November 26, 2024 • 46 mins
Host Mark Miller speaks with Ben Breen (Sightless Kombat), Accessible Gaming Officer for Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), about his experiences and advocacy. Learn about:
- His work as an accessibility consultant for video games
- His activism and awareness for accessibility in video games.
- His experience as a blind gamer
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- [Announcer] 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.
- Hey, welcome to the "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGi.
(00:22):
I am your host, Mark Miller,
thanking you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor,
if you're enjoying "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
share it, tell someone about it.
Hey, even link to it fromyour accessible website.
My favorite subject today, gaming.
We have with us SightlessKombat.
SightlessKombat.
(00:43):
How you doing?
- Hello.
Hello, sorry, I steppedon your intro there.
Sorry.
- Oh, that's okay.
No, well, my intro was to say hi to you.
Step away, you can do whatever you want.
- Well, hello everyone.
I am SightlessKombat.
I am the accessiblegaming officer for RNIB,
that is Royal NationalInstitute of Blind People,
the UK-based sightless charity.
(01:03):
I am a gamer without sight.
I have no sight whatsoever, never have.
And you will know me fromspeaking at conferences,
doing presentations over the years,
consulting on games like "Godof War Ragnarok," "Gears 5,"
"Sea of Thieves," "Killer Instinct."
Sorry, I mean "Killer Instinct,"
amongst many others, of course.
(01:25):
And I stream on Twitch and on YouTube,
write accessibility reviews, and, yeah,
I play far too many video games, I think,
is the general consensus.
And for those of you that can see,
I have, or those of you that can't rather,
I have loads and loadsof pop vinyls, figures,
other memorabilia and things.
And I am a white male in my late twenties
(01:49):
wearing an RNIB DFEG, that isDesign for Every Gamer cap,
as a part of my dressfor today, shall we say.
- Well, beautiful.
And thank you for tellingus everything that you do.
As I said at the beginning,
this is such an exciting subject for me,
(02:09):
because I'm an OG gamer from back.
- A ha.
- I mean from a being a kid,
like I literally started with "Pong."
Mid-nineties, I was online,
I was playing first-person shooters.
- Ooh okay.
- The whole nine yards.
So it just is, it's so excitingfor me to be talking to you.
(02:29):
And I've sat with many people at CSUN
and tackled this exact subject,
probably not near as wellas you have in your past.
So let's just start from the beginning.
Like how, particularlyfor people out there
that may not understandfully, or appreciate fully,
how a person who's blind eveninteracts with a computer.
(02:53):
How does a young man who's blind
develop such an interest in gaming,
and what was that like for you as a kid,
before there were peoplelike yourselves out there,
doing what they could tomake gaming accessible?
- Wow, that a lot of questions.
Let's try.
- Yeah, you can handle it.
- Okay, yeah, let's try it.
(03:14):
So my gaming journey, if you will,
starts many, many yearsago, playing PC games,
like "Fighter Pilot" whichI did a lot of research,
or a fair amount of research on later,
and discovered it was an EA budget title
from I think the early 2000s.
- Which that at the Microsoft?
- No, no, no, that wasn't.
(03:35):
- Oh, "Fighter Ace" was Microsoft.
- Maybe.
Yeah, I think that, I'm sure that,
I think they did one called,
I think Microsoft did one called"Combat Flight Simulator."
That's the one that I remember.
But "Fighter Pilot" was different.
"Fighter Pilot" was an EA thing.
- Okay.
- And the fun thing aboutit was I had no idea
how tech worked, howscreen readers worked.
I didn't even know screenreaders existed at that point.
(03:56):
- Really?
- So I was literallyjust nose diving planes
into unseen territory (laughing).
- So it was all an audio thing for you.
You were just listeningto the plane, like eeeeeh.
- Kind of, it was just like,you know, fire missiles.
And it's like, you know,you press and hold space,
and you just hear themachine guns just, it's like,
(04:16):
okay, this is cool (laughing).
But, you know, I didn'treally understand it.
It was just me kind of, you know,
playing around with video game stuff,
and not really knowing how it worked.
"Pole Position," I sortof have vague memories
of playing a strange versionof that under Windows, maybe.
- So "Pole Position" was aracing car racing game, right?
(04:37):
- Yeah, "Pole Position"was a 1980s arcade game.
- Arcade game, yeah.
- But there was a weird Windows version.
I can't even rememberwhich version it was.
I actually played, but itwas a PC version of that
from very blurry memories.
But the point being,
I had no idea how any of it worked.
And then I got introduced toPC audio games specifically,
(05:01):
I should say, gotintroduced to audio games.
And I played a very, a verycool title that, I mean,
I don't think it's aged too badly
over the past 20 odd years.
And it's "Grizzly GulchWestern Extravaganza."
- Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I've never heard of that.
What is that?
- So it was developed bya company called Bavisoft,
who have been long discontinued.
(05:23):
They also developed agame called "Chillingham,"
which was like a horror themed thing.
Unfortunately, there wasmeant to be a "Chillingham 2,"
but that never happened.
So there's this big cliffhanger,
and it's like "To be continued,"
and it's like, well no it's not,
'cause there's no sequel.
- Continued, no, not really, sorry.
- Exactly (both laughing).
It's like there videos you see on YouTube,
(05:45):
"Seven unresolved cliffhangers
"that we wish would beresolved," or whatever.
- Oh.
- It's like those.
But "Grizzly Gulch" actually-
- SightlessKombat, yousaid it was all audio,
The whole game was audio?
- Yeah.
So this, this is what I was gonna say.
So "Grizzly Gulch" didn't, thankfully,
suffer the cliffhangerfate of "Chillingham,"
(06:06):
But it was a four, or five-key,
if you count the spacebar, adventure game,
literally just using the arrows.
- Mm hm.
- So it was essentially apoint and click, in a way.
So it would be, you'dhave a character who'd say
"Where to?"
And you'd go through,
and it'd be like "the bank," "saloon,"
"marshal's office, "hotel,""general store," et cetera,
'cause it was set in this-
- I like the accent,that's very well done.
(06:27):
- It was set in theeponymous Wild Wild West town
of Grizzly Gulch.
You'd come into it, and he'd be like,
"Hey, I'm Sherman, welcome tothe town of Grizzly Gulch."
And it's like, okay (both laughing).
And you go through,
and you'd get these strangemissions from the marshal,
and be like, lemme see if I can do it.
It's like,
"Seems finger licking Freddy'sbeen out stealing chickens
(06:48):
"from Old Man Morton'schicken coop again."
- That is fantastic.
- It's these real like cheesy characters.
It's like, "I'm Doug,welcome to the slot machine."
It's just this eclecticcast of characters,
and you'd go throughgetting into gambling,
(07:09):
gun fights, and bribery,
all great. Things tolearn from a young age.
No, of course they're not (laughing).
- Staples really.
- Well, I mean, depends who you're asking,
and whether they've played"Grand Theft Auto" or not.
- Yeah, right.
It makes "Grand Theft Auto"look, or "Grand Theft Auto"
makes it look like church probably.
- Well, not really.
But it's a fun game.
(07:30):
It's relatively short.
I remember it being arguablyquite difficult way back when,
'cause there's one mission
that doesn't have a lot of checkpoints.
It's like the finalone in the entire game.
You have to go and catch thisguy called Murdering Sam,
because of course he'scalled Murderin' Sam.
Yeah.
So, you know, I playedthat, I played, you know,
other games around that time,and had a great time with it.
(07:51):
But the problem was that, you know,
sighted people people justdidn't wanna engage with that,
because essentially audio games
are just a black screen with a logo.
- Right.
- And that of course isn't very appealing
when you've got stuff like, I dunno,
what the things I graduated to next,
which were "Tekken," and"Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha,"
you know, PlayStation One games.
And that was mostly just tointegrate with sighted people.
(08:13):
So, you know, I wouldn't have any idea
of how the move lists work.
I'd be like, how do theyjust do that amazing thing?
- Yeah.
- And then they're like, "I don't know,"
'cause it's just showinga red and a yellow arrow,
and a green fist.
It's like, I have no ideawhat that means (laughing).
- You bring an interesting point up.
Like we, you know, when wethink about accessibility,
(08:35):
like in our industry, like one of the,
obviously the big sort ofmantra is equivalency, right?
And it's not-
- Well parity, yeah.
- Yeah, or parity.
And it's not separate.
It's not like here's the gamefor you, You know, blind guy,
you go play this one,
and all us sighted people
are gonna go over here and play this one.
The idea is that we all should be able
(08:57):
to participate in the same things.
So right there, early on,
you're kind of like almostdiscovering that, like,
this works really well for me,
but my sighted friends wannago off and do something else.
And I would imagine that's why
you started shifting into other games,
is because that was whatyour friends who had sight,
were doing, right?
- Well kind of,
but it was also that, youknow, people would say to me,
"Oh, do you wanna play this?"
(09:18):
And I'm like, okay, I'll give it a go.
Like I've still got copies of, oh God,
it was one of the "JediKnight" games, I think.
I can't remember which one it was.
I'd have to go and find it.
But I've still got copies of that.
And I didn't really understandhow it works, you know,
at the time.
But it was good fun.
It was like, I enjoy "Star Wars,
and it's like, I can sort of,
I like the sound design for this,
(09:39):
or the music for this, or whatever.
- Mm hm.
- So sometimes you have totake what you could get.
But PS1 games, you know,
that started me in my fightinggame journey, you know?
And then I went from there,
through various iterations of consoles.
And now we come to modernday where I'm in PS5,
and Xbox Series X land.
- Right.
- So where things have changeda heck of a lot, you know,
(10:01):
in the intervening years.
- When is the first timethat you ran across a game
that started to becomesort of an equivalency,
where you were doingsomething very similar
to your sighted peers, or atleast a hint of that, you know?
- Ooh.
(10:21):
I mean, I'm not really too sure,
because, you know, accessibilityhas given that equivalence,
that that parity, almost, notcompletely, not fully yet.
We're not there yet, unfortunately.
But, you know, once, I don't know,
I think if I had to pick out a moment,
it would probably bewith "Killer Instinct,"
(10:41):
where, you know, I wasonline fighting people,
and I then started to do okay.
and it was like, oh, this is amazing.
- Is that a first-person shooter RPG?
- No, no.
"Killer Instincts" is a fighter.
It's a classic fighter from the nineties.
- Like "Mortal Kombat" style.
- Yeah, yeah.
That era, but not that style.
'cause "KI" is very mucha game of fluid combos,
(11:03):
and you can break it pretty much anytime.
It's the one where, you know,"Combo breaker!" comes from.
It's that one (laughing).
So you have heard thatbooming across our cage,
and they did a version of it for Xbox One
when that launched.
And I mean I'd playedgames like, you know,
"Mortal Kombat 9," "MortalKombat versus DC Universe,"
those kinds of things with people.
(11:25):
- Mm hm.
- I do remember, blurrily,
having an interaction with a person
where I said, "I'm blind, I can't see."
And they're like, "You what?"
- Excuse me?
- They were very frustrated, I think,
by the fact that they justgot utterly annihilated
by somebody you couldn't see.
At least that's the way I remember it.
Whether that's entirely accurate,
(11:45):
I'm not a hundred percent sure'cause it's been many years.
But, you know, "KI" wasreally one of the first games
where I felt like I had a chance,
but it wasn't becauseof accessibility really,
it was because of sound design.
- Okay, that's interesting.
- Well, because it was,
well I guess you could callthat unintended accessibility.
So it was fluid, the soundwas moving everywhere.
I could hear fireballs traveling,
(12:06):
those kinds of things.
- So they actually did such a good job
in creating an environment,and a soundscape,
that you were able, to adegree, interact with that
in the way that you might interact
with your own environment,
and use sound as a indicatorof where something might be,
how far away it is, howfast it's traveling.
- Yeah, pretty much.
(12:27):
I mean, but the, I mean, full disclosure,
I did then reach out viathe "Ultra Combo" forums,
and say, you know, I'm playingthis game without sight.
I would love to be ableto do better at this.
But the key thing that'smissing is the combo gauge,
'cause as a sighted player,
you see a bar on the side ofthe screen if memory serves.
(12:48):
And that bar indicates
whether you're gonnadrop your combo or not,
or how high it is up that sort of bar.
And as a sighted player,you can just see it,
optimize your combo bar, drop it or like,
hit it and you're done.
You get damage out of it.
- Mm hm.
- When you are a gamerwithout sight like myself,
you have no idea of that,
because when I was playing it,
there was no sound cue for that.
(13:08):
There was nothing there.
So I was getting utterlyobliterated by people,
because they could seetheir little combo gauge,
and they could end it.
And I'm like, arrgh!
- What's going on?
How's this happening to me?
- It's like, why?
It's like, I can't be that bad, can I?
And then I realized I was at first,
but then I also realizedthat half the problem
was that I couldn't actuallyend my combos optimally.
(13:31):
So I reached out and basically said,
you know, this is, gimme a example.
Well here's a bunch ofthings that we could do.
So one was clipboard reading,
one was like with a screen reader,
so it would, well noteven clipboard reading,
but TTS basically of any kinds,to make the menus narrated.
That sadly didn't happen.
But what did was what becamethe HUD meter volume slider.
(13:52):
And the best part of that wasthat got introduced in a patch
for a beta character.
So this was, I wanna saylike September of 2015,
when Rash came out in beta,the Battletoads character.
- Mm hm.
- Yes, there is a Battletoadin "Killer Instinct."
Yes, it's strange.
Yes, he's kind of broken-ish (laughing),
(14:15):
and yeah, but that's a whole other story.
But he came out into beta,
and myself and Dukesy.
Dukesy and I go way back.
He's a fellow gamer without sight,
longtime sparring partnerin "Killer Instinct,"
"Gears 5" player alongsidemyself, all sorts of stuff.
But he and I played that,
and we noticed night and day difference.
(14:36):
And I'm actually, I've gotvideo footage on YouTube
of almost the before and after.
So you can see like the footage before,
where there was no cue.
And then you can seethe footage afterwards,
where they'd added that audio in,
not as like a single video necessarily.
- Mm hm.
- But there is beta footage
that I got deliberately on that day.
And I was like, this is brilliant!
(14:57):
Like, I wasn't recordingour reactions at the time,
'cause I didn't have the setup to do it,
but I was like, this is amazing!
We're actually able to figureout how combos work, yay!
- That's awesome.
- That was night and day difference.
We played for hours on that.
And it was phenomenal justto be able to understand,
you know, I dropped my combo, that is bad.
(15:18):
Or like, you droppedyours, I can counter you,
or whatever it happens to be.
Or you are doing too many heavies,
you're doing too many lights.
And it's all because of thatfeedback that it gives you.
- Mm hm.
- And that's where the parity comes in.
Like, I've fought people with sight.
I had the great fortune,well, a couple of times,
to fight the wonderful man myth,
the legend that is Ken Lobb,
(15:40):
he of "GoldenEye," development fame,
if you ever heard ofthe gun called The Club,
that's where it comes from (laughing)
because he worked in part onit from what I understand.
but he also worked on "Killer Instinct,"
like the original franchise.
But then he also came back to,
I think in like anexecutive producer role,
(16:00):
to assist with it.
But he and I got thechance to meet in person
during a traveling fellowshipI did several years ago
out to the States,
through the WinstonChurchill Memorial Trust.
And the best part of that wasI got to not only talk to Ken,
but then we actually got to sit down-
- Oh wow.
- and had an entire "Killer Instinct set,
(16:22):
which you can find footage
of parts of it on YouTube.
- Do you have to share those with us.
We'll post those.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Show notes.
- I'll send you a list of things.
But we played that match.
I won that set, I think itwas nine matches to eight?
- Nice.
- And then a couple of years later,
we played at the game
at a disability bootcamp at Microsoft,
(16:44):
and I played against him.
And I won it five matches to four,
after coming from four two down.
So he was beating me into the ground,
and I managed-
- Was an epic, epic comeback.
- Yeah (laughing).
But the funniest part of it
was that he'd brought thisamazing controller with him,
(17:05):
and he said to me on the last set,
I was like, this is for the set.
And he looks at me and hegoes, "And for the controller."
I'm like, what?
And I'm like, you can't be serious.
And he's like, "Yeah."
And I beat him,
and he just hands me this controller
that he's brought with him.
- Oh my.
- So I have that as a souvenir, which was,
(17:26):
that was ridiculous.
It was a fight stick.
I don't play stick as a player.
I use a custom build.
- Still a trophy.
- Oh yeah, no, well pretty much.
But that was the amazing thing of it.
Like I managed to fight aplayer with sight and win.
- That's incredible.
(17:47):
- And that's where, youknow, parity kind of started.
I think parity in singleplayer is catching up.
- Right.
- You know, with stufflike "God of War Ragnarok,"
it got close.
It wasn't fully accessible.
- So I wanna go to "God of War Ragnarok,"
and talk about that,
because boy, it was aroundthis time last year.
- Boy.
(18:08):
- My oldest son,
he was hanging out with usfor the Christmas holiday,
and he brought with him his Xbox.
- Ah.
- And we have like a wholeapartment upstairs in our house,
and that's where he was staying,
and he was playing his Xbox up there.
And you know, all of a sudden he goes,
(18:28):
"Dad, dad, dad, you gottacome up here and see this."
And he had found theaccessibility features,
and he and I sat thereand I was amazed, right,
being in the industry.
I was absolutely amazed at whathad been achieved with that.
So can you, and that's on your CV, right?
You were an integral?
(18:49):
- I'm in the credits.
- Can you just tell us aboutyour involvement in that,
and what you did?
- Yeah, I mean, I can try.
I mean, I worked withthe combat team mostly,
giving feedback.
- Okay.
- So for a little context,
I played through "God of War2018," with sighted assistance.
I've played a lot of gameswith sighted assistance
over the years, whether that's stuff like
"Ryse Son of Rome," "Jedi Fallen Order,"
(19:09):
the "Gears" series, "Halo,"all sorts of things.
But I got working witha wonderful individual
by the name of Jennissary,
who now works for Descriptive Video Works.
- Mm hm.
- And we got talkingthanks to "God of War,"
'cause I reached out and was like,
I don't understand what's going on.
(19:31):
What am I missing in these cuts scenes?
Because I was watching Jacksepticeye
play through the game.
And I was like, why is he so amazed about?
What's the details that I'm missing here?
- Right.
- So I reached out toJennissary, well not directly.
I reached out to Reddit, andsaid, what am I missing here?
And then she got back to me,
(19:51):
and said, you know,
"I'm happy to help," like, you know,
"We can discuss it from here."
And the end result of that
is what we called theTranscribing Games Project.
And that is communitydriven audio description,
but it goes deeper than that.
So it goes to character descriptions,
to items, locations, weapons, enemies,
(20:13):
those kinds of things.
- Wow, so you have a gamingcommunity that is sitting there
basically alt textingvisual elements of the game,
so that anyone canappreciate the aesthetic.
That's unbelievable.
- Yeah, I mean that's the idea.
I mean it's, yeah,
(20:33):
the main thing we got done,
our sort of crowning achievement for that,
was the main story beatsof "God of War 2018,"
audio described, wereover like edited footage.
- Mm hm.
- But the funniest part of it was,
we had people coming to us saying,
"How do you turn this on in game?
"I can't find the option."
(20:54):
And we were like,
that is the highest possiblecompliment you could pay us.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause it was that good,
people were convincedthat it was in there.
I was like oh no.
- And then is that a bridgeto putting it in there?
- Well, I wouldn't sayit's so much a bridge
to putting it in there,
but it's an example of howyou could do it potentially.
(21:15):
And the fun thing is, ofcourse, "Last of Us, Part One,"
I didn't work on that game,but "Last of Us, Part One,"
got AD for the cinematics.
So we're slowly but surely getting there.
And "Stories of Blossom"has done it as well.
- Mm hm.
- You know, those are twogames that have released
sort of within the last year.
And "BROK the InvestiGator" as well,
(21:36):
I need to shout COWCAT games out
for "BROK the InvestiGator."
It's a punch and click,
'cause it's very actionheavy in that respect.
There are puzzles and stuff.
But yeah, "God of War" wise,
so I played "God of War 2018,"with Jennissary's assistance,
on a lot of streams onMixer, and then on Twitch,
(21:57):
including fighting allof the optional bosses,
which are the Valkyries.
And those of you that know "God of War,"
and "God of War 2018's" reputation,
will know that even onlike standard difficulties,
shall we say, so like normal,
or you know, whatever the equivalents are,
they are no pushover.
(22:19):
And we had to really workhard to get round it,
because there were a few things,
you know, attacks that weren't given cues,
or things like that.
So you couldn't tell, saythere were two attacks
that sounded the same,but one was unblockable,
so you had to dodge it,
you wouldn't be able totell which one was which.
And that's what, you know,a lot of the feedback
(22:41):
happened for "Ragnarok."
That's how a lot of that happened,
because I streamed a lot of my gameplay,
and they got a lot fromthat, the development team.
But then I was also, you know,
able to provide that information on,
you know, what's useful,kind of what isn't,
and what's there.
So, you know, the end result is,
(23:02):
it doesn't make it afully accessible game,
but the fact that I have just finished
beating all of theoptional bosses unbalanced
as of last week,
and I'm working throughcleaning up the end game
of Give Me God of War, whichis the hardest difficulty,
the fact I'm doing both of those,
and I've managed to dopretty much all of it
in just about a year,
(23:23):
is testament to at leasta big step in the combat,
if nothing else.
So I'm really, the good thing,the way I look at it is,
"God of War Ragnarok"isn't fully accessible,
not by any means, unfortunately.
It could be, you never know.
There might be updates,patches, things that happen
that may make it more accessible.
(23:45):
But it's a massive stepin the right direction
for the series.
- Well, and I think that'san important concept.
Like, you know, a lot of people
kind of have this binary view sometimes
of accessibility like,
we gotta make this thingcompletely accessible, or not.
- Yeah, I mean-
- Doing something is alwaysbetter than doing nothing.
- Yes.
(24:06):
- And it will eventuallylead to it being, you know,
so something along the way,some version of it, you know,
in the future, may be veryclose to fully accessible.
My question for youSightlessKombat is, you know,
you clearly have a passion for gaming,
and you've gotten-
- You could say that (laughing).
(24:26):
- And you've gotten into thiswonderful place in your life
where your, you know,your passion and your work
are kind of meeting together.
But there has to be a lot of people
who are blind out there playing games
that just appreciatebeing able to play a game,
as a person who's blind,
that aren't, you know,contributing like that.
Do you ever hear from those folks?
(24:47):
Do you ever hear people youknow, do they come to you,
and say,
"Hey, I really enjoyed myexperience with this game.
"Thank you for yourcontribution to it," or?
- Yeah, every once in a while yeah,
I'll see, you know, people saying,
"Oh, this is amazing."
Like, even just sightedpeople, they'll watch me play,
and they're like, "Howare you doing this?"
And I'm like, this has a sound cue.
(25:09):
And they're like, "Wow, that's cool."
You know?
And like if I say I workedon the game, they're like,
"Oh, that's amazing."
That's really cool to hear.
So, you know, and I willhave people, you know,
where I've shown a game to,
and you know, I've not worked on, like,
I've worked on a few games,
(25:30):
and most of those, Ithink full accessibility
is still a way off formost games at the minute.
- Right.
- But where I've worked on titles
that have significantly improved,people usually understand,
and they're like, "Thisis a really good start."
You know, this is, you know,"I can see why this is good."
Of course you will get detractors,you'll get people saying,
"Oh, why isn't it fully accessible?"
(25:50):
But game development takes time,
accessibility takes time.
And as much as I'm workingin that field as well,
I have to sort of remind myself of that.
- Mm hm.
- You know, I have to keepthat in the back of my head,
that even if I want toplay, I dunno, an RPG,
or a "Souls" like, or whatever,
the theory is therethat can make it happen,
(26:13):
it's just a matter of getting it
through to the right people.
And I'm always happy to talk to anyone
who's willing to listen,
anyone who's willing to helpme get that message across,
and connect me with people as well,
not just, you know,through RNIB of course,
but you know, even externally too.
(26:34):
You know, 'cause I talk alot about it on social media.
I've done a few YouTubevideos on, you know,
full agency versus, you know,sight assistance, or copilot,
or all sorts of things,
just to try and get people to understand.
So I feel like as time goes on,
that will happen more interms of people coming up
and saying, "Hey thisis really, really cool."
(26:56):
But I've even had, you know,
where I've said about sighted people
playing games alongside me,
I've had people play "KillerInstinct" against me,
this was a few years ago.
I had one sighted player fight me,
and then they played meblindfolded as like a challenge.
I was like, look, yeah,you fight me blindfolded,
I'm sure you can do it.
And I went back to talkto that person later,
(27:17):
and they actually stillhad the settings on
from the last time I played them.
- Oh.
- Which is really validating.
Like the fact that they justleft it on is brilliant.
- Because it helped, it wasalmost a curb cutout effect
kind of.
- Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
- And for the listeners whodon't know what that is,
that's this common term foran accessibility feature,
(27:38):
like a curb cutout in in the sidewalk,
unintentionally benefitingpeople who don't need it,
to accommodate for thedisability it was intended for.
- Yeah, I mean it'sthe thing of, you know,
like accessibility canhelp pretty much anybody.
So like if you have a sound cue in there,
say for unblockableattacks in "Jedi Survivor,"
(28:02):
then you know, anyone can use that.
Doesn't matter if it's actuallyan accessibility option,
or like in a menu specifically,or if it's just there.
So, you know, the unblockablecue from "Jedi Survivor,"
is just there.
It's not an option you turn on.
It just exists.
And I remember when Iwas playing, you know,
my first time with "Jedi Fallen Order,"
(28:24):
'cause it's in that game as well,
I then realized what that meant.
And I was like, is that a red attack?
'cause somebody said,
"Oh, you keep gettinghit by the red ones."
And I'm like, is that a red attack?
And they're like, "Yeah."
I'm like, is that a red one?
Like a few seconds later whena different one happened.
And I was like, oh, that's consistent.
So then when I'm watching, yeah.
- That's great.
(28:44):
- That's when I'm watchingother people play.
I'm like, you keep gettinghit by those red ones.
- How do you know?
- It's just engagement.
It's like, you know, that's part of it.
But also as well, of course,
then you get people likeusing menu narration,
because they don'twanna strain their eyes.
Or you get people using Aim Assist,
because they're having troublelocking on, or whatever.
(29:04):
You know, there's all sorts of reasons
why accessibility is great.
And one of the reasonsis because, you know,
everybody's gonna needit at some point as well.
- Yeah, right.
- I remember hearinga quote from somebody,
I'm trying to think who it was now,
but it comes back into my mind is like,
"We are all temporarily able bodied."
(29:26):
Yes, it sounds depressing,yes it sounds morbid.
- Oh, that's a great way to put it, yeah.
- But the other way Ilike to put it to people
who get slightly frustrated
about accessibility being needed,
is what if you woke up tomorrow,
and you had no sight at all?
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Like, you just woke up,
and you couldn't see anything.
- All of a sudden, yeah.
- Like in "Day of the Triffids,"or whatever, you wake up
(29:46):
and you've suddenly gone blind.
And you know, you'd stillwanna keep gaming, right?
There's no reason why you wouldn't.
And the only way you aregonna be able to keep gaming,
is if accessibilityadvance is to the level
that you can play a game, start to finish,
no sight assistance.
whatever difficulty you want,
whatever settings you want, any of that.
And that can only happen by degrees
(30:06):
with accessibility featuresbeing added in as time goes on.
- Yeah.
I think, you know, one of thereally interesting concepts
too that I think you'resort of bringing up here
is that what you're doing is important
in terms of showing peoplehow accessibility might work,
or exposing everyone to accessibility,
(30:29):
and how it helps you, andother people participate,
you know, play the games.
But also it's important I think,
to recognize that there's no magic wand,
that accessibility is stilla puzzle in many ways,
to be solved.
Like these games arecomplex, to your point.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- They do a whole bunch of things.
They're literally recreatingphysics in an environment,
(30:53):
and all this stuff.
So it's not like there's abunch of answers out there,
and we just need to apply them.
There are some answers.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- But a lot of what weneed is just great minds
thinking about how could thisexperience be accessible?
How could we make thisaccessible, you know?
And I think that that'salso an important concept,
(31:14):
and I think an importantbyproduct of your work
where you're really showingthe public how this works,
you know, or how it could work,
or how you solve it to this point,
or however you wanna say it.
- Yeah.
Like whether it's theory, liketheory crafting, you know?
So say you are going through a menu,
(31:35):
and it's like, if onlythis did this thing,
or like if you're playing say,
"Last of Us Part One and Two,"
and you wanna say you're like,
if only this had a progressionfilter (laughing), you know,
so I could just tell what like,
so I just get the loot,
rather than the next doorto the story or whatever.
You know, even those kinds ofcomments can be very useful
(31:57):
if able to be fed to the right people.
And sometimes it's not evenabout accessibility, you know,
for the game itself.
Accessibility, I've said for years,
it is not just about the games,
it's about everything around the games.
So alt text on your marketing images,
well not your marketingimages, your images, full stop,
(32:17):
alt text on your images,we mentioned it earlier.
For those that don't know,
alt text is just text thatdescribes what's in an image.
So you could say, let me just grab a prop
from off camera here.
A little 3D printed oh, there we go.
- Hold it up just a tiny bit.
There you go.
- I'm good, don't worry.
There we go.
(32:38):
I was just detaching a thingthat had got connected to it.
- [Mark] Got it.
- So this is a tiny little prop
of BD-1 from "Star Wars Jedi Survivor,"
or "Fallen Order."
It's a little, how can I describe it?
This is a two-legged little robot
with sort of hinged legs, a little droid,
with like a squarish head,
little sort of long antennapoking up and backwards.
(33:03):
And it's got littlemismatched eyes at the front.
And it's all 3D printed,and the legs move,
the head moves ever so slightly,
the little antennae slightly wiggle.
But the key thing is, that's 3D printed,
that's free and online.
And you know, I now have an idea
of what this character looks like,
(33:23):
just for those that can see,
I put my hand next to him for scale.
So you can see that he'sactually quite tall, really.
He is taller than he looks.
And he does actually stand up.
Let me see if I can get him to do it.
There, yay!
I wasn't sure if that'll work.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
So even having official,easy-to-buy, well priced merch,
(33:49):
that allows you to understand the world,
the characters, the locations.
So I've got a massiveone-to-one Gold Lancer
from "Gears of War 4"on the wall behind me.
That is brilliant.
- We can see it.
It's just over your left shoulder,
over your door it looks like?
(34:10):
Is that the one you're referring to?
- Yeah, yeah.
It's basically a massive gun
with a chainsaw on the end.
- It looks like a wholelot of fun to play with.
- It is, but the fun partis when you pick one up
for the first time,
'cause they may not be exactly weighted,
as you would find in an actual,
if it was ever real world kind of thing.
But the fact of the matteris, you pick that up,
(34:31):
and you're like, "That's heavy!"
- Mm hm.
- And so it gives areal sense of, you know,
this is what these charactersare running around with,
and you know, dealingwith the enemies with.
Even Thor's hammer, because I've got,
you won't be able to necessarily see it,
'cause it's off camera.
- No, I don't see it.
- No, no, no.
But I do have one of the"God of War Ragnarok"
(34:53):
Thor's hammer replicas,and those are great,
because, you know, youthink Thor's hammer,
and you think, youknow, Marvel Thor maybe.
But it's a different design.
There's all the patterns on it.
- Mm hm.
- So you get all thatlovely wonderful detailing
that the art department
have probably put hundreds of hours in.
And you get it, becauseit's a physical thing
(35:13):
that you can actually gethands on with, if you will.
And you know, that feeling of, you know,
I'm included in this,
even with like action figures and stuff.
- Included in the aesthetic, yeah.
- All the little pop vinyls even, yeah.
Even pop vinyls, they're caricatures, yes.
But you get a rough idea
of this is this character's hairstyle.
(35:34):
So if you said to me, you know,
say we're playing the sameRPG, and it's fully accessible,
and you are like, oh,I'm playing as so and so,
and I'm like, oh, theguy with the spiky hair.
And you're like, "Wait,how did you know that?"
I'm like, 'cause I've got a figure.
So stuff like that you can, you know,
describe the characters in game.
- I see.
(35:54):
- But it's just even better
when you actually have aphysical representation of it,
'cause then if a person said to me,
"Draw your favoritecharacter from a video game,"
I will be going on areference that I have,
you know, actually sort of firsthand.
- Mm hm.
- I'm not going on a vague description
from a piece of text in the game,
or arguably even betterand accurate description.
(36:15):
I'm not going on any of that.
I'm going on, you know, thisis the proportions of it,
this is how it all looks, you know,
the cool looking mechanical pieces
that are coming outta his arms, I dunno.
But yeah, there's all sorts of stuff.
So audio description in trailers as well.
You know, I could go on and onabout this, in the best way,
because there's so many waysto make things accessible.
(36:36):
And you're right, the wayto get people, you know,
having this happen, is throughworldwide collaboration.
So, you know, I will talk to anybody
from anywhere in the world in terms
of making their games accessible.
It doesn't matter, you know,whether you are a AAA studio,
whether you are one person indie,
(36:58):
somewhere in the middle of there,
I don't mind.
I want to be able to play your games,
and so do other people, with no sight.
Because, you know, justbecause you have no sight
doesn't mean you can't enjoy video games.
That's basically my sort of-
- Your mantra.
- Okay.
- Well SightlessKombat,
(37:19):
we have to start wrappingup here, unfortunately.
I think I could do this withyou for another couple hours.
- And Captain America oncesaid, "I can do this all day."
- Exactly.
And you know, one of the things like,
I think I think about a lot of stuff,
but, you know, making thegame accessible is one thing,
but the other thing I've always wanted to,
because we're talking about worlds, right?
- [Ben] Yeah.
(37:40):
- We're talking aboutworlds we're moving through.
I've always thought it, you know,
gaming is not like business.
Like with business, it's like, oh,
we've gotta make this equivalent.
And if it says, you know,
if a person with sight can perceive this,
a person who's blindneeds to perceive this.
And you can't mess with that a whole lot.
But in with a game you can have some fun.
And I've always thoughtit would be interesting
to have a game,
because I have a lot ofcolleagues who are blind,
(38:02):
so I'm actually navigatingcities, and going to conferences,
and all sorts of stuffwith people who are blind.
And, you know, we experiencedthe world together,
but in a different way.
It would be so interesting to me.
I'd love to see somebody lean into a game
where they made the experiencefor a person who's blind,
(38:23):
equivalent to their experience,
or equivalent to the way thatthey might react to the world,
where, and then a person with sight
would have the experienceof somebody who has sight.
So I could actually play a game
with a blind colleague, or friend,
where we're sort of experiencing it
in the two different waysthat we normally would,
(38:43):
whether that's the way weact with the environment,
you know?
I've always thought about like,
why couldn't you turn acontroller into a white cane,
for example.
- Yeah.
- Why couldn't you have thingsthat a person who's blind,
to your red point, you know,
like a person who's blind mightperceive something quicker,
because they're much moreattuned to their hearing,
(39:04):
whereas maybe there'ssomething that shows up
that the sighted person perceives quicker.
So it becomes collaborativewith that different-
- Yeah, like a co-op game
that's deliberately designedaround that kind of thing.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- I'm thinking of likemaybe not this specifically,
but maybe like a Lego thing.
- Something yeah.
Where it's cooperative.
- Yeah.
(39:24):
- And each person iscontributing differently
because of the way
that they interact with theenvironment differently.
- Yeah.
- And then, if we did doan experiment like that,
how would that start to informaccessibility in gaming?
Because again, we canjust push on any edge
of this envelope that wewant to, and play around.
Like there's no rules,
(39:45):
where in business it'ssort of like, you know,
you're trying to fit intothis, you know, this criteria.
- Yeah.
- Because there's a law around it,
or you know, you'reworried about compliance,
or you're worried about realtrue equivalency of messaging,
as you should, right?
- [Ben] Of course.
- But with gaming, it's like, hey,
we can take the governoroff this a little bit,
(40:05):
and start to really experiment.
So anyways.
- It's an interesting point.
I agree.
I feel like there'sdefinitely a discussion
to be had around that.
- Yeah.
I mean, wouldn't be great
to just build a game fromthe ground up that way?
- Well, I mean, accessibility
should be built in from the ground up.
That's a key thing as well.
- Absolutely.
(40:25):
- Hire accessibility consultants
as early as possible in development.
Keep them on
through the iterativeprocess of game development,
and through post-launch as well.
You know, accessibility isn'tjust a thing that you do
to release, and thenyou're like, no, that's it.
You keep it going through post-launch.
Fix any problems, you know,
with the resources you have available,
(40:46):
be transparent with yourcommunity about the Accessibility
you're gonna be able to give,
and make sure that everybody's included
in that worldwide feedback approach.
- So with the last minute or two here,
tell me where you kind of see
the world of accessible games going,
(41:07):
gaming going in the next couple of years?
- Pun most certainly intended (laughing).
I see the world of accessible gaming
going from strength to strength, actually.
We've seen in, even inthe last couple of years,
we've seen games embracing accessibility
for gamers without sight in particular,
and channeling that.
(41:28):
- Mm hm.
- We've not seen all thebig releases doing it.
We've not seen every release doing it,
but we are seeing more games doing it.
That's, that's the key difference.
Every year, if we see more games doing it,
those more will encourage other people
to do more on their own games.
- Exponential, yeah.
- Just a giant accessibilityexponential useful snowball.
(41:48):
There you go, yeah.
And you know, that's where I see it going.
I think give it maybe, youknow, maybe three or four years,
because of how long dev cycles take.
- Mm hm.
- We might see another fully playable game
with audio description,like throughout it maybe.
Who knows?
So that kind of thing.
Or you know, like you said,
(42:09):
there could be, you know,co-op games maybe in VR
that are fully accessible.
You know, that kind of thing.
- That's my current platform.
I absolutely love VR,
and there's no reason whythat can't be accessible,
because it's working with all your senses,
just the way it does.
- Exactly.
I mean the V in virtual reality, well,
V in VR doesn't stand for visual.
(42:29):
It stands for virtual.
- Virtual, yeah.
- And you can have haptic feedback-
- Exactly.
- through the controllers,and all sorts of stuff.
It's brilliant.
- I was gonna say, I've played one game
a couple of years ago, as partof a user research project,
that was playable without assistance,
which is very cool indeed.
But I'm looking forward toseeing other games embrace that.
(42:51):
Like, I'd love to be able to, you know,
me being the action combat fan I am,
or like the set piece video game fan,
like I am, like "Uncharted,"those kinds of things.
What if there was anaccessible "Uncharted" in VR
that would allow you towork off your calories,
I dunno.
That'd be great.
Be able to exercise in VR,
give me a good reason to own a headset.
(43:14):
- Or why can't we make theinteraction with the world
more tactile?
You know, why can't you, you know,
in your list of tools, whyisn't there a white cane
that would extend
- Yeah.
- Your ability to understandwhat's in front of you,
you know, to a reasonable angle.
Like there's all these things
that I think are just opengreenfields inside of VR,
(43:37):
that could be explored.
- Yeah.
No, I totally agree.
- I thank you so much.
I really wish we could keep this going,
and maybe there's apart two to be had here.
- Pun intended I'm game (laughing).
- Ba dum dum!
- Yeah, there we go.
- But I absolutely love what you're doing.
(43:58):
I love that you clearly approach it
with just a wonderful attitude,
and nothing but fun all the time, right?
It sounds like you takeaccessibility seriously,
but you don't take yourselfso seriously, right,
that you can't have fun.
- If you can't laugh at yourself,
who can you laugh at?
- Yeah well, I'm aroundmyself all the time,
so I laugh a lot, right?
(44:19):
- Well said, good one.
- Yeah.
And you know, I love yourSightlessKombat moniker.
I think it's a great thing.
And please make sure that youshare anything and everything.
We have some of your Twitchstreaming and all that,
that we can include.
But after this podcast,I'm sure there's people
that are gonna want to go checkout all that you're doing.
(44:39):
So we'll make sure we putthat in the show notes.
So whatever you want toshare with us, please.
- Yeah, no.
I mean, if you wanna watch me,
come and watch me livefirsthand on Twitch,
or on YouTube now, 'causeI'm now simulcasting,
thanks to that being allowedby the Twitch terms of service,
you know, that's a brilliant thing.
You're able to come andwatch me on another platform,
(45:00):
or of course follow me on Twitter as well.
That's SightlessKombat,
S-I-G-H-T-L-E-S-S-K-O-M-B-A-T.
And I also have a Discord server as well,
which you can find throughmy various channels,
where I organize my streams,
where we all just chat about stuff.
You know, you can come along,say hi, introduce yourself,
(45:21):
just, you know, generally hangout with like-minded people
who are interested in accessibility,
but also things like food, 3D printing,
Mac stuff, all sorts ofstuff, music as well,
'cause I write my ownmusic for my streams,
which is a lot of fun.
And sometimes you'll seeme streaming that as well.
But yeah, so Twitch, Twitter, YouTube,
(45:43):
SightlessKombat, that'swhere you'll find me.
But also, of course, if you wanna find out
what RNIB is doing,
including stuff likeDesign for Every Gamer,
the initiative that is a rallying cry
across the video games industry
to raise awareness of the need
for greater accessibility for gamers
across the spectrum of sight loss,
and of course includingfor gamers without sight,
like myself,
then you can find out more byemailing gaming@rnib.org.uk.
(46:07):
- Brilliant.
Well this is Mark Millerthanking SightlessKombat,
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- Thank you so much for the opportunity.
It's been brilliant.
Thank you.
- [Announcer] This podcast hasbeen brought to you by TPGi,
the experts in digital accessibility.
(46:28):
Stay tuned for More "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
- [Announcer] 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.
- Hey, welcome to the "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGi.
(00:22):
I am your host, Mark Miller,
thanking you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor,
if you're enjoying "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
share it, tell someone about it.
Hey, even link to it fromyour accessible website.
My favorite subject today, gaming.
We have with us SightlessKombat.
SightlessKombat.
(00:43):
How you doing?
- Hello.
Hello, sorry, I steppedon your intro there.
Sorry.
- Oh, that's okay.
No, well, my intro was to say hi to you.
Step away, you can do whatever you want.
- Well, hello everyone.
I am SightlessKombat.
I am the accessiblegaming officer for RNIB,
that is Royal NationalInstitute of Blind People,
the UK-based sightless charity.
(01:03):
I am a gamer without sight.
I have no sight whatsoever, never have.
And you will know me fromspeaking at conferences,
doing presentations over the years,
consulting on games like "Godof War Ragnarok," "Gears 5,"
"Sea of Thieves," "Killer Instinct."
Sorry, I mean "Killer Instinct,"
amongst many others, of course.
(01:25):
And I stream on Twitch and on YouTube,
write accessibility reviews, and, yeah,
I play far too many video games, I think,
is the general consensus.
And for those of you that can see,
I have, or those of you that can't rather,
I have loads and loadsof pop vinyls, figures,
other memorabilia and things.
And I am a white male in my late twenties
(01:49):
wearing an RNIB DFEG, that isDesign for Every Gamer cap,
as a part of my dressfor today, shall we say.
- Well, beautiful.
And thank you for tellingus everything that you do.
As I said at the beginning,
this is such an exciting subject for me,
(02:09):
because I'm an OG gamer from back.
- A ha.
- I mean from a being a kid,
like I literally started with "Pong."
Mid-nineties, I was online,
I was playing first-person shooters.
- Ooh okay.
- The whole nine yards.
So it just is, it's so excitingfor me to be talking to you.
(02:29):
And I've sat with many people at CSUN
and tackled this exact subject,
probably not near as wellas you have in your past.
So let's just start from the beginning.
Like how, particularlyfor people out there
that may not understandfully, or appreciate fully,
how a person who's blind eveninteracts with a computer.
(02:53):
How does a young man who's blind
develop such an interest in gaming,
and what was that like for you as a kid,
before there were peoplelike yourselves out there,
doing what they could tomake gaming accessible?
- Wow, that a lot of questions.
Let's try.
- Yeah, you can handle it.
- Okay, yeah, let's try it.
(03:14):
So my gaming journey, if you will,
starts many, many yearsago, playing PC games,
like "Fighter Pilot" whichI did a lot of research,
or a fair amount of research on later,
and discovered it was an EA budget title
from I think the early 2000s.
- Which that at the Microsoft?
- No, no, no, that wasn't.
(03:35):
- Oh, "Fighter Ace" was Microsoft.
- Maybe.
Yeah, I think that, I'm sure that,
I think they did one called,
I think Microsoft did one called"Combat Flight Simulator."
That's the one that I remember.
But "Fighter Pilot" was different.
"Fighter Pilot" was an EA thing.
- Okay.
- And the fun thing aboutit was I had no idea
how tech worked, howscreen readers worked.
I didn't even know screenreaders existed at that point.
(03:56):
- Really?
- So I was literallyjust nose diving planes
into unseen territory (laughing).
- So it was all an audio thing for you.
You were just listeningto the plane, like eeeeeh.
- Kind of, it was just like,you know, fire missiles.
And it's like, you know,you press and hold space,
and you just hear themachine guns just, it's like,
(04:16):
okay, this is cool (laughing).
But, you know, I didn'treally understand it.
It was just me kind of, you know,
playing around with video game stuff,
and not really knowing how it worked.
"Pole Position," I sortof have vague memories
of playing a strange versionof that under Windows, maybe.
- So "Pole Position" was aracing car racing game, right?
(04:37):
- Yeah, "Pole Position"was a 1980s arcade game.
- Arcade game, yeah.
- But there was a weird Windows version.
I can't even rememberwhich version it was.
I actually played, but itwas a PC version of that
from very blurry memories.
But the point being,
I had no idea how any of it worked.
And then I got introduced toPC audio games specifically,
(05:01):
I should say, gotintroduced to audio games.
And I played a very, a verycool title that, I mean,
I don't think it's aged too badly
over the past 20 odd years.
And it's "Grizzly GulchWestern Extravaganza."
- Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I've never heard of that.
What is that?
- So it was developed bya company called Bavisoft,
who have been long discontinued.
(05:23):
They also developed agame called "Chillingham,"
which was like a horror themed thing.
Unfortunately, there wasmeant to be a "Chillingham 2,"
but that never happened.
So there's this big cliffhanger,
and it's like "To be continued,"
and it's like, well no it's not,
'cause there's no sequel.
- Continued, no, not really, sorry.
- Exactly (both laughing).
It's like there videos you see on YouTube,
(05:45):
"Seven unresolved cliffhangers
"that we wish would beresolved," or whatever.
- Oh.
- It's like those.
But "Grizzly Gulch" actually-
- SightlessKombat, yousaid it was all audio,
The whole game was audio?
- Yeah.
So this, this is what I was gonna say.
So "Grizzly Gulch" didn't, thankfully,
suffer the cliffhangerfate of "Chillingham,"
(06:06):
But it was a four, or five-key,
if you count the spacebar, adventure game,
literally just using the arrows.
- Mm hm.
- So it was essentially apoint and click, in a way.
So it would be, you'dhave a character who'd say
"Where to?"
And you'd go through,
and it'd be like "the bank," "saloon,"
"marshal's office, "hotel,""general store," et cetera,
'cause it was set in this-
- I like the accent,that's very well done.
(06:27):
- It was set in theeponymous Wild Wild West town
of Grizzly Gulch.
You'd come into it, and he'd be like,
"Hey, I'm Sherman, welcome tothe town of Grizzly Gulch."
And it's like, okay (both laughing).
And you go through,
and you'd get these strangemissions from the marshal,
and be like, lemme see if I can do it.
It's like,
"Seems finger licking Freddy'sbeen out stealing chickens
(06:48):
"from Old Man Morton'schicken coop again."
- That is fantastic.
- It's these real like cheesy characters.
It's like, "I'm Doug,welcome to the slot machine."
It's just this eclecticcast of characters,
and you'd go throughgetting into gambling,
(07:09):
gun fights, and bribery,
all great. Things tolearn from a young age.
No, of course they're not (laughing).
- Staples really.
- Well, I mean, depends who you're asking,
and whether they've played"Grand Theft Auto" or not.
- Yeah, right.
It makes "Grand Theft Auto"look, or "Grand Theft Auto"
makes it look like church probably.
- Well, not really.
But it's a fun game.
(07:30):
It's relatively short.
I remember it being arguablyquite difficult way back when,
'cause there's one mission
that doesn't have a lot of checkpoints.
It's like the finalone in the entire game.
You have to go and catch thisguy called Murdering Sam,
because of course he'scalled Murderin' Sam.
Yeah.
So, you know, I playedthat, I played, you know,
other games around that time,and had a great time with it.
(07:51):
But the problem was that, you know,
sighted people people justdidn't wanna engage with that,
because essentially audio games
are just a black screen with a logo.
- Right.
- And that of course isn't very appealing
when you've got stuff like, I dunno,
what the things I graduated to next,
which were "Tekken," and"Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha,"
you know, PlayStation One games.
And that was mostly just tointegrate with sighted people.
(08:13):
So, you know, I wouldn't have any idea
of how the move lists work.
I'd be like, how do theyjust do that amazing thing?
- Yeah.
- And then they're like, "I don't know,"
'cause it's just showinga red and a yellow arrow,
and a green fist.
It's like, I have no ideawhat that means (laughing).
- You bring an interesting point up.
Like we, you know, when wethink about accessibility,
(08:35):
like in our industry, like one of the,
obviously the big sort ofmantra is equivalency, right?
And it's not-
- Well parity, yeah.
- Yeah, or parity.
And it's not separate.
It's not like here's the gamefor you, You know, blind guy,
you go play this one,
and all us sighted people
are gonna go over here and play this one.
The idea is that we all should be able
(08:57):
to participate in the same things.
So right there, early on,
you're kind of like almostdiscovering that, like,
this works really well for me,
but my sighted friends wannago off and do something else.
And I would imagine that's why
you started shifting into other games,
is because that was whatyour friends who had sight,
were doing, right?
- Well kind of,
but it was also that, youknow, people would say to me,
"Oh, do you wanna play this?"
(09:18):
And I'm like, okay, I'll give it a go.
Like I've still got copies of, oh God,
it was one of the "JediKnight" games, I think.
I can't remember which one it was.
I'd have to go and find it.
But I've still got copies of that.
And I didn't really understandhow it works, you know,
at the time.
But it was good fun.
It was like, I enjoy "Star Wars,
and it's like, I can sort of,
I like the sound design for this,
(09:39):
or the music for this, or whatever.
- Mm hm.
- So sometimes you have totake what you could get.
But PS1 games, you know,
that started me in my fightinggame journey, you know?
And then I went from there,
through various iterations of consoles.
And now we come to modernday where I'm in PS5,
and Xbox Series X land.
- Right.
- So where things have changeda heck of a lot, you know,
(10:01):
in the intervening years.
- When is the first timethat you ran across a game
that started to becomesort of an equivalency,
where you were doingsomething very similar
to your sighted peers, or atleast a hint of that, you know?
- Ooh.
(10:21):
I mean, I'm not really too sure,
because, you know, accessibilityhas given that equivalence,
that that parity, almost, notcompletely, not fully yet.
We're not there yet, unfortunately.
But, you know, once, I don't know,
I think if I had to pick out a moment,
it would probably bewith "Killer Instinct,"
(10:41):
where, you know, I wasonline fighting people,
and I then started to do okay.
and it was like, oh, this is amazing.
- Is that a first-person shooter RPG?
- No, no.
"Killer Instincts" is a fighter.
It's a classic fighter from the nineties.
- Like "Mortal Kombat" style.
- Yeah, yeah.
That era, but not that style.
'cause "KI" is very mucha game of fluid combos,
(11:03):
and you can break it pretty much anytime.
It's the one where, you know,"Combo breaker!" comes from.
It's that one (laughing).
So you have heard thatbooming across our cage,
and they did a version of it for Xbox One
when that launched.
And I mean I'd playedgames like, you know,
"Mortal Kombat 9," "MortalKombat versus DC Universe,"
those kinds of things with people.
(11:25):
- Mm hm.
- I do remember, blurrily,
having an interaction with a person
where I said, "I'm blind, I can't see."
And they're like, "You what?"
- Excuse me?
- They were very frustrated, I think,
by the fact that they justgot utterly annihilated
by somebody you couldn't see.
At least that's the way I remember it.
Whether that's entirely accurate,
(11:45):
I'm not a hundred percent sure'cause it's been many years.
But, you know, "KI" wasreally one of the first games
where I felt like I had a chance,
but it wasn't becauseof accessibility really,
it was because of sound design.
- Okay, that's interesting.
- Well, because it was,
well I guess you could callthat unintended accessibility.
So it was fluid, the soundwas moving everywhere.
I could hear fireballs traveling,
(12:06):
those kinds of things.
- So they actually did such a good job
in creating an environment,and a soundscape,
that you were able, to adegree, interact with that
in the way that you might interact
with your own environment,
and use sound as a indicatorof where something might be,
how far away it is, howfast it's traveling.
- Yeah, pretty much.
(12:27):
I mean, but the, I mean, full disclosure,
I did then reach out viathe "Ultra Combo" forums,
and say, you know, I'm playingthis game without sight.
I would love to be ableto do better at this.
But the key thing that'smissing is the combo gauge,
'cause as a sighted player,
you see a bar on the side ofthe screen if memory serves.
(12:48):
And that bar indicates
whether you're gonnadrop your combo or not,
or how high it is up that sort of bar.
And as a sighted player,you can just see it,
optimize your combo bar, drop it or like,
hit it and you're done.
You get damage out of it.
- Mm hm.
- When you are a gamerwithout sight like myself,
you have no idea of that,
because when I was playing it,
there was no sound cue for that.
(13:08):
There was nothing there.
So I was getting utterlyobliterated by people,
because they could seetheir little combo gauge,
and they could end it.
And I'm like, arrgh!
- What's going on?
How's this happening to me?
- It's like, why?
It's like, I can't be that bad, can I?
And then I realized I was at first,
but then I also realizedthat half the problem
was that I couldn't actuallyend my combos optimally.
(13:31):
So I reached out and basically said,
you know, this is, gimme a example.
Well here's a bunch ofthings that we could do.
So one was clipboard reading,
one was like with a screen reader,
so it would, well noteven clipboard reading,
but TTS basically of any kinds,to make the menus narrated.
That sadly didn't happen.
But what did was what becamethe HUD meter volume slider.
(13:52):
And the best part of that wasthat got introduced in a patch
for a beta character.
So this was, I wanna saylike September of 2015,
when Rash came out in beta,the Battletoads character.
- Mm hm.
- Yes, there is a Battletoadin "Killer Instinct."
Yes, it's strange.
Yes, he's kind of broken-ish (laughing),
(14:15):
and yeah, but that's a whole other story.
But he came out into beta,
and myself and Dukesy.
Dukesy and I go way back.
He's a fellow gamer without sight,
longtime sparring partnerin "Killer Instinct,"
"Gears 5" player alongsidemyself, all sorts of stuff.
But he and I played that,
and we noticed night and day difference.
(14:36):
And I'm actually, I've gotvideo footage on YouTube
of almost the before and after.
So you can see like the footage before,
where there was no cue.
And then you can seethe footage afterwards,
where they'd added that audio in,
not as like a single video necessarily.
- Mm hm.
- But there is beta footage
that I got deliberately on that day.
And I was like, this is brilliant!
(14:57):
Like, I wasn't recordingour reactions at the time,
'cause I didn't have the setup to do it,
but I was like, this is amazing!
We're actually able to figureout how combos work, yay!
- That's awesome.
- That was night and day difference.
We played for hours on that.
And it was phenomenal justto be able to understand,
you know, I dropped my combo, that is bad.
(15:18):
Or like, you droppedyours, I can counter you,
or whatever it happens to be.
Or you are doing too many heavies,
you're doing too many lights.
And it's all because of thatfeedback that it gives you.
- Mm hm.
- And that's where the parity comes in.
Like, I've fought people with sight.
I had the great fortune,well, a couple of times,
to fight the wonderful man myth,
the legend that is Ken Lobb,
(15:40):
he of "GoldenEye," development fame,
if you ever heard ofthe gun called The Club,
that's where it comes from (laughing)
because he worked in part onit from what I understand.
but he also worked on "Killer Instinct,"
like the original franchise.
But then he also came back to,
I think in like anexecutive producer role,
(16:00):
to assist with it.
But he and I got thechance to meet in person
during a traveling fellowshipI did several years ago
out to the States,
through the WinstonChurchill Memorial Trust.
And the best part of that wasI got to not only talk to Ken,
but then we actually got to sit down-
- Oh wow.
- and had an entire "Killer Instinct set,
(16:22):
which you can find footage
of parts of it on YouTube.
- Do you have to share those with us.
We'll post those.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Show notes.
- I'll send you a list of things.
But we played that match.
I won that set, I think itwas nine matches to eight?
- Nice.
- And then a couple of years later,
we played at the game
at a disability bootcamp at Microsoft,
(16:44):
and I played against him.
And I won it five matches to four,
after coming from four two down.
So he was beating me into the ground,
and I managed-
- Was an epic, epic comeback.
- Yeah (laughing).
But the funniest part of it
was that he'd brought thisamazing controller with him,
(17:05):
and he said to me on the last set,
I was like, this is for the set.
And he looks at me and hegoes, "And for the controller."
I'm like, what?
And I'm like, you can't be serious.
And he's like, "Yeah."
And I beat him,
and he just hands me this controller
that he's brought with him.
- Oh my.
- So I have that as a souvenir, which was,
(17:26):
that was ridiculous.
It was a fight stick.
I don't play stick as a player.
I use a custom build.
- Still a trophy.
- Oh yeah, no, well pretty much.
But that was the amazing thing of it.
Like I managed to fight aplayer with sight and win.
- That's incredible.
(17:47):
- And that's where, youknow, parity kind of started.
I think parity in singleplayer is catching up.
- Right.
- You know, with stufflike "God of War Ragnarok,"
it got close.
It wasn't fully accessible.
- So I wanna go to "God of War Ragnarok,"
and talk about that,
because boy, it was aroundthis time last year.
- Boy.
(18:08):
- My oldest son,
he was hanging out with usfor the Christmas holiday,
and he brought with him his Xbox.
- Ah.
- And we have like a wholeapartment upstairs in our house,
and that's where he was staying,
and he was playing his Xbox up there.
And you know, all of a sudden he goes,
(18:28):
"Dad, dad, dad, you gottacome up here and see this."
And he had found theaccessibility features,
and he and I sat thereand I was amazed, right,
being in the industry.
I was absolutely amazed at whathad been achieved with that.
So can you, and that's on your CV, right?
You were an integral?
(18:49):
- I'm in the credits.
- Can you just tell us aboutyour involvement in that,
and what you did?
- Yeah, I mean, I can try.
I mean, I worked withthe combat team mostly,
giving feedback.
- Okay.
- So for a little context,
I played through "God of War2018," with sighted assistance.
I've played a lot of gameswith sighted assistance
over the years, whether that's stuff like
"Ryse Son of Rome," "Jedi Fallen Order,"
(19:09):
the "Gears" series, "Halo,"all sorts of things.
But I got working witha wonderful individual
by the name of Jennissary,
who now works for Descriptive Video Works.
- Mm hm.
- And we got talkingthanks to "God of War,"
'cause I reached out and was like,
I don't understand what's going on.
(19:31):
What am I missing in these cuts scenes?
Because I was watching Jacksepticeye
play through the game.
And I was like, why is he so amazed about?
What's the details that I'm missing here?
- Right.
- So I reached out toJennissary, well not directly.
I reached out to Reddit, andsaid, what am I missing here?
And then she got back to me,
(19:51):
and said, you know,
"I'm happy to help," like, you know,
"We can discuss it from here."
And the end result of that
is what we called theTranscribing Games Project.
And that is communitydriven audio description,
but it goes deeper than that.
So it goes to character descriptions,
to items, locations, weapons, enemies,
(20:13):
those kinds of things.
- Wow, so you have a gamingcommunity that is sitting there
basically alt textingvisual elements of the game,
so that anyone canappreciate the aesthetic.
That's unbelievable.
- Yeah, I mean that's the idea.
I mean it's, yeah,
(20:33):
the main thing we got done,
our sort of crowning achievement for that,
was the main story beatsof "God of War 2018,"
audio described, wereover like edited footage.
- Mm hm.
- But the funniest part of it was,
we had people coming to us saying,
"How do you turn this on in game?
"I can't find the option."
(20:54):
And we were like,
that is the highest possiblecompliment you could pay us.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause it was that good,
people were convincedthat it was in there.
I was like oh no.
- And then is that a bridgeto putting it in there?
- Well, I wouldn't sayit's so much a bridge
to putting it in there,
but it's an example of howyou could do it potentially.
(21:15):
And the fun thing is, ofcourse, "Last of Us, Part One,"
I didn't work on that game,but "Last of Us, Part One,"
got AD for the cinematics.
So we're slowly but surely getting there.
And "Stories of Blossom"has done it as well.
- Mm hm.
- You know, those are twogames that have released
sort of within the last year.
And "BROK the InvestiGator" as well,
(21:36):
I need to shout COWCAT games out
for "BROK the InvestiGator."
It's a punch and click,
'cause it's very actionheavy in that respect.
There are puzzles and stuff.
But yeah, "God of War" wise,
so I played "God of War 2018,"with Jennissary's assistance,
on a lot of streams onMixer, and then on Twitch,
(21:57):
including fighting allof the optional bosses,
which are the Valkyries.
And those of you that know "God of War,"
and "God of War 2018's" reputation,
will know that even onlike standard difficulties,
shall we say, so like normal,
or you know, whatever the equivalents are,
they are no pushover.
(22:19):
And we had to really workhard to get round it,
because there were a few things,
you know, attacks that weren't given cues,
or things like that.
So you couldn't tell, saythere were two attacks
that sounded the same,but one was unblockable,
so you had to dodge it,
you wouldn't be able totell which one was which.
And that's what, you know,a lot of the feedback
(22:41):
happened for "Ragnarok."
That's how a lot of that happened,
because I streamed a lot of my gameplay,
and they got a lot fromthat, the development team.
But then I was also, you know,
able to provide that information on,
you know, what's useful,kind of what isn't,
and what's there.
So, you know, the end result is,
(23:02):
it doesn't make it afully accessible game,
but the fact that I have just finished
beating all of theoptional bosses unbalanced
as of last week,
and I'm working throughcleaning up the end game
of Give Me God of War, whichis the hardest difficulty,
the fact I'm doing both of those,
and I've managed to dopretty much all of it
in just about a year,
(23:23):
is testament to at leasta big step in the combat,
if nothing else.
So I'm really, the good thing,the way I look at it is,
"God of War Ragnarok"isn't fully accessible,
not by any means, unfortunately.
It could be, you never know.
There might be updates,patches, things that happen
that may make it more accessible.
(23:45):
But it's a massive stepin the right direction
for the series.
- Well, and I think that'san important concept.
Like, you know, a lot of people
kind of have this binary view sometimes
of accessibility like,
we gotta make this thingcompletely accessible, or not.
- Yeah, I mean-
- Doing something is alwaysbetter than doing nothing.
- Yes.
(24:06):
- And it will eventuallylead to it being, you know,
so something along the way,some version of it, you know,
in the future, may be veryclose to fully accessible.
My question for youSightlessKombat is, you know,
you clearly have a passion for gaming,
and you've gotten-
- You could say that (laughing).
(24:26):
- And you've gotten into thiswonderful place in your life
where your, you know,your passion and your work
are kind of meeting together.
But there has to be a lot of people
who are blind out there playing games
that just appreciatebeing able to play a game,
as a person who's blind,
that aren't, you know,contributing like that.
Do you ever hear from those folks?
(24:47):
Do you ever hear people youknow, do they come to you,
and say,
"Hey, I really enjoyed myexperience with this game.
"Thank you for yourcontribution to it," or?
- Yeah, every once in a while yeah,
I'll see, you know, people saying,
"Oh, this is amazing."
Like, even just sightedpeople, they'll watch me play,
and they're like, "Howare you doing this?"
And I'm like, this has a sound cue.
(25:09):
And they're like, "Wow, that's cool."
You know?
And like if I say I workedon the game, they're like,
"Oh, that's amazing."
That's really cool to hear.
So, you know, and I willhave people, you know,
where I've shown a game to,
and you know, I've not worked on, like,
I've worked on a few games,
(25:30):
and most of those, Ithink full accessibility
is still a way off formost games at the minute.
- Right.
- But where I've worked on titles
that have significantly improved,people usually understand,
and they're like, "Thisis a really good start."
You know, this is, you know,"I can see why this is good."
Of course you will get detractors,you'll get people saying,
"Oh, why isn't it fully accessible?"
(25:50):
But game development takes time,
accessibility takes time.
And as much as I'm workingin that field as well,
I have to sort of remind myself of that.
- Mm hm.
- You know, I have to keepthat in the back of my head,
that even if I want toplay, I dunno, an RPG,
or a "Souls" like, or whatever,
the theory is therethat can make it happen,
(26:13):
it's just a matter of getting it
through to the right people.
And I'm always happy to talk to anyone
who's willing to listen,
anyone who's willing to helpme get that message across,
and connect me with people as well,
not just, you know,through RNIB of course,
but you know, even externally too.
(26:34):
You know, 'cause I talk alot about it on social media.
I've done a few YouTubevideos on, you know,
full agency versus, you know,sight assistance, or copilot,
or all sorts of things,
just to try and get people to understand.
So I feel like as time goes on,
that will happen more interms of people coming up
and saying, "Hey thisis really, really cool."
(26:56):
But I've even had, you know,
where I've said about sighted people
playing games alongside me,
I've had people play "KillerInstinct" against me,
this was a few years ago.
I had one sighted player fight me,
and then they played meblindfolded as like a challenge.
I was like, look, yeah,you fight me blindfolded,
I'm sure you can do it.
And I went back to talkto that person later,
(27:17):
and they actually stillhad the settings on
from the last time I played them.
- Oh.
- Which is really validating.
Like the fact that they justleft it on is brilliant.
- Because it helped, it wasalmost a curb cutout effect
kind of.
- Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
- And for the listeners whodon't know what that is,
that's this common term foran accessibility feature,
(27:38):
like a curb cutout in in the sidewalk,
unintentionally benefitingpeople who don't need it,
to accommodate for thedisability it was intended for.
- Yeah, I mean it'sthe thing of, you know,
like accessibility canhelp pretty much anybody.
So like if you have a sound cue in there,
say for unblockableattacks in "Jedi Survivor,"
(28:02):
then you know, anyone can use that.
Doesn't matter if it's actuallyan accessibility option,
or like in a menu specifically,or if it's just there.
So, you know, the unblockablecue from "Jedi Survivor,"
is just there.
It's not an option you turn on.
It just exists.
And I remember when Iwas playing, you know,
my first time with "Jedi Fallen Order,"
(28:24):
'cause it's in that game as well,
I then realized what that meant.
And I was like, is that a red attack?
'cause somebody said,
"Oh, you keep gettinghit by the red ones."
And I'm like, is that a red attack?
And they're like, "Yeah."
I'm like, is that a red one?
Like a few seconds later whena different one happened.
And I was like, oh, that's consistent.
So then when I'm watching, yeah.
- That's great.
(28:44):
- That's when I'm watchingother people play.
I'm like, you keep gettinghit by those red ones.
- How do you know?
- It's just engagement.
It's like, you know, that's part of it.
But also as well, of course,
then you get people likeusing menu narration,
because they don'twanna strain their eyes.
Or you get people using Aim Assist,
because they're having troublelocking on, or whatever.
(29:04):
You know, there's all sorts of reasons
why accessibility is great.
And one of the reasonsis because, you know,
everybody's gonna needit at some point as well.
- Yeah, right.
- I remember hearinga quote from somebody,
I'm trying to think who it was now,
but it comes back into my mind is like,
"We are all temporarily able bodied."
(29:26):
Yes, it sounds depressing,yes it sounds morbid.
- Oh, that's a great way to put it, yeah.
- But the other way Ilike to put it to people
who get slightly frustrated
about accessibility being needed,
is what if you woke up tomorrow,
and you had no sight at all?
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Like, you just woke up,
and you couldn't see anything.
- All of a sudden, yeah.
- Like in "Day of the Triffids,"or whatever, you wake up
(29:46):
and you've suddenly gone blind.
And you know, you'd stillwanna keep gaming, right?
There's no reason why you wouldn't.
And the only way you aregonna be able to keep gaming,
is if accessibilityadvance is to the level
that you can play a game, start to finish,
no sight assistance.
whatever difficulty you want,
whatever settings you want, any of that.
And that can only happen by degrees
(30:06):
with accessibility featuresbeing added in as time goes on.
- Yeah.
I think, you know, one of thereally interesting concepts
too that I think you'resort of bringing up here
is that what you're doing is important
in terms of showing peoplehow accessibility might work,
or exposing everyone to accessibility,
(30:29):
and how it helps you, andother people participate,
you know, play the games.
But also it's important I think,
to recognize that there's no magic wand,
that accessibility is stilla puzzle in many ways,
to be solved.
Like these games arecomplex, to your point.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- They do a whole bunch of things.
They're literally recreatingphysics in an environment,
(30:53):
and all this stuff.
So it's not like there's abunch of answers out there,
and we just need to apply them.
There are some answers.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- But a lot of what weneed is just great minds
thinking about how could thisexperience be accessible?
How could we make thisaccessible, you know?
And I think that that'salso an important concept,
(31:14):
and I think an importantbyproduct of your work
where you're really showingthe public how this works,
you know, or how it could work,
or how you solve it to this point,
or however you wanna say it.
- Yeah.
Like whether it's theory, liketheory crafting, you know?
So say you are going through a menu,
(31:35):
and it's like, if onlythis did this thing,
or like if you're playing say,
"Last of Us Part One and Two,"
and you wanna say you're like,
if only this had a progressionfilter (laughing), you know,
so I could just tell what like,
so I just get the loot,
rather than the next doorto the story or whatever.
You know, even those kinds ofcomments can be very useful
(31:57):
if able to be fed to the right people.
And sometimes it's not evenabout accessibility, you know,
for the game itself.
Accessibility, I've said for years,
it is not just about the games,
it's about everything around the games.
So alt text on your marketing images,
well not your marketingimages, your images, full stop,
(32:17):
alt text on your images,we mentioned it earlier.
For those that don't know,
alt text is just text thatdescribes what's in an image.
So you could say, let me just grab a prop
from off camera here.
A little 3D printed oh, there we go.
- Hold it up just a tiny bit.
There you go.
- I'm good, don't worry.
There we go.
(32:38):
I was just detaching a thingthat had got connected to it.
- [Mark] Got it.
- So this is a tiny little prop
of BD-1 from "Star Wars Jedi Survivor,"
or "Fallen Order."
It's a little, how can I describe it?
This is a two-legged little robot
with sort of hinged legs, a little droid,
with like a squarish head,
little sort of long antennapoking up and backwards.
(33:03):
And it's got littlemismatched eyes at the front.
And it's all 3D printed,and the legs move,
the head moves ever so slightly,
the little antennae slightly wiggle.
But the key thing is, that's 3D printed,
that's free and online.
And you know, I now have an idea
of what this character looks like,
(33:23):
just for those that can see,
I put my hand next to him for scale.
So you can see that he'sactually quite tall, really.
He is taller than he looks.
And he does actually stand up.
Let me see if I can get him to do it.
There, yay!
I wasn't sure if that'll work.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
So even having official,easy-to-buy, well priced merch,
(33:49):
that allows you to understand the world,
the characters, the locations.
So I've got a massiveone-to-one Gold Lancer
from "Gears of War 4"on the wall behind me.
That is brilliant.
- We can see it.
It's just over your left shoulder,
over your door it looks like?
(34:10):
Is that the one you're referring to?
- Yeah, yeah.
It's basically a massive gun
with a chainsaw on the end.
- It looks like a wholelot of fun to play with.
- It is, but the fun partis when you pick one up
for the first time,
'cause they may not be exactly weighted,
as you would find in an actual,
if it was ever real world kind of thing.
But the fact of the matteris, you pick that up,
(34:31):
and you're like, "That's heavy!"
- Mm hm.
- And so it gives areal sense of, you know,
this is what these charactersare running around with,
and you know, dealingwith the enemies with.
Even Thor's hammer, because I've got,
you won't be able to necessarily see it,
'cause it's off camera.
- No, I don't see it.
- No, no, no.
But I do have one of the"God of War Ragnarok"
(34:53):
Thor's hammer replicas,and those are great,
because, you know, youthink Thor's hammer,
and you think, youknow, Marvel Thor maybe.
But it's a different design.
There's all the patterns on it.
- Mm hm.
- So you get all thatlovely wonderful detailing
that the art department
have probably put hundreds of hours in.
And you get it, becauseit's a physical thing
(35:13):
that you can actually gethands on with, if you will.
And you know, that feeling of, you know,
I'm included in this,
even with like action figures and stuff.
- Included in the aesthetic, yeah.
- All the little pop vinyls even, yeah.
Even pop vinyls, they're caricatures, yes.
But you get a rough idea
of this is this character's hairstyle.
(35:34):
So if you said to me, you know,
say we're playing the sameRPG, and it's fully accessible,
and you are like, oh,I'm playing as so and so,
and I'm like, oh, theguy with the spiky hair.
And you're like, "Wait,how did you know that?"
I'm like, 'cause I've got a figure.
So stuff like that you can, you know,
describe the characters in game.
- I see.
(35:54):
- But it's just even better
when you actually have aphysical representation of it,
'cause then if a person said to me,
"Draw your favoritecharacter from a video game,"
I will be going on areference that I have,
you know, actually sort of firsthand.
- Mm hm.
- I'm not going on a vague description
from a piece of text in the game,
or arguably even betterand accurate description.
(36:15):
I'm not going on any of that.
I'm going on, you know, thisis the proportions of it,
this is how it all looks, you know,
the cool looking mechanical pieces
that are coming outta his arms, I dunno.
But yeah, there's all sorts of stuff.
So audio description in trailers as well.
You know, I could go on and onabout this, in the best way,
because there's so many waysto make things accessible.
(36:36):
And you're right, the wayto get people, you know,
having this happen, is throughworldwide collaboration.
So, you know, I will talk to anybody
from anywhere in the world in terms
of making their games accessible.
It doesn't matter, you know,whether you are a AAA studio,
whether you are one person indie,
(36:58):
somewhere in the middle of there,
I don't mind.
I want to be able to play your games,
and so do other people, with no sight.
Because, you know, justbecause you have no sight
doesn't mean you can't enjoy video games.
That's basically my sort of-
- Your mantra.
- Okay.
- Well SightlessKombat,
(37:19):
we have to start wrappingup here, unfortunately.
I think I could do this withyou for another couple hours.
- And Captain America oncesaid, "I can do this all day."
- Exactly.
And you know, one of the things like,
I think I think about a lot of stuff,
but, you know, making thegame accessible is one thing,
but the other thing I've always wanted to,
because we're talking about worlds, right?
- [Ben] Yeah.
(37:40):
- We're talking aboutworlds we're moving through.
I've always thought it, you know,
gaming is not like business.
Like with business, it's like, oh,
we've gotta make this equivalent.
And if it says, you know,
if a person with sight can perceive this,
a person who's blindneeds to perceive this.
And you can't mess with that a whole lot.
But in with a game you can have some fun.
And I've always thoughtit would be interesting
to have a game,
because I have a lot ofcolleagues who are blind,
(38:02):
so I'm actually navigatingcities, and going to conferences,
and all sorts of stuffwith people who are blind.
And, you know, we experiencedthe world together,
but in a different way.
It would be so interesting to me.
I'd love to see somebody lean into a game
where they made the experiencefor a person who's blind,
(38:23):
equivalent to their experience,
or equivalent to the way thatthey might react to the world,
where, and then a person with sight
would have the experienceof somebody who has sight.
So I could actually play a game
with a blind colleague, or friend,
where we're sort of experiencing it
in the two different waysthat we normally would,
(38:43):
whether that's the way weact with the environment,
you know?
I've always thought about like,
why couldn't you turn acontroller into a white cane,
for example.
- Yeah.
- Why couldn't you have thingsthat a person who's blind,
to your red point, you know,
like a person who's blind mightperceive something quicker,
because they're much moreattuned to their hearing,
(39:04):
whereas maybe there'ssomething that shows up
that the sighted person perceives quicker.
So it becomes collaborativewith that different-
- Yeah, like a co-op game
that's deliberately designedaround that kind of thing.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- I'm thinking of likemaybe not this specifically,
but maybe like a Lego thing.
- Something yeah.
Where it's cooperative.
- Yeah.
(39:24):
- And each person iscontributing differently
because of the way
that they interact with theenvironment differently.
- Yeah.
- And then, if we did doan experiment like that,
how would that start to informaccessibility in gaming?
Because again, we canjust push on any edge
of this envelope that wewant to, and play around.
Like there's no rules,
(39:45):
where in business it'ssort of like, you know,
you're trying to fit intothis, you know, this criteria.
- Yeah.
- Because there's a law around it,
or you know, you'reworried about compliance,
or you're worried about realtrue equivalency of messaging,
as you should, right?
- [Ben] Of course.
- But with gaming, it's like, hey,
we can take the governoroff this a little bit,
(40:05):
and start to really experiment.
So anyways.
- It's an interesting point.
I agree.
I feel like there'sdefinitely a discussion
to be had around that.
- Yeah.
I mean, wouldn't be great
to just build a game fromthe ground up that way?
- Well, I mean, accessibility
should be built in from the ground up.
That's a key thing as well.
- Absolutely.
(40:25):
- Hire accessibility consultants
as early as possible in development.
Keep them on
through the iterativeprocess of game development,
and through post-launch as well.
You know, accessibility isn'tjust a thing that you do
to release, and thenyou're like, no, that's it.
You keep it going through post-launch.
Fix any problems, you know,
with the resources you have available,
(40:46):
be transparent with yourcommunity about the Accessibility
you're gonna be able to give,
and make sure that everybody's included
in that worldwide feedback approach.
- So with the last minute or two here,
tell me where you kind of see
the world of accessible games going,
(41:07):
gaming going in the next couple of years?
- Pun most certainly intended (laughing).
I see the world of accessible gaming
going from strength to strength, actually.
We've seen in, even inthe last couple of years,
we've seen games embracing accessibility
for gamers without sight in particular,
and channeling that.
(41:28):
- Mm hm.
- We've not seen all thebig releases doing it.
We've not seen every release doing it,
but we are seeing more games doing it.
That's, that's the key difference.
Every year, if we see more games doing it,
those more will encourage other people
to do more on their own games.
- Exponential, yeah.
- Just a giant accessibilityexponential useful snowball.
(41:48):
There you go, yeah.
And you know, that's where I see it going.
I think give it maybe, youknow, maybe three or four years,
because of how long dev cycles take.
- Mm hm.
- We might see another fully playable game
with audio description,like throughout it maybe.
Who knows?
So that kind of thing.
Or you know, like you said,
(42:09):
there could be, you know,co-op games maybe in VR
that are fully accessible.
You know, that kind of thing.
- That's my current platform.
I absolutely love VR,
and there's no reason whythat can't be accessible,
because it's working with all your senses,
just the way it does.
- Exactly.
I mean the V in virtual reality, well,
V in VR doesn't stand for visual.
(42:29):
It stands for virtual.
- Virtual, yeah.
- And you can have haptic feedback-
- Exactly.
- through the controllers,and all sorts of stuff.
It's brilliant.
- I was gonna say, I've played one game
a couple of years ago, as partof a user research project,
that was playable without assistance,
which is very cool indeed.
But I'm looking forward toseeing other games embrace that.
(42:51):
Like, I'd love to be able to, you know,
me being the action combat fan I am,
or like the set piece video game fan,
like I am, like "Uncharted,"those kinds of things.
What if there was anaccessible "Uncharted" in VR
that would allow you towork off your calories,
I dunno.
That'd be great.
Be able to exercise in VR,
give me a good reason to own a headset.
(43:14):
- Or why can't we make theinteraction with the world
more tactile?
You know, why can't you, you know,
in your list of tools, whyisn't there a white cane
that would extend
- Yeah.
- Your ability to understandwhat's in front of you,
you know, to a reasonable angle.
Like there's all these things
that I think are just opengreenfields inside of VR,
(43:37):
that could be explored.
- Yeah.
No, I totally agree.
- I thank you so much.
I really wish we could keep this going,
and maybe there's apart two to be had here.
- Pun intended I'm game (laughing).
- Ba dum dum!
- Yeah, there we go.
- But I absolutely love what you're doing.
(43:58):
I love that you clearly approach it
with just a wonderful attitude,
and nothing but fun all the time, right?
It sounds like you takeaccessibility seriously,
but you don't take yourselfso seriously, right,
that you can't have fun.
- If you can't laugh at yourself,
who can you laugh at?
- Yeah well, I'm aroundmyself all the time,
so I laugh a lot, right?
(44:19):
- Well said, good one.
- Yeah.
And you know, I love yourSightlessKombat moniker.
I think it's a great thing.
And please make sure that youshare anything and everything.
We have some of your Twitchstreaming and all that,
that we can include.
But after this podcast,I'm sure there's people
that are gonna want to go checkout all that you're doing.
(44:39):
So we'll make sure we putthat in the show notes.
So whatever you want toshare with us, please.
- Yeah, no.
I mean, if you wanna watch me,
come and watch me livefirsthand on Twitch,
or on YouTube now, 'causeI'm now simulcasting,
thanks to that being allowedby the Twitch terms of service,
you know, that's a brilliant thing.
You're able to come andwatch me on another platform,
(45:00):
or of course follow me on Twitter as well.
That's SightlessKombat,
S-I-G-H-T-L-E-S-S-K-O-M-B-A-T.
And I also have a Discord server as well,
which you can find throughmy various channels,
where I organize my streams,
where we all just chat about stuff.
You know, you can come along,say hi, introduce yourself,
(45:21):
just, you know, generally hangout with like-minded people
who are interested in accessibility,
but also things like food, 3D printing,
Mac stuff, all sorts ofstuff, music as well,
'cause I write my ownmusic for my streams,
which is a lot of fun.
And sometimes you'll seeme streaming that as well.
But yeah, so Twitch, Twitter, YouTube,
(45:43):
SightlessKombat, that'swhere you'll find me.
But also, of course, if you wanna find out
what RNIB is doing,
including stuff likeDesign for Every Gamer,
the initiative that is a rallying cry
across the video games industry
to raise awareness of the need
for greater accessibility for gamers
across the spectrum of sight loss,
and of course includingfor gamers without sight,
like myself,
then you can find out more byemailing gaming@rnib.org.uk.
(46:07):
- Brilliant.
Well this is Mark Millerthanking SightlessKombat,
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- Thank you so much for the opportunity.
It's been brilliant.
Thank you.
- [Announcer] This podcast hasbeen brought to you by TPGi,
the experts in digital accessibility.
(46:28):
Stay tuned for More "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
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