Human Kindness: Or How I Learned to Love Day Four of GDC

Friday, 27 March 2009 16:03 Written by Michelle Hinn

I’m not quite sure where to start Thursday’s recap because something amazing happened. Everything happened the way it never turns out. Let me explain…

This is my eighth tour of duty at GDC and over the years, I have seen a lot of well-intentioned work toward raising awareness about gamers with disabilities end in a lot of frustration and disappointment. I’ll be straightforward with you as possible – I’ve left seven GDCs to come home seriously depressed because no matter what we’ve tried, there has been no real spike in games that contain accessibility features. I’m not saying that absolutely nothing has changed in all this time, but marked change has been few and far between.

After each year, I return home knowing that I have to start the ramp up to the next GDC almost immediately and hope that next year we’ll get it right and the industry will finally hear what we have to say. That’s a hard place to return to again and again.

I’m the first to admit that the session proposals I’ve set up and plans that I have had for each year’s GDC approach as the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG haven’t always been winner ideas – we are all human, after all, but that’s not what has been eating me up inside all this time. It has been all the years of never quite connecting. We’ve been told what we do is great. People pat us on the back and say that they will be at our sessions and then they don’t attend. A few years in a row we had the same audience as the previous year, and the year before that, but they rarely represent studios. And if they do – despite our reaching out – they never contact us back. More often than not it was not from lack of trying to keep them engaged with us after GDC, but after a while I found myself at a cynical place – accessibility was a “one time affair” it seemed.

This year I started the week before GDC at that cynical place. After going through the battle of my life with my health, I looked toward GDC knowing it would exhaust me and because of current economic conditions we might face an even more frustrating year. I worried we would get automatically written off because companies view it as a risky chance to take when budgets are tighter than ever.

What I realized after today is it doesn’t matter how many people are in our sessions. I’d been thinking about it all wrong. After today, my eyes are now open thanks to having been a part of some amazing, beautiful moments.

As you know, Mark, Annette and I are live at the show and covering as much as our exhausted selves would allow to quickly get content up on AbleGamers. We have a lot of content set for this week, next week and beyond. The important distinction is we grabbed the reins and realized that getting developers thinking about game accessibility was happening 24/7 with every interview, every conversation on an escalator (filmed or not), on the sidewalks around the Moscone Center with mobs of GDC attendees, etc. We just kept talking to everyone we could. Then we listened. We listened and celebrated our fellow diversity in gaming activist’s successes. On Thursday we had a number of moments that had us all in tears – in the best of ways – off and on. All day.

The three of us have become fellow soldiers in the same platoon. We’d been in different units for a while, fighting the same war of raising awareness in the industry. Last year, Mark and Stephanie joined me at GDC with the Game Accessibility SIG and I cannot tell you how much they helped get people listening to the message – people we are still in contact with again this year. This year the SIG received the lowest number of passes we have gotten in years so our physical presence at the GDC is skeletal. And our budget? Well, we have none; however, I think our mark, our emotional presence and our impact has been the strongest in all of my eight years of GDC.

We started the day at 8 a.m. at a strategy meeting with Microsoft who helped BIG (Blacks in Gaming) start a non-profit. This was to move their mission forward and discuss all areas of diversity, as well as ways we can help each other. I can’t say too much about the meeting – I had to leave before 9 a.m. to give my roundtable presentation, but Mark was able to stay. By the end of the meeting, the non-profit was in place.

Thursday night when we stopped by the BIG reception, the crowd went wild. We hugged all our friends at BIG because this is a win for all of us fighting for diversity in gaming. As you know, I’ve been invited to give a one day talk at Microsoft mid-May. Our friends at BIG are right with us, celebrating our victories and talking more about the Diversity Summit for GDC 2010. Mark, Annette and I started telling our friends about the earlier part of our day, and yes, I’m about to tell you all about that. Don’t worry!

I’ll give the rundown of my Roundtable in a different article because I want to tell you about these powerful moments right now.

Right before GDC, I had gotten in contact with Morgan Romine aka Roulette, captain of FragDolls. On Thursday at 1 p.m., I interviewed her for AbleGamers (nope – not posted yet – but stay tuned!) because I was interested in learning more about their casting call for new team members. I asked her if she could give advice to any female, elite gamers with disabilities who would be interested in applying. She gave us really cool tips and much, much more. We were so glad to do the interview because she had really great things to say. She is a super cool, down-to-earth woman that we just had a fun time talking to. I can’t wait until the video is posted! Ladies? Learn about the casting call here in the meantime: http://www.fragdolls.com/index.php/blogs/category/rhoulette.

It was very refreshing to meet someone, a star in the gaming world, who wanted to learn more about our community. After we all hugged and took pictures, she had to go to her next appointment. Mark, Annette and I just sat at our interview table and commented on how fun that was, and how glad we were to have been able to reach out to her!

Our next amazing moment, although I don’t want to spoil what I’m going to tell you about this later this week, but I got a call from a PR agent from a big gaming company to tell me that he had a special gift to give us. I realize I’m being a big tease right now because there’s a surprise I do not want to spoil, but he hugged us all and, well, that’s when the tears set in. I’ve only just told you a few things about our day Thursday, but that was my first tipping point emotionally. I found the amazing generosity and thoughtfulness of this company in what some might say was a small gesture, but to me? It was not a small gesture. It was a powerful moment because I realized that this GDC.We have met some amazing people who have been generous with their time and wanting to know more about us, asking us to call them any time we’d like because they want to help and be involved in the movement.

We went back to the hotel after that when Mark and Annette had filled me in about another interview that they had done while I was at a meeting. They insisted I watch the footage and promised a tear jerker. They had done an interview that we’ll post shortly where the creative director of a very popular game told us a very personal story about exactly why game accessibility is vital and must be considered. Games are too important and powerful to not open the experience up to gamers with disabilities.

Mark was right. I did cry. Then I said: “You know what? I’m throwing out my lecture slides for tomorrow. We’re opening with his story and I’m redirecting the whole focus because the clip is just that powerful.”

No, I re-did the entire lecture. Seriously.

The three of us worked all night to create the best presentation on game accessibility we have ever given for 9 a.m. Friday. We only went to the BIG reception for a short while to congratulate our friends, Mark and I stopped by the Level 99 (Speaker’s Party) reception for 10 minutes and off to work we went. We ordered in Thai after grabbing slurpees (we’re all losing our voices) and caffeine. Mark and Annette had been prepping the video and stills and caught a few zzz’s. I stayed up all night finishing up my new talk.

That audience thing I was depressed about at the beginning of the story? I didn’t expect that very many people would be there because, yes, Friday at 9 a.m. is the hangover session because Thursday is when the final parties for GDC take place. A lot of people miss the first one, two, or five session slots. The GDC filmed the talk and will sell it on the conference Web site, but due to their speaker restrictions, we can’t post it online. I’ll give you the full run down soon!

When I first found out the session time slot, I was angry, furious! However, now I know that the connections we’ve made all week with our interviews and just talking, talking, talking to everyone we met was how we finally got our audience. Now I know we have far more meaningful relationships we have built than we would ever get at a single session. The point of the talk now is that it’s for all of us in the movement for game accessibility. It’s a celebration of where we are right now, at this moment. It’s about knowing that this exhausting week has given us a whole new way of looking at things. For me it’s about knowing that at my eighth GDC, I’m finally starting to figure out that it was my community of Mark and Annette who have been with me all week working non-stop, collaborating, and each going with the things that we each excel in, to further the cause of the accessibility movement. That made every single minute of this GDC into the GDC of my dreams.

XOXO vrgrrl (You know you love me!)

Comments (2) Add Comment

Barrie Ellis

March 28, 2009

Votes: +0

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Really been enjoying following all these GDC posts. Bloomin' good on you all for the massive efforts.

John Bannick

March 31, 2009

Votes: +0

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Michelle,

When you get angry or despondent, consider your impact on our small game company.

Yeah, we're not EA. But we do ship 30 games, most of which have specific accessibility features that they would lack had it not been for the information, guidance, advice, and simple encouragement of the GA SIG.

People play those games who would not otherwise have access to them, nor to whatever entertainment and perhaps encouragement they offer.

You do good work.

John Bannick
CTO
7-128 Software