Adapting: Working in Games with Chronic Illness

[Music] [Applause] hello everyone and welcome to my talk adopting working in games of chronic illness so as you might have read in the session's description according to the cdc 6 in 10 adults in the us have chronic disease and 4 inten adults in the us have two or more chronic diseases because of these rather large ratios you'll most likely encounter many people living with one or more chronic illness both inside and outside of work so you might be thinking why is it important to talk about working with chronic illness inside of the game development umbrella well as we sort of all know working in games can be quite stressful at times and when you add this on top of dealing with health issues things can sometimes get a bit dicey especially if you aren't sure how to handle working

handle being chronically ill or working with someone who is while also being super busy or stressed at work this can sometimes lead to unwanted conflicts today i hope to give you some ideas of what a person with chronic illness will be going through on a daily basis along with some ways that people with chronic illness might help make their quality of life a bit better in addition to all this i believe that it's important that we have folks with chronic illness and disabilities working in game development we're making games that will be played by a wide variety of different people and in order to create the best most encompassing experiences we need the best most diverse group of folks making our games gaming systems tools and hardware [Music] so my name is victoria doran i've been diagnosed with lupus since my freshman year in college kind of weird to say that is the first thing when introducing oneself but it feels like the right crowd

i'm also a software engineer working on the system side of the playstation system mostly dealing with audio for this talk i wanted to share a bit of my own experiences on working in games of chronic illness i've sort of debated on giving this talk for a few years now and i wasn't really sure if the information would be useful or even wanted but this year i decided it was time so hopefully you all will gain a bit more knowledge of what it's like to work with chronic illness and maybe be able to help out your fellow co-workers with the subject if ever needed even in small ways [Music] so the agenda for today we'll be talking about three main topics the first is letting the cat out of the bag or not should you tell those you work with that you have chronic illness next we'll talk a bit about the work life of a person with chronic illness what are some things that they have to do differently and how can non-chronically ill folks help most

effectively finally we'll be talking a bit about finding support both inside and outside of work along with providing support [Music] so quick disclaimer i'm not a doctor and i'm not trying to give any sort of medically related advice i don't know the answers to all situations and in addition to that most situations aren't one size fits all things will differ with different workplaces or working situations along with any given chronic illness or disability today i'll be speaking mostly on my own personal situations and the situations of folks that i know [Music] so let's begin so letting the cat out of the back do you let the folks who you work with know about your chronic illness or disability quick story time on this so when i first started in the gaming industry i started as an intern turned contractor i didn't really have a lot of symptoms of my health issues at the time maybe

some basic fatigue some pain here and there but nothing too bad or at least i thought i always kind of thought my health condition wouldn't ever get too severe so i've also felt very junior on my team the folks i worked with had been in the industry for quite a long time five ten plus years right i really wanted to show that i was a hard worker and that i could handle anything that was thrown my way my team is a great team still on this team they're awesome shout out um and i really wanted to be offered a full-time position on this team at some point i felt that maybe if i told the folks that i worked with about my health condition they could potentially maybe treat me differently in some subtle or small way in addition to this would i would i'd be able to give the impression that i wanted to give to my coworkers and boss if i told them that my health was a bit flawed i really didn't want to be thought of as a less capable person

because usually i am just as capable as anyone else i just had some bad days or maybe some bad patches sometimes and i really thought about telling folks especially on bad days of course and i always decided against it and this of course happened many times so the biggest portion of my hesitation to talk with folks about my condition sort of revolved around the question of how comfortable i felt talking with my co-workers or managers about the topic and to just kind of talk about gauging comfort levels you can kind of think about how nervous or relaxed you might feel when talking about talking with a particular person about a certain topic you can do things like trying to run through the conversation with this particular person in your head and kind of see how you feel where you kind of land when you begin to talk with a given person about your illness you're letting someone know that you're different in some way and

this can potentially lead to lots of unconscious bias in my case i wanted to make sure that folks used my health health information with care and i didn't really want them running off telling everyone i also didn't want folks to feel sorry for me or looked down upon me because my health because of my health condition i really didn't want folks to think that i was just complaining because my illness itself is quite invisible at least to you know just passing glance i generally if you look at me i don't really look like i have any sort of major health conditions and i didn't want my telling folks that i have a health condition just feel like a complaint [Music] so another big question that you might also want to consider and maybe even more so than the other questions i'll talk about is are there things that folks you work with can do to make your work life easier or better or more efficient if yes then you should let folks know if

you're at least somewhat comfortable i've generally found folks i work with to be very willing to help make my working conditions more suitable to my current health state and we'll talk a bit more about this and some of the potential adjustments to your work life in the next section so during my struggle with deciding whether or not i should tell folks about my health condition i got this really rough case of arthritis in my hands and elbows and pretty much all my joints this sort of flared up after like a really busy week and sinus infection the kind of the perfect storm type scenario and since i hadn't really talked with my boss or many of my coworkers about my health issues yet i had to suddenly find some time and a good chunk of mental capacity to talk with my boss about it which kind of brings us to the next thought or question could it be necessary to inform folks you work with at some point

does your health condition potentially fluctuate to where you might need additional assistance or work adjustments if it does it might be better to inform folks before you hit this rough patch this can lead to a bit less stress when you need to suddenly let folks know that you need to change something at work or even take time off because you aren't feeling or doing well for me i personally felt like i waited too long to talk about my health condition with my coworkers and boss i don't know if i would recommend waiting until you're really down health-wise before letting folks know that you have some health problems that might potentially affect you in a negative way it's mentally very hard on a person to tell someone that you have health issues when you really don't feel well and if you can avoid this scenario i would suggest doing so if at all possible in hindsight i think that i if i would have told folks about my

health condition at an earlier date i could have avoided some of the stress around telling folks about my health condition when i really wasn't feeling well my co-workers could have also helped me come up with some workplace adjustments to help alleviate some of the system symptoms that i was having sooner as well ultimately though with all health related topics this can really depend on your exact scenario different workplaces can affect your decision to let folks know along with how long youth might have been working in a given company or even how senior or junior you feel in the end you have to really do what's best for you and your health if at all possible [Music] so what happens if a coworker lets you know that they have a chronic illness or disability what are some things you can do to help [Music] so first when someone confines it confides in you about their health condition

the the first thing you want to do is acknowledge it let them know that you're there to support them if and when needed if you can assure them that you'll treat this information with care for example not kind of treat them any differently than you would have before you knew the information and you can always let the person know to sort of check you on this as well too you can let the person with chronic illness let you know if you're treating them in any sort of different way at any given point next ask maybe ask a couple of questions if you or they feel comfortable things like how does your illness affect your work life or are there things that you the non-chronically ill person can do to make their work life better or easier potentially even do some research on the topic as well too you have to be a bit careful here because sometimes online resources are not always as accurate as

they should be in addition to this folks with a given illness don't necessarily like explaining their condition over and over again so if you can try to ask your questions once and remember the answers or maybe keep track of them somehow so you don't have to ask them over and over again [Music] finally assist if they request some folks might be okay with asking for or receiving assistance others might not try to be mindful of what works best for your coworkers with chronic illness in addition to this as i said previously asking a chronically ill person how they feel over and over again is maybe not always the best way to go about this and again this sort of depends on the relationship you've built with a given person if they know that you're being sincere then maybe this is okay but yeah as as with a lot of the other things i've said it kind of depends on the given person in the given scenario that you have

um generally though if i'm not feeling well on a given day i will confide in the people that i know are okay um to sort of combine this information and i will let them know right if i'm not feeling well one day i will probably just tell you right and in addition to this um try to be mindful that if someone does tell you they don't feel well on a given day um they're not really just complaining to complain right just keep in mind that some days folks or chronic illness just really don't feel well and this is unfortunately a feature [Music] next the work life of a person with chronic illness there are a lot of different things that might affect the work life of a person with chronic illness since there are so many and this talk is only about 30 minutes i'm just going to talk about a few things that i have dealt with personally and that i believe will apply to the most folks first we'll talk about more doctor's appointments and then we'll talk a little bit about the work environment adjustments i mentioned earlier and

finally we'll talk a bit about varying energy levels [Music] so doctor's appointments this might sound like a bit of a no-brainer to some but folks with chronic illness or disabilities usually have to go to the doctor more more the doctor more often than normal i believe that it's a good idea as the person with chronic illness if you can to set expectations about having to attend doctor's appointments potentially with your direct manager early on if possible and if you don't feel comfortable telling them why you have to go to the doctor more often than normal um i found that most managers won't really pressure you for a why and maybe if they do ask you can either let them know or just say you'd rather not say right now [Music] doctor's appointments are also almost always during working hours especially visits with specialists which is usually the people folks with chronic

illness and disabilities have to visit this means that some days they might the folks with chronic illness on your team might need to leave early or arrive late or even work from home to attend these appointments most efficiently um just some quick tips from my own personal experience about scheduling doctor's appointments during the work day or before or after i usually try if possible to schedule my doctor's appointments at the beginning or the end of the day and this can reduce the amount of time that you need to take off from work or or you know meeting schedules and things like that in addition to that if there aren't really appointments available during those times like if you need to make kind of more of a last-minute doctor's appointment i usually try to work from home on that day and that might be a good option as well so if you have an appointment on in the middle of the day it's sometimes a bit stressful to have to drive from your house to work and then from work to the doctor

and then back to work so to try to kind of reduce some of that stress load i think it's a good idea to try to work from home because doctors appointments can be stressful so my final tip for folks who are working with chronic illness is if you can try to keep your manager up to date with your appointments just to kind of set expectations once again i for myself i like to try to put them into my work calendar if possible especially with travel time and i usually send an email to my my manager so that they can kind of flag it and then the day before i'll usually send an instant message or something like that to my manager to say hey by the way i'll be gone for you know this set of time during the day and sometimes let my team know as well if it might be a time in which they need to contact me so work environment adjustments depending on the given chronic illness or disability there may be a number of different work

environment adjustments needed for a given person to do their job as efficiently and productively as possible sometimes without adjustments working can become very difficult or impossible which can lead to a lot of terrible things like becoming disengaged or even leaving the job and we don't want any of these things if possible sometimes figuring out the correct adjustments for a given person might require some or even a lot of trial and error as a manager or co-worker it's important to be open-minded about trying out some of these adjustments for a given person if these adjustments really help their work life then they'll be much happier and they'll perform better which is what we do want [Music] it's also important to not think of these adjustments as treating the person better than other folks on your team these adjustments are just trying to give the person a better shot at working in an equal environment as your other

co-workers or reports so a few quick examples um that i've encountered myself are first off time of day adjustments for things like meetings or working hours late meetings and or early meetings sometimes at the same time can be quite difficult for folks whose health issues cause them to need extra sleep working long hours can also be very difficult unfolds with certain health conditions meaning they need to leave it a reasonable hour most work days it's important to stress that it's okay if folks need to leave at a reasonable hour especially if they've already worked their eight hours another area that might require some work adjustments involves ergonomics so small things like changing a desk or chair keyboard and mouse can greatly improve the comfort level of folks with some health conditions and these are usually fairly easy fixes though they might take some trial and error

so for example a few summers ago when i was having the arthritis flare up i um i was running into a lot of problems working at a keyboard and mouse all day because i'm a software engineer and that's kind of what i do the first thing my manager suggested was trying to switch out my keyword and mouse for like a new setup maybe a more ergonomic setup i talked to the full some of my friends in i.t and i talked with a few co-workers to try to see if they had any ideas or if they had any um any ergonomic setups that i could borrow and they did so i borrowed some keyboards and some mice and i tried them out and after about a week or two i was able to come up with a solution that helped alleviate a lot of the pain i was having in my hands and especially my wrists so yeah i was very grateful of the help that they provided because i think i i might have been not very comfortable for a while if i had not found some adjustments so again there are so many different

adjustments and that can be necessary for different chronic illnesses or disabilities and it's best if possible to talk through options and find the best solution to each problem [Music] something something out of mana so energy levels may vary something i personally experience with my chronic illness is a wide array of varying energy levels sometimes constantly low sometimes waves so this is fairly common with other chronic illnesses or disabilities including depression um it's very depression itself is a chronic illness right and depression can also be caused by not feeling well so as a co-worker it's important to realize that these low energy days are most likely going to happen and to sort of help your co-workers with chronic illness deal with them as they go this might look something like offering up a bit of help on a low day or asking for help on a high day if

possible and this can be great for both parties is it provides some relief to the low energy energy person and potentially if possible makes the chronically ill person feel good on a day when they actually have a little bit extra energy to give right so low energy can also lead to being overly emotional as you're tired if you can imagine for me this sometimes manifests itself as being grumpy as a person who does experience these energy fluctuations it's important for me to realize when i'm being grumpy and adjust if possible some folks can sort of give me a little nudge in this regard but there are also other folks who might not know about my underlying health conditions and might just see me as being the grumpy person even if i'm only grumpy and interact with them maybe once every couple weeks

right because this is what they see and remember so as a co-worker it's really important to understand that folks with health issues might really not be being rude to you on purpose they might just be having a like a low energy day right [Music] so overall it's important to remember that some days it's going to be easy to function like a normal person as a person with chronic illness and some days it just isn't and there's not really much that can be done to control this right so i try to do what i can on bad days if i can and make up for things on good days also if i can and i also try to control the grump thing it's difficult oh [Music] so finding support if this wasn't already a no-brainer for you dealing with health issues by yourself is hard and if you're dealing with chronic illness or disability i believe it's important to

build a support network and preferably both inside and outside of work if possible [Music] the most important part at least to myself with the support network is sort of finding someone who i can talk with about different uh health related things on a given day right so things like um my doctor's appointment that didn't go so well or how i'm not feeling well one day or the next or a new medication that i'm suddenly like a little bit scared to start taking because side effects different things like this and i personally don't feel like i can just talk with any old person about most of these things is i feel maybe i'll annoy them or just burden them more it's also nice having someone that you can ask things like um is this kind of a normal human feature or is this like i should go to the doctor sort of feature like is this thing supposed to hurt like this um because a lot of the time i kind of feel like i'm just complaining about aches and pains that a normal person can

feel um but i don't really have the privilege of knowing what a normal person feels like most of the time in addition those communities can also be fostered within your office via things like employee resource groups or maybe even just like small groups of folks dealing with health issues or disabilities that meet and talk about different things right if you're someone working with a person with chronic illness or a disability it's important you support them in ways that they want to be supported for some folks this might mean asking how their illness affects the way they work and seeing if you can do something to help improve that aspect of their work life for others it might be just being there for them to vent about a bad doctor's appointment there are also things that you can do to help elevate their voice especially when it comes to things like making their place of work more accessible so in the past i've been asked by folks in sort of upper management type roles about

what they can do to help better support people within the company within their company with chronic illness [Music] the first and biggest step you can take is to create a culture of advocacy most likely not everyone in your company has worked with a person who has chronic illness or does not have a chronic illness themselves the best way for these folks to learn more about what it's like to live and work with one of the many chronic illnesses is to learn about different illnesses and how they may affect a person's work life attending the session is a good first step so thank you all for attending good job it's also important to provide provide opportunities for teaching and this can either be by supporting folks within your company with chronic illness or disabilities who want to talk more openly about their condition or by providing learning and development opportunities centered around working with chronic illness for those in your company

[Music] hopefully this last bit of support you can provide will sort of speak for itself after you've created a culture of advocacy within your company you must advocate for the fact that not all folks especially those with chronic illness or disabilities will be able to work in the same ways that folks without chronic illness or disabilities can work especially with ease and that's completely okay the people who work at your company with chronic illness shouldn't feel like they have to work past their limits because everyone else around them seems fine with working that way or a certain way it's important to make sure that teams carry this mentality as well this means reassuring folks that it's okay to not take the early morning plus late night call one day and again making sure the teams carry this sentiment so the information trickles down from the top and keeps form all the way through right

so these are just a few ways that you can start to provide support for folks in your company with chronic illness from the top down and i hope you'll join me in trying to make our industry as inclusive as possible for folks with chronic illness or disabilities so finally to folks who are working with chronic illness be their advocate support them in doing the best they can with what they have and elevate their voice to folks dealing with chronic illness working in games you can do it we can do it we can make it in this industry though we may need some help along the way but honestly who doesn't don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it even if it isn't from your co-workers or boss i won't lie to you there have been a lot of hard times when dealing while dealing with my health issues and in work

but it's possible to overcome the rough patches it's possible to thrive as a person with chronic illness or disabilities in game development thank you