About this Episode

Player Research: https://www.playerresearch.com/
Descriptive Video Works: Descriptive Video Works – Descriptive Video Works
Meet Jenna!
Meet Améliane!

In the latest episode of the Player Engage podcast, we delve into the crucial topic of accessibility in gaming and media. Host Greg is joined by Améliane Chiasson, an advocate for accessible gaming at Player Research, and Jenna, a live and interactive producer at Descriptive Video Works. Together, they explore the essence of accessibility, its significance in the digital realm, and the innovative strides being made towards inclusivity. Améliane and Jenna share their unique insights and experiences, highlighting the challenges and triumphs of creating universally approachable digital content.

Key takeaways from this episode include:

• The importance of integrating accessibility into game design from the outset.
• The distinction between subtitles and closed captioning, and their impact on player experience.
• How audio description is revolutionizing gaming for blind and low vision players.

To discover the full depth of these insights and learn how these advancements are shaping the future of gaming, tune into the Player Engage podcast. Améliane and Jenna’s expertise is not only enlightening but also a testament to the gaming industry’s commitment to inclusivity. Don’t miss out on the valuable lessons and engaging discussions in this episode—listen now to expand your understanding of accessibility in gaming.

AI Transcript

Intro: 00:00: 00:15: Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and Helpshift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
Greg Posner: 00:16: 03:00: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engage Podcast. Greg here. Today’s episode, we are venturing into the pivotal realm of accessibility within gaming and media. The session is designed to unfold with the essence of what accessibility signifies for the digital world, transitioning from foundational concepts to the intricate mechanisms that champion inclusivity. Our discussion will navigate through the challenge and triumphs encountered in making digital content universally approachable, highlighting the innovative strides and the dedication needed to cultivate a truly inclusive environment. Today, we are joined by Emilian and Jenna. Emilian Scheiessen, based in Montreal, is a forefront advocate for accessible gaming at Player Research, a leading company dedicated to enhancing the gamer experience through user research and playtesting, Her role as Games Accessibility Lead has been instrumental in ensuring AAA, AA, and Indie titles are inclusive for diverse gamers worldwide. Through her projects like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which has been recognized for its accessibility, Ameliane demonstrates a profound commitment to making gaming accessible to all. She has leveraged her expertise to influence the development of games like Just Cause 4 and Shadows of the Tomb Raider, focusing on inclusive design. Her efforts are crucial in advancing the gameplay industry towards a more inclusive future. So, we are excited to have you here, Ameliane, and we are also, I’m talking a lot here, we are also here to- Hey, listen, we don’t got to do anything. This is great. I love it. Excited to have Jenna, our live and interactive producer at Descriptive Video Works, DVW, where her passion for accessible gaming has found a remarkable platform. Coming from a background in pharmaceuticals and the US Army, Jenna has seamlessly transitioned into a pivotal role ensuring gaming is accessible for all. DVW, renowned for pioneering audio description services for over 20 years, is guided by a philosophy of inclusivity, nothing about us without us. This principle is reflected in their practice of employing a diverse team, including blind professionals, to deliver audio descriptions that set industry benchmarks. Jenna’s work at DVW embodies the commitment to making visual media accessible and enjoyable for blind and low vision audiences globally, aligning with DVW’s mission to provide accessibility for all, regardless of their location. All right, that is my intro. Jenna, Ameliane, thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve said a lot about you, but you’re probably going to be better off at explaining yourselves to our audience. So Ameliane, would you like to start and say hi?

Ameliane Chiasson: 03:00: 03:54: You’ve introduced us better than we could, I think. Thanks so much. Thanks for having us. Yeah, so as you mentioned, Greg, I am the Games Accessibility Lead at Player Research, and we’ve launched our Advancing Accessibility line of services last year, in 2023, in order to help developers and other teams in marketing, for example, to deliver accessible experiences to their audiences. And yeah, we collaborate with people like Jenna, for example, across keywords, because as you may know, you know, it takes a village to make a game and it also takes a village to make a game accessible. So we have a lot of, you know, capabilities through these collaborations that, you know, I’m sure Jenna will touch on a little bit about her work doing audio description.

Greg Posner: 03:54: 03:55: Thanks, Jenna.

Jenna: 03:56: 05:18: Yeah, for sure. I mean, where Amay is a generalist who knows a lot about a lot of different things, I am a highly, highly specialized niche within that village that you said. I do audio description and just that, and pretty much just that for gaming. Audio description, of course, exists for movies, TV shows, even live events like live theater as well. but my focus is primarily on either live events or interactive content, so gaming. We’ve had the privilege of working on in-game audio description for a few different games now, but it’s still relatively new in the field, so there’s always something new and weird and fun that we get to test out. Our specialty is in making games more accessible for blind and low vision players, but there are also ancillary benefits like people with cognitive disabilities who might enjoy audio description as well. So I might not have a whole lot of insight into the overall process like Aimee would, but if you want to do a deep dive into some of what players will experience in specific disabilities, that’s my bread and butter.

Greg Posner: 05:19: 06:18: Well, and I appreciate that. So first of all, thank you both of you for explaining and talking about what you do. But this is what excites me because as a gamer and an employee in the industry, I have an idea of what accessibility is and I’ve learned more since being a part of Keywords on what it entails. But I think the everyday gamer, you know, you launch a Ubisoft game and you pop up like, what color mode do you want, right? And do you want subtitles and what size? And it kind of ends there, but there’s really kind of like the shallow end, which I think we’re going to start in and what’s kind of the basics of accessibility. And then to Jenna, right? The in-game audio description you talk about. What does that mean? The first time we spoke and you told me about that, it was like a mind-boggling experience. Like, wow, I didn’t even know things like that necessarily exist and I want to learn more about it. So let’s start at a higher level and maybe we can start with you, Ameliane, on kind of what is accessibility in, I don’t want to say the simplest form, but a good way for people to understand.

Ameliane Chiasson: 06:19: 07:36: Yeah, so what is accessibility and how it applies to games? The way that I describe it is that accessibility is the breadth of people that are able to enjoy and access an experience, oftentimes focused on people with disabilities, but also benefits the wider population. Accessible games means to adopt considerate, inclusive, customizable game design that accommodates the needs of all kinds of players. For example, you’ll see things like colorblind friendly design, configurable control schemes, subtitles, closed captions, audio features, things like that. So that’s really what accessibility is. Not to be confused with approachability that I see often online. that I see often online being confused. Approachability really means to, you know, onboard like new players into an experience. So, you know, but we often hear people talk about accessibility when they really mean approachability. Sometimes there are overlaps when an experience is made to be approachable, sort of by accident, it’s made to be a little bit more accessible and vice versa. However, those are two completely different intentions that we really need to make sure we sort of separate as their own thing, because they’re not the same intention.

Jenna: 07:36: 08:05: Yeah, and I mean, I’ve heard very often when someone says, like, we want our game to be accessible to a wider audience, or we want this narrative to be more accessible, when they’re not putting in more accessibility features, they’re not building in anything that makes it actually playable by someone who previously would not have been able to play, they’re just making it more enticing to more people. So hence the delineation between approachability and accessibility.

Greg Posner: 08:05: 08:14: So is approachability almost like the concept of a better tutorial or something to kind of pull people in where accessibility is most safe?

Ameliane Chiasson: 08:14: 09:51: It’s like wider appeal. Yeah. Yeah. Wider appeal, I think is a good way to see it. It can go into, you know, like the onboarding, you know, first time user experience, flow. However, usually when we talk about approachability, a lot of those efforts are, you know, within the marketing campaigns and also within, you know, how the game is being sort of like presented to the player. When I say that sometimes there’s overlap is when a game is made to really be approachable. Like, for example, I can actually pull from an example here. I worked on a game called Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy. And that game, prior to the accessibility team being created, one of their big core concepts is that they wanted the game to be approachable because it’s a really well-known brand and a lot of people are aware of what Guardians of the Galaxy is they wanted to make sure they’re not alienating any types of, you know, audiences, who, for example, are huge fans of the movies, but aren’t necessarily, you know, familiar with the company or the games that we were making or things like that. So they wanted to make sure that everybody felt sort of enticed, you know, by that game. And that was a nice in into making the game more accessible, because that way, we were able to, you know, sort of make the case for it that, you know, if you want to make a game super approachable, accessibility is a great way to do that. However, the two intentions are inherently different. However, they can definitely hold hands, if we work together.

Greg Posner: 09:54: 10:42: So I had a question that was going to roll into that one. And I guess before we go forward, let’s take a stopping point because I like to do this usually around halfway, but it’s a little that I want to understand how you get into this line of work. I think it’s fascinating work to want to help and spread good messages. And I think gaming is a great message. I think people can escape it. It’s a great way to kind of do new things. And through the podcast, we’ve learned about lawyers and teachers and all these other roles that ended up in these jobs. And maybe you dreamed of working accessibility when you were growing up, but I’m curious, and maybe we can start with you, Jenna, since we know you were in pharmaceuticals in the US Army. How did you end up being in descriptive video works and working in this line of work?

Jenna: 10:43: 11:09: Just a quick aside before I start answering that. I’m ultra paranoid, so currently I only see waveforms spiking for Amelian’s audio. Oh, I don’t actually see hers spiking, but I see yours spiking. Oh, weird. Okay, never mind. So that means I always continuously look to the waveform to reassure myself that yes, it is in fact recording, but the fact that you guys can both hear me means that my audio is probably fine, right?

Greg Posner: 11:09: 11:11: I do see your waveforms going.

Ameliane Chiasson: 11:11: 11:14: Okay, good. Yeah, I just see Greg and yours.

Jenna: 11:14: 11:19: So I don’t know what’s- Okay, so we’ve got like the overlap via all three of us.

Greg Posner: 11:19: 11:23: We’ll have enough to paste together one podcast. It will be disjointed.

Jenna: 11:23: 13:36: By our powers combined. Okay. Anyway, I come from a really weird background. I’ve never worked for a game developer. I’ve just been really passionate about video games pretty much my whole life. I would assume that I ended up being an accessibility specialist via a similar calling or path as many others around me, and that is that I just wanted to help the guy next to me. I didn’t want to make a huge industry-wide change. I didn’t feel like there was some social wrong that I needed to correct. I just had friends, and I saw that it was more difficult for them to play the same games that I was able to play. and I wanted to be able to play more games with them. So I mean, in college, I was in a disability advocacy group, I kind of maintained some of those friendships, and then I made new friends with a lot of passionate blind gamers and streamers online. It actually started when a guy named Sightless Combat, who now works for the RNIB as their gaming specialist, just posted on a God of War subreddit saying, hey, could someone describe what’s happening in this pivotal scene? Because I feel like there’s a lot of visual storytelling going on here, and the audio’s just not properly conveying that. And then years later, I was like seeking out additional education in audio description. I started doing contract work for DVW, and it was a very quick whirlwind of now I’m doing this as a producer full time and not to, you know, give myself not too much credit. I have done a lot of work and put a lot of thought into it to be this specialist, but it’s incredible that now we’re leading the charge on putting audio description into video games. I love being part of that. It’s so cool. This was a passion side project, and then now I get to just do it all day, and it’s great.

Greg Posner: 13:37: 14:14: I love that story, especially since it comes from a passion project of itself of just loving gaming. I mean, imagine being in a God of War, which the story is phenomenal in all those games, right? And someone just like, I can’t see what’s happening. Can someone describe it? And that little inkling like, wow, I never really think about that outside of my own player experience, right? Like, I can help this person by describing what’s going on. And again, even I didn’t realize that exists in games. So like, I’m excited to learn more about that. So, we’ll kind of put a pin in that because I do want to come back to you, Emilion. I guess, how did you end up at Player Research?

Ameliane Chiasson: 14:15: 17:16: So I think like Jenna and like a lot of people who are in accessibility-related roles in the games industry, we all have very particular unconventional backgrounds, I feel. Just because there’s no university for games accessibility, there’s not a diploma that you can go and get for, you know, congratulations, you’re a games accessibility specialist now. So a lot of us have sort of built those careers out of different backgrounds, really. So for me, I joined the games industry as a 19 or 20 year old. And I was working as a QA tester. This was, you know, back more than 10 years now. And, you know, working as a QA, you know, of course, a lot of what we focus on is making sure that the game is of high quality and is launching without you know, any game breaking bugs and things like that. And then from there, you know, after getting promoted to like coordinator for QA and things like that, I ended up actually making a transition into user research. So for those unfamiliar with user research, we would do play tests and studies with members of the public of different profiles of gamers to, you know, gather feedback and observe the game through the lens of players that we’re trying to, you know, target the game towards, if that makes sense. There’s a lot of different ways to do these studies, playtests being one of the, let’s say, most classic approach. And through that work, you know, I also became more and more exposed to different accessibility needs. And also, you know, like, oftentimes, when we talk about these, like, how did you end up an accessibility thing? People are looking for, like, what was the cataclysm moment? Or, you know, like, what was the big, like, Eureka moment that you decided to go into accessibility. But I think for most of us, it’s either a mix of our own needs, the needs of those around us, and the work that we’ve done in the past that exposed us to these realities. And ultimately, it’s just the right thing to do, really. It’s the perfect ground for innovation. It’s the perfect ground for creativity. And it’s also a work that is highly rewarding for anyone that gets involved in it. All the developers that I’ve worked with who, you know, maybe initially didn’t even know what accessibility was about ended up, you know, launching a project or working on initiatives that made them feel like they were doing work that had a really, really good purpose. So, you know. it’s positive. It’s positive work that even though can be difficult, and can be challenging at times is highly rewarding. And so that’s why I ended up here. And that’s why I continue to push, you know, for that mission across the industry, not just for myself, not just for the people that I know, but also just for the industry as a whole.

Greg Posner: 17:17: 17:43: Yeah, the more people playing games, the better for the industry. And I think opening it up for everyone is super important. But let’s talk about why is it really crucial to have this in games? We’ve seen Xbox a few years ago release their accessibility controller. We’ve seen PlayStation, I think within a few months ago, release their accessibility controller. So it’s clearly more on the radar of the AAA studios at this point. But why is it crucial to start including these features in game?

Jenna: 17:45: 17:52: I mean, is it because it feels warm and fuzzy? Is that enough of a reason?

Greg Posner: 17:52: 18:01: It’s a great point, right? It feels warm and fuzzy, but it’s also going to cost you X amount of money to implement this into your game, right? So what’s the trade-off?

Ameliane Chiasson: 18:04: 20:59: Go ahead. You can jump in after also. In terms of the business case for it, because beyond the ethics behind it and the morals behind it, which I think are crucial to understand, There’s also the business aspect of it that I think, you know, we can’t ignore. And depending on who we talk to, these are the types of conversations that you need to have for people to be able to, you know, dedicate budget for these types of efforts. So there are starting to be more and more studies and stats around, you know, the population of disabled gamers across the world. One study from New Zoo that came out last year, you know, surveyed people across the UK and the US and discovered that 31% of US gamers identified themselves as having some type of disability and 29% in the UK identified as having some type of disability. So these are not numbers to be ignored. These are big numbers. Across the world also, just beyond gaming itself, 16 to 20% of the world population has a disability. And so this isn’t, you know, that small of a sample of people that people tend to assume it is. I see a lot of people, you know, when we talk about accessibility, like, what, we’re making the game accessible for like two people? Like, no, like, there’s like, an enormous amount of people who have these needs. And ultimately, a lot of these efforts when planned in the good way, meaning in advance and early on, will not generate that much more costs to production. What I mean is a lot of accessibility barriers can actually be prevented at the design level. So even before we start making the case for a feature to be implemented or be designed, we need to first understand like, okay, well, within our design, within the things that we’re already doing, what can we make more inclusive and more accessible? That’s where the concept of inclusive design comes to play, because that’s where, you know, I’m already going to be designing a UI. I’m already going to be you know, making a control scheme. I’m already going to be making my three Cs and, you know, my environments and all of that. These are all things that you can’t skip when making a video game. So, as you’re doing these tasks, how do you make sure that you implement an accessibility mindset or integrate an accessibility mindset into each of those efforts. And this will prevent a lot of unpredicted costs, a lot of unpredicted backlash also, because we’ve seen also games that unfortunately have launched with poor accessibility, and that generated a lot of bad press, you know, for those games, which oftentimes doesn’t come from like a bad intention, but because of ignorance, unfortunately, so.

Jenna: 21:00: 21:58: or long development cycles, expectations have ratcheted up as the years go on, which is great. It’s so strange how often I have heard from many different game developers that an accessibility tool is often just a repurposed tool that was originally meant for something else. A high contrast mode was originally a hitbox QA testing tool of some kind. That’s just like a hypothetical, but it’s surprising how often an accessibility feature is easy or even time-saving in other areas to implement. Not to diminish the work that anyone in accessibility does, there is often There are often things that need to be hand-tailored into the game, but you’d be surprised how often it ends up costing nothing or even saving you money.

Ameliane Chiasson: 21:58: 23:37: To add to that whole budget conversation, There was a quote from Karl Groves, who is a veteran of accessibility in the web space. Actually, he did a talk at the Accessibility Toronto conference last year. And he said something that I felt was really smart and true is that, sure, if you want to make your game accessible, or your product accessible, it’s going to cost a little bit more. However, you’re spending money to avoid spending more money. if that makes sense. So you’re going to spend a certain amount of money to make your game more accessible, which will prevent you from having to spend a lot more money if you have unforeseen challenges post-launch or during launch that like sort of forces you to, you know, unpredictably assign resources and people on fixing barriers that are causing sometimes even health harm to, you know, your audience. And having to assign a team for designing a feature that you haven’t planned is going to be very costly. Having to damage control online when you have a bunch of articles that are coming out about a game having poor accessibility is also a lot of unforeseen costs that you don’t want to have. So it’s really about prevention, and being proactive in these efforts. So yes, you’re going to have to spend a little bit of money to make sure that your game is inclusive and accessible. However, this is the smart approach instead of putting your head in the sand and hoping that everything works out, you know.

Jenna: 23:37: 23:44: I’m bothered by the quantity of headlines that popped into my head. Yeah, we’re talking about that. I’m like, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that.

Greg Posner: 23:44: 23:44: Oh, yeah.

Jenna: 23:44: 23:46: Yeah, that’s happened a lot.

Greg Posner: 23:46: 24:21: Well, I love how you talk about doing it during the design stage, right? Because then the foundation’s not even built yet. You can put the right pillars in place to make sure that you do all that early on. And I imagine, maybe it’s me being ignorant here, but once you put those pillars in place, it’s not hard for the rest of the pieces to fall into line. You set it up from the beginning and anything you build on top of it will go from there. Do you tend to see with the studios that you work with that way after you work with like the first game or two they pick up on this and they start to automatic like does the design get ingrained in their head?

Ameliane Chiasson: 24:21: 26:29: Um, so it’s definitely a work of, you know, going through this type of stuff over and over. It’s, it’s not that, like I said earlier, even for us, you know, there’s no one single sort of like Eureka moment where it’s like, okay, now I’m an accessibility champion, you know, like, there’s a lot of things that go into it, I think the the biggest thing to remember, I think for anyone who works in accessibility, or for anyone who advocates for accessibility, you have to meet people where they are, you know, like, a lot of people are starting into the space. And so you have to realistically, you know, assign them or recommend to them solutions that make sense to where they are at the moment, you know, you have to sort of preach for small steps consistently over trying to run full speed into a wall. So when we work with development teams, we won’t provide them with a grocery list of 160 features that they have to develop. Usually we will meet with them first to really understand, okay, where are you in your accessibility journey at the moment? And if you’re super early on, let’s understand what are your processes right now, and from there, what can we realistically, you know, have you do better within what you’re doing right now? And then from there, slowly but surely, establishing objectives and goals over, you know, the short, medium to long term. So we have to be realistic and strategic in our approach. Because again, even though when it comes to accessibility, everything feels important, because it is. Every single thing that doesn’t make it in means that someone won’t be able to play your game. However, we have to not be our own enemies here. And in order to preach for or not preach for, but in order to progress, we have to not aim for perfection. We have to aim for progress. So, you know, steps, step by step, you know, we can we can slowly but surely, you know, build, you know, a world that is more accessible, but it doesn’t happen overnight. So we have to meet people where they are. That’s really important.

Jenna: 26:30: 28:39: Don’t let perfection be your enemy. While our will to implement as many features as we can is infinite, our time and resources are finite. Unfortunately, yes, you do have to make some tough decisions for what is going to be the most beneficial sometimes. Greg, to answer your question from my perspective on whether we see game developers start to pick up on those practices that we’re trying to instill in them. I’ve seen that a lot. I have had the pleasure of working with a couple of studios on more than one project or on ongoing projects a couple of times. Typically, my first few script reviews with that studio… Audio description is a highly specialized form of writing that has internally established rules that are easy to forget and easy to break if you don’t really know what you’re doing and if you’re not familiar with those rules. Usually, when we get a script back to the client the first couple of times, the first round of script reviews are me explaining those rules to them in a very nice way and explaining why their suggestions are not great for revisions. And then after the next couple, they start to pick it up. And then near the end, their suggestions start being really, really good and really helpful, and they start to understand a little more. Outside of just my specialty, game studios tend to use the same engines repeatedly. If they have built features in the past that could be helpful in future games, they can often repurpose those. They can repurpose humans that have worked on those in the past, who are already familiar with what we need to create. They can repurpose assets or workflows. So the more accessibility features you build in, the easier it gets in the future.

Ameliane Chiasson: 28:39: 28:42: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Greg Posner: 28:43: 29:12: So I’m going to pick on you here for a second, Jenna. There’s a common misconception, right, that blind or impaired vision, people with impaired vision don’t play games. This is going to be a two-point question, two-part question. One, I’d love to understand what your day-to-day is. You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty. What goes into that? And with what you do, can you kind of, maybe it’s not possible, but how does someone with low vision or blind play a game?

Jenna: 29:13: 33:08: Yeah, for sure. So I myself am not blind, so I cannot speak for all or any blind gamers for that matter. But the shorter answer is via sound and haptics. So as long as there is some auditory reflection of visually crucial details in gameplay, it is possible for someone with no vision at all to play through a game. That sounds way bigger and more intimidating than it is, but you’d be surprised. I myself have actually tried it out. I played through a couple of games without ever looking at the visuals, just turned my monitor off, tried it out, and I was like, yeah, let me turn on all these accessibility features and see how it goes. And the answer was very, very well when it’s well implemented. and it’s a lot of fun. It takes some getting used to. You have to retrain your brain a little bit to listen to UI sounds, character dialogue, text-to-speech for the menus. What that actually plays out as is going to be very different depending on the different types of games, but there are now multiple examples of fully blind accessible games out there that have pretty well achieved, I would say, the, like, we can be played without any vision, just out of the box as soon as you boot up the game, which is just so cool. It’s so awesome. And part of that is a lot of people who have grown up or who have lost their vision later in life, who have grown up blind, or who have lost their vision, might have this mentality that games aren’t for me. Because for so long, games just haven’t been accessible. And if you wanted to play games, it took a lot of effort. You would have to memorize menus, or brute force your way through it, or use mods. or optical character recognition, or you would have to put in so much work to fight both the game and the enemies in that game. And now that that’s kind of opening up and becoming a lot more user-friendly, we are potentially also opening up a whole new audience who previously had never been gamers. And we’re indoctrinating everyone into our gaming clique, which is super, super fun. Just more gaming for everybody. What does my day-to-day look like? I don’t just put audio description in games, but our studio is relatively small, so a lot of us wear a lot of different hats. Unfortunately, a lot of my day is a little boring. We do project management and quotes and client meetings and all that sort of thing, but the exciting parts are that I also get to write a lot of the audio description that I’m producing. I get to go through some client reviews. I get to direct our other writers and give them pointers and guidelines for what’s going to be in their next video or script. And then sometimes I get to voice it, but I’m nowhere near our best narrator, so I try to take a step back from that a little bit. And a lot of my day will be filled with planning out live jobs or planning out new games that we receive, because there’s a lot of background work that goes into those before the writer ever sees the script. We’re also implementing a new software, which is really cool and a lot of fun. Anything that can make our day-to-day job easier is pretty great. A lot of it’s boring, but the fun parts are I do still get to write. I do still get to directly create things that go into the end product that we all get to love and experience.

Greg Posner: 33:08: 33:18: If you know this off the top of your head, could you name one or two games that can be played completely blind that you were mentioning. How much time you got? Name your favorite.

Jenna: 33:18: 34:04: The platforms you want. So without any mods or workarounds, Forza Motorsport, God of War Ragnarok, like 90, 95%, but there’s a guide out there now so you can get past the progress blockers. Last of Us Part 1 and 2, there are quite a few that are playable with mods. So Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, There are a few that are made to be audio games only, so Blind Drive, The Veil, Shadow of the Crown. There are quite a few. There’s a lot to choose from. Oh, Mortal Kombat 1, Brock the Investigator, Spider-Man 2 is getting audio description next week, so hopefully that gets added to the list. But I mean, there are lots, depending on what platform or genre that you have available to you.

Greg Posner: 34:05: 34:16: Awesome. It’s exciting to hear. I mean, I didn’t necessarily think about online games, right? But like being up against someone online, hearing the audio, I’m going to have to check this out and see what it looks like live.

Jenna: 34:16: 34:27: I mean, you can be in World of Warcraft now and I can’t remember if it’s an add-on or if it just comes with the base game now, but World of Warcraft now playable.

Greg Posner: 34:27: 34:40: There we go. Same question for you, Emilian, but I, you know, you’re a different approach, right? Cause Jen is more of a specialist, right? You’re going to be more of a generalist. So I’d love to hear the same thing about your day to day and what it’s like.

Ameliane Chiasson: 34:41: 36:45: So I like to consider myself as almost an accessibility strategist. So a lot of my days consist of meetings, either internal or with clients, doing, you know, strategy work, frameworks, I’m working a lot on resources, training materials, things like that. So a lot of my work is educational because we do a lot of research. So it’s kind of like with that angle in mind, helping with design also, and just managing all of our different services that we’re doing in collaborations with all of the different keywords teams. Because we have multiple services, which Go across training, workshops. We have collaborations that we’re doing with disabled content creators and players. Research, of course. and accessibility quality assurance that we’ve launched only a couple of months ago. So there’s a lot of different hats that I wear within accessibility, which is also why it’s really, really important in the space that we have people like Jenna and others who are specialized in different areas of accessibility. Because, you know, we can’t possibly do everything by ourselves, right? There’s a lot of things that can sort of in the in the mission of breaking barriers for some, it can create barriers for others. So there’s a lot of, you know, work that has to be done cross functionality, like cross functionally, to make sure that we’re all aligned in our objectives and our efforts. So, a lot of my work is facilitating those collaborations to make sure that we’re all sharing the same voice and that within a project, we’re not actually hurting each other’s efforts, if that makes sense. So, that’s a lot of what my work consists of. So, a lot of strategy work.

Jenna: 36:45: 36:54: I mean, have you also been haunted at night by the possibility that there’s something you haven’t thought of? Oh yeah, all the time.

Ameliane Chiasson: 36:54: 39:12: Oh my god, is there something I forgot with this? And the reality is that I have, right? To give a concrete example, in my previous job, I used to work at a company called Square Enix, and I was working at the Eidos Montreal studio, and we had a colleague of ours during one of our projects that came to us, and I’m talking late production within the game, And we had a colleague that came to us and said, Hi, I have like really bad tinnitus. And when I’m working on this part of the game, you know, it’s triggering my tinnitus really, really bad. Do we have something in the game or that we can do to make the game like more accessible and more comfortable for people who are experiencing tinnitus? And my answer was like, No, I didn’t think of that. You know, and so We learn every day. We learn about this work every day and we learn about people’s needs every day too, because there’s not one person that can represent the entirety of the spectrum of accessibility needs, right? So when he came over, my first reflex at that point was, I went to the audio team and I went like, help, help, we didn’t think of this. Is it too late? I understand. I don’t want to add too much pressure on your plate and things like that. And it ended up being one of those cases that Jenna mentioned where it was kind of like an easy win. It’s dangerous to talk about easy when we talk about accessibility efforts. I don’t want to diminish the efforts that it takes to make a game accessible. However, there are some instances where we can have those easy wins. For that particular thing, all of the systems were in place to make that feature work. It was just a matter of putting it together and put a nice little bow on it. I think within two days, we had that feature implemented. The game now has ways to reduce loud sounds and modify the equalizer presets to either mute or lower certain frequencies that may be you know, hurtful or triggering tinnitus, if that makes sense. So we were able to make that game accessible for that developer that was working on that game and found it annoying to have to go through that specific sequence that was problematic for him. And also for our players, of course, who also had these issues with tinnitus.

Greg Posner: 39:13: 39:47: It’s one of those things that you don’t know until you know, right? And that helps. And this is going to lead to my next question, which I want to take a break before, but it’s going to be what’s the latest happenings in accessibility? What’s new that kind of is cool and can blow your mind? But before we do, I like to kind of do like the spitfire around in the middle of the podcast. So I think we’re past the middle, but I’m just going to throw a question out there. Jen, if you want to go first to answer in the net, put as much or as little thought as you want in it. Good to go. Sure. Sweet. What do you have for breakfast? coffee.

Ameliane Chiasson: 39:47: 40:01: I had Tim Hortons. So not sponsored, but the Canadian experience. So I had like a breakfast sausage sandwich and a hash brown and iced coffee. Sweet. Nice.

Greg Posner: 40:01: 40:09: Greg, what’d you have for breakfast? For breakfast today, I had two hard boiled eggs and coffee. That’s more than I usually eat. I usually just have coffee.

Ameliane Chiasson: 40:09: 40:10: That’s more healthy than me.

Greg Posner: 40:12: 40:15: If you were going to go to a bar, what drink would you order?

Jenna: 40:15: 40:19: Oh, I might go ahead.

Ameliane Chiasson: 40:19: 40:28: A London mule. So this is kind of like a twist on the Moscow mule, but with gin. So it’s ginger beer, gin and lime juice.

Greg Posner: 40:28: 40:29: Write that one down.

Jenna: 40:30: 40:43: Nice. I’ve also been on a bit of a gin kick just because it feels very wintry and almost has like Christmassy vibes. But now that that’s fading a little bit, probably whatever lager they got on tap.

Greg Posner: 40:43: 40:54: There you go. Jenna will be at GDC. So if you find her, have a lager in hand or gin. Dream vacation.

Ameliane Chiasson: 40:54: 40:54: Ooh.

Jenna: 40:58: 41:37: I know this one, actually. Go ahead. Go ahead. My husband was bored at work, and he just recently started sending me photos and screenshots from, apparently, you can go on cruise lines that are sailing ships. It’s like the three-masted sail ship. It only has a capacity of 80, and it’s super expensive. Of course, we’d never be able to afford it ordinarily. but it’s oriented around being more sustainable and more of a smaller individual experience. So now, of course, we’ve just binge watched a bunch of travel review videos about these sailing cruises. So that’s dream vacation right there.

Greg Posner: 41:37: 41:38: Nice.

Ameliane Chiasson: 41:38: 42:12: Yeah, and for me, I mean, I don’t love being hot, but I don’t love being super cold. So I think for me, a lot of European cities would be a good go for me. I think there’s a part of me that really, really wants to visit Ireland and maybe further than that, like New Zealand. I love the mountains. I love, you know, going into places that look like, you know, movies and a lot of nature. And so I think those are my go-tos, but we’ll see where the wind takes me, really.

Greg Posner: 42:13: 42:15: Do you want to go to the Lord of the Rings? Is that why you said that?

Ameliane Chiasson: 42:15: 42:25: Yes. So I know, so people will be angry, but I’ve never, I’ve never seen Lord of the Rings. You’re right, I’m angry.

Jenna: 42:25: 42:33: I’m immediately jumping to anger. How have we worked together for this long and I didn’t know this about you.

Ameliane Chiasson: 42:33: 43:17: I’ve never seen it. And it’s and it’s kind of like, it’s such a funny thing now that it’s almost like I refuse to see it just because I want to keep living in that ignorance. I’ve watched the first 20 minutes probably of the first movie a lot of times, but I always fell asleep, so I’ve never went beyond that. I know about like Gandalf and the little guys in the village, but I don’t know anything really beyond that. I know there’s a ring, I know there’s the Eye of Sauron. You probably know all the memes. Like, and I know that there’s a gif with a guy that’s like, like this. And like, there’s Yeah, but I know nothing about it. Maybe one day it’ll be an event where I’ll watch it and comment in life.

Greg Posner: 43:17: 43:33: But we expose all the ugly truths here. What is the last game you played? And we have two streamers here, right? Streamers.

Ameliane Chiasson: 43:33: 43:35: Yes, I am playing L Divers 2 right now.

Jenna: 43:35: 43:39: Oh, nice. I’ve seen a lot of good stuff about that.

Ameliane Chiasson: 43:39: 44:50: So it’s really funny. It’s it has a really ridiculous vibes, but in the best way possible, like it’s, it takes itself non seriously, which I love. It’s really humor, like full of humor. And yeah, it’s co-op. You shoot bugs and robots, you know, it’s good times. I like it. Prior to that, I What did I play? Oh, I played Cyberpunk for the first time. I hadn’t played when it first came out. So I played the Phantom Liberty, you know, when it when it came out. Yeah. So I played the entire thing with that. So that was really fun. And it was really cool also to see the the entire like sort of progression arc of that game because they they they did so much post launch, which I think is really cool, because it also sort of like proves to us once again that, you know, of course, when it comes to accessibility, and anything else, really, is that, of course, early is best when it comes to planning and implementing stuff. However, it’s never too late to see what can be done. And I think, you know, games like this, and any game that has any type of, you know, live support, I think is really cool to see like games patching accessibility and things like that.

Jenna: 44:50: 44:53: They want some awards for that, for their ongoing support for it.

Ameliane Chiasson: 44:53: 45:06: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s really cool to see because even though of course it’s always better to have everything at launch, sometimes it’s just not possible and it’s important to understand that also. So it’s cool to see.

Jenna: 45:06: 45:41: I think my husband and I just recently finished our collectively, I think either sixth or seventh Cyberpunk run. So to say we love that game is an understatement. Yeah, that’s really good. So I’m in the middle of both a God of War Valhalla run on the, whatever the second highest difficulty is, but also playing a ton of Pal World, of course, right now. So I can’t remember which one I technically played last, last night, but yeah, Pal World is, consuming all of my time as I breathe the perfect jet dragon.

Greg Posner: 45:41: 45:44: So I love it so much.

Ameliane Chiasson: 45:44: 45:45: What are you playing, Greg?

Greg Posner: 45:45: 46:19: I am playing a mix of the finals in Call of Duty with some buddies online. It’s a single player game. I’m playing Suicide Squad a lot, which I’m enjoying the story. It’s getting a lot of hate online. I am an Xboxer, but Helldivers 2 is like really pulling me like, you want this thing. And I have a five-year-old that plays Spider-Man all the time. I love Spider-Man. I’m like, oh, I could kind of kill two birds with one stone here if I do that. But then I don’t get to play because he’s just going to play it all day.

Ameliane Chiasson: 46:19: 46:56: The recent Spider-Man games are great games for accessibility as well, just as an FYI for people out there. Also great examples of disability representation. It’s a great character that even was, I think, nominated for the Games Accessibility Conference Awards for the portrayal of this death monster. I think they won that one. Yeah, I think they won it. So yeah, amazing games. And Samyak has done a really good job in, you know, over time, over their titles, doing more and more in accessibility for their titles.

Greg Posner: 46:58: 47:32: Cool. So I appreciate that. We’re all off the hot seat here and we’ll go back to our program here. And Spider-Man’s kind of a good segue into this because you said it’s coming next week with their additional accessibility modes, but like outside of the games that are coming out with accessibility, right? What are these new, what are the new features that are coming out to help people who have some sort of, um, I guess I’m not sure the appropriate way to word that. Disability, yeah. Disability or needs. I keep saying it. What are some cool tools that are out there that people may not be even aware exist?

Ameliane Chiasson: 47:35: 50:35: So, one of the things I like to use as an example just to, like, sort of expose the impact that accessibility can have is subtitles and closed captioning. This is one of the, I guess, accessibility-related features that a lot of people seem to take for granted and just assume that like, oh, yeah, that’s just normal, but it’s totally accessibility. So a lot of people, including myself, play with subtitles on for a variety of reasons. Same thing for closed captioning. And, you know, a lot of modern games now support subtitles. more and more starting to support closed captioning. The difference between the two, if you’re wondering, depending on the region where you are, you might use these interchangeably, but I’d like to make a difference between the two. Subtitles is really about dialogue and language. A lot of people who use subtitles usually will use subtitles if, for example, they’re watching a movie in a language that isn’t theirs, or they’re playing a game in a language that isn’t their mother tongue, And so they’ll have subtitles in their language of choice. Closed captioning is really about, you know, having in usually in writing at the same area around of subtitles of sound effects and any other sound that are crucial for understanding either the tone or things that are happening around you. in the game. So you’re not captioning every single thing, but you’re captioning everything that is important to understand what’s going on and where you should be going next and where you should be, you know, having attention, things like that. So it’s one that a lot of people are using that I definitely think, even though we’re sort of like taking it for granted now, that I think we need to continue making better and continue to talk about. But the other thing that I’m starting to see more and more that I hope more games can have are those equalizer settings in audio. Because a lot of people have a lot of different disabilities or needs related to audio and hearing. And so having more options within audio settings, I think, is really, really important. Because you know, aside from those sort of sliders that you see for the different, let’s say, audio tracks, there’s a lot more that can be done. In Guardians of the Galaxy, we had done a focused audio mode where when you activated that feature, it made it so that only crucial, important sound were prioritized over others. This was really, really useful for people who struggle with overstimulation or, you know, sensorial overload, things like that. So that was really, really useful. And it was also useful for people with low vision who are relying more on audio to complete tasks in game. And I’m not seeing that many games adding those types of features yet. So I’m hoping to see that more and more.

Greg Posner: 50:35: 51:01: I love that. And we also have an audio specialist here. What’s new in the world, I guess, for you, Jenna? And I’m also curious if you don’t mind touching You talked about Gears of War, or God of War, sorry, and someone asking for a description. So what does DVW do? If I turn it on, what’s going to happen, just so I could envision it?

Jenna: 51:02: 55:56: Yeah, I mean, so currently there is audio description now in Last of Us Part 1 and 2 and Mortal Kombat 1 and soon to be Spider-Man 2. This is actual just in the game, not counting any promotional materials or videos outside of it. But basically it’ll be in an accessibility menu. You toggle it on. and it adds an additional narration track over top of all of the other audio. Usually it’s during cinematics or QTEs or death animations, in the case of Mortal Kombat, the super moves and fatalities that happen in the middle of the fight. And it also affects the mix slightly so that you can clearly hear the narrator over top of everything else. So usually anytime there’s storytelling elements, a narrator will pop in, usually between existing dialogue, to describe on-screen visuals. It’s, of course, heavily constrained by timing, so there is a finite amount of time you have with which to describe things. character appearances, new environments, their actions, anything that’s narratively crucial, and you also do your best to not step on other character dialogue. For every writing rule, of course, there are exceptions, but that is one of the cardinal rule. There’s a lot of inherent subjectivity when it comes to writing a description of visuals, but there are a lot of rules that come with it, like needing to avoid passive voice and avoid injecting your own opinion into the audio description. At the end of the day, the goal is if a sighted player and a blind player play through that narrative, all other things held equal, they should come away from it with as emotionally close an experience as possible. So we want parity between those with vision and those without, not just from being able to physically press the right buttons to advance the story, but also being able to experience that story. So it can also be useful for people who are learning another language, because audio description is read at a relatively uniform pace, it’s going to have clear and concise language, and it’s going to use terminology that usually isn’t used in character dialogue, so you might learn some new vocabulary and get more comfortable with vocabulary that way. It’s also useful for people who might be colorblind and they just want to see what color a character’s outfit is. It might be useful for people who are cognitively impaired and you have difficulty following the visuals or maybe you’ve got a really severe migraine and or visuals trigger migraines if there’s a lot of busyness going on on screen. So maybe just temporarily you want to turn off the screen for a couple hours and still get the full benefit of it. So I would say definitely check that out if that’s in a game that you’re interested in. It’s pretty cool. But I would just say for anyone booting up a new game, especially if you or someone you know is new to gaming, just have a look through the accessibility settings menu. There’s a lot of cool stuff in there where you might think like, I’d never use that myself, but that’s pretty cool. And you might turn it on for a little bit. There’s also really, really silly things that you can do sometimes. Rebindable controls means you can shake your controller to hit someone or whatever you want to do. Just do something fun with it. But a lot of features do overlap with approachability in the sense that if you’re new to gaming, those accessibility features are there to help you too. If you have trouble parsing what is supposed to be like gameplay relevant in an environment and you get lost all the time. Maybe there’s a navigation assist. Maybe there’s a toggleable high contrast mode where you can highlight distant enemies or interactable objects that you might not have thought were interactable in the past. Maybe there’s a camera reorientation where you’re having trouble processing using both the left and right sticks to both look and move at the same time. So you just want to have the camera reorient behind you in whatever your direction of movement is. Things like that. There are a lot of features out there that you didn’t think could make your life easier, but they absolutely can. Even if you consider yourself to be a high-level, super-advanced player. I use God of War Ragnarok’s high contrast mode to spot all the stupid pots that you’re supposed to break in the safe areas. Those are bright pink for me now, because I don’t want to spend all my time just going around trying to find these vases that I’m supposed to break. Make your job easier. Don’t make the game harder than it has to be.

Ameliane Chiasson: 55:57: 57:24: even when you look into like competitive esports, you know, sort of seen, you know, a lot of customization and mods and things happen there, like, you know, accessibility really, like enable so many people to do what they what they want to do with the game ultimately to have fun, or to be competitive. So and, you know, Even for the most individualistic people out there, accessibility is still a mission they should care about because it’s not because, for example, right now you don’t identify as someone who has a disability or has accessibility needs. Most of us, in the large majority, will at some point in our lives, face disability, whether it’s temporary or permanently. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning to stop playing video games anytime soon. If you want to develop accessible games for your future self, be my guest. If that’s your your motivator behind it, you know, might as well, because that’s going to be helping more people than you think. But, but yeah, so it’s, it’s a nice angle that I like to bring up. And that I first sort of was exposed to because of Ian Hamilton during a conference years ago, where he had people, he asked people in the audience to say, who here plans on stopping to play video games at 65 years old? And of course, nobody raised their hands, right? And so that was kind of like his end to make that argument, which I think is really smart, but it’s totally true.

Jenna: 57:24: 57:52: If we are fortunate to live long enough, every single one of us will become disabled. It’s a demographic to which we will all eventually belong to if you live long enough. So it’s not something that we can afford to just kind of put in the back of our mind and shove disabled people into the shadows. It’s something that it will eventually have a personal impact for every single one of us.

Greg Posner: 57:52: 58:13: You can’t stop time. And I love some of the features that you spoke about. I mean, I always use subtitles because whether I just can’t hear or I just don’t have it loud enough, I mean, it’s a no-brainer to me. I didn’t even think about changing the contrast. I remember back in the day, like, turning my monitor all the way up. Like, I don’t want to look at my monitor.

Intro: 58:13: 58:14: It’s really dark in here.

Greg Posner: 58:15: 59:43: It’s funny, you mentioned some of these things and I don’t even think about that. I don’t associate it with accessibility, but it makes so much sense that it is. It’s just like these features in the game I’m used to seeing and not all the time is obvious, but it’s just like, it makes a lot of sense. I get it. So, you know, we talk about these cool modes, right? And my question then leads to things like, Who pushes for this? How do you hear the voice of the people that are wanting these features? And you can think about it. And I think we kind of spoke about it a little earlier. It’s like, you don’t know what you don’t know. How do you learn what you don’t know in the industry?

Ameliane Chiasson: 59:43: 01:02:47: So, of course, a lot of the learnings that you can get is from the community you’re trying to serve, ultimately. disable people into your process, whether it’s through design or research, is really, really beneficial because you can get direct feedback from the community you’re targeting when it comes to these features and those design decisions. So that’s really important. There’s a lot of independent consultants that you can reach out to. And there’s starting to be more and more services like ours, for example, who can help developers know where to start, what to prioritize, what to focus on, and also help developers connect with those people because you don’t necessarily know who to contact or where to go. And so there’s services like ours that can also build that bridge between developers and the community, to facilitate those collaborations, if that makes sense. One of the services that we’ve recently just launched is our accessibility QA service, which I’m really excited about. We spent last year training people across Poland, Montreal, and India to be able to conduct accessibility testing on video games So both for cycle testing, meaning that we integrate accessibility checks and test cases throughout the QA process, the FQA process, and accessibility auditing, which means that we basically go through an entire test plan to evaluate your game against the most up-to-date guidelines and standards in gaming accessibility. And that’s like one of the first steps that a lot of studios can take in knowing where to start or where they stand at the moment when it comes to accessibility in their games. And all of the different services that we offer, we’ve developed with people in the accessibility and disability and gaming consultancy community. and we continue to involve them as we go forward, because that’s a big mission statement for us, the nothing about us, without us, something that we hear a lot in this space, but it’s something that we don’t have to reinvent, it works, it’s what we need to do, so really, really important for us to empower those voices as well. But there’s a lot of people out there who advocate for this stuff, but in terms of accessibility, full time professionals, we’re actually not that many, you know, across the industry. You know, we have internal professionals in accessibility in a couple of companies, but I think we’re probably not more than 50 or 60. I want to say like accessibility professionals. worldwide that work like full time in studios, there’s more, of course, that are independent, but in studios, there’s not that many. So that’s why there’s a need for those services to exist and those consultants to exist, because a lot of studios don’t have those resources internally. So they kind of like have to reach out to people externally to achieve their goals.

Jenna: 01:02:48: 01:03:41: Yeah, and I would say if you’re a studio or anyone who is looking for additional accessibility services, whether that’s QA testing, audio description, or anything else, if you’re considering an external or third-party service to do that, ask about their inclusivity practices. Ask how they ensure that disabled voices are included in their workflow processes. So at DVW, we have our advisory council and we put effort into We try to ensure that blind talent or blind QC-ers or other blind voices are included in our workflows wherever possible. But that is also something that our clients can help to push for by asking for and advocating for external service providers who do what we do, who put that effort into it.

Greg Posner: 01:03:41: 01:03:54: Well said. And I appreciate this entire conversation. It was a very exceptional learning experience for me, I guess is the word I’d use. I think some of the things that are going to stick with me, and same thing I hear quite often.

Jenna: 01:03:54: 01:03:57: You’re going to go through all the accessibility settings menus now, aren’t you?

Greg Posner: 01:03:57: 01:05:01: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. But I think, I mean, inclusive design, I loved it. I hear it a lot with the women in games group as well. Like, if you set these practices up from the beginning, it’s going to make the rest of the process significantly easier. Probably not super easy, but easier to move on from there. And the features, I mean, I knew there were some features, but the amount of features that are out there and the new things that are coming out, I think, you know, I think it’s fantastic. And you don’t have to be disabled to use these and get the benefits of these features. I think that’s another important thing to understand that if you just have a little bit of trouble seeing, or maybe you, whatever, right? Like you can’t hear like me sometimes, right? You throw on the, you throw on the subtitles or closed captioning and I learned the difference between those. Fascinating. This really was a great educational session for me, and I really appreciate the two of you coming out. And I’m hoping that people can listen to this and understand that more people gaming is only good for the industry. We want more gamers. We want every type of gamer possible because the more people playing, the more fun we’re going to have. So I appreciate you.

Ameliane Chiasson: 01:05:01: 01:06:35: And just to add like a last thing that I think is really, really important to for people to understand is that when it comes to accessibility work, we never aim to change the vision of a game. Yeah, a lot of people seem to think that accessibility efforts will dilute your experience. But our goal is, is always to bring your vision to more people. That’s the that’s the key thing that people need to understand is that we always aim to bring your vision to more people. So you know, accessibility is, is, is one of the ways to make your game more inclusive, but also one of the ways to allow for more people to experience your amazing vision and the work of art that you’ve done. A lot of people are emotionally attached and invested in what they do in gaming. And even though we’re going through really, really hard times as an industry right now, a lot of people have poured their hearts and souls into making wonderful gaming experiences. And it’s always kind of heartbreaking when you see people who would love to buy and experience a game, but aren’t able to because the game isn’t accessible to them. And so that’s something that’s always important to do is to build that empathy between developers and community. Because ultimately, we’re all, you know, part of the same, you know, community, really. We’re all players, even within the games industry professional community, and we want to make games that resonate with people. So accessibility is a great way to do that.

Jenna: 01:06:35: 01:06:37: Bring your vision to people with no vision.

Ameliane Chiasson: 01:06:37: 01:06:38: That’s a good one, actually.

Jenna: 01:06:38: 01:06:47: I’m going to take that. Cut that out. Cut that out. That’s my hashtag now.

Greg Posner: 01:06:47: 01:07:35: No, this was great. And I hope people do listening. I mean, Emilian, you shared the stats in the beginning. I think it was anywhere from 20 to 30 percent identify as some form of disabled. Right. So and we’ll throw some of these stats as well on our player engaged site as well. So you can see them. But the numbers don’t lie. There’s an audience there and this audience wants to engage and they want content to play. And it’s up to you, the publisher, to decide how do we want to put this or developers to put these in our games. And there are other people there. You can hire freelancers, you can hire player research, you could go to Scripted Video Works, right? There’s these companies that are available, have done this already. So even just reach out and say hi, because again, more players, better for everyone. So, Ameliane, Jenna, thank you so much again for joining me today. I’m going to give you guys a last word. Jenna, you want to kick it off?

Jenna: 01:07:35: 01:07:37: Oh, gosh. Oh, do we get a plug? No.

Greg Posner: 01:07:37: 01:07:38: No, no, no, no, no. No, thank you.

Jenna: 01:07:43: 01:08:13: Thank you so much for having us on. This is fantastic. We both love being able to talk about what we do because we get to do something that is both fun and meaningful, and it means more of our friends can play games, which everyone can get behind. It’s so wonderful that we get to do this, that we have the privilege of doing this. but there’s always more work to be done. There’s always more inclusivity and advocacy to push for. Greg, thank you so much for having us on this and allowing us to do that.

Ameliane Chiasson: 01:08:13: 01:08:30: Yeah, same. Same. Thanks for allowing us to talk about what’s really important for us on this platform, and hopefully it can perhaps create a spark in some people’s minds. If you need anything, feel free to reach out.

Greg Posner: 01:08:31: 01:08:53: Yeah, and a few notes for people at the end of this episode. So Emilian is from Player Research. We’ll have links to Player Research as well as her profile, maybe her Twitch account if she wants to share where she’s streaming. Same thing with Jenna. Jenna is from Descriptive Video Works as well, so we’ll have information to that. Jenna will be at GDC. Emilian, I think you said you are not going to be at GDC?

Ameliane Chiasson: 01:08:53: 01:08:54: I am not going to be at GDC.

Greg Posner: 01:08:54: 01:09:12: So if you’re looking to meet Jenna or myself, we will be at the Keywords booth at GDC, come say hi. Remember, have a lager in hand for Jenna. And again, we’ll have all our information at the Player Engage podcast. We’ll tweet about it. Thank you again, both of you so much for coming out and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Intro: 01:09:12: 01:09:13: Thank you. Thank you so much.