GDC Summer Live Podcast - Day 1

[Music] hey everybody this is the first uh game developers conference podcast live i am chris graft editor-in-chief of gamma future and uh i'm here with alyssa hi i'm melissa i'm the news editor and associate publisher at gamasutra and i'm really weirded out by doing this on video it's really weird yeah yeah it is it is weird we don't usually like we see each other um you know just like in meetings and stuff like that but um now i'm it's like i'm actually talking to you and the art of like face-to-face conversations um is it's rusty for me let's just talk each other through it yeah so so this is actually episode 12 of the podcast so that means that's like it's like one everyday one a month

it's like one years for a year this is a one year of one year of podcasting so uh uh let's just let's just do the uh hey how's your show going it's going great um been very busy it's uh amazing that uh online event can kind of capture that same kind of like i'm constantly behind feeling as uh the regular gdc does for me uh i'm bad at scheduling so it's on me but like it's about the same kind of like heart rate throughout yeah yeah yeah the thing too though is that if you're running late for something it's not like oh i'm in moscone west and i need to be in south yeah you don't have to power lock up an escalator yeah yeah and then show up at like the session completely like sweaty and stuff so um although i'm getting a little sweaty from this uh you know it's the anxiety of podcasting my podcasting we can't edit this i don't know about that right right yeah this is edit this is edit free so if you ever listen to gdc podcast on uh itunes spotify

and uh youtube when we feel like yeah yeah youtube google play um you can go check us out there but yeah you'll find out just how much editing goes into this no we always 100 flawlessly execute our sentences oh yeah yeah sorry it's always first take um so i'm also noticing this that uh there are people in chat which i didn't even consider uh that in the swap card app hello everyone uh this is totally a recording uh no it's not really this is actually live uh so hello everybody in chat this is totally new for us thanks for uh coming on here uh yeah i'll try not to look at that and uh look at that too much so we actually have an amazing guest here do you think that we should yeah we have no gdc announcements to do because gdc is about so we can get right to the meet no there's no morning announcements this

time so we can just it's like yeah we got you here the content marketing works let the content rain let's introduce a guest the marketing is done in mathematics okay um now here we are um we do have a guest and and we're excited uh so i'm going to uh to uh introduce here so you're ready to do it live okay our next guess is lead games user researcher at the ablegamers charity he has a bachelor's in psychology i don't have that was a research assistant in the libra center for schizophrenia at the new york state psychiatric institute for six years that's a mouthful and it sounds prestigious uh an advocate for accessibility in the game industry and he's led talks workshops and consultations with tech

companies that you might have heard of google oculus avalanche activision and there's also microsoft where he worked he did some consulting on the xbox adaptive controller which is a super cool thing uh so let's go ahead and and bring him on right about now and unmuted let's welcome greg haynes that was an intro and a half like i don't even know what to say after that i should just like leave right now yeah thank you so much for that intro that was great yeah thank you so much for joining us that's that's what we like to do uh all the fanfare right away poppies in the background yeah yeah and then just bring the person on and just make them super duper humble yes um yes expanding as we speak i know you seem very cocky did you miss any notable achievements anything else you want to kind of brag about a little bit i mean i think

you got it outside of my social security number i think you got my entire history yeah what is that then the closing comments yeah right so like accessibility uh that's a topic in games i was very important one uh you personally what prompted your interest in game accessibility why are you such a big advocate for that um that's a really that's a really interesting question um i mean for starters uh just coming out of the the farmer research realm i really wanted to combine my love for gaming and my love for psychology and helping people essentially find well-being through um gaming experiences uh and i happen to to meet uh the uh the founder and executive director uh mark barley and uh our uh our director of community craig kaufman um at a convention a few years ago and we just hit it off and you know when they were talking to me about game accessibility i was like this is it like this is the way that i

can combine those two loves like at the end of the day being knowing how important games are to me and and seeing uh the impact that gaming has made on my life and the connections i've been able to make uh whether it was content creation or or making like lifelong friends uh you know i felt that there if there's a community out there that's unable to experience that for whatever reason and i can change that somehow then it then it was my my duty and my calling if you will to to indulge that you can get into it in your intro but uh how long have you been with ablegamers now i've been with ablegamers since the beginning of 2018. since the beginning of 2018. so two years you've done all you've been doing like only a couple years yeah i mean you have to factor in pandemic time too so it's been roughly 15 years yeah i'm running up my pension right now it's it's looking good well done now before we get more into it you know

there is a lot of talk about accessibility in games but it's kind of a word that's thrown around a lot and maybe not everybody quite understands what it means so as an expert in this field uh what does accessibility mean to you how do you define that oh you know i think accessibility you're right because there's definitely you definitely see accessibility used in the context of like is this game something that a consumer will enjoy but in terms of uh game accessibility and uh essentially uh opening up the the gaming sphere for people with disabilities we're talking about being able to remove barriers to play um for anyone right it's not even just people with disabilities it's anyone who might have a barrier um to play um and it goes from being able to boot up a game and being able to just interact with the game and we'll talk more about that later um and also being able to encounter the the challenges uh that you encounter in a game and being able to surpass those challenges to make progress

um to ultimately have a fulfilling experience an experience that you want to have um so i i i guess in short game accessibility is really being able to break down the barriers uh to play um as you engage with the these game worlds that uh creators are creating like i'm stealing this uh this phrasing from somewhere i read recently but there's like the idea that game design is like creating barriers for people this might have been like something i read in your bio and then just like repurposing it but like uh so how do you kind of coach people through or work with like devs who are i think accessibility might be at odds with like creating challenge or something along the way yeah that's a that's a huge huge issue because what you're talking about there is like the perception of game difficulty right like yeah you know we've seen that debate play out time and time again just in the past few years of like what makes this game like i want to make this game hard like is it does that mean it's not accessible um and there's there's sort of a misconception i think within the community uh that anybody asking for accessible features

wants their game to be easy and i think that's that's sort of a disservice to the experience that anybody who plays the game wants to have and that's that we all including people with disabilities including what i've seen in the research that we've done with ablegamers um the the disabled community does want challenge in their games um they don't want their games to be easy per se but challenge is relative right like what's hard for me might not be hard for you right so yeah at the end of the day it's being it's being able to tune the challenges that they encounter in games in order to be able to surpass those barriers and again to make progress um so when it comes to uh game difficulty you know uh simply you know talking about easy mode or you know uh having a mode that's you know explorer mode or whatever it it may be isn't it's not the entirety of the conversation it's it it could be part of it but i think game difficulty and challenge really uh really amounts to to having the options to tune challenge the way you need to be

so that you're getting the right amount of uh i guess resistance to your progress but not so that it's just this thing that you're not able to enjoy because what's unique to games versus like let's say like web accessibility right like web accessibility you don't want interaction with the website to be hard right when you jump on amazon.com you don't want to be you know you put like i don't know like anything in your car i'm going to say capri suns because i was just talking about that today i'm supposed to have three suns get out of my car i don't want a challenge when i order some free suns i don't want like a a an amazon you know gremlin to pop out well then maybe you're not a true gamer i mean and you know we laugh about it but that's kind of the argument that that's out there right which is yeah you know you won't you're not a gamer if you don't want some sort of challenge and at the end of the day it's relative some people want different things and what we're talking about when we talk about like gaming accessibility in the context of challenges being able to create the environment the challenge environment that you want to create

and that doesn't mean that the current means of of game difficulty don't exist right like you can still have your your hardest hardcore modes but how i play doesn't affect how the next person plays and how the person after that um so in terms of coaching uh you know through coaching developers in terms of the conversation around difficulty it's really about presenting options for people um you know it's we kind of have this this this concept in the community where you know people want to marshal over the way other people play and it's like you know are you in my house playing the game like what how do you what does it matter to you how playing the game now again when you're talking about things like multiplayer right like that's where something where you know you might think well what if it's easy for this person and i'm playing on the hardest mode or whatever and i'm like well there's there's optional matchmaking there's things where we call that house rules in the ablegamers community you know where you can tune the rules for online engagement so you're playing with other people who want to play the same way

that you want to play um so there's definitely a multitude of answers uh for something like that but i think i think game difficulty is a contentious uh conversation to have and uh yeah you know it's one of those things where it's like let people game the way they want to gain do you think it's fair to put it like this like um it's about giving access to a wide range of people with different abilities giving them access to the challenges that the game designers intended question mark i mean it's not i don't think again you know i don't think game developers need to change their vision per se right what yeah that's that's yeah i'm just saying right that's what i mean that's exactly what you're saying right like you can keep the same world that you want to create just allow people to tune the elements of it that they want because ultimately if you know we look at the current landscape of game difficulty right let's say you have your standard easy

medium arc right if i want to play it on hard mode i'm going to play on hard mode if you're going to play an easy mode you're going to play on easy mode um and the interesting thing about it is you know always i always kind of talk to people about this which is as a gaming community as a community we accept whatever definitions a developer has determined for easy medium medium hard we accept it outright like we just choose one of those and we just go with it and we don't really question what that is right because easy in in one game isn't necessarily easy in another game you know there are different factors at play um and and what we're asking here is is really to have the ability to to to edit those things like you see like sliders and games like uh on um uh the last of us part two um had difficulty sliders or challenge ladders uh tomb raider is another uh franchise that lately has been doing those difficulty sliders that allow people to tune what aspects of the game they want to be more difficult or less challenging and ultimately like it again if you want to default to to easy medium hard which those modes

which those games also have they also have those default modes that are developer so to determine you could jump into that and you can play those modes if you want but if you want the other way of going about it then you can do that too and as a community like we all like we always see talks about options like we all want options consumer options like it is consumer friendly and frankly it's good usability to give a user options in terms of how they want to engage with the content you're presenting no one's going to be hurt by like having more options and more ways to choose how they want their experience to be except the so-called marshalls that i mentioned earlier yeah that are trying to govern how i want to interact with the game this is kind of like uh what you guys have done with the accessible.games is there a fancier name for that probably that i'm getting wrong no that that's that's the name of the site it's a really cool portal i i covered it when you guys launched it at first there's just like so much like free accessible information about accessibility there and how devs can like roll that into

their games um how involved were you in the creation of that is it like your baby or uh is it my baby um wow now we're now we're getting into the galaxy child support questions uh i mean it is i you know it is it is our team's baby did i have a role in it yes i had a very big part in accessible.games uh including the accessible player experience uh design tool um that we created um base it's based on user research based on this uh program uh research from this program um we have called player panels uh which is uh an assemblage of people with disabilities players with disabilities who have provided feedback about uh the way they wanna play with games um and we turn those into uh to design patterns i speak a lot about what i'm speaking about right now um where it operates on an access level which is getting people around what's called the uh the player feedback loop um so basically access barriers stop people from interacting with the game and taking out information from the game and access solutions would help you

navigate those barriers and then on the second level challenge um which is essentially what i mentioned earlier helping people progress through the game helping people uh not just encounter some of the com some of the challenges they might have in like combat or progression but also emotional challenges right like sometimes they might be content that you can't engage with um a great example of that is you know you see gore settings in games you see games that sometimes allow you to turn off mature language um so anything on that level operates in the challenge fear and anything that allows people to get through that cycle get through that player feedback loop and substantially progress with the game is what we call an accessible player experience um so all of that is is unacceptable about games including uh you know anyone who might have a disability who plays games who wants to be part of the player finals program um currently we have registration halted uh due to covet 19 but uh you know we uh we usually have a portal there for people to be able to register and sign up for that program which is currently sent out about 600

players um right now thank you and uh right now in the works uh we have a research portal that we're trying to set up that'll show some of the research studies that we are we've already come out with just have it housed there in one spot so that any developer can come and check out some of the work we've done i do want to go over here and uh and uh look at chat real quick because uh some people are using the uh the question function and uh yeah let's uh let's ask this one uh from misha samoridin and sorry if i pronounced that incorrectly uh how much do you advocate for accessibility with people with autism and asperger's is there funding opportunities for those wanting to create experiences for this audience do you have any insight on that greg so just just so i'm clear uh funding opportunities for anyone wanting to do development uh for uh neurodiverse folks and was the other part was the first part of the question um

how much do you advocate for accessibility for uh for those types of situations sure so i mean uh you know at the end of the day you know we we kind of have to get to a point where we're respecting and acknowledging um both the physical side of disabilities and also the the cognitive and mental side of disabilities as well so i very much we very much advocate for uh not just addressing some of the physical barriers that people might have to play um but also some of the cognitive barriers some of the mental health barriers um that folks have to play um you know we're speaking about challenge a lot of the sort of interactional barriers that get in the way of progress usually happen for a lot of a lot of folks who uh you know have mental health difficulties or are neurodiverse people with physical disabilities experience that as well but that is something that certainly uh operates for for folks who have you know those mental difficulties as well as access issues too sometimes you know you're looking at a game you're just like there's too much information here you know i might have a learning

disability and i might need to turn off some of the information because it's coming at me too there's too much coming at me at once so i think uh very much so we should we should keep in mind that it's not just about people who have physical disabilities um it's also about folks who uh you know maybe have a disability that you can't physically you know uh see or comprehend um without talking to them um in terms of funding opportunities that's a really great question i don't personally know if there are any funding opportunities um like grants i i assume the person's is talking about um i don't think there i don't know if there are any funding opportunities in that respect that's not really my area of expertise um but you know i can say that you know there there's a sizable population of people with mental health difficulties that could benefit from from games uh being more inclusive in that respect um and uh that is that's even a a population that's represented in our player panels program um because it's important for us to to

cover the full landscape of of disability um which is very much inclusive of people who have neurodiverse diagnoses and mental health conditions now if i'm a small game developer i don't have a lot of time and resources uh like and i'm just like you know what accessibility just isn't a priority for me uh do you have you know an argument you know that that counters that yeah i mean that's one of those tough ones where where you hear you you kind of rage inside because it's like there's there's always time you know i mean i mean but but i understand where they're coming from and and and to that i'll say um that's part of the work that as an organization we're trying to do um where we're trying to inform the community uh about ways that they can uh move accessibility to the to the earlier stages of development um the accessible player experience

design patterns that i uh mentioned earlier they're available for free on uh accessible dot game slash apx um it's something that you can view freely and what it does it is it presents accessibility problems that people might encounter um in a problem solution format so um let's say for example uh we have a design pattern called second channel right so one of the problems or the problem for second channel is people can't take in the information you're trying to to relay to them through the particular modality that you've chosen right so that's a lot of words and when you hear that you're like what is this do you talk about but a great example might be like uh the information in the cutscene right let's say like you know uh voiceovers and a cut scene right so that's one modality you're presenting a cut scene visually and you're presenting uh the audio and that cut cut scene through you know what means on your channel so a way to articulate a cut scene or at least the dialogue coming from a cut scene another modality or channel would be to

have subtitling that way there's now a visual visual modality in addition to that audio modality um you know when we're talking about visuals sometimes we'll see some game trailers um like everwild i think had a game trailer uh where it was completely in audio descriptions so like the trailer was presented visually but the the whole thing was audio described so someone who has a physical disability visual disability could perceive the entire thing you know from that perspective so um what those design patterns do is they identify a problem like that and they present a solution which is present information through additional modalities so by tuning a developer's thought processes that way it helps them think about game mechanics that they might want to implement their game early on and some of the barriers or problems that people with disabilities might encounter um so the idea there is you're able to think about disability while without thinking about specific diagnoses right you're able to come out a few levels and think okay

how might someone who has a visual disability deal with this feature that i'm including this game how might somebody with an auditory disability encounter this feature uh that i have in the game how about a physical disability um and so on and so forth um so that was really important to us to be able to create this resource um because currently every a lot of the the industry is guideline focused and guidelines aren't they're not a bad thing they're really useful uh for checking once you've created a game right like it's really helpful to be like okay i've got this feature check check mark it's great but the the difficulty with uh guidelines is they don't really tell you how to do it or how to do it well right they don't tell you how you're supposed to implement a future it just tells you that you should have it there are best practices that are you know guidelines can be inclusive of but ultimately they they get so robust right like you know current guidelines right now like they say that

you know you're talking about dozens and dozens of options that you have to make sure are in your game without telling you how to improve that and then it comes like a checklist than like design decisions at that point is what it sounds like right exactly so with with apx and and the way that we're trying to shift design thinking is we're trying to think of the person first versus the versus the technology we're trying to put the human being first um and essentially with with apx you're thinking about problems or barriers that people might encounter and in the process of developing your game thinking about solutions that help you ideate but don't tell you how to design your game it tells you what barriers might people might encounter and allows developers to think reflexively right and ultimately what is it what it does is it encourages generative design um so in terms of uh you know smaller developers that's sort of one aspect of it the other aspect of it is the financial aspect of it um you know people with disabilities in the united states um have about 21 billion dollars in

discretionary income right that's like after they've paid their bills and they're like yo this is this is party time money what do i have what can i spend it on it's 21 billion dollars and to put that in perspective that's more than the black community and hispanic communities combined black community has about 3 billion the spanish community has about 16 billion in discretionary income so there's a financial factor to that as well and with 46 million potential players with disabilities in the united states you're talking about a huge player base that you can tap into as a smaller developer um and there are other examples of independent independent developers uh including accessibility in their games you know you've got you've got celeste uh infernium way of the passive fist uh hypno space outlaw uh hyper dot there's like a a bevy of games they're now including that and ultimately the industry is changing um the industry is changing and uh if you're not able to adapt you know

people aren't gonna be able to play your game um and ultimately you know that's sort of the decision you have to make um and i it's tough to think about this way but not every single game is always going to be accessible but we have to start somewhere we have to start thinking about things like subtitling we have to start thinking about things like remapping because as with all technologies we have to start somewhere we have to start somewhere and there are too many people being left out to not even think about starting somewhere so that we can ultimately progress the industry to the place we needed to be i know with uh the last of us part two had like that amazing array of just accessibility options focused at so many different areas of need and um they talked about how it started with the uncharted game that i don't remember the number of uh prior to that and they're like oh these are foundations we set up by building accessibility options into this game and then we were able to iterate on them and just build their feedback and just from already having those foundations lay i just accelerate this into this really cool thing right so like just getting out there and

doing the even the basic so you can kind of learn and iterate and do more later on seems to be beneficial yeah and and you know to that point i mean um you know we talked about the player panels program which a developer is free to submit a project to player panels if you need feedback from players with disabilities again we have 600 players you can submit a project to let them let us know what type of feedback you want you want to get from your game the only thing we ask is that those players are compensated for their time um you know we have to set up minimum rate for the amount that players are paid we don't take anything from that it's completely you paying the players that are involved in it and you know that minimum rate you know is is at minimum it's ten dollars for 20 minutes of work or 25 dollars for an hour work so you guys pay people for stuff like that because there's a lot yeah i mean it's not even i was paying them it's it's the developer yeah i can but you know when it comes down to it right like let's say you you create a survey or a gameplay play session that's an hour long and you're like all right you're like i want to get 10 people with disabilities to give me

feedback on their gameplay experience right 25 times 10 people was 250 she talked about 250 for accessibility feedback at minimum right like at the end of the day and again going back to the numbers i said to you before you're talking about tapping into 21 billion dollars of discretionary income so like you can make a small investment now to make your game more accessible and ultimately you'll iterate and become better at that going forward right so and again the space is changing also people our age right like i don't know about you but like i'm 30 years old i want a game until like until like the the the angels start singing for me like i'm hopefully angels uh you know hoping that pitchforks that was a pitchfork um but you know i'm trying to start i'm trying to play for the rest of my life but we all know that as time progresses you have age-related disabilities right and even things that we don't often think about as disabilities right your site might go right yeah maybe your

reflexes aren't as good right we're a product we're a huge gaming generation when we're older the industry we want the industry to be able to cater to us i don't i mean i don't i don't i don't want to be zoomers that take over the gaming face and i'm like hey what about me like i'm a millennial i'm trying to gank too games all i got i'm broken i got debt i need games you know so like it's it's important for us to think about accessibility in that respect because the industry's changing yeah and i'm 40. so i've got like a decade on you uh i'm going to be hitting those uh i'm going to be needing some of that stuff uh i'll tell you right now you shocked the hell out of me when you told me you were 40 just now like i hit it well like i internalized it oh you know what i do i found out the video option zoom i can uh touch up yeah i'm actually the gray hair just goes away [Music] the hair appears i need whatever lotion you got whatever you're using man let me

get some of that it's called house filipino i think but um i'm gonna go to chat real quick um for becky grady getting a decent amount of likes on this question so earlier you said no one's getting no one's going to be hurt by more options um and becky points out in ux though there is often a balance of not making it too complicated or some maximum where it could become too overwhelming to customize at all how do you make sure you're providing the needed options without going so far that it's too hard to navigate that is a well thought out question yeah that's a wonderful question um and ultimately it comes down to player testing um you know you want to bring in players that you can source this information with and obtain data as a ux researcher as a ux designer you know that feedback is going to be the way that uh you obtain this information and when it comes down to the menus and options that people are navigating on you're right like that could become overly complex very easily um you know i

know for example like sometimes you know you'll jump into like mmo and the amount of menus you're presented with it's like fam like i feel like i'm doing my taxes right now i don't know what's going on like there's a lot of terms and numbers here so you know the way to to really navigate that is player testing and user testing um ultimately i can't tell you what the right menu settings are but i sure can tell you that if you source about five to ten people and you ask some questions about their experience navigating the menu chances are you'll see certain issues rise to the top you'll probably see the same five issues rise to the top in terms of uh how people are navigating things um and ultimately when you source those questions when you do that research which also takes time and also takes resources not trying to downplay that but when you do that when you take that time you do that research that's something that's gonna gonna rise to the top and ultimately player testing user testing that has to become a bigger part of the industry right now it's simply it's simply it's necessary um because you're

putting out a product and you don't know how people are going to feel about it if you're not testing it yeah just to kind of segue this into this question uh from gabe poshner sorry offshore which probably is related to what you just said uh you know they asked what do you recommend for projects that may not have even 250 dollars for accessibility feedback is that just you know going to you know having people do your favor and play test your your product your game or something yeah i mean what i what i'll say is you know first there are resources like accessible.games to check out um the other thing i'll say is there's plenty of news articles and things about uh games that have a good good accessibility features that you can check out uh can i play this um there's a great website that uh talks about um you know gaming accessibility in various games um and you can use those games to help inform how you're gonna design your game um i'm not trying to make this make it seem like this is an easy thing to do um but you know when i talk about there

being 21 billion dollars in discretionary income with people with disabilities there being 46 million people with disabilities uh you know in the in the us with with the world health organization estimating that there are two billion people uh in on the planet that identify as having disabilities so that's not even counting people who don't identify as having disability um you're talking about a huge uh population that is gonna want access to these experiences especially as we you know we we move to almost three billion players uh on the planet that play games there's you're bound to be overlapped with people who have disabilities um as well so um you know really and truly what it is is is it's a value proposition and um you know when it comes to not having the resources to to do something like that i totally understand that um but you know doing things like betas also help to get feedback as well because you can see how people are interacting with your game um but ultimately time and research and

the same thing in the same way that you've studied to do uh you know to learn how to design a game accessibility is something that is it's it's it's it's here to stay it's happening and you know unfortunately uh there are our folks that have not realized that and are lagging behind but we have things like the cvaa um the uh 21st century uh communications and uh video accessibility act it's a mouthful um that legally says that certain people need to have access to these experiences um and other countries around the world they're also starting to adapt things like that too so it's the landscape is changing from a legality perspective perspective it has changed from a financial perspective and the numbers of people that you can uh you know potentially have access to has increased as well and continues to increase so you know the world is changing the landscape is changing and uh you know hopefully we'll be able to to do what we can as an organization and i mean ablegamers to alleviate that

and that that's part of the research that we're doing to try and put out there too to change that landscape because we know it's hard and we know it's difficult so um what we need to do now is what we're going to okay how can we do this we'll swit we'll switch over we're going to switch over to uh basically a word from our sponsor uh a pre-recorded uh interview that that we did and uh but when that's done uh greg is going to come back with us and there's going to be two more gamma suture editors uh really engaging banter about current gaming yeah yeah no but we can we can keep on talking to greg too after that so um if we could um roll that beautiful bean footage is that no it's like the uh yeah so um we're gonna go ahead and switch over to that right now and we'll be back in about 10. up next we'd like to welcome one of our

sponsors barack wardell ceo and co-founder of istanbul based hyper casual mobile game publisher rolex purveyor of chart topping games including go nuts 3d and tangle master 3d and before rollick barak was at mobile advertising company ad colony as head of growth and client solutions in charge of the emea and latin america territories hey barack how's it going all good all good chris good thanks for joining us appreciate it so uh for those who aren't familiar can you tell us a little bit about relic and what you do there actually rolex is a hyper-casual developer and publisher based in istanbul so we're working with third-party development partner studios to develop hyper-casual games and also we have an internal studio that we produce on our own hyper casual games and we are in istanbul and we are controlling an ecosystem of almost a thousand developers and

designers oh wow and uh what do you do there personally i'm the ceo so i'm managing the on daily basis i'm managing business publishing and product teams of the company and can you tell us about some of the more successful games that relic has published yeah actually until uh august we we've published uh 30 games in total and i think almost 20 of them was the became the most downloaded game in united states and actually in q2 in a in the period of april may and june uh rolex developed the most downloaded top two games of united states app store going out 3d and tango master 3d so i think those are the latest big ones so i can tell those as an answer yeah great and i feel like this genre is kind of off of a lot of people in the game industry's radar so can you

define what you think a hyper casual game is yeah actually in the industry there are a lot of talks about the generals and there and there's like they're creating new genres like super casual hybrid casual track casual we mainly don't believe those a lot so we believe that there are certain rules of game design that you can apply to the mobile game do you have at that moment but of course hyper casual is a big and popular genre so i can define an hyper casual game is as a simple mechanic giving a huge fun for the society and also the the main uh the main point of an hyper casual game is it should be played by everyone without any genre uh gender age or anything it should be a mass appealing game and a successful one yeah yeah can you can you describe uh the gameplay of like go nuts for example so that they're kind of like very tactile

seeming right yeah actually actually the fun moment of that is untying the knots right so there are tight knots and you're trying to untie them with the simple short mechanic you use it's same with the tangle master so in the tangle master you also try to break the ropes and then try to have a clean level end so it's a very simple fun but it's very satisfying when you achieve the win uh in the level so it's a very simplistic mechanic and a simplistic game design but gives a huge uh satisfaction and fun to the user so that's uh actually that's what an uh successful hyper-casual game is yeah it's almost like uh therapeutic uh now relic has seemed to gain a lot of traction pretty quickly as uh you know rock is still a young company so what do you attribute the fast growth to

yeah actually we are an 18 month old company so we are very young in terms of the history of rolex but i think the biggest value over there is in hyper casual many of the publishers are acting like performance marketing companies and many of the developers are acting like outsourced development but in rolex community we are we have a huge gaming culture so i think the value of success and without like measuring the timeline of the company i think the biggest value there is having the proper game component product culture in whatever you do in your business so if it's hyper casual if it's casual it's it's the same for every game production so i think uh the the reason rolex succeeded this fast is the hirings and the culture of the team in terms of gaming not like performance marketing or outsourced development we have a big gaming culture and in every day in rolex office the only topic is the games our team is

playing or we are producing actually and you work very closely with the developers right mm-hmm yeah so when uh you are collaborating on games with them what are uh some of the design principles that you adhere to when you're guiding your development partners yeah actually um we are partnering our developers from brainstorming level of the idea to the scaling part so there's a huge story over there we are fast so we are preparing a game to its launch in mostly in one month maximum but in the in the meantime we are covering a lot of details about the game together like in the first prototype we always try to coach them in terms of how many levels do they need to test the game properly what should be the exact mechanic of the game or what should be the progression look like when we are producing the game after games show a potential in the in the metrics we test then comes the updates updates are like

bigger schedules for the game that we are giving the feedbacks to the studio in terms of every detail of the mechanic every detail of every level we produce so we are trying to be as clear and as uh transparent as we can in terms of the idea they are producing and also but the thing we don't coach or don't tell them is the execution quality and the development they do so that should be coming from the studio as an uh as a know-how and as an experience but the rest of the game the design parts like level design like progression like characters and like the general color palettes of the game are all coached by rolex twitch studio partners during the production period and roika also is involved in something interesting called the relic hub can you talk about that a little bit yeah actually so we know the physical value when we're producing games together with our partners in especially in hyper casual because these

games doesn't have like detailed game design documents they don't have a big background on that moment you think of an idea and if your studio partner is a quality partner they will be probably able to develop that mechanic in like three hours right so when they when you have those partners in your office working every day with you then you are able to try more mechanics new designs etc so something comes up to your mind you talk on that moment and you develop and play it right away and check the feeling of the game so rolex hubs is the idea of being getting product like keeping the uh in the soul during production but also doing a very successful business together with our partners so we are providing them shared shared offices in our istanbul hq and in ankara the capital of turkey and soon in izmir the third biggest city and we are producing together with our studios on daily basis and this wood shop it was a huge release

from our game up and also latest release fast driver which is the first first person driving game of hyper-casual history was also a game from our game very cool and just to wrap things up for game developers who are looking to get into this hyper casual mobile space do you have any advice that you could give them yeah actually i think uh first advice is always courage so don't don't be afraid but don't uh confuse of producing prototypes with releasing successful games so in hyper casual uh producing prototypes looks relatively easy compared to really releasing a huge upper casual title so every day you need to do better execution better ideas and you need to continue testing and in terms of your partners choose your partners very well if you're a developer please choose a proper game artist as a game designer as a partner or vice versa if you're a

successful game artist find a good developer partner that you can pair with you don't need like 10 people to produce a proper hyper casual game three four people will be enough and i think choosing the right partners is the key over there to make a sustainable and future proof ecosystem in hyper casual industry that's great well barack thanks so much for joining us and best of luck and thank you very much chris it was a pleasure thank you and we're back and found a few more people somewhere there's more people here now we decided that uh greg was too lonely he needed to be confronted yeah yeah we've got we've got the uh the normal uh hoodlums from gamasutra uh bryant francis hey bryant hi i'm not a hoodlum i'm a highwayman you're all good and then uh alex awarrow

oh i'm interested in that correctly you nailed it and here i am in standard hoodlum attire let's go yeah let's do it i want to keep on talking to greg because whatever about you guys all right so later no but but um greg um first of all thanks for sticking around for the bean footage pleasure and then uh but you announced something very developer-centric which i think would be appropriate for here uh your yes d-pad yes yes so uh the d-pad initiative actually launched today um says for developers promoting accessibility and diversity uh in the space and uh really what d-pad is about it's about giving people uh free access to um the ablegamers practitioner course um so that's a course that we developed um to fund our mission and also to teach developers about accessibility normally the course is priced at two thousand dollars for a seat um it's a two-day course extensive course that goes into

how to use the free tool that we present on uh accessible.games um how to win uh the the the sort of arguments around accessibility uh in your respective uh you know companies how to establish a culture and community of accessibility uh in your companies and ultimately to just coalesce around more accessible design thinking generative accessible design thinking um so d-pad is something that sort of emerged um out of our our our need to to do something in the community um to bring improved inclusion in the space um you know this year in particular um we've seen so much happen um from a diversity perspective that really reflects how far we need to go um how far we've come but also how much further we need to go in order to to have an inclusive safe space not just in the gaming community but you know in the the larger uh you know environment as a whole and on our planet in our country and our planet um you know from the notion that black

lives matter from the truth that black lives matter not even the notice of the truth that black lives do matter um the fact that there are trans folk trans folks uh experiencing extreme violence and and losing their lives because of of their chosen identity the the things that we've seen women have to endure in the gaming industry um from a a discrimination and from a uh just inappropriate behavior standpoint we realize that the the only way to really to really change the industry is to start changing it on the on the developer side of things to start changing those environments and ultimately create cultures there that are inclusive and hopefully make games that are inclusive and representative of the people that are playing these games people of color uh people with disabilities uh women uh people that you know are members of the lgbtqia community um so with d-pad we want to create an initiative where an initiative where we

can essentially have developers who are interested in taking that course and learning about accessibility developers from diverse backgrounds such as the one that i just mentioned apply to this course um to apply to this program to be able to to join up and get a free session of the course um so if you head over to ablegamers.org d-pad um you'll find the application there um you can submit the application super short um we want to keep it concise because we realize people people about to spend two days with us potentially doing this course so we don't want to have you spend too long on the application um and yeah just uh just apply and join up you have nothing to lose if you're if you're from you know a marginalized group uh you know apply um we definitely want to see you and we definitely want to hear from you um and you know from from my experience um you know as a black man in this environment i realized that there there's so much there's so much inequality and hatred towards groups that don't deserve it um these are things that we can't change

and even if we could we wouldn't it's who we are and i say we when i when you know i speak about you know my blackness you know and obviously i don't want to speak for for other groups that i don't necessarily identify as but i know that we all are the way we want we are um and and we we embrace that and it's the way it is and we need to to make sure that the community opens those doors um for for those people to feel welcome uh this community is an amazing community but it has an ugly side the gaming community has an ugly side to it and we got to stomp that out like it's enough is enough already so it's we got to get rid of that and i hope that that d-pad can start making uh you know making that progress um towards towards alleviating some of the the the biases that are in uh you know the game development space um and sort of improving the numbers so that there's less of the sameness that we currently see uh in the gaming environment um so that other voices can be elevated

and other experiences can be can be shared and told is there even anything else to be said you've got like eight minutes left and like that is straight up mic dropped and that's uh beautiful and you know to it it goes you know just the fact that you know the uh the concept of accessibility goes you know beyond just a lot of people think oh i'm you know helping disabled people uh play games which that's part of it but uh there's it's it's woven into all the things that you're talking about yeah and and we want we want developers who have disabilities to apply to this program too because that's another stigma in the space right now which is oh we don't know how to hire people with disabilities and i'm like like there are plenty of people that are out there that have disabilities that want to be developers or want to work on the game gaming side of things um you know we've seen uh we've seen cherry thompson uh you know get get hired at ubisoft which is an amazing hire hi cherry if

you're listening uh you know he's in chat yeah so yeah oh what up terry uh uh you know so cherry you know is an example of bringing uh folks who have disabilities who are vocal about their disabilities who are expressive about their disabilities and the experiences that the game industry needs to start like changing their minds towards you know hiring people that have these experiences it's an important part of making sure that this this community can grow um and you know and i'll be honest with you too like it benefits these companies you're trying to make money to to to to have other people in the community you know what i mean like it's it's not an altruistic thing i know to include other people you know in order to to grow your your business so like it doesn't hurt anybody but bigots honestly so your perspectives make better games i mean i i couldn't have said it better you know and i i hope to see that i hope to see d-pad you know be the uh be the the starter for that in terms of

what we could do on our end you know we're not we're not nike you know we can't give out a hundred million dollars towards a towards a specific movement um because ultimately anybody who decides to support our organization uh you know they've chosen us to be cons custodians of of the money that they've given us um and we feel as custodians a great way to support our mission is to train developers from diverse backgrounds in accessibility to ultimately uh help the community that that we set out to by starting ablegamers in and also to to to grow the space in terms of uh a a diverse inclusive perspective a real quick just sliding in with a tiny tiny correction uh we referred to cherry in the third person a couple of seconds ago uh cherry is one of our great gdp do you see speakers and uh they use they them pronouns so just quickly yes thank you just to clarify that and make sure you know this live episode doesn't contain any bad feelings after this is done so absolutely thank you for watching if i

did do that um thank you thank you for uh asterisk yeah and um on the topic of hurting bigots uh i saw a great i thought great talk today at gdc summer uh that is a different tack in a different sphere but i think uh it's sort of similar in some key points brenda romero gave a talk this morning i don't know if anybody caught it on hidden histories of women in computing and a key point of that talk which is going to be available on the platform for everyone to watch on demand if you missed it is that uh women are not fairly represented in leadership roles and in creative roles both in tech and in games and one of our key arguments was that you know having a mostly male dominated industry a mostly white male dominated industry creates a lot of situations where women are physically uncomfortable whether it's cold offices or you know badly designed games or whatever uh and so she basically made a big call for gender parity um making that good case that like basically the more diverse teams you have

the better games they're gonna make because they're gonna bring their own perspectives and their own experiences to the work uh and it seems like we're seeing a lot of calls for that across the industry and it's great let's just keep doing it let's just keep never stop yeah we gotta we gotta keep that same heat that we had you know when we saw everything happen with george floyd when we saw him we saw the brutality that was shown towards a human being and we all started recognizing that when we see all the people in the industry being outed for their behavior towards women like that heat that we have right now about trying to improve that like if this hasn't changed a year from now we got to have that same fire because every time we let up every time we let up in terms of uh you know uh appealing for for for more equality and diversity we take five steps back and enough is enough i'm tired i know i'm tired and i know that i'm not the only one who feels that way but at the end of the day there's a there's a generation that's coming after us that needs to see a better world and the degeneration of the six right it's just right now we deserve a better world so we gotta

keep got to keep pushing in that respect absolutely did you guys see any fun talks about hurting bigots yeah yeah um the other day very it was very specific nice um if you want to read about that talk you can find write up by alex on gamma suture.com promotion [Laughter] nice one we do work for gammaseatry.com don't we a website with a name yeah um i do we didn't really talk too much we have a little bit of time left like four or four minutes uh i'm i'm wondering like working with like i mentioned right at the beginning that you work with these big companies some of them large publishers uh what do you get from those like when uh when you're consulting with them are you kind of like surprised at uh the culture or are you um you know are they usually receptive uh how does that usually go for you

i i think it i think it certainly varies um i think if i have to be honest i think i think companies it's not that they're receptive it's that they're somewhat apprehensive uh and uh you know like for example personally i don't identify as having a disability um and i like to make that clear when i talk about the community because i always say like you know i speak about their needs and the community as opposed to me because i'm not i don't necessarily identify as being part of that community but even myself it took me a long time to get comfortable with asking questions that ultimately serve the knowledge that i'll need to have in order to benefit the community i want to help and i think at least with the companies i've worked with i can't speak with for for for every company out there at least the companies i've had uh you know the the pleasure of working with it's more so that it's it's it's a it's a lack of knowledge um you know that that really makes create sort of apprehension um and to that we try to offer a safe space where you can ask questions

um about the community um to further inform yourself because ultimately like asking questions with respect obviously you know we're not talking about like you know being uh you know uh rude or bigoted in how you address um the community but you know asking questions about the experiences that we try to we try to share um with these companies in order to to improve their approaches to accessibility uh in terms of in terms of uh you know common questions we might get you get a lot of questions about like you know what should i do first from an accessibility standpoint and like that's that's a tough question to answer i can say from the players that we've polled for the players that we've talked to in player panels that a lot of the people um ask for things like key remapping a lot of people ask for uh you know proper subtitling that includes uh increasing text size that means or decreasing text if you need to or turning it off completely uh having backgrounds for those subtitles uh being able to change the color of both the text and the background to

match what you want from a contrasting standpoint uh including the speaker name as well if there's multiple speakers um speaking in a game um we see a lot about recoloring so colorblind options uh being able to turn off sort of the the the background noise that might be coming from the game or flashes it might be coming from a game um we also see a lot about you know timed uh timed actions so things that you know require you to have quick reflex quick reflexes uh qtes being a big one uh quick time events um so it kind of varies and ultimately you know um i'd say start somewhere and continue to iterate from that respect but i we we get we get a lot of questions it's hard to think of them right now we definitely get a lot of questions in that regard no and um you know we've got like 17 seconds left i'm watching the timer go down perfect um yeah but uh you know people can probably go to what resources what website you know

aprilgamers.com all right let's make this quick ablegamers.org accessible.games follow us on twitter at ablegamers uh you can follow myself on twitter at greg j hazy jason jaguar and um go to gamers.org slash d-pad if you're a developer and you come from a marginalized background and you want to learn about accessibility amazing and that is a great place to stop and thank you so much greg thanks to the crew and thank you seriously everybody in chat you're like you're so wonderful uh so thanks for joining us for this special uh episode and we're gonna be doing these live ones again tomorrow and the next day after that whichever day that is thanks everyone