- [Announcer] Welcome to TPGi's "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place. - Hey, welcome to the "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, brought to you by TPGi. I am your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor, if you're enjoying "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, share it, tell someone about it. Hey, even link to it from your accessible website. My favorite subject today, gaming. We have with us SightlessKombat. SightlessKombat. How you doing? - Hello. Hello, sorry, I stepped on 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 accessible gaming officer for RNIB, that is Royal National Institute of Blind People, the UK-based sightless charity. I am a gamer without sight. I have no sight whatsoever, never have. And you will know me from speaking at conferences, doing presentations over the years, consulting on games like "God of War Ragnarok," "Gears 5," "Sea of Thieves," "Killer Instinct." Sorry, I mean "Killer Instinct," amongst many others, of course. 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 loads of pop vinyls, figures, other memorabilia and things. And I am a white male in my late twenties wearing an RNIB DFEG, that is Design for Every Gamer cap, as a part of my dress for today, shall we say. - Well, beautiful. And thank you for telling us everything that you do. As I said at the beginning, this is such an exciting subject for me, 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 exciting for me to be talking to you. And I've sat with many people at CSUN and tackled this exact subject, probably not near as well as you have in your past. So let's just start from the beginning. Like how, particularly for people out there that may not understand fully, or appreciate fully, how a person who's blind even interacts with a computer. 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 people like yourselves out there, doing what they could to make gaming accessible? - Wow, that a lot of questions. Let's try. - Yeah, you can handle it. - Okay, yeah, let's try it. So my gaming journey, if you will, starts many, many years ago, playing PC games, like "Fighter Pilot" which I 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. - 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 about it was I had no idea how tech worked, how screen readers worked. I didn't even know screen readers existed at that point. - Really? - So I was literally just nose diving planes into unseen territory . - So it was all an audio thing for you. You were just listening to 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 the machine guns just, it's like, okay, this is cool . But, you know, I didn't really 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 sort of have vague memories of playing a strange version of that under Windows, maybe. - So "Pole Position" was a racing car racing game, right? - Yeah, "Pole Position" was a 1980s arcade game. - Arcade game, yeah. - But there was a weird Windows version. I can't even remember which version it was. I actually played, but it was 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 to PC audio games specifically, I should say, got introduced to audio games. And I played a very, a very cool title that, I mean, I don't think it's aged too badly over the past 20 odd years. And it's "Grizzly Gulch Western Extravaganza." - Oh my gosh. Yeah, I've never heard of that. What is that? - So it was developed by a company called Bavisoft, who have been long discontinued. They also developed a game called "Chillingham," which was like a horror themed thing. Unfortunately, there was meant 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 . It's like there videos you see on YouTube, "Seven unresolved cliffhangers "that we wish would be resolved," or whatever. - Oh. - It's like those. But "Grizzly Gulch" actually- - SightlessKombat, you said 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 cliffhanger fate of "Chillingham," But it was a four, or five-key, if you count the space bar, adventure game, literally just using the arrows. - Mm hm. - So it was essentially a point and click, in a way. So it would be, you'd have 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. - It was set in the eponymous Wild Wild West town of Grizzly Gulch. You'd come into it, and he'd be like, "Hey, I'm Sherman, welcome to the town of Grizzly Gulch." And it's like, okay . And you go through, and you'd get these strange missions from the marshal, and be like, lemme see if I can do it. It's like, "Seems finger licking Freddy's been out stealing chickens "from Old Man Morton's chicken 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 eclectic cast of characters, and you'd go through getting into gambling, gun fights, and bribery, all great. Things to learn from a young age. No, of course they're not . - 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. It's relatively short. I remember it being arguably quite difficult way back when, 'cause there's one mission that doesn't have a lot of checkpoints. It's like the final one in the entire game. You have to go and catch this guy called Murdering Sam, because of course he's called Murderin' Sam. Yeah. So, you know, I played that, I played, you know, other games around that time, and had a great time with it. But the problem was that, you know, sighted people people just didn'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 to integrate with sighted people. So, you know, I wouldn't have any idea of how the move lists work. I'd be like, how do they just do that amazing thing? - Yeah. - And then they're like, "I don't know," 'cause it's just showing a red and a yellow arrow, and a green fist. It's like, I have no idea what that means . - You bring an interesting point up. Like we, you know, when we think about accessibility, like in our industry, like one of the, obviously the big sort of mantra 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 game for 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 to participate in the same things. So right there, early on, you're kind of like almost discovering that, like, this works really well for me, but my sighted friends wanna go off and do something else. And I would imagine that's why you started shifting into other games, is because that was what your friends who had sight, were doing, right? - Well kind of, but it was also that, you know, people would say to me, "Oh, do you wanna play this?" 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 "Jedi Knight" 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 understand how 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, or the music for this, or whatever. - Mm hm. - So sometimes you have to take what you could get. But PS1 games, you know, that started me in my fighting game journey, you know? And then I went from there, through various iterations of consoles. And now we come to modern day where I'm in PS5, and Xbox Series X land. - Right. - So where things have changed a heck of a lot, you know, in the intervening years. - When is the first time that you ran across a game that started to become sort of an equivalency, where you were doing something very similar to your sighted peers, or at least a hint of that, you know? - Ooh. I mean, I'm not really too sure, because, you know, accessibility has given that equivalence, that that parity, almost, not completely, 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 be with "Killer Instinct," where, you know, I was online 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 much a game of fluid combos, and you can break it pretty much anytime. It's the one where, you know, "Combo breaker!" comes from. It's that one . So you have heard that booming across our cage, and they did a version of it for Xbox One when that launched. And I mean I'd played games like, you know, "Mortal Kombat 9," "Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe," those kinds of things with people. - 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 just got utterly annihilated by somebody you couldn't see. At least that's the way I remember it. Whether that's entirely accurate, I'm not a hundred percent sure 'cause it's been many years. But, you know, "KI" was really one of the first games where I felt like I had a chance, but it wasn't because of accessibility really, it was because of sound design. - Okay, that's interesting. - Well, because it was, well I guess you could call that unintended accessibility. So it was fluid, the sound was moving everywhere. I could hear fireballs traveling, those kinds of things. - So they actually did such a good job in creating an environment, and a soundscape, that you were able, to a degree, interact with that in the way that you might interact with your own environment, and use sound as a indicator of where something might be, how far away it is, how fast it's traveling. - Yeah, pretty much. I mean, but the, I mean, full disclosure, I did then reach out via the "Ultra Combo" forums, and say, you know, I'm playing this game without sight. I would love to be able to do better at this. But the key thing that's missing is the combo gauge, 'cause as a sighted player, you see a bar on the side of the screen if memory serves. And that bar indicates whether you're gonna drop 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 gamer without sight like myself, you have no idea of that, because when I was playing it, there was no sound cue for that. There was nothing there. So I was getting utterly obliterated by people, because they could see their 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 realized that half the problem was that I couldn't actually end my combos optimally. So I reached out and basically said, you know, this is, gimme a example. Well here's a bunch of things that we could do. So one was clipboard reading, one was like with a screen reader, so it would, well not even clipboard reading, but TTS basically of any kinds, to make the menus narrated. That sadly didn't happen. But what did was what became the HUD meter volume slider. And the best part of that was that got introduced in a patch for a beta character. So this was, I wanna say like September of 2015, when Rash came out in beta, the Battletoads character. - Mm hm. - Yes, there is a Battletoad in "Killer Instinct." Yes, it's strange. Yes, he's kind of broken-ish , 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 partner in "Killer Instinct," "Gears 5" player alongside myself, all sorts of stuff. But he and I played that, and we noticed night and day difference. And I'm actually, I've got video 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 see the 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! Like, I wasn't recording our 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 figure out how combos work, yay! - That's awesome. - That was night and day difference. We played for hours on that. And it was phenomenal just to be able to understand, you know, I dropped my combo, that is bad. Or like, you dropped yours, 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 that feedback 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, he of "GoldenEye," development fame, if you ever heard of the gun called The Club, that's where it comes from because he worked in part on it 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 an executive producer role, to assist with it. But he and I got the chance to meet in person during a traveling fellowship I did several years ago out to the States, through the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. And the best part of that was I got to not only talk to Ken, but then we actually got to sit down- - Oh wow. - and had an entire "Killer Instinct set, 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 it was nine matches to eight? - Nice. - And then a couple of years later, we played at the game at a disability bootcamp at Microsoft, 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 . But the funniest part of it was that he'd brought this amazing controller with him, and he said to me on the last set, I was like, this is for the set. And he looks at me and he goes, "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, 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 a player with sight and win. - That's incredible. - And that's where, you know, parity kind of started. I think parity in single player is catching up. - Right. - You know, with stuff like "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 around this time last year. - Boy. - My oldest son, he was hanging out with us for the Christmas holiday, and he brought with him his Xbox. - Ah. - And we have like a whole apartment 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, "Dad, dad, dad, you gotta come up here and see this." And he had found the accessibility features, and he and I sat there and I was amazed, right, being in the industry. I was absolutely amazed at what had been achieved with that. So can you, and that's on your CV, right? You were an integral? - I'm in the credits. - Can you just tell us about your involvement in that, and what you did? - Yeah, I mean, I can try. I mean, I worked with the combat team mostly, giving feedback. - Okay. - So for a little context, I played through "God of War 2018," with sighted assistance. I've played a lot of games with sighted assistance over the years, whether that's stuff like "Ryse Son of Rome," "Jedi Fallen Order," the "Gears" series, "Halo," all sorts of things. But I got working with a wonderful individual by the name of Jennissary, who now works for Descriptive Video Works. - Mm hm. - And we got talking thanks to "God of War," 'cause I reached out and was like, I don't understand what's going on. 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 to Jennissary, well not directly. I reached out to Reddit, and said, what am I missing here? And then she got back to me, 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 the Transcribing Games Project. And that is community driven audio description, but it goes deeper than that. So it goes to character descriptions, to items, locations, weapons, enemies, those kinds of things. - Wow, so you have a gaming community that is sitting there basically alt texting visual elements of the game, so that anyone can appreciate the aesthetic. That's unbelievable. - Yeah, I mean that's the idea. I mean it's, yeah, the main thing we got done, our sort of crowning achievement for that, was the main story beats of "God of War 2018," audio described, were over 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." And we were like, that is the highest possible compliment you could pay us. - Yeah. - 'Cause it was that good, people were convinced that it was in there. I was like oh no. - And then is that a bridge to putting it in there? - Well, I wouldn't say it's so much a bridge to putting it in there, but it's an example of how you could do it potentially. And the fun thing is, of course, "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 two games that have released sort of within the last year. And "BROK the InvestiGator" as well, I need to shout COWCAT games out for "BROK the InvestiGator." It's a punch and click, 'cause it's very action heavy 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 on Mixer, and then on Twitch, including fighting all of 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 on like standard difficulties, shall we say, so like normal, or you know, whatever the equivalents are, they are no pushover. And we had to really work hard 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, say there were two attacks that sounded the same, but one was unblockable, so you had to dodge it, you wouldn't be able to tell which one was which. And that's what, you know, a lot of the feedback happened for "Ragnarok." That's how a lot of that happened, because I streamed a lot of my gameplay, and they got a lot from that, 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, it doesn't make it a fully accessible game, but the fact that I have just finished beating all of the optional bosses unbalanced as of last week, and I'm working through cleaning up the end game of Give Me God of War, which is the hardest difficulty, the fact I'm doing both of those, and I've managed to do pretty much all of it in just about a year, is testament to at least a 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. But it's a massive step in the right direction for the series. - Well, and I think that's an important concept. Like, you know, a lot of people kind of have this binary view sometimes of accessibility like, we gotta make this thing completely accessible, or not. - Yeah, I mean- - Doing something is always better than doing nothing. - Yes. - And it will eventually lead to it being, you know, so something along the way, some version of it, you know, in the future, may be very close to fully accessible. My question for you SightlessKombat is, you know, you clearly have a passion for gaming, and you've gotten- - You could say that . - And you've gotten into this wonderful 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 appreciate being 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? Do you ever hear people you know, do they come to you, and say, "Hey, I really enjoyed my experience with this game. "Thank you for your contribution to it," or? - Yeah, every once in a while yeah, I'll see, you know, people saying, "Oh, this is amazing." Like, even just sighted people, they'll watch me play, and they're like, "How are you doing this?" And I'm like, this has a sound cue. And they're like, "Wow, that's cool." You know? And like if I say I worked on the game, they're like, "Oh, that's amazing." That's really cool to hear. So, you know, and I will have 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, and most of those, I think full accessibility is still a way off for most games at the minute. - Right. - But where I've worked on titles that have significantly improved, people usually understand, and they're like, "This is 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?" But game development takes time, accessibility takes time. And as much as I'm working in that field as well, I have to sort of remind myself of that. - Mm hm. - You know, I have to keep that in the back of my head, that even if I want to play, I dunno, an RPG, or a "Souls" like, or whatever, the theory is there that can make it happen, 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 help me 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. You know, 'cause I talk a lot about it on social media. I've done a few YouTube videos 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 in terms of people coming up and saying, "Hey this is really, really cool." But I've even had, you know, where I've said about sighted people playing games alongside me, I've had people play "Killer Instinct" against me, this was a few years ago. I had one sighted player fight me, and then they played me blindfolded 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 talk to that person later, and they actually still had the settings on from the last time I played them. - Oh. - Which is really validating. Like the fact that they just left it on is brilliant. - Because it helped, it was almost a curb cutout effect kind of. - Exactly. Yeah, exactly. - And for the listeners who don't know what that is, that's this common term for an accessibility feature, like a curb cutout in in the sidewalk, unintentionally benefiting people who don't need it, to accommodate for the disability it was intended for. - Yeah, I mean it's the thing of, you know, like accessibility can help pretty much anybody. So like if you have a sound cue in there, say for unblockable attacks in "Jedi Survivor," then you know, anyone can use that. Doesn't matter if it's actually an accessibility option, or like in a menu specifically, or if it's just there. So, you know, the unblockable cue from "Jedi Survivor," is just there. It's not an option you turn on. It just exists. And I remember when I was playing, you know, my first time with "Jedi Fallen Order," '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 getting hit 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 when a different one happened. And I was like, oh, that's consistent. So then when I'm watching, yeah. - That's great. - That's when I'm watching other people play. I'm like, you keep getting hit 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 like using menu narration, because they don't wanna strain their eyes. Or you get people using Aim Assist, because they're having trouble locking on, or whatever. You know, there's all sorts of reasons why accessibility is great. And one of the reasons is because, you know, everybody's gonna need it at some point as well. - Yeah, right. - I remember hearing a 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." Yes, it sounds depressing, yes it sounds morbid. - Oh, that's a great way to put it, yeah. - But the other way I like 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 and you've suddenly gone blind. And you know, you'd still wanna keep gaming, right? There's no reason why you wouldn't. And the only way you are gonna be able to keep gaming, is if accessibility advance 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 with accessibility features being added in as time goes on. - Yeah. I think, you know, one of the really interesting concepts too that I think you're sort of bringing up here is that what you're doing is important in terms of showing people how accessibility might work, or exposing everyone to accessibility, and how it helps you, and other 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 still a puzzle in many ways, to be solved. Like these games are complex, to your point. - [Ben] Yeah. - They do a whole bunch of things. They're literally recreating physics in an environment, and all this stuff. So it's not like there's a bunch of answers out there, and we just need to apply them. There are some answers. - [Ben] Yeah. - But a lot of what we need is just great minds thinking about how could this experience be accessible? How could we make this accessible, you know? And I think that that's also an important concept, and I think an important byproduct of your work where you're really showing the 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, like theory crafting, you know? So say you are going through a menu, and it's like, if only this 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 progression filter , you know, so I could just tell what like, so I just get the loot, rather than the next door to the story or whatever. You know, even those kinds of comments can be very useful if able to be fed to the right people. And sometimes it's not even about 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 marketing images, your images, full stop, alt text on your images, we mentioned it earlier. For those that don't know, alt text is just text that describes 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. I was just detaching a thing that 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 antenna poking up and backwards. And it's got little mismatched 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, just for those that can see, I put my hand next to him for scale. So you can see that he's actually 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, that allows you to understand the world, the characters, the locations. So I've got a massive one-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? 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 whole lot of fun to play with. - It is, but the fun part is 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 matter is, you pick that up, and you're like, "That's heavy!" - Mm hm. - And so it gives a real sense of, you know, this is what these characters are running around with, and you know, dealing with 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" Thor's hammer replicas, and those are great, because, you know, you think Thor's hammer, and you think, you know, Marvel Thor maybe. But it's a different design. There's all the patterns on it. - Mm hm. - So you get all that lovely wonderful detailing that the art department have probably put hundreds of hours in. And you get it, because it's a physical thing that you can actually get hands 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. So if you said to me, you know, say we're playing the same RPG, and it's fully accessible, and you are like, oh, I'm playing as so and so, and I'm like, oh, the guy 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. - But it's just even better when you actually have a physical representation of it, 'cause then if a person said to me, "Draw your favorite character from a video game," I will be going on a reference 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 better and accurate description. I'm not going on any of that. I'm going on, you know, this is 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 on about this, in the best way, because there's so many ways to make things accessible. And you're right, the way to get people, you know, having this happen, is through worldwide 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, 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, just because you have no sight doesn't mean you can't enjoy video games. That's basically my sort of- - Your mantra. - Okay. - Well SightlessKombat, we have to start wrapping up here, unfortunately. I think I could do this with you for another couple hours. - And Captain America once said, "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 the game accessible is one thing, but the other thing I've always wanted to, because we're talking about worlds, right? - [Ben] Yeah. - We're talking about worlds 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 blind needs 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 thought it would be interesting to have a game, because I have a lot of colleagues who are blind, so I'm actually navigating cities, and going to conferences, and all sorts of stuff with people who are blind. And, you know, we experienced the 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 experience for a person who's blind, equivalent to their experience, or equivalent to the way that they might react to the world, where, and then a person with sight would have the experience of 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 ways that we normally would, whether that's the way we act with the environment, you know? I've always thought about like, why couldn't you turn a controller into a white cane, for example. - Yeah. - Why couldn't you have things that a person who's blind, to your red point, you know, like a person who's blind might perceive something quicker, because they're much more attuned to their hearing, whereas maybe there's something that shows up that the sighted person perceives quicker. So it becomes collaborative with that different- - Yeah, like a co-op game that's deliberately designed around that kind of thing. - [Mark] Yeah. - I'm thinking of like maybe not this specifically, but maybe like a Lego thing. - Something yeah. Where it's cooperative. - Yeah. - And each person is contributing differently because of the way that they interact with the environment differently. - Yeah. - And then, if we did do an experiment like that, how would that start to inform accessibility in gaming? Because again, we can just push on any edge of this envelope that we want to, and play around. Like there's no rules, where in business it's sort of like, you know, you're trying to fit into this, you know, this criteria. - Yeah. - Because there's a law around it, or you know, you're worried about compliance, or you're worried about real true equivalency of messaging, as you should, right? - [Ben] Of course. - But with gaming, it's like, hey, we can take the governor off this a little bit, and start to really experiment. So anyways. - It's an interesting point. I agree. I feel like there's definitely a discussion to be had around that. - Yeah. I mean, wouldn't be great to just build a game from the ground up that way? - Well, I mean, accessibility should be built in from the ground up. That's a key thing as well. - Absolutely. - Hire accessibility consultants as early as possible in development. Keep them on through the iterative process of game development, and through post-launch as well. You know, accessibility isn't just a thing that you do to release, and then you're like, no, that's it. You keep it going through post-launch. Fix any problems, you know, with the resources you have available, be transparent with your community 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, gaming going in the next couple of years? - Pun most certainly intended . I see the world of accessible gaming going from strength to strength, actually. We've seen in, even in the last couple of years, we've seen games embracing accessibility for gamers without sight in particular, and channeling that. - Mm hm. - We've not seen all the big 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 accessibility exponential useful snowball. There you go, yeah. And you know, that's where I see it going. I think give it maybe, you know, 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, 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 why that 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. 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 part of a user research project, that was playable without assistance, which is very cool indeed. But I'm looking forward to seeing other games embrace that. 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 an accessible "Uncharted" in VR that would allow you to work off your calories, I dunno. That'd be great. Be able to exercise in VR, give me a good reason to own a headset. - Or why can't we make the interaction with the world more tactile? You know, why can't you, you know, in your list of tools, why isn't there a white cane that would extend - Yeah. - Your ability to understand what's in front of you, you know, to a reasonable angle. Like there's all these things that I think are just open greenfields inside of VR, 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 a part two to be had here. - Pun intended I'm game . - Ba dum dum! - Yeah, there we go. - But I absolutely love what you're doing. I love that you clearly approach it with just a wonderful attitude, and nothing but fun all the time, right? It sounds like you take accessibility seriously, but you don't take yourself so seriously, right, that you can't have fun. - If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? - Yeah well, I'm around myself all the time, so I laugh a lot, right? - Well said, good one. - Yeah. And you know, I love your SightlessKombat moniker. I think it's a great thing. And please make sure that you share anything and everything. We have some of your Twitch streaming and all that, that we can include. But after this podcast, I'm sure there's people that are gonna want to go check out all that you're doing. So we'll make sure we put that in the show notes. So whatever you want to share with us, please. - Yeah, no. I mean, if you wanna watch me, come and watch me live firsthand on Twitch, or on YouTube now, 'cause I'm now simulcasting, thanks to that being allowed by the Twitch terms of service, you know, that's a brilliant thing. You're able to come and watch me on another platform, 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 through my various channels, where I organize my streams, where we all just chat about stuff. You know, you can come along, say hi, introduce yourself, just, you know, generally hang out with like-minded people who are interested in accessibility, but also things like food, 3D printing, Mac stuff, all sorts of stuff, music as well, 'cause I write my own music for my streams, which is a lot of fun. And sometimes you'll see me streaming that as well. But yeah, so Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, SightlessKombat, that's where you'll find me. But also, of course, if you wanna find out what RNIB is doing, including stuff like Design 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 including for gamers without sight, like myself, then you can find out more by emailing gaming@rnib.org.uk. - Brilliant. Well this is Mark Miller thanking SightlessKombat, and reminding you to keep it accessible. - Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been brilliant. Thank you. - [Announcer] This podcast has been brought to you by TPGi, the experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for More "Real People, Real Stories" podcasts coming soon.