male"
that is me.
(29:33):
- (laughs) That's you?
- Yes.- Benevolent Male.
- Benevolent Male.
- That's like straightup Bob's Burger stuff,
where you're just like, "I'm gonna do
half the characters here."
- I was not even closeto half the characters,
but I was several voices.
I was an ogre.
I was a demon at one point.
I was a civilian that was ina house fire at one point.
(29:57):
- So let's entertainpeople a little bit here.
Can we hear your ogre?
- Yes. You can.
- Okay.
- Okay, so keep in mind, before I do this,
keep in mind that after I did this,
this was put through some voice processing
to make me sound even larger.
- I got you.
This is called Unprocessed Ogre.
(30:18):
- This is Unprocessed Ogre.
- Unprocessed Ogre.
- Crush them!
- Excellent.
- That's the Unprocessed Ogre.
- That's the Unprocessed Ogre.
And then now, I was a bigBuffy the Vampire Slayer fan,
so I've gotta hear your demon.
- I have several different demon types.
- Oh.
Several demons is even better.
(30:39):
- Several demons.
The first one is kind of basically like...
Again, without any voice processing,
it's something like-
- Cold. Cold demon rightout of the freezer.
- I shall rule this world.
- Ooh. I like that one.
- Things like that.
That's the idea.
- That's great.
(31:00):
- Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
- Well, first of all, before I continue
to make you do things like that.
(Brandon laughs)
The one thing I want to say
is you mentioned Robin Williams,
and I think it's very interesting
that he was your inspiration,
because, I mean, I was ahuge Robin William fan,
like I picked him up at Mork & Mindy,
and I followed his standup,
(31:22):
and I think a lot of peopleof my generation were.
And he just had an...
You know, his wit andthe way he was able to,
to almost battle with comedy.
That was really what he could do.
He could spit back and forth,
and it was like a rap battleor something like that,
but from a comedic standpointwas absolutely unbelievable.
(31:43):
- But he could do it with a serious person
on the other side.
Like, he didn't care, the other person
didn't have to be funnybecause he would just-
- No.
But he could do it withsomebody funny as well.
Like, he could go back.
It was unbelievable.
But anyways, I just wantedto make the point of like,
the number of people,
he inspired you from avoice acting standpoint,
(32:04):
the number of people that he inspired
from a comedic standpoint,
and the number of peoplehe probably inspired
from just the standpointof wanting to be in acting
or whatever.
Like, what an amazingperson and just incredible.
He's been so much to all of us.
So it was just reallyinteresting for me to hear
(32:24):
that that was who inspired you.
- He will be forever missed.
- And he will be forever missed.
I mean, what is that story,
actually speaking of Buffy,
I think he was workingwith Sarah Michelle Gellar
at the time that he...
- Oh wow.
- ... he passed away.
I can't remember what theshow was they were working on,
but it was somethingtogether that they were-
- I think it was coming back to TV.
(32:46):
- It was something for TV.
And I almost wanna say it was a drama
but I could be wrong about that.
- Yeah, I'm not 100%.
- Yeah, I'm not 100%, but anyways.
Neither here nor there.
So what I was gonna ask you,
that was your break sothat you could take-
- That was the break. (laughs)
- That was your break sothat you could take a rest
between ogre and demon.
(33:07):
So you clearly have voices.
Are there any impressions,like famous voices
that you are able to do
that we just can't end thispodcast without hearing?
- I mean, I can do impressions.
I don't know if any ofthem are good enough to say
that you can't end thepodcast without hearing them.
- I'm gonna declare that thereis one like that and then-
(33:29):
- I have imagined for a long time
that I could be the next Goofy for Disney
if I was hired to be Goofy for Disney.
- All right, let's hear your Goofy.
- Hi guys, ah-hyuck!
- (laughs) That's perfect.
So do you listen to these things
and then just sit there and practice?
(33:51):
- Not in the way that you think.
- Or is it more, is itquicker or more natural?
- It's more...
I mean, I do technically practice,
but I don't do it in the waythat you might be thinking
that I do it.
Like, I don't spend anhour in front of a mirror
or anywhere.
I don't spend time exclusively practicing.
The way that I do it
is I just keep doing it over time.
(34:11):
I'm always practicing.
Like, I'm generally-
- It's just part of yourgoofy day that you just-
- Yeah, I'm generally a silly person,
I just do voices at random sometimes,
and, you know, that's me practicing.
- We talked about thatbefore the mics heated up
about how silly you are.
Haven't disappointed, this has been great.
- If you watch any of my archived footage,
any of my streams, I willjust get weird sometimes.
(34:33):
I mean, I actually have,on my Twitch channel,
there is a point redemption reward.
So if you watch my Twitchchannel for long enough,
you get these things called Breakpoints.
Just for watching you get these.
And if you get 10,000 of them,
you have the ability to make me do a voice
for the rest of the stream.
(34:53):
- Oh, that's fantastic.
- That was once used against me
to turn me into Jar Jar Binksfor the remainder of a stream.
And it was a memorable experience.
My own fiance did that to me.
- That had to be afriend of yours, because-
- My own fiance did that to me.
My fiance did that to me.
- Okay, that tracks, that tracks 100%.
- He redeemed the reward
(35:14):
just to see what that would be like.
- So it's a Breakpoint, right.
Also a great movie.
Does that mean that you cando a Keanu Reeves impression?
- It's not based on the movie.
- I just tied it to the movie.
I just six degrees to Kevin Bacon
your Break Point reference.
- No, it's actually a wordplay.
(35:36):
So my fiance and I started a movement
called Break Down Walls.
- Mm-hmm.
- And right around that time...
The movement, by the way, is the idea is
to break down the barriers
between blind and sighted gamers
and just people in general,
just break down all the barriers
and be humans to each other.
And right around the same time,
Twitch developed a channel point system.
(35:57):
When Twitch released that,
they allowed people to name the points
whatever they wanted to name them.
So what I did was I builta whole theme around this.
So like, for instance,
the reward where you can change my voice
is called Voicebreaker.
The reward where you choosethe next person that we raid,
thus creating new connections,
(36:19):
is called Wallbreaker.
- Got it.
- You know, it's differentthings along that theme.
It's all about breaking down walls.
So we just kept with thetheme for the channel points.
- Yeah.
I really like that concept.
And one of the reasons why I actually
dove into your voice workthe way that I did here
is because I think an important point
or important concept here,
(36:39):
because we're talking abouthow you, as a blind individual,
are consulting and helping video games
become more accessible and usable
by other people who are blind.
But just because you're blind
doesn't mean that you're not doing work
that somebody who's notblind might be doing, right?
- Sure, sure.
(36:59):
- Like that voice work,
like it leads to those other things.
And I know that becauseof the industry I'm in,
you know that because it's your life,
but I just think it's an important concept
to kind of have thatout there in the world,
that everybody has thingsthat they can specialize in
and talents and thingsthat they're good at,
(37:20):
and conditions that maybe theyshould be doing something.
But at the end of the day, it's all just
human beings doing allsorts of different things.
- Yeah, just like with me andaudio description narration.
That's a field that is verymuch open to blind people
because it is for them,
but at the same time, a lotof audio description narrators
are also sighted.
(37:41):
The concept of blind people
doing professional audiodescription narration
is kind of relatively new.
It's not completely new,I'm not the first one,
but, you know, I'm doing that too,
and I daresay doing apretty good job of it,
and it's good.
It's good.
I've done a lot of...
And also, that ties together
(38:03):
with the rest of my work too,
because a lot of what I'vedone for audio description
has been video game trailers.
So a lot of companies nowadays
have started releasingtrailers for their games
with audio described versions,
and when they get professionalaudio description companies
to do those trailers, they need narrators
for those of course,
and I've been picked to be more than one
(38:23):
of those narrators.
- Was God of War Ragnarök, doesn't that
have audio description in it as well?
- It does have audio described trailers,
but the audio descriptionwas done by text-to-speech,
which typically I don't like,
but at least it was there.
- At least it was there.
But I think, as my son was playing it,
because I've gotta tell you,
my son is a developer anda big gamer and all that,
(38:47):
and he's playing God ofWar Ragnarök upstairs
while I'm downstairs and he's yelling,
"Dad, you've gotta come see this,
gave all the accessibility features."
And he's got the audio description on
and all of this kind of stuff.
And by the way, he develops an app
and he sends me hispersonal testing results
from accessibility,
and he's like, "Lookat how good this was."
(39:09):
- That's awesome.
- Like, oh, go, yes.
But anyways, he was very excited, being...
My son is somewhat of anevangelist for accessibility
and he was very excited to hear.
I'm thinking back to when I did this,
but it was the audio description,
I think he called me up to say,
(39:29):
"Look, they've audio described this."
- Yeah.
To be clear, though, the audio description
is not in the game.
God of War Ragnarök doesnot have any in-game
audio description.
- It's the trailers, yeah.
I think it was the opening trailer.
He's like, "I'm starting thisgame, you've gotta hear this."
- Yeah, the launch trailer has it,
and a few trailers before that had it too.
But yeah, it is TTS but it's actually,
it's fairly well-written,
(39:50):
it's just described by text-to-speech,
which I don't typicallyprefer, but there you go.
- Yeah.
Like you said, the effort's there,
and that's where we needto start, is by, you know-
- Yeah, at least they did it at all.
- Yeah, I know.
A lot of people think about perfect.
And it's like eh, don'tthink about perfect.
Think about let's getit started, let's do it.
(40:10):
- Well, I do think peoplehave a right to proclaim
their dislike of something
if it doesn't meet the standard
that they think that should be met.
- Of course.
- But, you know, I'm alsoan advocate for that.
I can't say a whole bunch about this,
but some of my careerhas come from the fact
(40:31):
that I spoke out about something
not being the way it should be.
- I agree with that.
I think it's just more the concept of like
it's at least occurring.
Like let's start with donothing is not an option.
- Right, right.
- Start it, do a bad job at it,
and then be willing toimprove based on feedback
(40:51):
and so on and so forth.
- Exactly, exactly.
- But it's a journey.
It's an absolute journey.
So I think you're right onall accounts there, for sure.
So tell me this, right.
I could sit here andtalk to you all day long,
but we need to kind of-
- (laughs) I mean, thatmakes me feel good.
- We will do that at some point.
- That does make me feel good.
- But I would be curious,
(41:12):
like I'm really impressed with how
the work that you're talkingabout and that you've done
and how far video gamesactually have gotten.
Back in five years ago at CSUN
when I was having that conversation,
I was almost worried that therewouldn't be attention on it,
and like I said, quicklylearned that it was different,
(41:34):
and then subsequentlybecame sort of impressed
with the attention that's been put on it.
And then also recognizehow long we have to go
before we're anywhere closeto there, whatever that is.
- Every game being accessible.
(laughs) Yeah.
- So what do you see...
Two part question here, what do you see
as your next big hurdle,
(41:57):
the next big thing thatyou wanna get past,
solve and accomplish?
And then the same question
for just sort of accessiblevideo gaming in general.
- That's an interesting question.
Honestly, I can't really answer
the second part of that question
because, let me put it this way,
(42:19):
I do have work currently.
I am working with a coupleof clients right now,
and because of that I havethese wonderful little things
called NDAs.
- Gotta be careful.
- Which is basically my life these days.
My life is comprised of NDAs
and occasional bits of fun.
(42:40):
So I can't talk about that stuff,
because one of those thingsI think would be the answer
to one of your questions,
because, you know, like I said,
I'm trying to bringpeople new experiences.
So what I would say is-
- I'm happy to wait untilthat video game comes out
and I hear about it.
- What I will say is I'mworking on a new experience
that does not exist in the blindAAA gaming space currently.
(43:01):
My own personal hurdle,
I want to find a way to grow,
I want to expand my platform,
I want to reach more people,
I want to reach more game developers,
and I want to ensurethat I continue to have
as much work as I do right now.
I'm lucky to have it,
because the problem is Iam currently freelance.
So if this work goes away
and I reach a point wheresome developer somewhere
(43:23):
isn't reaching out to me,
which luckily hasn't happened in a while,
but if it does, I have toconsider the fact that it might,
then I'm just not making any income.
- Right.
- So...
- If you're not growing,you're shrinking philosophy.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
So to that point,
then if somebody'slistening to this podcast
(43:46):
and they're like, "I'm so inspired,
I love what Brandon's doing,
I would love to be a part of it,
I'd love to help him,I'd love to make sure...
I'd love to help him achieve his goals
and continue his mission."
What would be the one thingthat somebody could do for you?
Would it be follow you onTwitch or would it be...
(44:06):
- I mean, follows are great.
I mean, if you wanna follow,
if you wanna watch the content, do that.
I'm perfectly happy with that.
Twitch, YouTube, all those things.
Check out hundreds of hoursof me playing video games
if you want to.
- Got it.- That'd be great.
I still haven't hit 1000YouTube subscribers,
so if I could hit that.
- 1000 YouTube subscribers.
- That would be amazing.
(44:26):
That is kind of my-
- You guys heard that, go subscribe.
- Go subscribe.
- I'm talking to the audience.
Hang on a second, Brandon,
I'm gonna talk directly to the...
- Do it.
- Go subscribe to his YouTubechannel, let's get that...
1000 is doable, right?
What number are you at right now?
- We're at about 660, I think.
So we're about 340 left.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
(44:47):
All right.
- 1000 YouTube subscribers means
that I can monetizethe videos that I make.
And that would prompt me to put
a little more emphasison the YouTube channel.
Right now I use it, but I useit as primarily an archive
of my streams.
Which is fine, people do like that,
but I'm thinking that whenI hit 1000 subscribers,
there may be incentive forme to maybe start making
(45:07):
other types of contents forthose subscribers if there's...
You know, the thing is,
and this is one of the hardtruths that I have to...
That it's true.
And maybe I'm too honest for my own good.
But this is the hardtruth of things right now.
I am a busy enough personthat I can't put a lot of time
into anything unless I can profit from it.
(45:31):
- Oh, that totally makes sense. Yeah.
- It might sound like, I'mnot trying to be selfish,
I'm not trying to be greedy,
it's just that I've reached a point
where I am trying to makesomething of this business
that I've formed,
and I'm actuallyofficially a business now.
And I'm trying to make something of this
and so I have to focus on thethings that help me do that.
(45:52):
- Yeah.
I always explain that as sustainability.
If you want this personto continue this behavior,
they've gotta be able to sustain it,
which means they've gotta beable to pay the bills with it.
- Yeah.
- It's that simple.
- So the follows are good.
Just getting the word out is good.
Like, just let people know who I am.
If you are a game developer,if you know a game developer,
(46:13):
hey, I'll help them too.
Like, you know, whatever you like.
You can check out mywebsite, brandoncole.net,
my blog is there, myconsultancy page is there,
so I can be hireddirectly from my website,
so that's a thing.
You know, all of it, allof it is important to me.
I'm typically never thetype to just directly say,
(46:34):
"Give to me monies. You givedollar, I do thing for you."
No, I'm typically not theperson to ask for that.
I mean, there are ways to do that,
because of course I'veset up ways to do it
if you wanted to donate directly to me,
but when asked how people can help me out,
I'm never gonna really bring those up.
Because the primary thing that I wanna do
(46:55):
is continue to be an advocatefor people and accessibility
and continue to talk topeople and about the things
that I'm doing as far as I can,
and let people know what's going on
and just keep helping people.
Just, yeah, just do all of that stuff.
- I got it.
Well, I'm happy for that tobecome sustainable for you.
- Yes, that's the idea, that's the goal.
(47:16):
- So that you can continue doing all that
and you're not worryingabout how to separately
pay bills and put food on the table
and all that kind of stuff.
- I will say that thingsright now are fairly good.
So I'm not in any kind ofdesperation situation right now.
I have a lot of work right now,
things are going very well.
So, if we don't hit- That's wonderful.
- the 1000 subscribersimmediately, that's fine.
(47:37):
- Things are going well.
I think the message isthings are going well,
I'd still take 1000 subscribers.
- I'll still take them.- Not lose sight of that.
- If they'd like to subscribe,I'll definitely take them.
- Wonderful.
Well, listen, like I saidI can keep going here.
Maybe you and I shouldtalk again at some point.
- Sure.
- Maybe contact us whensome of these games
(47:58):
that you can't talk about right now,
some of these new things come out
that you can't talk about right now,
when that happens ping usbecause I'd love to hear
about some of those things,
because it's incredibly fascinating to me
and I think other people,how these things get solved.
I and a bunch of others are appreciative
that you're around to solve them.
(48:19):
- Whenever we can announce,
which I don't even know when yet,
but whenever we can announceI'll be happy to let you know.
- That'd be great.
And please make sure, youmentioned a bunch of websites
and your YouTube channeland all that kind of stuff.
Please make sure that Dara has that
so that we can make it easier for people
just to go to our shownotes and grab that.
Very, very great talking to you, Brandon.
(48:40):
Very, very cool.
I was a hardcore '90s gamer
when games first wentcompetitive on the internet.
I had a problem, I had toback off of it quite a bit,
but if I do go back to it,it's first person shooter,
so work on that please.
- I want to.
- Yeah.
(49:01):
Listen, you and I have a goal now.
- Yeah. Oh, I've had it-
- The goal is for youand I to either compete
to play side-by-side,
if it's team based like death match or-
- Or shoot each other in the head.
- ... against each other orboth, D, all of the above
in a first person shooter.
That's the goal, I want you tomake it happen for you and I.
(49:21):
- That's a good goal, I like that goal.
I'm gonna do my best to make that happen.
- It's nice to have somebodyelse in your goal, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- All right, man, well thank you so much.
Anything last minute you wannasay before we sign off here?
- I think just that you never know...
Yeah, this is what I'll say.
When you do something inlife, that even if you know
(49:47):
what reasons you have for doing it,
you never know how that thingwill affect other people.
The fact that I get to say,
that I get every couple of weeks or so,
I get a thank you for thework that I did years ago
on The Last of Us 2, thatI still get those today,
(50:07):
that I have affected people'slives in this major way
is an incredible reward.
So when you're thinking aboutdoing something that is huge,
when you're thinking about taking a risk,
I took a risk, I left a full-time job
to start doing this full-time,
this career that I'm doingnow, I left a full-time job.
Think of not only howsomething might affect you,
(50:30):
not only how somethingmight affect your friends,
but think of how it might affectpeople all over the world.
And maybe that will inspireyou to take that leap
if that's what you need,
and follow your dreams.
You know, it might sound corny,
but the thing is, it really can work.
And I'm living proof.
That sounds corny too, but it's true.
(50:51):
It's 100% true.
I get those stories, I getthose talks from people,
and it humbles me and I'mhonored to do this work
because I'm doing it forpeople all over the world.
It's hard to accept that that's the power
that your name has at any given point,
but it can be real.
(51:13):
And if you think that youcan do that for someone
or do that for a whole bunch of people,
if you have ideas, get them out there
and start making that thing happen.
Because you never know.
You never know.
- Well, that's great wordsto end the podcast on.
So I am not going to dive in there
other than to say thankyou so much for being here.
(51:35):
What an inspiration, whata great conversation,
and I appreciate youindulging the geek within me
during the conversation.- No problem at all. Any time.
Any time.
That's what I'm here for.
- All right, well this isMark Miller thanking Brandon
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- [Voiceover] This podcast hasbeen brought to you by TPGi,
(51:56):
the experts in digital accessibility.
Stay tuned for more "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
(bright uplifting music)
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