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3 episodes with steven spohn
3 episodes with steven spohn
3 episodes with steven spohn
3 episodes with steven spohn
2 episodes with steven spohn
2 episodes with steven spohn
2 episodes with steven spohn
2 episodes with steven spohn
Sometimes, fluctuating disabilities mean you have to pivot plans, and that's okay x 00:00 – Intro 03:52 – Arevya played Super Market Simulator, Botany Manor 05:30 – Steven Spohn and Mark Barlet are leaving AbleGamers 08:40 – FDG 2025 will have the theme "Accessible Worlds, United Through Play" 10:35 – Laura and Arevya have consulted on Sorry, We're Closed 12:05 – Arevya consulted on Life Below 14:43 – Lauras take on the PS5 PRO 19:15 – Laura has played Mario & Luigi Brothership, Super Mario Party Jamboree, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and LEGO Horizon Adventures 36:25 – Where to find us
Watch Ad-Free on Supercast: http://whatsgoodgames.supercast.com Andrea chats with Steven Spohn, Senior Director of Business Development for AbleGamers, about AbleGamers 20th anniversary and their upcoming Gala 2! He takes her on sneak peek tour of their new Gala online social space and chats about AbleGamers mission to bring video games to everyone. Buy your ticket and support AbleGamers Gala: https://ablegamers.org/gala-2024/ Thank you to this month's Super Producers: Bored Ape Gamer's Club Faris Attieh Joshua Franklin Justin Foshee Punkdefied WGG is recorded on a Rodecaster Pro 2. Use our affiliate link to build your creator setup: https://brandstore.rode.com/whatsgoodgames Create your own YouTube video chapters with InstantChapters! https://instantchapters.com/?via=whatsgood Chapters: 00:00:00 - Special Episode with Steven Spohn 00:01:31 - AbleGamers Gala 2 and 20 Years of Impact 00:03:00 - Introduction to AbleGamers and their mission 00:04:25 - Providing Accessibility for Gamers 00:05:49 - Expanding Accessibility in Gaming 00:10:19 - Balancing Gaming and Parenthood 00:11:55 - Celebrating 20 Years 00:13:26 - Gaming Community and Virtual Events 00:14:53 - Bringing Friends Together in a Virtual Environment 00:19:45 - Behind the scenes tour of the virtual world 00:21:16 - Table with Highlighted Area for Private Conversations 00:24:26 - Getting your character drawn at the gala 00:27:31 - Will Steve Dye His Hair Pink?? 00:29:03 - Million Dollar Eyebrow Challenge Merch: https://www.whatsgoodgames.com/store Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/whatsgood_games Follow on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/whatsgoodgames Follow on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/whatsgoodgames Join our Discord community: http://discord.gg/whatsgoodgames Our website: http://www.whatsgoodgames.com Follow the crew: Andrea: http://www.twitter.com/andrearene http://www.instagram.com/andrearene_ http://www.tiktok.com/@andrearene Britt: http://www.twitter.com/blondenerd http://www.instagram.com/blondenerd Riana: http://www.twitter.com/rianatweetsnow http://www.instagram.com/rianagramsnow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jeff Grubb is joined by Steven Spohn to talk about data showing that people mostly play older games, reports of a Prince of Persia roguelite, and a rumor of a May PlayStation Showcase started by... *Checks notes* Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb!
From outta nowhere comes one of the weirder titles we've played this year: Mr Sun's Hatbox, a "slapstick roguelike." Joining us to discuss is Steven Spohn, the Senior Director of Development at Able Gamers.Also on the episode: Dead Island 2, Meet Your Maker, The Strange (Ballingrud), Red Rising (Brown), My Neighbor Totoro, and much more!For more information about the Able Gamers Gala, head over to: https://ablegamers.org/gala/
Steven Spohn, Sr. Director of AbleGamers, joins the After Dark crew to give us some fantastic book and TV recommendations. Meanwhile, Jake shares his experience with Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, and Lucy spreads the gospel of Succession. If you're in
Welcome back to The MinnMax Show! On this episode, Ben Hanson, Leo Vader, Kyle Hilliard, and Jacob Geller unpack the details and secrets of the incredible new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Then Janet Garcia joins the show and we check in and share our full thoughts on the open-world game Tchia. Kyle and Ben got to see an extended preview for Immortals of Aveum, the new first-person magic game from Ascendant Studios and the creative director of Dead Space. Oh and then things get weird and we talk about Meet Your Maker, an RTS you play by typing, and Tron's best games. For community questions this week we're joined by Steven Spawn from AbleGamers to talk about the AbleGamers First Annual Gala! Submit a question for us to answer on next week's episode and compete in Trivia Tower this Monday, April 17th at 8pm Central by supporting us on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/minnmax Watch and share the video version here - https://youtu.be/s9Bpb5Vh9Tc Learn more about AbleGamers' First Annual Gala here - https://ablegamers.org/gala/ Follow Steven on Twitter here - https://twitter.com/stevenspohn Help support MinnMax's supporters! https://www.iam8bit.com - 10% off with Promo Code: APRILSHOWERS https://www.stamps.com/minnmax - Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! ExpressVPN.com/minnmax - Three extra months free To jump to a particular discussion, check out the timestamps below... 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:36 - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's final trailer 00:17:23 - Tchia check-in 00:30:23 - Immortals of Aveum preview 00:41:26 - Meet Your Maker 00:50:38 - Touch Type Tale 01:00:47 - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt 01:04:22 - Tron Identity 01:10:09 - Thanking MinnMax's biggest supporters 01:16:21 - Steven Spohn and the AbleGamers Gala 01:24:19 - Community questions 02:11:25 - Get A Load Of This Leo's GALOT - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074030/Melon_Journey_Bittersweet_Memories/ Janet's GALOT - https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR3DDs5E/ Hanson's GALOT - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-fire-with-jeff-probst-the-official-survivor-podcast/id1673596832 Kyle's GALOT - https://variety.com/2023/film/news/1993-super-mario-bros-movie-directors-what-went-wrong-1235574696/ Community GALOT - https://twitter.com/RainDingRandom/status/1644688645780279296?s=20 Follow us on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/minnmaxshow Subscribe to our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/minnmax Watch our solo stream archives - https://bit.ly/3vRAQbi Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/minnmax Buy MinnMax merch here - https://minnmax.com/merch Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/minnmaxshow Follow us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/minnmaxshow Go behind the scenes on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/minnmaxshow Become a Game Champion by supporting MinnMax at the $50 tier on Patreon and lock in the game of your choice! https://www.patreon.com/minnmax Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon - Luciano Comassetto Tokyo Jungle - Michael Berry 80 Days - DarkFishDays Half-Life: Alyx - Maniac No One Lives Forever - Jot Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix - The Sleepy Mailman Garfield Kart: Furious Racing - RabidLime Sly 2: Band of Thieves - ProcyonNumber6 Placid Plastic Duck Simulator - RabidLime Superman 64 - Zachary Pligge Snowboard Kids 2 - Ted Ryser Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside - Starkiller Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles - Joshua Ayers Luck be a Landlord - TrampolineTales Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble - Tokyo Game Life Paper Mario - Clemens Zobel Ico - Studio Hoiho Dragon Age Origins - Logan Krause The Simpsons: Hit & Run - Jawarhello Cap'n Crunch's Crunchling Adventure - Prettygoodprinting.com Dark Cloud - Andres Silva Digimon Survive - Malcolm Holliday
Jeff and Christian welcome Steven Spohn from Ablegamers back to the show this week to discuss the rumors of a Playstation 5 Pro SKU, the exploding handheld market, new video game movies of Street Fighter and Minecraft, and more! The Playlist: Crimeboss, Marvel Snap, Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure, Shogun Showdown Prologue Tabletop Time: Remembering Klaus Teuber and Catan Parting Gifts!
The year is 1975, it's been 5 years since there has been a new X-Men comic when all of a sudden, this behemoth hits the newsstands and changes the course of X-Men and comics overall forever. Wolverine's first appearance in an X-Men comic as well as the first ever look at Storm, Nightcrawler & Colossus. The new X-Men are saving the old X-Men and I'm talking about it with Steven Spohn as we dive into Giant S-ze X-Men #1 (1975).
On this episode, we're joined by streamer and COO of AbleGamers, Steve Spohn (@stevenspohn)! We have a great chat about sending emails, Ultima Online, internet friends, trolls, VeggieTales, Fallout: New Vegas mods, synth shelves, funny mouse stories, and more! Steve is such a sweetheart, we had a great time hanging out, and we hope you like this ep too. Check out the good stuff AbleGamers is up to at ablegamers.org and you can donate directly at ablegamers.networkforgood.com. Follow us on Twitter at @leightonnight and on Instagram at @leighton_night. You can find Brian on Twitter/Instagram at @bwecht, and Leighton at @graylish (Twitter)/@buttchamps (Instagram).
Thank you to Hello Fresh for sponsoring this episode of What's Good Games! Go to http://hellofresh.com/whatsgood65 and use code whatsgood65 for 65% off plus free shipping! Andrea, Britt, and Riana are joined by Steven Spohn of AbleGamers to chat about the GTA 6 leaks, the Diablo 4 beta (and leaks), and more. In hands-on, Britt previews her time with Scorn and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Andrea and Steven talk about Tabletop Simulator, and Riana is killing off followers in Cult of the Lamb. Donate to Steven's SpawnTogether campaign: https://tiltify.com/+spawn-together/spawntogether Follow Steven on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevenspohn Follow Steven on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/steveinspawn Thank you to this month's Patreon Producers: Chewy's Godson Alex Rigopulos Faris Attieh Justin Foshee Punkdefied Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/2rAcJvF Support us on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/whatsgoodgames Want audio only? http://whatsgoodgames.com/podcast/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/whatsgoodgames Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/whatsgood_games Follow on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/whatsgoodgames Follow on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/whatsgoodgames Our discord channel: http://discord.gg/whatsgoodgames Follow on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/whatsgoodgamesofficial Our website: http://www.whatsgoodgames.com #gta6 #diablo4 #crisiscorefinalfantasyvii #whatsgoodgames 07:32 - GTA 6 gameplay leaks 15:45 - Diablo 4 leaks 17:14 - Blizzard Announces Diablo 4 Closed Beta 20:53 - Nvidia RTX 4090 & 4080 27:37 - Official RTX Ray Tracing Launch Trailer 28:48 - Iron Man Game Announced by EA Motive 32:29 - Resident Evil Showcase 33:10 - Resident Evil Village: Shadow of Rose 38:01 - PlayStation VR 2 49:55 - Scorn 59:25 - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion 1:09:03 - Tabletop Simulator 1:16:25 - Fall Guys 1:18:52 - Fortnite 1:19:20 - Cult of the Lamb
This week we're talking about the recent wave of tech layoffs, and React Eurasia's controversial decision to locate this year's conference in Dubai. Then we speak with Steven Spohn, senior director of development at The AbleGamers Charity Foundation about Diablo Immortal's native voice chat transcription and speech-to-text accessibility feature, and where we are in terms of accessible design in the video game industry as a whole. Finally, we speak with Jeri Ellsworth, co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five about what some of the inherent challenges are with creating AR devices that might be making it difficult for both Apple and Google to launch the glasses they've been talking about for years. Show Notes DevDiscuss (sponsor) CodeNewbie (sponsor) Avalanche (sponsor) React Eurasia's 2022 Location Twitter Announcement The Split-Screen Job Market: Low Unemployment, High Turnover, Plenty Of Openings—And More Layoff Headlines Diablo Immortal will launch with native voice chat transcription and speech-to-text The AbleGamers Charity accessible.games Tilt Five
Steven Spohn joins us this week - accessibility starts things off, but this episode takes some crazy, amazing turns into what we think is our best episode yet!
Full transparency: we're still just playing Elden Ring / experiencing video game burnout from playing too much Elden Ring, so we figured this week would be a great opportunity to catch up on other video game & pop culture moments that have been in the zeitgeist! Aside from an obligatory Elden Ring corner, topics the employee walkouts at Disney over the company's ongoing financial support of anti-LGBTQ politicians, the Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation, a few other video games we've been checking out (Tunic, Paradise Killer, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Kirby and the Forgotten Land), The Video Game Accessibility Awards hosted by Alanah Pierce and Steven Spohn, and gaming fundraisers for Ukraine relief-efforts from the (now-ended) itch.io bundle and Epic Games.Then in the back-half of the show for "what else we're gay for this week" we get into a whole bunch of movies and TV we've been watching! It's a lovely hodgepodge of an episode, we hope you enjoy!========Be Our Friends!!EMAIL US at gayforplaypodcast@gmail.comFOLLOW G4P Twitter: @GayForPlayPodInstagram: @GayForPlayPodTwitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypodSupport the Show on PATREON========CREDITSIntro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)Show art by Nick Adams (@nickadams.art)Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner
Steven Spohn and Alanah Pearce stop by to discuss what it was like working together to organize the Video Game Accessibility Awards and the importance of educating people on accessibility in gaming. They also share how video games have strengthened their friendship and dish on who is more competitive of the two.
This week we're joined by Steven Spohn and Alanah Pearce to talk about the second annual Video Game Accessibility Awards, happening March 12th! Tam also discusses his recent watch of The X-Files, Jordan's been playing Have a Nice Death, and a very tired Jean-Luc details his 19+ hour run in Destiny 2's new raid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Senior Director of AbleGamers Steven Spohn chats with Sonja and Bley about the impact Ultima Online had on him and how he worked for years in secrecy on the Microsoft Xbox Adaptive Controller. He also reminisces on playing Atari Tennis and gives his opinions on Star Wars Galaxies. Plus, we have a #GameBookClub update!
This week, we're joined by AbleGamers COO Steven Spohn to talk about the complexity and importance of including accessibility features in games, and also, pizza. Really, lots and lots of pizza talk. We also discuss Far Cry 6 for a few minutes!Other games discussed: Metroid Dread, Final Fantasy 14, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Satisfactory, InscryptionAbleGamers: https://ablegamers.org/Steven Spohn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenspohn
Dealing with loss is never easy and everyone deals with it differently. Welcome special guest Steven Spohn @stevenspohn to the naked army & please do yourself a favor and follow his podcast as well! http://stevespohn.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/trisha-hershberger/support
On this episode of The Resties, Plante and Frushtick hit the road with a trio of skeletons in Spookware. Finally the dream of a horror-themed WarioWare is realized! Other things discussed: Tales of Arise, Tres-Bashers, Dracula on the Criterion Collection, and Cowboy Bebop. If you're looking for our follow-up discussion on accessibility with Steven Spohn of Able Gamers, that episode will drop on October 22, 2021.
In this Industry Perspectives Chat, Ains follows up with Steven Spohn, COO of Able Gamers to discuss hitting their $1 million goal, what it will allow the organization to accomplish, and what's next for Able Gamers as 2022 nears.
I talk to Steven Spohn and Dr. Chris Power from Able Gamers about their APX certification for game developers. This is a certification that teaches best practices for accessibility to game creators. Steven and Chris explain how those conversations with devs have changed over the last few years as well as the challenges they continue to face. APX Discord Patreon --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
When Clayton decides to create a video game about his life, he brings in Hell's #1 game developer, Enron LootBoxér. Enron LootBoxér played by Steven Spohn, COO of AbleGamers. Support a good cause and donate at https://ablegamers.org/ Go to http://adamandeve.com and use code GMFH to get 50% off almost any one item!
If the world has learned one thing in lockdown, it's that staying isolated and confined to one place is hard. But for some people living with disabilities, a sense of social isolation predates the pandemic. Steven Spohn is a writer, philosopher, Twitch streamer, and the Chief Operations Officer of AbleGamers. His non-profit organization advocates for people with physical and mental disabilities in the gaming world, providing peer counseling and adaptive technology to help them play the games that they love and connect with worlds beyond their own. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
In this Industry Perspective Chat, Ains sits down with the COO of Able Gamers, Steven Spohn. The two discuss the impact Steven and Able Gamers have had on the gaming industry, the on-going fight for accessibility, the benefits of gaming for those facing challenges, escapism, and more. This is the latest addition to our on-going Good in Gaming Initiative (https://seasonedgaming.com/good-in-gaming/)
Summertime (and E3 season) is almost upon us and to kick things off, we've invited Steven Spohn of AbleGamers to talk E3 predictions, explain why cats are so cool, and help share a special announcement about this year's Play For All charity event.
Summertime (and E3 season) is almost upon us and to kick things off, we've invited Steven Spohn of AbleGamers to talk E3 predictions, explain why cats are so cool, and help share a special announcement about this year's Play For All charity event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ben gets together with Steven Spohn (@stevenspohn), COO of AbleGamers to talk about being a COO, streaming, and life in general! Gaming Community Expo '21 Tickets and Information: https://www.gcxevent.com/ Giveaways here: https://loot.raredrop.co/Join the Loot Pool:https://patreon.com/raredropBroman and Rare Drop merch now available here:https://shop.raredrop.co/Love Coffee? Check out Kings Coast Coffee Co.:https://kingscoast.coffeeFollow me on Twitch:ProfessorBromanFollow me on Twitter:@ProfessorBromanFollow me on Insta:ProfessorBromanSubscribe on YouTube:Broman
This week we were blessed to talk with the one and only Steven Spohn for our "Celebrity Spotlight"! He shares some delightful insight in his life, and shares some beautiful ideas on how we can all make the world a better place. Steve Spohn is the COO of AbleGamers charity, an award-winning content creator, and internationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. He has also been featured on CNN, NBC, and other mainstream news outlets as a game accessibility and mental health expert. Steven brings all his knowledge and much more to championing for people with disabilities in the video game space as a means of combating social isolation. When not streaming or doing charity work, you can find him gaming, reading sci-fi novels, or spending precious time with his friends and family. http://getgeekish.com
The PS5 has arrived!!! Okay but we've also got news to talk about including those Xbox Series X fridges, new APEX Legends content, and special guest Steven Spohn from AbleGamers joins us! Follow Steven on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/steveinspawn Follow Steven on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/steveinspawn Learn more about AbleGamers: www.ablegamers.org Support What’s Good Games on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/whatsgoodgames Discuss the podcast on our social channels! http://www.facebook.com/whatsgoodgames http://www.twitter.com/whatsgood_games http://www.youtube.com/whatsgoodgames Join the community page! https://www.facebook.com/groups/whatsgoodgames/ Timestamps: :01 Welcome to the show! 4:30 Weekly announcements 6:08 We have a PS5! 8:05 Shout-out to cute animals 11:30 Sony delays PS5 launch title to February 16:24 If you delete your Facebook account you lose your Oculus games 22:10 My Time At Portia sequel announced! 25:20 Snoop Dogg has AN XBOX SERIES X FRIDGE 32:16 APEX Legends is getting a new legend for Season 7 33:52 Nintendo JoyCons have been reduced in price 35:56 Let’s talk to Steven Spohn! What’s he playing? 40:19 Morning! For Steven - I wanted to know your thoughts on how conversations between accessibility and difficulty modes tend to be interwoven when discussing them in the games industry. Is this an OK thing? Are there better ways or terminology the industry can use to express differences between the two? -Devon 44:26 Other than adding Closed Captions to our streams are there any other ways streamers can increase accessibility in their streams? ✌❤- TylerAusten 47:27 Pokémon chatter 51:51 Steve, do you have any game that comes to mind when you think of a trailblazer for accessibility options? - Nxthxniel97
This week, we’ve been looking at disability and technology: where innovation is happening and where there’s work left to do to improve accessibility. That includes video games. Kimberly Adams talks with Steven Spohn, chief operating officer at AbleGamers Charity. He helped develop an adapter that lets gamers use their wheelchair as a controller for consoles or computers.
This week, we’ve been looking at disability and technology: where innovation is happening and where there’s work left to do to improve accessibility. That includes video games. Kimberly Adams talks with Steven Spohn, chief operating officer at AbleGamers Charity. He helped develop an adapter that lets gamers use their wheelchair as a controller for consoles or computers.
This week, we’ve been looking at disability and technology: where innovation is happening and where there’s work left to do to improve accessibility. That includes video games. Kimberly Adams talks with Steven Spohn, chief operating officer at AbleGamers Charity. He helped develop an adapter that lets gamers use their wheelchair as a controller for consoles or computers.
This week, we’ve been looking at disability and technology: where innovation is happening and where there’s work left to do to improve accessibility. That includes video games. Kimberly Adams talks with Steven Spohn, chief operating officer at AbleGamers Charity. He helped develop an adapter that lets gamers use their wheelchair as a controller for consoles or computers.
This year has left Kinda Funny wondering how it can be a better ally to its marginalized friends and peers. Today, Greg moderates an IGDA panel on the subject featuring... - Elaine Gomez, Co-Founder of Latinx in Gaming, https://twitter.com/chulatastic - Steven Spohn, COO of AbleGamers Charity, https://twitter.com/stevenspohn - Shana Bryant, Senior Producer at Crystal Dynamics, https://twitter.com/MushrooQueendom - Elyse Willems, Producer at RoosterTeeth, https://twitter.com/ElyseWillems - Kahlief Adams, SpawnOnMe Podcast, https://twitter.com/Kahjahkins
This weekend we are celebrating the birth of our nation. Happy 4th! The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776, is a brilliant and powerful document. But just like 244 years ago, many marginalized populations in our nation do not enjoy the protections and provisions outlined in our founding documents. In 2020 I am particularly concerned about how life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are withheld from many unborn, disabled, and African Americans. On this episode we’ll look at the Supreme Court’s abortion-related ruling from last week, the premature death of Michael Hickson, a quadriplegic who with Covid was was starved to death in an Austin hospital, and the senseless death of Elijah McClain, an innocent African American young man, at the hands of the Aurora Police Department. The following links contributed to this episode: The Declaration of Independence - ConstitutionFacts.comTwisting Supreme Court precedent - World MagazineCulture Friday – Losing faith in the Supreme Court - The World and Everything In ItPlanned Parenthood CEO Resigns After Staff Say She Engaged in Racist and “Abusive Behavior” - LifeSiteNewsAustin Hospital Withheld Treatment from Disabled Man Who Contracted Coronavirus - The Texan'LEFT TO DIE' Disabled man, 46, died from coronavirus ‘after docs REFUSED to treat him “because he had no quality of life”‘ - The SunTweet Thread by Steven Spohn providing a perspective from the disabled community on the death of Michael HicksonA police officer in photos near where Elijah McClain was put in a chokehold has resigned - CNNHere’s What You Need to Know About Elijah McClain’s Death - The New York TimesColorado Police Officers Under Investigation Over Photos At Elijah McClain Memorial - National Public RadioAbove the Law: The Data Are In on Police, Killing, and Race - Public Discourse
Steven Spohn from Able Gamers comes by to talk about his journey, making games accessible, and Oreos!
In episode 16 of the Xbox Expansion Pass (XEP) Luke is joined by Steven Spohn, the COO of Able Gamers to discuss what it is Able Gamers does in its work of bringing games to those with physical or cognitive disabilities. Ninja Theory's new Project Mara again addresses mental illnesses via gaming. Additionally a review of the first person exploration title Journey to the Savage Planet is discussed as the game offers and surprisingly rich and impressive experience. Enjoy!The Xbox Expansion Pass (XEP) is a podcast dedicated to interpreting the goings on in the world of video games and analyzing how they impact the Xbox ecosystem. Luke Lohr, the InsipidGhost, plays host and discusses various topics throughout the industry. Twitter: InsipidGhostMixer: Games With GhostContact: InsipidGhost@gmail.com
Video Games have never tasted this good! Join the Taste of Dragons crew as we discuss Borderlands 3, Mario Maker 2, Control, Greedfall, Kind Words, and Creature in the Well. We also dive into the recent Twitch Bans for "sexually explicit" content and honor our Dragon of the Week, the COO of Able Gamers, Steven Spohn. If you're looking to catch up on recent releases and video games news, join the dragons every Sunday as we shine a little love on this amazing industry. Recorded at 'TATE'S Comics' in Sunny South Florida with Special Guests: Marlent and Zack Marquez! Powered by our friends 'The 3000 Brigade'. Follow, Like, and Subscribe!IG: @tasteofdragonsTwitter: @tasteofdragonsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TasteOfDragonsPodcastE-mail: tasteofdragons@gmail.com
Steven Spohn is our guest today and he began his journey in the world of accessible gaming as a gamer with disabilities himself. He’s now an author and the Chief Operations Officer and Community Outreach Director for the AbleGamers Foundation. Steven shares his thoughts on when “gated communities” for gaming are appropriate, advocates for insurance companies to cover gaming as social therapy, and much more in this engaging conversation.
On this bonus episode of the OK Beast Podcast, Alex is joined by the COO of AbleGamers, Steven Spohn, to go behind the scenes of the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Not only does Steve share details as to how the controller came to be, but also communicates how the messaging behind the controller is misleading and […] The post Behind the Scenes of the Xbox Adaptive Controller (Feat. Steven Spohn) – OK Beast Podcast appeared first on OK Beast.
Jeff and Christian welcome Steven Spohn from Able Gamers to the show this week to discuss a potential Borderlands 3 announcement, new 8th Gen Pokemon games, Funcom dong Dune, THQ Nordic's bad PR, and more! The Playlist: Rocket League, Dead by Deadlight, Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove, Dead or Alive 6, Destiny 2; Fortnite Season 8, Ape Out Quick Questions! Parting Gifts!
Jeff and Christian welcome Steven Spohn from Able Gamers to the show this week to discuss a potential Borderlands 3 announcement, new 8th Gen Pokemon games, Funcom dong Dune, THQ Nordic's bad PR, and more! The Playlist: Rocket League, Dead by Deadlight, Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove, Dead or Alive 6, Destiny 2; Fortnite Season 8, Ape Out Quick Questions! Parting Gifts!
Steven Spohn of AbleGamers comes on the show to school us on game accessibility, what it actually means, and how it can be better. You have the power, ARGonauts! AbleGamers COO Steven Spohn joins us this week to chat about accessibility in gaming. We discuss what it means for a game to be accessible, Microsoft's Adaptive Controller, and how Nintendo used to be a leader in this back in the NES days. This week's news has us wonder if wrestler John Cena will be in Mortal Kombat 11. That's followed by a Resident Evil 2 mod that would make DMX proud, and a stealth release of Commander Keen on Switch. The Stage of History has us make a big leap in time from Video Olympics on Atari 2600 to the modern classic Flower. Robert then gets super nerdy in Obscura with Lester The Unlikely. Don't forget to nab our game giveaways, then stick around for some Random Select! Who could Robert be this time? Did WWE Superstar John Cena Just Hint at His Role In ‘Mortal Kombat 11’ As Stryker? DMX Has Officially Been Modded Into Resident Evil 2 Commander Keen in Keen Dreams for Nintendo Switch The AbleGamers Charity Uncharted 4 developers explain why they added accessibility options to the game Xbox Adaptive Controller The Disabled-Friendly NES Controller From The 1980's Got a question, comment, or suggestion for the show? Email us or send a tweet! Check out our Patreon to help support the show and get cool perks along the way. Also, join our Discord room to chat all things retro gaming. See you there! Follow David | Follow Robert We are partnered with Don't Feed The Gamers! Be sure to check them out for fan-focused gaming content.
John, Finn, Zach, Derek, and Reb sit down with Steven Spohn from AbleGamers to talk about the push for accessibility in gaming and how that impacts some major current and upcoming releases. Plus: Apex Legends, and a heartfelt discussion on what gaming means to us. Grab a tissue folks, this is a real one.
On this week's episode, Joseph Knoop officially takes over the reins of the 1099. Joe is joined by AbleGamers COO and Game Awards' Global Gaming Citizen Steven Spohn, who works to improve accessibility for gamers with disabilities. The two chat about Steven's work leading such an important cause, the issues that gamers with disabilities and AbleGamers face, and how he cultivates hope and strength in a world that hasn't always shown him either. 1099 music (episode 184 onward) provided by Zach Buckley. Find his work at www.zwbuckley.com.
Danny talks to Steven Spohn about growing up as a gamer with a disability, and the work he does at the Ablegamers charity to make games more accessible. (Recorded January 10th) iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclipvideo Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,913 Patrons. -------------------------------------------------------------- - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip; the podcast about people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer and today I'm joined by somebody who kind of has a finger in both of the pies we generally talk about; people who play games and also people who make games. We're gonna talk to him about a lot of different areas of his work and also the ways in which he enjoys playing games as well. He is the COO of AbleGamers, he is a fellow Trending Gamer nominee survivor. I am delighted to be joined by Mr. Steven Spohn. How are you doing my friend? - [Steven]I'm doing well. Can we just talk about pies for the next 15 minutes? - [Danny] I wanted to bring up the pie because I was trying to think about how you fit into the world of video games and, in a way, your work at AbleGamers is involved in both sides of the equation. You help individuals who have trouble accessing video games to get controllers and the means by which to play the games they wanna do, but you're also talking to game studios and hardware manufacturers about they ways in which they can make it so you don't have to do the other thing. - [Steven] Yeah. The truth is when I did the game awards video, one of the things that they captured me saying was that I don't know how I got where I am and I don't know what I'm doing and it was the absolute most truthful thing I had said during the whole piece. I don't know exactly what you would call my job. My job is literally whatever AbleGamers needs and sometimes that's talking to hardware, sometimes that's talking to developers, sometimes that's talking to fundraisers, sometimes that's talking to people with disabilities who need tech support, so I have really become the Jack of all video game trade at the moment. - [Danny] I've got a lot of questions about your work at AbleGamers and we've got some from the Patrons too. We've actually been, like, I feel like we've been working on the AbleGamers documentary, in some respect, either us having conversations or filming stuff like we did last summer, it feels like it's been going on forever and it's something that we eventually will get done. Today I kind of wanna talk a bit more about Steven; about how you came to be in the position you're in because, like you said, in a way I can't imagine anyone else doing your job, but also I couldn't imagine anyone doing your job until you did it. So, let's go all the way back. When did you start playing games or when did you start getting interested in games? - [Steven] I became interested in video games actually thanks to a friend I had made in high school. We were in a vo-tech class and we were doing AutoCAD designing and... - [Danny] Oh, cool. - [Steven] I, for just a brief hot second, I wanted to be an assistant engineer and then I wondered how much work it is and I said, "Nah". - [Danny] What was the name of the class? It sounded like volt-tech class. - [Steven] It was vo-tech. - [Danny] Vo-tech? - [Steven] Yeah, vocational technical school. - [Danny] Oh, okay, okay. - [Steven] Yeah, vo-tech is like the American, "We're not going to real school, we're going to fancy 'you're going to learn actual useful life skills' classes". - [Danny] Awesome. - [Steven] Yeah, like its where your mechanics go and all the people who are gonna do computers and what they do is, or at least in my school, you did your math and your science in the morning and then they shipped you on a bus during lunch to go to the other school. It's kinda cool. - [Danny] Wow, we had something similar in Ireland. It was called Leaving Cert. Applied and it was where all my friends who are tradesmen went. Like electricians and plumbers and then they all ended up moving to Australia anyway because the economy crashed and nobody was building houses. So you were in that class and you were learning AutoCAD. Was that the first piece of software you ever encountered? - [Steven] It was the first time that I had really worked on computers for more than a few minutes. Of course, everybody had Oregon Trail on their MathLab or whatever, but I grew up poor so we didn't own a computer and that was really the only time I got to have hands on a computer from multiple hours at a time. One of my friends there worked at a computer shop and he was telling me how he just got all these parts for computers secondhand because people would turn them in for repairs and then they wouldn't want them, so he would just end up fixing them and taking them home, and I was like, "That's amazing", so he started talking me into getting into video gaming and he told me about this fabulous game where you could go online and you could have a life and you could do amazing things like walking around the town of Britain and you could fight dragons and you could own a house, and I was like, "This is amazing", and so he sort of talked me into this persistent world, he was a Guild Master in his own right. That's how I got sucked in to Ultima Online and from there I just became super interested in the alternative reality that video games present. - [Danny] Was there an element of the escapism that appealed to you? Escapism is something that we all enjoy, but perhaps somebody in your position, maybe, was there an added element of escapism for you? - [Steven] For me it was the timing of where it hit me in life. I had gone into my senior year of high school and I had discovered friends and it sounds corny, cheesy; it's something that I'm probably gonna get up on a stage and give a TED Talk about one day, but it's interesting how our school system kind of segregates people with disabilities away from the main population if you let them. They'll put you in a special classroom and they will put you in a special room to eat lunch and they really keep you almost walled off from everyone else and I was super lucky that I had a friend who talked me into doing that and I made friends. Long story short, I sort of got a huge case of senior-itis and I just didn't want to do the school thing anymore. I wanted to go have a social life because holy crap having friends is awesome! And so I just wanted to go experience that and have fun with it and it was fantastic. The only problem was that I was just at the age where we were transitioning from middle-teens to late-teens so it was a couple of years of doing... - [Danny] Hell. - [Steven] Oh, hell! But also doing video games in your friends garage, to, "Hey, let's go to the club and pick up girls." and its like "Well, the club has a stair to get into it, so I can't do that, oh damn". So I started kind of being walled off by life. Just happenstance of things not being wheelchair accessible and here's my other friend going, "Hey, here's a world where your wheelchair doesn't eff-ing matter". I don't know if I can say swears on this show. - [Danny] Say whatever you want, man. - [Steven] Right, cool, so they were like "Who the fuck cares if you're in a wheelchair. Go play this world where everybody's equal", and I was like "Oh, this is my first experience where everything is a level playing field" and it was amazing, so... Was it escaping or was it choosing to forge a different path in life? I don't think I'll ever really know the answer to that, but consequently, through the butterfly effect, deciding to do that and take that friend's advice led me to where I am right now. - [Danny] You're an incredibly social person. I feel like everyone in the industry has met you and had a conversation with you. I've noticed that you're very good at advocating for people's time, which is something that a lot of people who like having friends and like being social, they sort of don't put themselves out there to, you know, they don't want to be a bother or something like that but I've always found you to be incredibly inviting and sort of proactive in your friendships, which I think is a really important trait, especially the older you get. Video games, in that way I suppose, have sort of provided you with a lot then, in terms of both your social life and your professional life. Is it fair to say that most of that sort of revolves around the world of games? - [Steven] I think it is now. I mean, you hit the nail right on the head. When you're in your thirties, going out and making new friendships is exceedingly difficult and we could literally talk for the rest of the podcast about the difficulties of living the disabled life and having to fit in to the norms of society. But as far as the video games industry has been, to me it's been a very welcoming and inviting place and I am super honest guy, you know, you follow me on twitter, we've been friends for a couple years now. I, to my own detriment, I am way too honest sometimes and I am sure that there are people in the industry who love me and there are people who probably wish I would just stop talking so much and I feel like if you don't have some people that think you talk too much then you're probably not making change and that's what I'm trying to do. I have terminal illnesses, I have a disability for those of you who don't know me. I am aware that there is that shot clock ticking and I don't talk about it a lot but I'm aware it's there probably more than your average person and I'm trying to use all the time I've got to do something with it. - [Danny] It's an interesting dichotomy you bring up there, in that, in many ways, who could say a bad thing about Steven and AbleGamers, you know what I mean? At least, who could say it out loud? But you are kind of creating problems for companies, right? Like you're creating a problem that, by the fact that you're even having the conversation with it was a problem that they thought didn't exist. You're fashioning it for them. Is that the case? Like, is it different now talking to companies than it was when you first started doing this work? - [Steven] The difference really is that I didn't make the problem. I shined a spotlight on a problem that was in the darkness. It was always there and the more technology advances, the less accessible it becomes, just by the very definition of advancing technology. So, we banded together, me and Mark Barlet and Craig Kaufman, and a bunch of amazing people, now AbleGamers, got together and decided that we were going to take this problem head on and we changed a multi-billion dollar industry. I tell you the weirdest thing that I could ever say to another human being because it is entirely factual, you could prove it, in fact, we're doing a documentary talking about it, so it's, you know, it's something that's kind of shock and awe to even try to talk about it, but here we are, years later, where developers went from laughing at us and walking away to now coming to talk to us, so, you know, it's pretty amazing. I am very fortunate in my position that I am able to walk all these different sides of the video game life. - [Danny] When you think about some of the ways in which you guys have changed the industry, the one that comes to mind right away, for me at least, because it's probably the most recent, is the work that you guys did with Microsoft on the, is it the Adaptive Controller, is that what the name is? - [Steven] Yeah, it's called the Adaptive Controller. - [Danny] What other stuff comes to mind for you, over the years? - [Steven] You know, I think some of the biggest were going into Harmonix and getting to talk to Alex. Sitting down in his office and doing the whole Rock Band thing and talking about the various ways that you might wanna play the game. The fastest way I can tell this anecdote is we were sitting in his office and we were talking about how, if someone wants to play the video game, how many buttons would they have to use at minimum? Could you do this if you only had three fingers on on hand? Could you do it if you were one-handed? You know, yes, no, yes, no. So we talked about that for a minute and I just came up with a question to ask; "Why did you come up with three buttons as the minimum to be able to play?" and his answer was, "Well, it's just the number that we thought was the smallest that people would ever wanna do". I said, "Well, what about somebody who only has the ability to push one button?" He said, "Well, we never thought anybody would want to be able to play Rock Band with just one button." I looked him in the face and I said, "I would." And the color just drained out of his face and he just nods his head and goes, "Okay, we'll have to work on that" and that was sort of a great beginning point for, not only my friendship with Alex, but AbleGamers as a company we have worked with Harmonix ever since and they've been really great partners of the business and I've made some good friends over there as well. It's this amazing thing of how, one of my friends put it best, my job title is to go out and be who I am very visibly and let people learn lessons from my experiences and I've been able to thread this needle of using personal experience and second hand experience from the gamers I've met along the way to then translate that into the friendships that I've forged in the industry and then turn that into making changes for other people. So it's this tightrope act of making sure to be friends with everybody because the only way that you really can get people to make change is if they want to. If they don't want to, they're not gonna change. - [Danny] When you think about changing those games, were there games when you were growing up that you were like "Oh man, I'd really love to play that", but then you realized that there were barriers in your way to doing so? - [Steven] Yeah, I can tell you that I wanted to play Dance Dance Revolution and that'd be a great sound bite. Of course I'm in a wheelchair but I've always been a very realistic kind of guy. I am a logic-based person, I have the weird sort or emotional Spock thing going on where I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody if I believe in them, but there has to be logic in my brain, also why this is a thing, and I'm never gonna be on Dancing With The Stars. I'm never gonna be a ninja. It's just not in the cards for me. So I am okay with that and there was no particular game that I wanted to play that made me start advocating for people. It was simply having a disease that was advancing slowly, taking away abilities one by one, made me go, "Oh, shit, I guess I need some technology" and somewhere along the way I discovered that it was a lot more fun to help other people than to help myself. - [Danny] What was it like then for you, trying to gain access to that technology? Presumably you were doing that before AbleGamers existed, so was it a case where your conditions were getting worse and you were effectively looking for solutions as the issues presented themselves? - [Steven] So it's interesting when you're doing a technology upgrade as someone with a disability because it's often a mismatch of just MacGyver-ing your way through technology. To eat potato chips, I used to use hot dog tongs as I couldn't lift up my biceps, but I could rotate my wrist so I would just pick up one chip at a time with a hot dog tong. It's the same thing with video games. I used a little tiny dental hygiene tool that has a little crook on the end of it, has a little rubber tip and I would use that to push W, A, S, D when I couldn't reach it and operate the mouse with the other hand. So I was already using technology, it was just this way... Doing things the low-tech way was beginning to start to fail, so I had to find a little bit more high-tech solutions. - [Danny] And how did you do that? Did you fashion stuff yourself? Were there people out there making custom rigs for people? - [Steven] Well, you know, I started doing it by finding ways to play video games with only the mouse and just getting rid of keyboard entirely. Fortunately, I had found a program called TrackIR which generally allows you to look around in the cockpit of a Microsoft Flight Simulator and when you're looking around, you're also telling the computer to push different directions and I found that you could use this to push keyboard buttons and it was a totally unintended thing that this program was offering. They were trying to use it to help people have a more virtual experience, more immersion, and I ended up using it as a disability tool and now I teach others how to do the same thing. - [Danny] That's incredible. So you sort of hacked it in a way to be quick key-binding stuff. How many buttons could you set up on a TrackIR? How many directional ways are there to use it? - [Steven] So the best way to think about it is to think about a dartboard. - [Danny] Okay. - [Steven] If you think about each position, each little block, being a different key then the laser pointer that is attached to the brim of one of my hats allows the laser pointer to move around based on the way I'm looking. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So I can move it to whatever block. The only downside of that technology, of course, is if you're thinking about moving in a straight line. If you gotta get to block number three, you gotta run through block number one through two. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So, it sort of becomes this interesting way of lining up the buttons so that they don't do the wrong thing at the wrong time. - [Danny] It sounds like key-binding is something that is one of the most powerful ways of allowing people to use controllers in these interesting ways. You say using a mouse only; I imagine setting up 'run' to be right-click or something like that would maybe fix one sort of problem. We talk about the hardware issue, but also one of the biggest issues in games that has sort of been slowly fixed over the past five, 10 years, well, maybe closer to five, is the ability to re-bind controls, which certainly has never been something that was standard and is a lot more common now. Is that a big issue with accessibility as well? - [Steven] Yeah, re-mapping has gotten a lot better. Now, re-mapping is almost as standard as closed captioning is for TV shows and movies. That's a lot thanks to the groundwork that people have done, demanding it to be a thing. It's not just a disability thing. Everybody loves for you to be able to re-map things so that they're more comfortable, so that your hand isn't stretched out in weird ways that the developers didn't quite think somebody would try to do. So it's good for everybody, it's good design and it allows us to be comfortable playing video games. - [Danny] So what other big games were you a fan of? Or what other games were you a big fan of, rather, back in those days, back in the Ultima Online days? Eventually those doors closed, but you could've got back into that fantasy world. So what other games are your favorites when you look back? - [Steven] Back then Diablo was huge, I loved that game. Star Wars Galaxies actually was the bait that Mark used to get me into AbleGamers. - [Danny] How'd he do that? - [Steven] Okay, so I loved Star Wars Galaxies so much. Star Wars Galaxies was, and maybe is, my favorite game of all time and they had just changed it to the NGE and the NGE made it more into an action simulator game, which took away a lot of the accessibility. - [Danny] Oh, really? - [Steven] Yeah, in SWG, the original vanilla version, you had macros, you had slash commands, you had buttons on the screen that you could click, you could do macro ability to do more than one action at a time. It was a very very friendly game for people with disabilities and they didn't even realize they were designing it that way. They were just trying to make it friendly for everybody. So, it just happened to be accessible and I happened to latch on to it as the most amazing thing since pizza and it was great and they changed it and then, right after that, they were gonna change it again for the combat upgrade and they were gonna make it into this, I don't even know what kind of 'Barbie Ken Dreamhouse' thing they were trying to do with this game, but it was just destroying it from the inside out and then then closed it so I literally told Mark that I would come work for AbleGamers, volunteer my time, and at the time I was just being a writer and trying to help the cause, and I would do it, but only if he would give me the email for Smedley so I could tell him off. - [Danny] And did you? - [Steven] I did, yeah, absolutely. - [Danny] Oh, God. - [Steven] I wonder if he still has that email. - [Danny] Did he respond? - [Steven] No. I was nobody then, so just an angry guy yelling at him, which he had a bunch of those already. - [Danny] How long is the email, do you reckon? Is it like one paragraph or was it like 20 paragraphs? - [Steven] It was like five paragraphs with expletives and doing something between rational explanation of why he should change it back to, you know, "I hope both your eyebrows catch on fire!" It was not my most refined moment but I was just so passionate about it. - [Danny] Yeah, shoot your shot, fair enough. So what have you been playing at the moment? We were playing a bunch of PUBG I remember last year and then you went off and joined the Fortnite gang. You said you could never be a ninja but there you are, every day, playing Fortnite. Are you still playing it? - [Steven] Actually, no. I don't play Fortnite as much as I used to. It is still a fun game for me, but I've actually began to fall away from first-person shooters a little bit. I've been doing the Rocket League thing, I've been really into Kingdom: Two Crowns recently, just playing that 8-bit life. Yeah, it's the third installment of this franchise where you're just a little dude or a queen that's got a kingdom to take care of and there's little greedy things that are trying to take all your money and beat up your people to get it, so there's no fighting involved so, I don't know, I'm one of those gamers that, I used to run a violent game like a Diablo and then I would run The Sims Online. I would just bounce back and forth to satisfy both sides of my brain, so I guess right now I'm just like, "I don't wanna shoot people, I just wanna watch little monsters be murdered." - [Danny] Okay so by that rationale, Rocket League is the violent game? - [Steven] Yeah, well, if you've ever seen me play Rocket League, it depends how many times I get scored on. - [Danny] Oh dude, I swear to God, I have never been as angry and stressed out as when I play Rocket League online. - [Steven] It's like a stress test, they should replace that at the doctor's office. - [Danny] I swear to God, I had to start playing on PS4 because then I couldn't type shit at people. Then I just started doing it on that as well, bringing up the little PlayStation keyboard. In between goals where you've hardly any time to trash talk anyone and you just figure out ways of doing it. - [Steven] What a save, what a save, what a save! - [Danny] Oh, yeah, totally and all that sarcastic stuff for sure, yeah. It's ridiculous. Did you do a 'Top 10' list or anything for 2018? - [Steve] You know, I think I'm one of the three video game industry people that didn't do a 'Top 10' post. - [Danny] You need to get Alex Navarro over at Giant Bomb to email you as well next year. - [Steven] Apparently, yeah. Next year I need to get on the list, I was like, "every one of my friends has a list, what the hell?" Damn. - [Danny] So what was the stuff last year that really caught your eye? Were you playing a lot of those games? Well, playing Rocket League I guess, since 2017. - [Steven]Yeah, it was a good year for video games, man. The one I wish I could have played the most was Spider-Man. Man, that looked like an amazing game. I couldn't personally play it, so it was actually one of the only games that I sat on Twitch and watched friends play from the beginning to the end. It was so good. I loved it so much. - [Danny] Is that because it's a console game and it's just the accessibility issue? - [Steven] It was the way that the accessibility was set up was just a little bit rough for trying to aim and change your weapons. Anything that has a weapon wheel just adds another layer of complication for people who have a limited number of buttons that they can push, so, yeah. Even if you were using a QuadStick on a console, the weapon wheel is just difficult, so, you know. - [Danny] How does the QuadStick interface with the PlayStation? Because obviously Microsoft now has a controller that's like officially doing it. Do you have to hack it to get it to work? - [Steven] Yeah, its just an adaptor. - [Danny] Oh, really, just like off the shelf? You just get it off Amazon or something, or eBay? - [Steven] Well no, it's not off the shelf, but there are adapters out there that let you use PlayStation and Xbox things, vice versa, depending on which console you need to use the most, so we can put a QuadStick on either one. It doesn't really work on a Swtich, unfortunately, looking at you Nintendo. But, yeah, PlayStation and Xbox works just fine. - [Danny] Is it the type of thing that they know about and they're cool with or they know about it and they're just gonna go, "Ah, whatever"? Like what is it that Nintendo are doing that stops people being able to make adapters for that? - [Steven] You know, I'm not really sure what I can say, legally. I can tell you that it's still works on Xbox and PlayStation and it doesn't work on Nintendo. - [Danny] Fair enough. Sorry, you were saying, what other games are you playing? - [Steven] The God of War series was, of course, super amazing. I had a lot of strange indie taste as well, like Tricky Towers was a really good game I found. Just something sort of different. I loved Into the Breach. I think the only one I've lost a lot of time into was Odyssey. Odyssey is just so good; I can't stop playing it. - [Danny] My wife is playing it too. It's the most game I've ever seen. - [Steven] It is ridiculous, it is. I mean there were so many good games that came out last year, but Odyssey is maybe the first one in forever that I've been playing off-stream. There's usually, for me, only two kinds of games that I play; either I play them for work or I play them for stream work. Don't you get it where it's like, I'm sure, just like you, I don't like play just to play very much, so when I do, a game's gotta be great and Odyssey was fantastic. - [Danny] Did you play the Origins? The one that came out the year before? - [Steven] I didn't. You know, Odyssey was actually my first venture into Assassin's Creed world. - [Danny] Oh, cool. It's crazy how people are, I feel like there's two groups of people; there's the people who played so much Origins that they just can't play Odyssey because it's just like, it's just so too much, too quickly and then there's people who didn't play Origins who are loving Odyssey because it's a lot of the same sort of systems and stuff that worked there, but in a much bigger map with so much stuff. It's ridiculous how much stuff is in that game. Like how much of the map have you uncovered? My wife's been playing for months and like a third of the map has been opened up. - [Steven] You know, I probably have got a little over half of it at this point, and it just seems like the game just keeps going and, I gotta say, I'm into it though. It's one of those games where I'm finding I don't mind how much time has been sunk into it. Normally by like hour 50 I'm like, "Alright, come on, we gotta wrap this up", but this one I'm like, "You know, I could probably play this off and on for the next year, I'd be alright with that." - [Danny] What is it about it? Is it the setting or the combat or is it the ticking off the things on the list? There's a lot of 'do these things' and then you do the things and they give you stuff for it and you're like, "Yeah, give me more things to do." Is it that? - [Steven] I think it's a combination of the story and the never-ending tasks. I love the bounty hunting system, oh my goodness. I love how you just randomly get hunted and then you get to kill them and then more people hunt you. It's just awesome. - [Danny] That's rad. What are you playing at the moment? So you're playing that at the moment still, are you? - [Steven] Yeah, I mean whenever I get spare time, that's where I'm sinking my time right now. That was after I beat Far Cry. I don't know if you got a chance to sink your teeth into that but, man, that was a mind trip. - [Danny] Yeah, that was another one, my wife is basically just on the Ubisoft open world ticket at the moment, so that was another one I watched her play a lot in the evenings. Had you played previous Far Cry games? Was that your first foray into that one as well? - [Steven] That was another first note as well. It seemed to be my year to break into story games. I guess now we're looking back at it and I liked it but, this is gonna turn into spoiler-cast if I'm not careful, but, man, the ending in that game. At the end of the day I am a writer who just happens to be doing other things right now and so I love, love, love a good story. So, if it had something that can just grab my attention and make me wanna find out what happens at the end, then I'm in. - [Danny] You're one of the first people we're talking to in 2019, I mean you're one of the first people we're talking to on this podcast, this is the 5th episode. I feel like I haven't been able to stop and take stock of what's coming out this year. Is there anything, I have a list in front of me here but is there anything off the top of your head that you're looking forward to? Because I feel like 2018 actually ended up being a fantastic year but I worry that we ended up going into a slower one, when that happens. But is there anything off the top of your head that's popping out that you're looking forward to in 2019? - [Steven] I don't know, it can't be a slower year than last year. Last year was just boom, boom, boom. I would say, right off the top, and the same thing everyone is gonna say is Anthem. If Anthem is bad then I am going to riot. I'm going to grab a pitchfork and I'm going to the studio and I'm gonna stand there and be like, "You guys fix it." I'm gonna do it in a very non-threatening way. I'm just gonna stand there and it's gonna be a safety pitchfork, there's gonna be little plastic things on top of it. - [Danny]Orange tips. - [Steven] Yeah, orange tips on it. I'm gonna have a peaceful vest on me and just be like, "I just want you to fix the game." - [Danny] Well you say you're a fan of stories, does that mean, are you a fan of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, the other BioWare games? - [Steven] Oh yeah, oh my goodness. Dragon Age: Origins is... So Dragon Age: Origins, I love it so much, so anybody who really is a fan of mine may have picked up my one and only book that I have out there and if you look hard enough at the book, you'll see that one of the main characters is actually nearly directly pulled out of the Origins video game. - [Danny] Oh, careful, this is fucking EA man! - [Steven] I did not steal their IP, but that was like my main inspiration. It was so good. - [Danny] That's awesome. - [Steven] It was like, you know, the character and the everything just was so great to me that I was like, "I have to create my own version of this and plug it in somewhere", and I ended up doing that. - [Danny] That's right, what's the name of the book? Where can you get it? - [Steven] It's a horrible book, you don't wanna go find it. - [Danny] Hey man, I a 33 year old video game fan. I don't read books, I just buy them and put them on my shelf. - [Steven] That's fair. So the book is called The Finder. You can get it on Amazon still. I got it under my pen name, Steven Rome. Honestly, I hired an editor but the editor really kind of let me down so there's grammatical errors and there's an audio book uploaded to it. I really tried pretty hard and it sold actually pretty well. So I've actually got a screenshot. Back in the day, you could put your Amazon book up to be downloaded for 72 hours for free and I put it up to be downloaded for free and it was downloaded as much as Game of Thrones was bought. - [Danny] Oh wow. - [Steven] So I've got picture of my book right beside George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. - [Danny] That's rad. Yeah I see it here, right here on Amazon. Go pick it up everyone, 13.95 paperback, Amazon Prime, you can have it by the time your next bowel movement comes, that's the way Amazon works now, it's pretty good. - [Steven] Yeah, if you need bad reading material, then... It's so sad too, because it's one of those things. It was a good story in my head and then it's like you can tell there's a certain point in there that I just wanted the book to be done. So I was just like, "You know what, I'm just done with it", and it goes from a very slow-paced book to "Alright, it's done." - [Danny] Steven, I feel like people go their entire lives trying to write their books so do not kill, or kick yourself over the fact that your first novel wasn't exactly what you needed it to be. That's incredible. Are you writing another one? Are you looking to write another one? Are you too busy with AbleGamers stuff? - [Steven] You know, I am super busy, but this is actually AbleGamers' 15th year. So, as I was saying to you privately when I agreed to come talk to you, not only because we're good friends and I wanted to help you launch this thing and if three of my fans will come listen, that'd be great. You know, its one of those things where I'd like to get into the writing and doing some of my own flights of fancy that I've been putting on the back burner for so long because I feel like after 15 years I've put in a little bit of blood and sweat into the cause and now maybe I can do a couple of other things I wanna do before the shot clock quite runs out. - [Danny] Well, I think there'll be a lot of people who would be interested in experiencing whatever you put out there into the universe, so... Let me tell you about this place called Patreon.com and it lets people do their dreams and get funded by the people who want to experience those dreams. - [Steven] Really, I'd never heard of that, Danny! Do you have one of those? - [Danny] Steven, can I ask you some questions from people who pay us money? - [Steven] Nope! I'm out of here, bye everybody. - [Danny] Thank you to Steve for being here. If you wanna get your questions in, go to Patreon.com/Noclip. If you're on the $5 tier you also get this podcast early. You don't get it exclusively. We had some people be like, "Hey, I can't get the podcast" and we had to be like, "No, you literally can't, everything we do is available, except the behind the scenes stuff". But if you're on the $5 tier you get this beautiful podcast early as well as a bunch of other stuff and we put the word out for some questions, we got a bunch of them. I'm gonna ask about two or three of them here. This one's from Matthew Glenn, he said, "What accessibility feature should indies and small teams prioritize when hoping to be more accessible?" Any come to mind? - [Steven] You know, I think the thing about being an indie, and I've had so many great conversations with Rami about this, indies have such a luxury of being flexible. Being an indie developer is super hard, right? It is back breaking work in a mental way. It is blood, sweat, part of your soul going into this game and here I am telling you you have to do even more. To indie developers out there, keep in mind everybody on the accessibility side understands that you didn't need one more thing to worry about, but if you add things like re-mappable keys, you add things like sliders for all of your settings, or allowing people to edit the INI files instead of keeping them hidden or encoded. Allow people to move the game as much as they can, without breaking your game or altering it, ` then let them play it your way and you'll have more sales and you'll have happier customers. It's interesting how some games tackled problems. Let's take, for example, one of my favorite indie games of 2018 called Raft. Raft was a cool little indie game where you basically were on a raft, spoiler! You had to fish junk out of the ocean and build a bigger, better raft that had air conditioning somehow, I don't know. It was a fun game but the settings in it were bare and minimal and when I reached out to say, "Hey, I can't play your game because the mouse sensitivity is very low, you capped it barely above what you'd need to move the mouse across the screen if you got an entire mousepad, not to mention you don't have the ability to re-map, you didn't have stuff like that. And within two days they turned around; they added the ability to map the mouse, the added the ability to uncap the mouse sensitivity. These are all things that don't take developers a lot of time, but if you don't do them, they can lock people out of your games. I happen to be one of the people that gets caught up in those times when you're alienated, so I always recommend, you know, do as much as you can with little effort and things like adding settings and adding re-mapping are often relatively easy, nothing is "easy" in development, but if you do it early in development cycle, it's doable without too much cost. - [Danny] Raymond Harris asked the question, "Have you tried Microsoft's new accessibility controller, if so, what do you like and dislike about it? I mean you guys were involved in the whole R and D aspect of that, is that correct? - [Steven] I was privileged to be one of the people that Microsoft pulled into it first. Me and my co-worker Craig, we were the ones that were asked to come sign some NDAs and check this out on a low key, 'here's a tablet with a drawing on it because our lawyers won't even allow you to look at the real prototypes, so here's what it looks like' kind of thing. Yeah and then from there we brought in AbleGamers and we became an entire organization to help, not just one or two of us, but everybody had a hand in making this thing better, so it was great to get to be a part of that and it's honestly going to go down in my brain as one of the highlights of my career. I had a very small part in personally bringing about a controller that is now available in freaking Walmart. Well, technically the Microsoft Store, whatever. Walmart, Microsoft Store, same difference. I'm definitely not gonna get an angry message from Microsoft PR tomorrow, its fine, right? - [Danny] Matthew Rogers asked the question, "Do you find that people with disabilities often write off video games as a hobby and don't realize that there are organizations like AbleGamers out there?" - [Steven] I do. I think one of the things that my job has become has been fighting against the stigma of being a gamer, let alone having a disability, so, in a lot of ways, 15 years ago when I got into this game and when AbleGamers first started, we were not only fighting for people with disabilities, which, back in the early 2000s and early 90s, was not as welcomed as it is now and neither is being a gamer and both of those had negative connotations on them. If you were a gamer, you're lazy. If you were disabled, you're lazy. We had to fight all these stereotypes and yeah, I think that there are so many companies out there who don't even understand what we do, what I do and my daily operations and what my company does and what even is represented by gamers with disabilities being a part of the world. I don't know that everybody's quite yet aware. I think we're making it so. I think people like Danny are helping us push the narrative into the mainstream that it's not some little niche bunch of people that just wanna play a couple of games, but gamers with disabilities are everywhere. People like Halfcoordinated who are out there on the stage of Games Done Quick, who are out there pushing, me being on award shows pushing. I think we're all doing our parts and I think everybody who is listening can do their part by saying to their friends, to their family whenever the situation comes up, that people with disabilities want to enjoy every hobby, including gaming. I think it's gonna be interesting watching companies get involved more and more as they figure this out. - [Danny] We go back and look at the commercials of the 90s, where the prevalent idea of the teenage boy, the white teenage boy, right? The able-bodied, white teenage boy was the... - [Steven] Straight, able-bodied, white teenage boy. - [Danny] Yeah, lets keep going! Eventually we'll find that gamer. The one that gave birth to us all. Do you find that accessibility and people with disabilities have a place at the table now in a way that they didn't five or 10 years ago, or it is for people like you that are visible, but for most people it's not? - [Steven] Here's the thing. I think that accessibility has come a long way in a lot of ways thanks to the work that has been done at AbleGamers and our allies and our people that care about our narrative, right? There's no question, accessibility is better. Full stop, period, end of sentence. However, to continue the conversation, if you are not somebody that has a high profile, you do not have as good of a chance of things being made accessible quickly. I am extremely privileged, in that if somebody gets a hold of me and says, "I can't play this game because of this feature being in the way", chances are I can get to a developer and say, "Hey, is there something you can do about this?" Sometimes they can do it quickly, sometimes they can't. I've had developers literally, and I will not tell you who, go behind their bosses back and find code and tell me slash commands in engines to get around the accessibility things because the publisher didn't want to deal with the problem and the developer cared enough that they were like, "Just tell them to do this and it'll be fine." Okay, cool, I am super privileged in that I can do that, but there's not a lot of people in my position that can do that and I can't do that for every single person all the time. Everybody at AbleGamers has their people that they can turn to and they can make magic happen sometimes, but there's only so many of us and only so many hours in the day, so you can't do that for everybody. What happens if you're a gamer who can't play a certain game and its because of a feature in a game and there's nothing that can be done until that feature is changed? Well, you can tweet and you can email and you can send a feedback report, but you have to wait your turn, right? So there's definitely a position of privilege there for people like you and me who are in the game industry because we have the right ears. We try to do that honorably. Danny and I try to use our power for good. At least I do, Danny, I don't know... - [Danny] No, no, honestly please don't even say us both in the same sentence because you give me credit that I do not deserve. The work that you've done is literally changing people's lives. Maybe I'm making people smile a little bit, but you're doing some work that is really affecting people in incredibly important ways. - [Steven] I think we all have a different part to play though. I think that everybody who's listening has their part to play. This magnification of positivity that I have turned my "brand" into, if you will, is 100% honesty and compassion. We're all playing a part. I think anybody who's listening to the 75 minutes of this that we've done so far is doing their part by absorbing this information that they might not have known, about the struggles of people with disabilities. They may not have known that these are problems and issues. Now they can watch out for them. Now they can be an advocate. But, to get back to the original question, you do everything that you can and I think that we're in a position that we can make as much change for as many people as we possibly can, but I think that there are minority groups who are very vocal. The LGBT community which, of course, I support and Blacks in Gaming is one of my favorite GDC groups. I support every minority I can because I know my own struggles and while I may not know theirs, I know how difficult mine were and I can imagine and empathize with their struggles and I try to amplify where I can. The problem that I always find, and it breaks my heart, is that I'll see people that I respect so much in the industry, tweeting about how we need to support races, genders and sexualities and then they'll leave out disability and I don't understand why we're still not putting disability on the same level as these other minorities. Because guaranteed every single one of those groups, there's also people with disabilities within that group. So I would like to see when we're all unifying a bit more, to say that my LGBT friends who are disabled need support, my black friends, my latino friends need support. We are all in this together and I think that if we continue to amplify each other, we'll make this battle just a little bit easier. - [Danny] Is that why you make yourself so public? Like, you talked about your brand, right? You don't strike me, I'm not gonna bullshit you, you don't strike me as someone who suffers fools, you've got an incredibly intelligent head on your shoulders and you talk about this like feel-good brand that's really really important. Do you have to be watchful of people who would try to utilize that for their own optics? Like who would try and manipulate or would try and use the feel-good narrative to make their brand look good and then ultimately not really invest in your mission in a way that is substantive? - [Steven] Oh, absolutely. It is a hard and fast rule at my place of work, that no one with a disability is to do work without being compensated in some way. It does not have to financial because sometimes the government frowns upon that kind of thing, so maybe someone who is on government assistance can't take a payment because then that could endanger their insurance, and that we would feel horrible about, so instead maybe they get a copy of the game. Maybe they get a free tablet. Maybe a new webcam, who knows? It's that you don't use people. You utilize their skills, you utilize their experiences, you do not use them. And I think that's something you have to watch out for, and again, just anybody who has followed me so far, or if you plan on following me, Danny knows all too well that I am a lover but I'm also a fighter. If I see an injustice, I will strap on a sword and I'll go to town. I have no problem with picking up the battleax and running into the fight. I am not somebody who thinks the world is rose colored and we can just all love each other because that's the right thing to do. I think sometimes there comes a time where all people must fight. - [Danny] And whenever the battle happens, I'll be, hopefully, standing right beside you, swinging my morning star as well. Steven Spohn, an absolute pleasure to talk to you as ever, my friend. Where can people follow your work? What are you up to? Where can they consume your delicious content? - [Steven]I don't want that advertisement on my phone. My most active place right now is Twitter. I find it's the best place to amplify positive messages to fight some of the darkness; you can find me @StevenSpohn and you can find me on Twitch at the acronym that is my name: SteveInSpawn, like the comic book character, and I stream on twitch five days a week, just trying to showcase that people with disabilities are out there and we're not innocent snow flowers that don't so anything but sit around and watch TV. We're out there playing games, we make dick jokes and we're funny and inappropriate and we're just human beings like everyone else and I'd encourage anyone that has a disability that happens to be listening to the amazing Danny O'Dwyer, that you too should go out and live your life as visibly as you can because that's the only way that we're gonna change the world. - [Danny] Steven, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'd love to have you back on if you're up for it again in the future. - [Steven] I'd be more than happy, Danny. Thanks for having me. - [Danny] No problem. Thank you, as well, for listening, everyone out there. We don't know who's up next week, but if you follow @NoClipVideo on the Twitters, you'll get an update over there. I'm @DannyODwyer on Twitter. If you have any feedback or any ideas for guests, you can also hit up our sub-Reddit, r/Noclip, or if you're a patron there is always a Patreon post you can just jump into, or hit us up on the DMs. The podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, the whole sha-bang. Anywhere podcasts are sold, stick 'noclip' in there and hopefully we'll pop up. We also have a new YouTube channel as well. If you type 'noclip podcast' into YouTube, we'll get that short URL soon enough, but until then if you hit that up, you'll be able to watch, slash, I mean 'watch', it's just a static image, pretty much with some gameplay in the background, but it's up there on YouTube. We also have full transcriptions as well. We don't talk about it very often. We do closed captions on all of our videos, but we actually also provide full transcriptions of the docs if you go to our Libsyn page, so that's like noclippodcast.libsyn.com and there's a link in all the descriptions no matter how you're listening to this and you can go check that out as well. Patrons get the show early. $5 if they're on the $5 tier. Thank you to them for making this ad-free and making it possible in the first place. Patreon.com/Noclip if you're interested in that. I hope, wherever you are, this finds you well. I hope you're enjoying some video games and we look forward to talking to you again on the next edition of the Noclip podcast, next week. See you then.
This week we bring on Steven Spohn and Craig Kaufman from AbleGamers to talk about all the their wonderful work helping the disabled play. We also chat about how they helped the Xbox team create their new adaptive controller and what they are most excited about at E3.
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