Mark asked me to write about this year's GDC from the perspective of
having participated in GDC for the last five years and seeing how
things have changed with regard to educating the industry about ways
that they can make their games more accessible, about products or
game features that can increase accessibility that were already
accessible but the developers themselves did not realize it, and so
forth.
I am the chair of the International Game Developers Association's
(IGDA) Special Interest Group on Game Accessibility (GA-SIG) and I
was so excited to be in the position to provide Mark and Stephanie of
AbleGamers with all-access passes to help spread the word about game
accessibility. More specifically I was excited that they could attend
as part of both AbleGamers and the GA-SIG to help get word out about
the latest games and game technology to GAMERS with disabilities. For
years the GA-SIG has been on the forefront of lobbying the industry
for change while AbleGamers has been on the forefront of helping
gamers with disabilities learn about controllers that can enable
playing games. BOTH are needed to make change happen -- companies
need to know from gamers what specific issues they are having with
games and gamers need to know about options that are already
available but not widely known about. Being a part of the IGDA gives
the GA-SIG access to the major players in industry who have the
decision making power and working with AbleGamers gives the GA-SIG
access to the stories of gamers that we can bring to the industry so
that game accessibility becomes a reality for more and more people
every day.
For the last several years, it has been easy to tell game companies
that game accessibility is important. Getting companies to act and
educate themselves on how to make their games more accessible,
however, has not been so easy. We could tell a CEO of a company about
game accessibility at GDC and invite them to come to our sessions to
find out more and they would nod and say that they would attend. But
unless they figured out how to be invisible, they were not in the
audience during the sessions. In fact, we would have an average
audience of about 2 people at each session we ran at GDC. Perhaps
opening up gaming to a wider audience wasn't as crucial in the past
few years? But the world economy has been changing and now game
companies cannot afford to close off their products to important
segments of the market and companies are starting to pay attention to
our message of "Game Accessibility Means Games For All."
The first session we ran at this year's GDC was, in my mind, a bit of
a miracle. We had up to about 75 people in attendance according to
the conference associates (a.k.a. the hard working volunteers who
help speakers run their sessions and keep count of people who wander
in and out of sessions). In fact, at about 15 minutes before our
session started, we had a nice crowd gathering in the room and I
thought to myself "oh, they must have the room mixed up because
surely they aren't here about game accessibility."
Allow me to back track a bit. For years, the GA-SIG has worked so
hard to promote and run sessions at the GDC on game accessibility
only to end up feeling depressed and jaded after the conference. We
would be angry at one another because we felt so awful and we
couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong. Could it be that the
game industry was that shallow? Could it be that spending 80 hours
per person each week in the months prior to GDC wasn't enough? But
each year we'd try again. And, yes, it was depressing.
But something changed this year. Thanks to the help of Mark and
Stephanie of AbleGamers, our fliers promoting our sessions were
passed out to every person they saw. Unfortunately I had entered a
pain cycle with my disability and I was so upset that it fell during
GDC and I thought that our sessions would be doomed to having a
"crowd" of two people and face permanent cancellation at GDC, that we
would never get another presentation slot again. In the weeks before
GDC I sent out nearly two thousand individual emails to press,
companies, agencies, developers telling them about our sessions. In
the months before I called the folks from Emotiv and Natural Point to
see if they would present their products with us at our
"Accessibility Arcade" sessions. And they said "yes!" And while in my
mind I knew that we might get some more attendees to see their cool
products and then maybe we could tell them about the other products
and about game accessibility before they ran out the door, I still
held my breath as the session got closer -- would things be different
this year?
As I said, as soon as GDC started I was in massive pain and I was
panicked. Why? Because you can do all the pre-GDC advertising you
want but to make sure you got those people in the door you need the
reinforcement of passing out the fliers and talking up the sessions
to other attendees. And even then, perhaps you'd only get two
attendees. So this year we did our biggest pre-event and event
advertising ever. Thanks to Mark and Stephanie, the fliers were
passed out (which, btw, looked awesome and were designed by Mark),
the word was spread -- they were the guardian angels of game
accessibility and stepped up when my body decided it wanted to give
up on me. And this year? All of these efforts resulted in an audience
-- a real audience of folks who were not JUST interested in Emotiv's
brain control interface and Natural Point's head navigation system
but also interested in finding out about all the other wonderful
controllers provided by Barrie Ellis and Mark Felling, game mods and
new games by folks like Reid Kimball, Eelke Folmer, and Eitan Glinert.
What did I do after the session was over -- and by that I mean after
the session ran WAY over time because people were so interested in
what we had to show? I burst into tears. Yes, it's true. I have never
done that even in my most angry, disappointed state post-GDC when we
would have practically killed ourselves to get two people in the
room. I know I freaked Mark out -- we did just finally meet in person
the week of GDC! Why was I crying? Because finally we had our
audience and the fight for game accessibility was in the limelight.
You cannot imagine the relief, the joy, the sense that maybe the
gaming industry was finally understanding why game accessibility was
so important that I felt. It was absolutely amazing.
And so, yes, I let myself cry tears of joy and Mark gave me a big
bear hug. We had done it -- all of us. Together we got our audience.
It was the moment where all of us who have been fighting for game
accessibility on all fronts got together and made this year's GDC a
HUGE success for us. Sure, we could have had even more people in the
room but the percentage increase from 2 attendees to approximately
75? Well, the organizers of GDC are now on notice -- the time for the
message about game accessibility to be heard is NOW!
Was all this due to any one person? No. It was all of us together.
The convergence of all our energies combined at the right time and
right place was exactly what was needed. Consider this a win for all
of us -- gamers and developers -- because that is exactly what it
was. So stay involved, join all of us in the fight for more
accessible games, talk to developers, tell us your story about gaming
with a disability, tell us the stories of others that you know. We
are all listening and we are all taking the word straight to the
CEOs. We will be heard and things will be changing. This is what I
now believe in my heart. And thanks to my new friends Mark and
Stephanie and the entire AbleGamers community along with all my old
friends that I have made over the years running the GA-SIG, I know we
can do it!
(1 vote)
Mark asked me to write about this year's GDC from the perspective of
having participated in GDC for the last five years and seeing how
things have changed with regard to educating the industry about ways
that they can make their games more accessible, about products or
game features that can increase accessibility that were already
accessible but the developers themselves did not realize it, and so
forth.
I am the chair of the International Game Developers Association's
(IGDA) Special Interest Group on Game Accessibility (GA-SIG) and I
was so excited to be in the position to provide Mark and Stephanie of
AbleGamers with all-access passes to help spread the word about game
accessibility. More specifically I was excited that they could attend
as part of both AbleGamers and the GA-SIG to help get word out about
the latest games and game technology to GAMERS with disabilities. For
years the GA-SIG has been on the forefront of lobbying the industry
for change while AbleGamers has been on the forefront of helping
gamers with disabilities learn about controllers that can enable
playing games. BOTH are needed to make change happen -- companies
need to know from gamers what specific issues they are having with
games and gamers need to know about options that are already
available but not widely known about. Being a part of the IGDA gives
the GA-SIG access to the major players in industry who have the
decision making power and working with AbleGamers gives the GA-SIG
access to the stories of gamers that we can bring to the industry so
that game accessibility becomes a reality for more and more people
every day.
For the last several years, it has been easy to tell game companies
that game accessibility is important. Getting companies to act and
educate themselves on how to make their games more accessible,
however, has not been so easy. We could tell a CEO of a company about
game accessibility at GDC and invite them to come to our sessions to
find out more and they would nod and say that they would attend. But
unless they figured out how to be invisible, they were not in the
audience during the sessions. In fact, we would have an average
audience of about 2 people at each session we ran at GDC. Perhaps
opening up gaming to a wider audience wasn't as crucial in the past
few years? But the world economy has been changing and now game
companies cannot afford to close off their products to important
segments of the market and companies are starting to pay attention to
our message of "Game Accessibility Means Games For All."
Allow me to back track a bit. For years, the GA-SIG has worked so
hard to promote and run sessions at the GDC on game accessibility
only to end up feeling depressed and jaded after the conference. We
would be angry at one another because we felt so awful and we
couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong. Could it be that the
game industry was that shallow? Could it be that spending 80 hours
per person each week in the months prior to GDC wasn't enough? But
each year we'd try again. And, yes, it was depressing.
What did I do after the session was over -- and by that I mean after
the session ran WAY over time because people were so interested in
what we had to show? I burst into tears. Yes, it's true. I have never
done that even in my most angry, disappointed state post-GDC when we
would have practically killed ourselves to get two people in the
room. I know I freaked Mark out -- we did just finally meet in person
the week of GDC! Why was I crying? Because finally we had our
audience and the fight for game accessibility was in the limelight.
You cannot imagine the relief, the joy, the sense that maybe the
gaming industry was finally understanding why game accessibility was
so important that I felt. It was absolutely amazing.
Was all this due to any one person? No. It was all of us together.
The convergence of all our energies combined at the right time and
right place was exactly what was needed. Consider this a win for all
of us -- gamers and developers -- because that is exactly what it
was. So stay involved, join all of us in the fight for more
accessible games, talk to developers, tell us your story about gaming
with a disability, tell us the stories of others that you know. We
are all listening and we are all taking the word straight to the
CEOs. We will be heard and things will be changing. This is what I
now believe in my heart. And thanks to my new friends Mark and
Stephanie and the entire AbleGamers community along with all my old
friends that I have made over the years running the GA-SIG, I know we
can do it!
