Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Episode Transcript

Transcript edited by Hannah “Asher” Sham

Introduction

Kylo: You are listening to Let’s Talk. Let’s Talk is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website, pcc.edu/DCA, on Spotify, on XRay 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Community Radio, 90.7 FM.

Asher: Hello and welcome everyone! My name is Asher, and today we have a very special guest to talk about accessibility and gaming. Hi, Matthew! Can you like tell me your full name, who you are, your pronouns, and what your occupation is?

Matthew: Yeah. Well, hi everyone. I first off, just thank you so much for having me. This is such an awesome opportunity. I know y’all are doing some really great work covering just a bunch of really interesting and impactful issues. So, my name is Matthew Kreutter. I’m the current director of learning and engagement with an organization called Games for Change, which I know we’ll talk about in a little bit. I use he, him pronouns, and I’m currently living in New York. It’s like a fun fact.

Asher: That’s awesome. It’s so great to have you here. Thank you so much for accepting our ask to speak on one of our topics on accessibility.

So, tell us what is Games 4 Change, what their mission is, and how did you get started with them?

Matthew: So, Games 4 Change is an ed tech-ish, play-based learning-ish, just educational broadly nonprofit. We’re based here in New York. Our mission really is just around leveraging the power of games, and this can be video games, tabletop games, in-person games that kids could play, learning games, just games as a broad category and other interactive media that really sits in this world of play, to drive some kind of positive social change. So, often that means using a game for learning, but can also mean using a game for advocacy, using a game for lifting up different voices or just addressing some kind of social issue broadly. A lot of what we do aims to empower creators, educators, innovators, lots of cross-industry people to use games to address local issues or even critical global issues. A lot of the work that we do sits around things like poverty, or education, or human rights, global conflicts, climate change, and really thinking about how games and play can be used to bring some joy or bring some change or bring some positivity to a lot of those issues.

Asher: That’s awesome! How did you get started with Games 4 Change?

Matthew’s Background

Matthew: I guess I’ll just do sort of my entire background ’cause it’s a bit of a winding road for how I got here. So, I’m still relatively early on in my career, but let’s just say earlier, earlier on in my career, I was a software engineer. I was a computer science major. I worked in a variety of tech and tech adjacent industries coding and I really did not enjoy it. I have the utmost respect for people who do. I think there’s a lot of really awesome stuff out there, and a lot of the work that we do does hinge on coders and developers, but it just really wasn’t for me. The biggest part about it was that I did not feel like I was having the kind of impact that I wanted to. It just felt like I was typing. Then committing that code, and maybe it had some impact on the tool, maybe it didn’t, and often the stuff I was working on didn’t feel impactful anyway. So, I made a pretty big pivot from software engineering into teaching. I did Teach For America, which is a two year teacher sort of residency program, without any kind of education background in particular. I got my master’s in secondary education and I taught middle school math for two years. So, this is really where I guess my real career started; where I’m taking these technical skills, product related skills from software engineering, educational skills and perspectives on various industries from teaching, and then bringing them into the field that I currently work in, which is nonprofit education. The big reason there, is that I finished Teach for America right as the pandemic was starting and virtual teaching was just extremely difficult for me. I think it was for a lot of people. Again, have the utmost respect for people who stayed in teaching during and through the pandemic and obviously are still teaching now. I was moving across the country, at the beginning of the pandemic. I was thinking about, ” what do I want to do next? Do I want to keep teaching?”, and the idea of starting at a new school virtually, it just really wasn’t gonna work for me. So, I thought, “okay, what would be impactful right now in the summer of 2020, as it relates to education?”. The obvious answer, that I think a lot of people were attaching themselves to, myself eventually included, is some kind of virtual education or virtual community spaces. So, I went from teaching to another nonprofit called Connected Camps, where I did product development, curriculum design, things like that for a large suite of Minecraft based educational classes, communities, learning tools. All virtual, all game-based, and then from there joined Games 4 Change. So, really translated computer science and product skills, into teaching skills, into ed tech skills, into now nonprofit advocacy around the power of games for education. So, a very long and winding road.

Asher: That’s really cool though. Ah, I have so many questions with that.

You mentioned Connected Camps. What is Connected Camps? Can you walk us through it?

Matthew: Yeah, so they’re still going. They’re a nonprofit based out of Southern California, and they still run a wide variety of virtual education programs in Minecraft. I think some fun examples, they have classes in Minecraft around cell biology history, virology, architecture, business, things like that, with the main goal of taking something that we know kids are interested in, in this case Minecraft, and leveraging that interest to help them become interested and learn something new. So, if a kid’s already interested in Minecraft and you are hoping that they build some additional interest or passion in the business side of architecture, then they could take one of our programs; architecture business in Minecraft, right? If you think that they’re interested in, perhaps pursuing some sort of future in science, they could take a cell biology course, but it’s like rooted in this thing that we know they’re really excited about. We know they have some mastery in, which is Minecraft. We know it’s a really great tool for exploring creativity and design and things like that, and sort of transitioning that into this building of interest in some other topic. Some of the other work we did, this is no longer running, but something I’m still very proud of is, we had a Minecraft based community for grieving youth. Partnered with another organization called Experience Camps. So, again, this was like birthed out of the pandemic where they have in-person summer camps for grieving youth. But, it was tough to get everyone there with the pandemic going on, and people were a little worried about sending their kids off to summer camp, even in the years following 2020 and 2021. So, they really wanted a virtual option for these kids who are disproportionately affected by feelings of isolation or loneliness, or feeling like no one around them understands what they’re going through or really gets it. We worked with them to build this community in Minecraft fully, virtually for kids around the nation and some globally, but it was tough with time zones, to just come together and be a part of this virtual community that, I think our pipeline was, everyone here gets it. They sort of understand not exactly what any individual is going through, since grief presents in its own unique ways for each kid, but there’s like this shared thread of like understanding a broader experience. So, I’m very proud of that project as well.

Asher: So cool. Oh, I wish that was still happening. I feel like a lot of people, especially in our generation now, could use something like that to be able to connect with other people. Whether it’s through gaming or just through a community of people who are going through the same thing. That’s very cool.

Going back to the topic of accessibility. Where do you find your drive to start advocating for accessibility, whether it’s in gaming or in what you do?

Advocating for Accessibility

Matthew: Yeah, so solidly in the middle of that long winding road of my career when I was teaching, I was at a, public charter school in St. Louis. It was a tiny, tiny school where the middle school actually was fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade and each grade only had one class. So, I was the math teacher for the fifth graders, the sixth graders, the seventh graders, and the eighth graders, and they just rotated, from class to class. It wasn’t like there were multiple fifth grade classes or sixth grade classes. It was just the fifth grade class, the sixth grade class, and they just sort of rotated. So, I had four preps, which is crazy. But, this idea of accessibility became very, very, very, very clear when I was the one watching them and tracking their growth from fifth to eighth grade, and I think my largest class was my fifth grade class, which was 30, 31 or 32, which I think is the legal maximum in Missouri. So, they really packed it. This is just so prevalent across any classroom, let alone just a very small charter school in St. Louis. Not every fifth grader in there, across all 32, was at an exact fifth grade level in math. I had some kids who were testing at like the 9th or 10th grade level in math, and I had some kids who were testing at the first or second grade level in math. So, this idea of accessibility as a function of I have this fifth grade curriculum, that’s what I’m being measured by my school district, which is another conversation in and of itself. Like how do I create a classroom where in my 50 or 55 minutes, whatever, per class; all of my students, from the students who are still kind of just struggling with basic numeracy all the way up to my student who’s like anything you throw at him, he just understands. He just like really gets, math and grasps things really quickly. How are they all accessing something that fits what they’re ready for, what they’re excited about, what they’re interested in learning in a classroom with 32 kids and one teacher. Wanting to find different structures, different scaffolding techniques, different ways to engage my students with technology. ‘Cause technology can be a really, really great tool in that setting to help me, help them, or reach them. That’s where like this idea of like accessibility, not necessarily in the context of video games, but we’ll definitely get there as my sort of like career and interest progress. But, just accessibility in general, like accessibility for students, accessibility for learners, and like teaching techniques. That’s where it became like this very poignant issue for me, because I could see that it was just such an issue for me to try to solve somehow, in my class.

Asher: Yeah. No, I feel like that’s very important. There’s so many different levels, even if you’re in a classroom. People are in different areas of expertise, whether it’s in math, or English, or science, what have you. I feel like especially in the gaming culture, you’re gonna have people who are just started gaming and people who are advanced or pro at it, but then there’s also people in the in between. So, to be able to reach all those different facets. accessibility is also very important, especially for our collective. We reach out to people who have disabilities who aren’t necessarily able to hold onto a controller. Whether it’s a gaming controller, or whether it’s a keyboard, or they have certain motor functions, or they’re not able to see and they rely on their hearing, and all that sort of stuff. Some developers, such as Ubisoft and Extremely OK, have been lauded for their accessibility and customizations. While others, such as Nintendo and FromSoftware, have been criticized for having limited to no accessibility implementation. For a studio that doesn’t provide a plethora of customization, what should be the bare minimum that they could strive to accomplish?

Matthew: Yeah, so this is just like my personal opinion. Sort of separating myself from speaking on behalf of Games 4 Change, because we have some broader production guidelines for how we might support different people with playing different games. But, just for me, like it is a very, very difficult issue. I think a lot of these game studios, especially when we’re looking at like a very small indie studio. There are so many different needs of this wide range of people out there that it can almost be, for an indie developer, just overwhelming, right? It is overwhelming to create a game, to market that game, to find your niche in the flooded games industry. Then also have your game be highly accessible. So, what I really appreciate in the industry, that’s like just bubbling up and growing right now, is that there are other organizations, and I’ll name a couple that I think are doing some really great work, but other organizations that are helping to provide guidelines, helping to provide technical support and then helping the players themselves discover games that have accessibility features that work for them individually.

So, three in particular, there’s an organization called Able Gamers. I think they’ve been around for upwards of 20 years and a lot of the work that they do is in the physical technology. So, they’re supporting a lot of the physical technology that allows for different players with different accessibility needs to engage with a game that itself did not have accessibility features built in. They’re building adaptive controllers. They’re creating televisions that work better for various levels of vision. Like you mentioned, if there’s an issue with deafness, they’re building some kind of… They work based on like vibration through parts of your bones, instead of actual sound waves. So, they’re doing a lot of great work just supporting with creating auxiliary technology, that supports gamers with disabilities. Instead of the games themselves, having those accessibility features built in. Because at the end of the day, if I’m making a game for the PlayStation. The PlayStation has a particular controller. If there’s a person out there that physically cannot use that controller, it doesn’t matter what I do in my game, like it’s not going to be accessible. So, there’s this layer of what physical technology are we providing to people? So, they’re great! Able Gamer’s great. there’s another organization I think called Good Trouble Games. They have a few things going on. One of which is this repository called Able to Play, where they essentially just have this long compendium of different games. It’s like a games discovery platform that tells people what is good about that game in terms of accessibility. So, you as an individual; you create this profile with the platform. It identifies what accessibility needs you might have and then it matches games to you based on what might work best for your needs or your abilities. Then another website is very similar to that. Can I Play That? So, again, they do like accessibility scores. I just appreciate that there’s these other organizations that are approaching this from a different angle which is, a lot of these big games just aren’t going to do this. Which is like problematic in and of itself, but if they aren’t; how do we still support people with finding games that do. I think there probably should be just some like bare minimum accessibility features around something as basic as subtitles being on by default instead of off by default. Certain things around color, allowing players to remap or rebind all of the keys. I know that’s a really big one. It’s like for certain games that don’t allow any key bind remapping; that’s just such an easy low hanging fruit for a studio to do that might allow someone with some sort of hand or other digit mobility issue to just bind the keys in a particular way that works for them. So, there are a lot of really simple things that I think most studios just should be doing. But, beyond that I’m sure there’s a much longer list of much more complicated features that I hope some of these other organizations like Able Gamers are Good Trouble Games are like helping to build a framework for, since that would not be like my personal area of expertise for the leveled up features.

Asher: I appreciate you sharing all those different organizations. I feel like reaching out to them would be a great resource as far as looking into what kind of games are accessible for yourself. I totally understand the idea of subtitling for a game. I wish there was a function where you can switch on or switch off subtitling, especially if you’re trying to listen into lore or NPC talking or something like that. There are times where even for myself, I don’t really have a disability. I just can’t really understand very heavy accents at all and I need that help to be able to understand what’s going on like, “wait, what did he say?”, Or something like that. How much do you interact with developers directly? And I know you answered this a little bit, but what are some guidelines that you have for your developers?

Matthew: Yeah. So, I personally don’t interact with developers at all. Not something that I do. I know, like on the Games 4 Change side, we support executive production needs. So, sometimes like an organization might say, I really wish I could make a game for my particular audience about, let’s just use grief as an example. We would support them with this matchmaking process around finding an actual development house or development organization that can make a game. We would sit as like the middleman between this organization that wants a game made, this organization that can make games and helping to like translate back and forth. Seeing as the organization that wants a game made has no experience with games, and the organization that wants to make the game probably has no experience with grief. So, we would sit as a middle expert helping to translate back and forth. A lot of what that would then mean, as a carryover for accessibility, is looking at this organization that’s an expert in grief and all of the accessibility issues that might come with that, like disproportionate feelings of isolation. This need for the people around them to have some understanding of what they’re going through. Potentially like access issues based on if the person they lost is a primary caregiver, there might be issues around how they can engage with the game itself or when they can do this. Then translating that to the game development studio to say, these are the things that you would need to be aware of that you aren’t normally aware of when you’re making your game. You need to be aware of these trigger words that might be relatively fine for a general audience, but might mean something totally different to an audience of students that are grieving. You might need to be aware of these different conventions of how someone might play a game. But, I think, in terms of the support that we or anyone would want to provide to a game studio of how to make games accessible, the thing that I’m really highlighting here is that it should come from the group that you are trying to make the game accessible to. So, again, I’m not sure if grieving youth is the best example in terms of accessibility, but continuing to use it, it should come from experts or kids themselves that are grieving about what accessibility features you might need. Similarly, if you’re trying to make a game that is highly accessible to people with colorblindness, or some other impairment of their vision, the guidelines or how you make that game good should come from experts or the people themselves who have that vision impairment, right? I think that’s a piece that’s very much missing in the games industry. It’s just like, let’s just…

Asher: Slap something together?

Matthew: We could probably figure out what might work for colorblindness just by Googling it. Maybe at the most baseline level, but probably you would want someone on your QA team to actually have experience with this particular accessibility issue. So, they can actually give you feedback on whether or not the approach that you had to solving that issue, or to supporting that issue, actually works; compared to like just Googling, ” how do I make my game more accessible for someone colorblind?”. You’re gonna come up with some answers, but I think the piece that’s missing is like having advocates from that group themselves really support you with development. So, again, it’s like a lot of work can go into that for a game studio, but it’s great that there are organizations out there. In our case, Games 4 Change, like helping to do some of that translational work; where studios are building a better understanding of how to make their games accessible with different groups in mind.

Asher: For sure. I feel like entertainment in general have that mindset of, we’re just going to slap something together on this topic that we don’t really know anything about, rather than finding someone who actually advocates for, whether it’s a disability, whether they’re blind or Deaf, or hard of hearing, or they have mobility issues; just so they can make the game a little bit more personal and actually reach the audience that they’re trying to reach. On that idea, what are some games and studios that you feel really deserve some recognition for their accommodations?

Matthew: Yeah, so I’ll go back to a couple that, I mentioned earlier. Mostly because they are platforms for people to find games with like reviews, accessibility reviews essentially. So, I want to stray away from being that game developer, I suppose, that just tried to make large pronouncements myself about like; “oh, yeah! This game studio is really great for people who are hard of hearing!”. I have no idea. Right? I’m not hard of hearing, I have no idea whether or not a game studio actually is or actually isn’t. So, the two platforms that I mentioned earlier that I think really support, some of this would be Good Trouble Games. They’re a game studio themselves. So, like a big focus that they had was creating games that were highly accessible. But, a game studio itself can only make so many games and they’re only making games that they’re interested in. So, whatever genre of game that is, there’s a million other genres that they’re not making games for, but that they wish players could play. So, they created this platform, Able To Play, which again is just like a personalized matching platform for people to find games that are accessible to them, based on this personalized score that they help to make with the platform. Another one called, can I Play That? I think there are a lot of studios out there that broadly people would say, they’re doing a good job. I think you mentioned UbiSoft and another one that I had actually never heard of. I think it was Extremely Okay, never heard of this, so I’m gonna look them up. But, I think the biggest thing is UbiSoft is not lauded for so many other things that it’s like there’s organizations that are doing good work around accessibility and there are certain games that UbiSoft has that probably has some good accessibility features. But, it’s such a unique problem person to person based on what exactly their accessibility need is, or even for you like you mentioned, it’s not that you have any vision or visual impairment, but you just appreciate having subtitles. You don’t have any hearing impairment. You just appreciate having subtitles to help you visually process the information that’s occurring. So, having platforms that really, really care about this and really, really want to help you find games that work for you; instead of just saying, I don’t know, just go play one of the 200 games that UbiSoft has published, some of which have horrible reviews ’cause they’ve like really watered down the franchise or some of which have great reviews, because they hit it out of the park. It’s like, well I don’t even know does this game have subtitles? That’s the only thing I care about. It’s really exciting to see that some organizations; again, “Good Trouble Games”, “Can I Play That?” Are approaching this from a very personalized lens where any individual can say, I would like to find games that have subtypes and it’ll recommend like this long list of games that like fit whatever your accessibility criteria are.

Asher: That’s very cool. Yeah, for sure. Do you yourself play games in general? Do you have a favorite game that you like to play?

Matthew: Yeah. I play a lot of different games. I think the game I’m playing most now, there’s like a new season of it. Actually, it came out today, so I’m excited to try it later. It’s called Team Fight Tactics. So, this is under the Riot Games IP. Like an offshoot of League of Legends. Some other games I really, really enjoyed. Balder’s Gate three. That was a big one I know for a lot of people. But, that was and still continues to be, I think, one of the great games of the last couple years. But, yes, I’m an avid gamer myself and so these issues are very near and dear.

Asher: Yeah, for sure. I personally love to play the Banner Saga series. That one in particular has a great mention on subtitles where you can actually toggle on and off subtitles, which I really love. I’ve played it over and over for years. And then I have also been starting up on Persona five, which the persona series is great and I love the game in general. So, going back to Games 4 Change. They recently hosted– well, not recently anymore, but I feel like it’s been a couple months at this point — a Games 4 Change Festival in New York. What was it? And will happen again next year?

Matthew: Yeah, so it was earlier this month. So, still relatively recent. It was last month? Wow. This summer. Wow. It was last month, it happens every year. So, we have our festival in New York City every year. Pretty much every summer. It is this giant cross industry conference, festival, expo combination; where we bring a wide variety of different people across the industry. So, people who are in game development, people who are in education, people who are in tech, people who are just in non-profit or impact work in general. Just various industry leaders together to have talks, workshops, that sort of thing. So, kind of like your standard festival slash conference idea, but totally focused on the future of social impact, social impact gaming, VR, XR, AR, all of these game adjacent things. We bring industry leaders in to talk about them and to have workshops about them. Then ideally for all of our attendees, they learn something or they build connections or they network, and there’s some progress that is made, some growth, and opportunities that are created for people to continue doing this work in social impact gaming or play-based learning. At the festival we also have our Games 4 Change awards. So, I know you were looking through and you had mentioned one of the games “Arise: A Simple Story”. We have our awards where we go through and we pick some of, what we think are, the best social impact games or XR experiences broadly of the year, with a specific focus on highlighting creativity, innovation. In the case of “Arise”, like really powerful storytelling. An interesting use of games as a media for doing something more than just creating a fun experience. So, more than just play, it has to do something impactful. Whether that’s a really powerful story, whether that’s bringing some sort of advocacy to a global issue. It is just an opportunity for networking, community building. Some very standard like conference pieces where we have speed networking and just different opportunities for our attendees to all meet each other. To forge new connections, collaborate. that’s a large part of it as well. Yeah.

Asher: That’s cool. Yeah, the Arise: A Simple Story. Me and my producer, we played it and we loved it so much. So, stay tuned. Actually, after this interview, we’re going to be talking about it a little bit and getting into it. But, thank you so much, Matthew.

Final Thoughts

Asher: Do you have any like final thoughts that you wanna give to our listeners as far as like accessibility and gaming, or anything about Games 4 Change, or about you in general?

Matthew: Yeah. Well, thank you. This was really great. I’m, again, just so honored to be asked to come and share some of my thoughts. But, I think broadly, like when I think about accessibility as it relates to the games industry, I think there are a lot of different ways it can go. The ones that like immediately pop into our heads that we focus on a lot during our conversations were around the more commonly known, or more stereotypical almost access issues. Things like hard of hearing, vision, physical, like dexterity with your hands, being able to use controllers, being able to access games because of language barriers or things like that. But, there are also like access needs around income, right? So, when we think about video games, there’s this huge component of the games industry that is gated behind income or socioeconomic status. It’s like not easy to become a game developer. It’s not easy to start at Indie game studio. It has all of these issues in the industry as well. There’s accessibility issues that are solved by games. Like games can be really great at solving accessibility issues based on location. So, if you have this desire to be on a sports team, but you’re very rural and you just don’t live near a place that has a sports team. There’s really nothing you can do. But, if you just have this desire to be on a competitive team of some sort, even if you live in a very rural location, you can be on an eSports team and it’s this opportunity that you can have, as a student, where locational accessibility is made possible by the fact that games often are fully virtual. Similarly, there’s a level of accessibility that games, as a baseline, allow for. You might have students who just, for whatever reason, are not able to play soccer or are not able to play a traditional sport or are not able to be on a traditional sports team. They could be on an eSports team, there are potentially certain competitive outlets that might exist for them in eSports. Even though traditional sports are not physically accessible to them. So, these layers of accessibility that exist in the games industry, and there are different organizations that are doing different good things around each of them. Income accessibility, locational accessibility, baseline accessibility of just being able to play the games themselves and then deeper and deeper, deeper into is this game accessible for folks who are hard of hearing? Is this game accessible for people who have issues with dexterity? Is this game accessible for people who have issues with vision, or colorblindness? It just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going. So, we talk about accessibility in the games industry. I think, again, it’s really important to just listen to individuals themselves that are experiencing these accessibility issues and then trying to come up with interesting, creative, innovative ways for your game, or for your tool, or for your feature to help work with as many people as possible, or very, very specifically target one particular group and help them really, really well. But, there’s all these different ways that the games industry approaches accessibility. It’s not just these high level ones of accessibility, things that you think about or disabilities that you think about. But, again, examples like income or just location, I think are really, really interesting accessibility issues that games can support with by virtue of being fully virtual.

Asher: Thank you so much, Matthew, for your final thoughts. Appreciate you coming in and I will hear from you guys next time. This has been Accessibility in Gaming. My name is Asher and thanks for listening in!

Outro

Asher: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk!. Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk Podcast collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resource Department, and the PCC multimedia department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify Channel, XRay 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Radio, 90.7 FM.