How Games Help People with Disabilities Featuring Hawken Miller | Game Dev Unchained Episode 238

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what's up everybody welcome to another episode and the number one podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am here with my special guest i don't know your last name hawkin how are you doing hawkin i'm good brandon my last name is miller so i have the a very uncommon first name to put a very common last name that's great man um so that is your real name hawking i thought it was some kind of cult name it's really cool dude but uh this is the part of the podcast actually where uh i let the guests such as yourself introduce you and viewers out there who you are where you've been where you're heading sure uh hi everyone my name is hawkin miller i am a journalist by trade i am

incidentally looking at reporting on the video game and esports industry i've graduated from ufc in 2019 and intern at the washington post and while i was there i've worked for their new video game vertical launcher and i've also been writing for a healthcare and biotech company covering rare diseases called bio news services so i do have a very large breadth of issues that i do cover and you know i've always been into video games from a young age it's definitely helped me through having to shed muscular dystrophy and not being able to participate physically with other kids and so it's been a great way for me to stay connected with my friends and a way for me to be competitive and and just to hang out with them and so that's a little bit about my story and where i'm at right now well i want to thank you for for coming on and sharing you know the last um i have there's still a long ways to go for the game history to kind of be

more inclusive um for for players i think the last big news that i've heard was from naughty dog with maybe their last of us too being a little bit more conscious of other players but that is far and few in between uh can you kind of share a little bit more of that background and what you had to like go through to to to play these games because you you found it as an escape too right um but like the industry wasn't ever really so accommodating to that uh until recently yeah i couldn't speak a little bit to that i know another game that i came across that has a lot of accessibility options as gears of war i think they're on five now um but they were they were great with you know as you know some games you have to button mash and that's kind of a little bit difficult so instead you got to hold the button down to complete an action or something like that so those are small things that are very helpful so in my own life uh

i can still use my hands and arms normally so thankfully it hasn't been too much of an impact for me but i do know people that are quadriplegics or have lost you know arms and just can't move as well it definitely is difficult to play video games i know we have come a long ways uh eye tracker technology has been very helpful for those people i'm not sure if you're familiar with a device called a quad stick but it allows users to basically use their mouth and blow into different tubes and do different actions through that so those two things have been nice but those kind of have been like independent not related to game developers and i mean to me it makes sense why i mean there aren't as many people with disabilities playing the games to begin with so they have less of an incentive to put those um interfaces or accessibility features in but like you said i think they're doing a

better job with that right now yeah driving points in the past six months more i feel like at least in the news there's more conversations uh about this is because well the pandemic right if news flashes you don't know about that um has kind of forced people to be in their homes and to find their escape through the internet and games and movies right there's no there's no coincidence here that these the stocks uh for these tech companies are going up because more people are turning to this uh something that you've been turned to many times for many years and then finally are uh emphasizing like hey this is uh a great way to kind of kill time and and and be a part of society but at the same time it's not set up for everyone just yet and so now there seems to be a light kind of shining on to this uh particular subject uh do you feel that

that's that's me based on intuition and just scoping is that is that kind of true definitely i think uh i did write a story about microsoft and kind of their accessibility focus and so they have they released the adaptive controller for xbox in 2018 and i mean i think it really has to do with you have to have people with disabilities working in these different places because if you have a disability you're not going to understand that perspective and you're not going to create a mechanic or create something within the game that that could help someone with a disability you know get through that game or get through whatever challenge that they're faced in the game so i think you know hiring more people with disabilities is definitely going to improve that and i think that's what's helpful for microsoft at least for their inclusive tech lab they have people with disabilities working there and so it starts from having a diverse group of people different ideas and then also with different abilities and programming that into the game from

the beginning yeah the push of diversity is seems like when when we have a conversation with it it seems very obvious but very few studios actually do them and a lot of it is not just completely trying to ignore it's just the game development cycle is so rushed uh where every second kind of feels like you're on your last salary in your paycheck right where it feels like other things take priority where um we're we're in a way you're you're shutting down the the very people that are actually supporting your game right right it's a balancing thing and i think that's the immaturity of the industry a bit where we're still figuring things out as we go do you feel like other industry entertainment industry are handling a little bit better and what advice do you think could carry over to the game industry that can help with the transitioning yeah and

i'm not super focused on the entertainment industry but what i can say is i think that the same problem is across both mediums i don't know how often you see movies or tv characters with a disability now that is improving and i think it's becoming more proportional to the amount of people with disabilities and you have to understand not it's not like half of people in the us have a disability it's a little bit less than that so you have to think about that but proportionately it's still not where it should be but you have shows like having someone with cerebral palsy that are represented in people in wheelchairs that are represented um like you know glee for example they had one of the characters in a wheelchair however he wasn't actually paralyzed so that might have been a problem in and of itself but i think you see that more and more i actually watched uh i did a review for a movie about someone with duchenne muscular dystrophy and paul rudd was in it so that gave a lot of good press to that to that

issue to this disease and i hope to just see that in the future and i think like many other things like being a representation of different races i think we're we're getting there and it's getting better and better [Music] yeah i think representation helps a lot um because that helps with people's curiosity and naturally people want to to explore more and then finally include it as part you know if they're a creator uh tell that side of the story more and i think because that hasn't happened that much it's slowly happening if we look at you know a longer timeline um i i hope that this momentum continues right so during covet right a lot of people are living with social isolation right and it is a complete slap in the face on wow i thought i could just rely on facebook and twitter all day i guess not um like i'm finding myself picking up the phone talking to people again didn't know that was what it's for

and a lot of people are discovering what a phone used to be like and um in a way i'm also discovering how time away from the phone has been really helpful with my mental health and people are kind of forced to think differently now um and i think a lot of that has to do with the the improvement with uh recognizing disability and uh accessibility uh with games especially with movies like that's why i feel like the the to to industry is kind of like the the main topic right now because people are mainly doing that and i think in the main i mean next month or so people are rediscovering board games again but with this social isolation you're playing with the same two people so that gets boring real quick beating beating my my 10 year old isn't so fun every time so

it seems like digital is the long-term uh solution uh to get us out of this um what are you seeing uh from that perspective from a journalistic perspective of what people are turning to and what can be improved to kind of help because even digital there's over saturation of like man i'm moving from my phone to the computer to the tv i'm like i'm just getting so much screen time now because that's you know outside of in in california for example we had wildfires where we were like really have to dig in to stay in in the house and not even breathe outside and so that was a hard two weeks at least on a personal level like this we're really being tested this year and if anything digital outlet is seems to be here to stay for a while yeah we're definitely turning to screens and i feel like whether we like it or not our screen time has increased and i know for me like i start getting a little bit lightheaded if you know i look at a

screen all day like and i stop looking at the screen and i go to the couch and watch tv and so that that isn't helping any at all but i think like you said earlier this is a great time for video games because people are realizing the potential to be able to connect online to however far away you are from each other and i think you look at the games that are coming out you got fall guys and among us games that are very specifically focused on like the party aspect like bringing people together rather than like call of duty because not everyone can play call of duty it it's something that i've only i'm only good at because i've been playing it for so long but other people you know can't necessarily keep up so those games have been coming into into fruition and then there's this whole idea of the metaverse and this is something that a reporter i worked with at the washington post uh gene park has explored and in fortnight specifically where people

are in their fortnight character but they're also seeing like a marshmallow concert or they're watching uh a trailer for the rise of skywalker or a tenant so we see it's just becoming so pervasive in our lives and we see the video game industry uh taking advantage of that and becoming that i guess if you look at ready player one it's kind of that environment or if you look at you know snow crash for example a book that a lot of um people like to cite with the metaverse and how you know you have a second life you know in the online space and i think that that's a great thing especially for now but it can also be dangerous and cause us to forget who we are as people yeah the danger with online communities like that turning that second life into first life right so the technology isn't there yet where we're opting in to be completely in thought but we're basically one facebook oculus away i think you know after the next one they're

gonna be bridging the gap to a point where like virtual reality is pretty cool right so like these technology companies are definitely taking advantage and they have to and in a way it's not so bad because there's really nothing to do all right um you can't really go outside like even if you do go outside there's a lot of people walking without mass because it's so politicized in the u.s it's unsafe so it's the safest thing is to stay at home and and be somewhat you know comfortable with that until this kind of blows over it's the 100 percent fail-proof plan for everybody right now just stay home and switch make your house comfortable um yeah the digital outlet thing is scary because i'm i'm like six months thank god i don't have to wear glasses but i'm i'm even at this point i'm staring at the screen way more than i've ever done before and it's coming from a digital artist right and i play games a lot and uh i'm

feeling like it's taking like five years from my eye away and i don't know how long i should be doing that um but you talked a bit about your uh somewhat pretty professional gaming career right so you're a twitch streamer as well you're you have your own community uh you're attending uh a call of duty warzone tournament already or uh will be soon well um so when i was so i'm taking a little bit of break from twitch i might come back it was just a lot to balance between doing my journalism and games and then doing twitch but i did participate in a war zone tournament with a few other streamers that i was connected with through this online community called pipeline and we participated in a warzone tournament back back in february i think so it's been a while now you know shortly after that game mode came out and what was great about that was you know we didn't necessarily do well i think we got fifth place or

something like that but it was a great opportunity to build a friendship with someone that i hadn't met at all in real life and to to be competitive and for me in call of duty a lot of my friends don't play that game and so it was nice to have people that really in that community that loved the game as well and understood the game and how it worked and were willing to like play to what i was doing and help each other and so that overall was it was a great experience [Music] yeah i mean that that whole universe right you know i mean we're we're taping this this podcast in my in my apartment but like uh it's still quite new like it's an arm that that just uh grew like just a few years ago but exploded in a way where it's like dominant of what the game industry is about right streaming connecting with the community it's a lot where games are now kind of gearing in accommodating streaming as part of

how they design games like um and if you can kind of like share that side of it because you have a lot more experience than probably a lot of our listeners on the stream part the tournaments even um give more insight about how that is becoming even bigger uh in in a well especially during covid um during covet after covid what were you seeing with that part of the industry going i think streaming has almost become like a bigger part of the video game industry than the games themselves because you have people like ninja people like doctor disrespect people like nick merks drawing in you know hundreds and thousands of live viewers and one it helps you know them grow as a person and build their community but it also helps the games that they're streaming because you know people are like oh that looks cool like he's having a lot of fun

playing this game let me buy this game for myself and do this and you look at uh ubisoft with uh hyperscape they really were aiming to make that twitch specific and you know the viewers on watching a stream of hyperscape could give the streamer whatever power up they wanted and so they would troll like the uh the streamers and give anti-gravity to them and it would be really hard to move around the map and they would get really frustrated with that but that was a way for the audience to contribute it didn't alter the gameplay too much but and it shouldn't but it was an opportunity for more involvement with that community and you know people that aren't able to afford game systems or uh or a pc or a gaming pc can still participate in a way without having to actually play and to me that's very interesting because normally it people watching we're already playing the game but now it's expanded beyond you know even

people that would traditionally play video games and now they're just watching it for entertainment like anything else yeah it's a that's a very interesting perspective like third player option um involving the stadium if this is a gladiator game right the stadium has some kind of influence on the player um that don't necessarily have a copy of the game but they're maybe connecting on a web base right it's a lot like what i've kind of talked about before with vr where you know the one with the headset always has the most fun right but then there's party modes now where people can tune in with their smartphone and stuff i see a very similar thing with twitch streaming where people are like going crazy in chat because that's all they can do right here modicons which is insane right because it's like wow people pay for this uh for emoticons right of course it's the only thing that can do but people want eventually to have some kind of participation in with the streamer with the game

playing with the game that's why the the stadium stuff with the youtube stuff um sounds very interesting but they're not quite there yet right because they have problems but that is a step yeah that's a huge step that i see the next five years where participants or viewers are not are to progress past just being viewers and that needs to happen i think uh because the jig is up i think eventually where he's like wow i'm just only watching i mean people are eventually going to get bored of just spamming emotes in twitch and they're gonna want more interaction and i think that's what streamers are trying to do with you know if you subscribe like you get special benefits like you know you get a personal video or you can you know play with me uh but that gets hard if you have if y'all if you have a lot of viewers but generally that that's the direction that they're trying to go and another game i i just thought of is jack box where if someone's streaming the game you can join the room as an audience and you can also

vote for your favorite you know uh live that they tell in equiplash or something like that oh wow yeah that's that's huge yeah that's why i think the same way that you know the um game studios need to be more diverse including more people especially if you're building a game for people with disabilities you're going to have to have someone on your team that have a disability to cater to that group you know you can't guess same things if you're you're writing a story with different races right you can't beat one race and then start sharing experience because you read a book on it right you're gonna have to have that it's one of the aching points with the game studios where they're starting to incorporate more diversity within the workplace but um i think we're kind of slow on that because the priority still becomes like shipping this game on time everything keeps falling by the and it's a as the game are getting

bigger it becomes more of a issue because the team hasn't grown in the next generation which is one of the the scary parts of what next generation looks like yeah i think this is a huge focus to like you said try to get the game out the door and that was something with red dead redemption that you probably read about with jason schreier's investigation about how you know they would just overwork antivirus and you can probably speak to that and they're so focused on getting the game out the door that they don't recognize these things i do i will say that one game that has done a great job is apex legends they have a very uh diverse group of characters i think league of legends has continued to do a better job of that and the nice thing about these games is they can continue to add characters it's not like especially games as a service like you can continue to add stuff as you update the game and kind of work backwards on that so it's not completely over with once a game comes out yeah a lot of the games that are moving

towards the patching and the re free to play model are better situated for the future a lot of games now that are shutting down or having layoffs or crunching are the games that are used to the old model where teams used to be like smaller 50 people where selling a million used to be awesome right but now you got to sell 8 million to break even so the um a lot of that is just the old way of thinking and which is great because one of one of one of the benefits of the industry moving forward is that they're learning from other parts of the industry like streaming uh accommodating more streamers accommodating more people watching the game more so than playing the game uh other other parts are like the mobile industry although they're fast and they throw out and you can be number one and then number 10 the next day they're frequently updating their game and that's where the free to play model from aaa games like fortnite apex

legend are learning uh from uh the mobile industry because a lot of the mobile industry are made up of people that were in triple a games before and they just like looked at the uh product and like hey we can think of a better way of selling these things and that's why they're doing a lot better in my opinion and kind of separately from aaa and triple a now are learning from that side so the the industry is great and forward thinking when money is involved so like the main catalyst for change has always been about money so like the you know being more inclusive um a lot of that has money driven it's like there's more players out here so we should be more inclusive yeah it's like that's that's how they think right um yeah i guess and you know that isn't a problem if you know their advantage like if they're evolving their product if they're adding more voices in because you know if i'm

playing a game and i you know see someone in a wheelchair like that makes you pretty excited and it goes for any type of community that you're looking at latino uh colored community if they see that you know they're more inspired to play that game and it gets more excited especially lgbt when you look at the last of us and and dina and ellie's character and so yeah i think money can't be a driver for good but that doesn't necessarily always happen and there's obviously exceptions to that rule but again i think you want so you want different types of people because that means more people are going to play the game thus giving you more revenue so it kind of does make sense but again there are exceptions to that and let's go back to uh how your journalistic career started right that's another part of the game industry where i mean i'm technically a broadcaster but i don't consider myself

at all being a journalist or anything close to that i'm game developer first and i'm learning as i'm going right so can you kind of talk about that side because that that part of industry changed a lot too in the last five ten years where were uh you know it was pretty dominant in game cells right a lot of influence but you know these you know the other half you the streamer you know kind of took over that side of the business where you have a lot more influence on what people buy can you kind of talk about how you got in and what you've seen on that side and how things have changed i think video game journalism has really uh evolved with the industry i think it's gotten more mature uh it's gone from people that are like community journalists like fans of games just going off of what what update like what patches are coming out and then analyzing that and then you know making youtube videos and there's also uh journalists that stream and talk

about their process and interview other people on the stream similar to what we're doing right now and there's been a lot more investigations uh investigative reporting in journalism i mentioned jason schreier he's been a pretty big force and that he's at bloomberg right now he was formerly at kotaku and i think game industry at least pr agencies and executives are kind of a bit worried about that from my perspective because people are now like looking at the video game industry and a lot of it is opaque and they you don't know really what's going in uh going on behind the scenes and people really want to find that out because they want to play a game that they have trust in that aligns with their values yeah i think there's one but i think you nailed it right there the gaming street is immature in a way and it's very privatized compared to um the movie

industry right i've talked about this many times where the movie industry they're they're well not now right the box office sucks right now no one's watching but like they're very good at uh we finding out of you know what movie generally does well what month right um games don't really have that data i mean used to be steam spy right unofficially but um now it's very hard to tell like what game is really good um what's responding in what time of the year you know all that information i think is very important to be transparent on because then we can move the industry forward um i think if anything it's slowing the industry down where we're not sharing that type of data because it's competitive data yeah i think it as industry is holding us back because a lot of this stuff would be highlighted very quickly with diversity the number of players uh that that that kind of are attracted to a certain genre i mean these are type of things that within a publisher they know but with

there's no grand global metric here that we can use as developers as gamers as journalists it's like there's no common ground here where we all can meet with each other we're very separate and segregated um and that doesn't seem to be a good thing ever for for business um even though they're doing it for business which is a very odd way of thinking i don't know um i think i guess from the other side of the fence how do you how do you see this playing out like are we gonna ever be open about this or do you see this continuously being closed off i think it'll get better eventually and you know talking about how many people are playing per month i think twitch is a pretty good metric you know how many people are watching this particular game like you know what are the top charts i think that's pretty indicative of what's going on what people are interested in but again like there isn't a lot of

information shared i think video game publishers are very hesitant to work with journalists they're uh i'd say afraid of them like they're going to somehow push a narrative that is negative towards them but that's really not what our job is our job is just to report what's going on and give information to people and it's for people to decide what they want to do with that i think there's that fear that we're gonna paint them as like evil you know capitalist monsters or something like that but we're really just here to give information to people and bridge that gap that isn't there right now well game devon chain is definitely to highlight the monsters so they doesn't mean that's the whole show but like on the journalists side there's you guys are there to be uh just reporting what's going on right to be nonpartisan as best as possible um which is the type of news that we miss uh in all type of news it's like it's too opinionated now where it's hard to know what's the truth um but yeah it is funny because it's

kind of happening i think we're on tomatoes for a while i think now everybody's kind of like more acquainted with rotten tomatoes and embrace it now especially if you have favorable reviews but a lot of movie companies it seems like they fear rotten tomatoes uh to the point of like trying to like budget a bit uh to to fable reviews because it is kind of translating sometimes right not not always because we do see uh movies that have poor ratings uh from the critics view and then amazing audience training and they do super well right so um it is a kind of understandable fear i guess from the publisher thinking that somehow this is gonna come completely demonish their game that they're about to release but at the same time it's like well i mean the data shows that people are going to play whatever game they want to play and they're just looking at you know what's out there available to kind of make their decision and it's better that way i think in in the end it's like if

you're trying to set themselves up for disappointment where you got you have a gotcha moment you got your 60 dollars and you run away with it knowing that it's a product right um that's never going to be good for your brand it's never going to be good for future games it's going to hurt yours you know eventually because you know they're going to pop it in and it sucks right so i don't think the bigger picture here inc being more inclusive being more open create i think you're right like that relationship between a journalist and game development or publishers in particular have kind of been diminished and um it's unfortunate because even though i love streamers they're not i don't know i i guess in a way it's more it's cool to kind of see the game but there are cons to that side too where um there's only certain types of games that actually translate to sales single player experience is completely out the window uh once you see the game from front to finish you're not really

are you going to play the game why am i going to pay 60 dollars if i've already been watching the game again yeah so there's genre of games that have to adapt to evolve it is the way it is um so those games which i i grew up loving right because it's like a book right where i'm i'm learning as the character goes and i do kind of miss that to some respect and less and less of those games are being made but it's just different time and um you can't stop streamers from streaming i mean yeah what's your perspective of that like just the the pros and cons yeah i mean if you're looking at like a single player story based game i mean my perspective is if i'm interested in playing it i'm not going to watch someone else play it i i mean for you know something like star wars squadrons that recently came out like i didn't want to see any i wanted it to be a whole new experience and i guess maybe some people don't have

that discipline to wait until the game comes out to see it um and then there's the other thing is that a lot of people are seeing it that wouldn't normally buy the game so it does give i get more press uh to the issue i think i i i understand why some uh publishers wouldn't want to are worried about things getting spoiled you know by journalists talking to them but the majority at least if you're covering games you should be a gamer in some sense and you should understand okay like there's a reason why they can't share the whole story at once and you have to respect that and i think there's ways to even talk about the development process behind behind the game which i think you're trying to eliminate is very interesting at least for me i am not a programmer or a very good artist but i can still appreciate the amount of work and effort that goes into making these games and you don't have to reveal any story it's

really you know the business and industry behind it and so i think i think there has to be trust on both sides right the trust uh from the game publishers that journalists aren't going to ruin the game for someone by by reviewing it and giving all the spoilers in and journalists also have to trust that game you know publishers to uh to work with them and to to get information from them and it's a two-way street yeah i think um any way that we can bridge the gap between these relationships it makes our industry a little better um that's why i feel like other entertainment industry like the movies are even though they're unionized and they are their own separate groups and niches i feel like they're better connected uh and they're growing every year i mean netflix is netflix for a reason we just don't have that on our side and i feel it's holding us back in a huge way yeah just internally like

you know there's a distinct group between mobile games and aaa and india and these are three separate groups that never talk to each other and i think it's insane and um in a very much same way uh the the media side of it the journalists the streamer are very much their own every streamer is their own within that group is like their own i mean they partner up and they're doing what they need to do which is smart what like we have all these different avenues to promote what we all love which is games but we're not working together to better this industry and people are kind of discovering it on their own uh luckily to kind of keep this industry going but i think we can be much bigger if we have like this somewhat singular voice of i don't know i i keep relating it back to the arcade so you go to arcade that feels like the closest thing to like wow we're all in this together but those days are long gone um unfortunately and people are kind of

fending for themselves and i think a lot of the lessons uh the result of that is a lot of studio shutdowns or any uh developers who are really well equipped with talented developers are not having a long enough chance to sustain themselves to come out with that masterpiece that we're kind of used to um during the ps2 days right i felt like the ps2 era had like hits after hits after hits from these small companies and because it was manageable it was supported and it was a lot easier um to kind of have an avenue to kind of publish him now that it's so big these similar size groups are not having that chance and uh we've had so many people talk about funding so many people there's so many different ways of doing these things that they don't have like this internet hub where they can go it's like all right you have a great idea let's go

through this let me show you the way um it's very weird it's very odd man um that we're so segregated in everything that we're doing and i don't know i hope that's a weird side effect of this uh oops i bet my camera just went dead um this is a weird side effect where um the pandemic is uh sidetracking us but at the same time focusing us back into these things that should matter right um being more inclusive so uh with that i want to ask you because this is a this is something where even myself i'm going through like the social isolation part of it right uh endless screen time and uh people are not equipped to this they don't know how they're learning as they're going and i feel like a lot of people are not are not able to kind of uh figure this out

on their own right um and the crazy thing is you know we're in times like this we always look for you know government to kind of help us out on this but like very little is kind of shared about um how to take care of yourself during this time right it's all financial right now what advice do you have from personal experience what you've seen through friends and family what they're doing where you're like hey don't do that eventually you're going to go crazy don't hold on to trying to recreate your life in this time right that's the to me what i've seen a lot it's like they're trying to hold on what they had before and stay normal it's like no man you got to change everything everything has to change during this time to survive what do you uh what's your opinion on this yeah i think there's a lot of ways that we can enjoy our screen time enjoy our online time together without it being detrimental to our health i think uh one interesting documentary i watched which you're probably familiar with the

social dilemma and one piece of advice that they have for that is just turn off notifications on all social media because that and most of the notifications aren't even related to you it's like oh look who this person has to post in a while this is what and so right it kind of forces you to stay on your phone as much as possible and it forces these companies to get as much data as possible on you so that's one thing that's helped me i think another thing uh is not using electronics i mean like an hour to two hours before you go to bed usually my video game time is at night and i'm i'm actually living with my parents right there and they're like why don't you just try like not you know playing right before you go to bed because and it really does make sense when you think about it if i'm playing getting sweaty playing call of duty and like my heart rate is up and i'm all you know into it and excited about it that i'm gonna have trouble falling asleep and that is gonna enter and have a negative

effect because we're not as healthy when we're not getting enough sleep and so i think we have to change our habits around a little bit uh and be more disciplined because it's a lot easier now than like if you're in office or you know out about reporting it's a lot harder now to have those boundaries so you really have to implement those on your own there's plenty of apps that you can i think freedom dot io is one that i'm using where you can set it to you know block off these websites these apps these video games for a certain period of time and then you can't use them at all and so it forces you to do you know the work that you need to do and then that isn't to say that we can't you know have fun online and play video games but you can't let that be the only thing you do and you have to you know branch out and be productive and not let you know this karate virus control uh how you live [Music]

yeah i mean that's definitely a huge part of it for sure um yeah i think it's crazy right there's a weird balance that you're like use social media as a way to connect people but don't don't use it too much because it's gonna hurt you and uh that the frequent balance and just like uh well when you're not doing that go outside but don't get near people because uh that's not good either it's so crazy um it's so hard uh but i think there isn't any other scenario where people will take that seriously until now where people are living with these consequences of too much screen time in a forceful way to recognize like wow this is way bigger than an issue than i thought because now that they don't have any other escape or distractions they're finally like i i keep saying that this is like a five-year flash forward for all types of relationship right um with people with phone if

you're living with your parents with your living with uh a significant other with your kids right this is like a flash forward of what five years of experience would be in like six months and you'll you'll figure out and they'll you know highlight all the problems that you've had that you've been kind of like sweeping under the rug so your issue with your your devices now it's like you know this is what it looks like if you keep doing this for five years so in a in a way it's a sort of a blessing is like figure this stuff out and make your life better right now because you have to and um yeah it's it's a thing in in the back of my mind that i've been like you know for us you know we're very dependent on social media we're very dependent we need to for for a business and what we do online right but yeah there are moments where you can take breaks and and do in a healthy way like you said an hour or two before sleep just being away from it all and and you're

starting to hear people who were completely unplugging uh and it's kind of like scary to hear that like um it's it's like the air being cleared a smog right there they're like infinitely not happy it's like wow is it that bad where if i spend the day away where my my serotonin just elevates that much it's like that that's scary man maybe that's why steve jobs didn't let his kids be on the ipad and stuff knowingly um that this is what the future holds and i think there's also responsibility from video game companies too they are knowingly or not creating something that's highly addictive and so you know letting people know okay like these are tips for not playing too many video games and letting it get in the way of your life you know you know spin you know make a schedule and you know allow yourself one hour of video games per day or like something where you're rewarding players for not

playing as much if that makes sense you know you can get this weapon skin if uh you're off for this amount of time obviously that that probably doesn't make sense in a lot of cases but if if you're showing that you care about the health of the people that you're marketing your game to i think that improves a lot of that trust that we were talking about that can go a long way yeah i think the last time i saw something that happened was not a western company it was the eastern company like nintendo did something like that with their switch where i was playing for a few hours and then popped up like hey maybe you should rest i was like what is this how dare you but uh but it totally makes sense for for game companies to recognize and it's funny that you say the highly adjective you know that's part of the design now it used to be casinos in las vegas hiring game designers to figure that part out now it's vice versa since we're like

becoming more profitable than the casinos that uh those designers are coming back to to study like addictive behaviors and recreating that in call of duty in all these shooters and all these like free-to-play games that's part of design and it's um it's scary uh because now uh it's it's it's a technology not a lot of people understand obviously you know government is always like 10 years behind uh of what's working right now or what's happening it took them a while to kind of kind of nip nip the loot boxes in the butt in the bud for a while uh five years ea doing that and they finally realized hey man you're charging people for like mystery boxes and so uh in the very much same way now that these games are asking for more attention more more time i think it's going to be a couple years where they figure out maybe after epidemics like man people are

just stuck into your games i am curious about that i don't think it's that crazy i think people are kind of aching for going outside so when that that is being lifted i mean we're singing right now right this is a epidemic but people are like well you know i'll take my chances like what it's been a hundred years since the epidemic happened and this is the time of anything to hold down in the house and be safe and people can't take it anymore so you see people just walking around so i can't blame them um and so i think it won't be that bad where people are so addicted to their devices where where we have to pry them away from their stuff but it's the the little it's the little killers that like you said like people are just those little things where you're checking notifications where you think it's harmless but you you end up spending like eight hours plus in front of your phone i think those are the ones that are the sneaky sneaky designs for games as well that that they build into um because they somewhat have a moral

comp that's how they justify right the designers for these things they it's like well it's like me it's just a few hours a day and i don't want them to be on there all day but that's how we justify it i think in a lot of these situations uh to make it better yeah and i'm glad the loot boxes are kind of a thing of the past uh right now i know um i'm a big star wars fan so when the remake of star wars balfour came out and i saw that whole controversy i you know i personally didn't play it enough to get you know too upset about it i was just you know playing like i was just excited that it was a star wars game that was the shooter um but if you really like that what the loot box system is it's it's essentially gambling and i think they still have that here and there where it's like okay you pay like 20 dollars to get like an epic box you it might be like the low end of the epic box or it might be really good and the guns you get might be in the meadow or they might not be or they might help you a lot so there's that that gambling a part of

it i think you see that a lot in in phone apps i think you know mobile games are kind of the first people to do that you know with buying more lives and candy crush and things uh to that extent to keep you playing as long as possible and then also make money at the same time and you you talk about uh players that are whales that'll that'll no problem by you know a 20 bundle and clash of clans and keep doing it over and over again [Music] yeah i briefly worked at a mobile company and i think one of the players and this was like a mobile company that was doing all right right i think pretty good right but not like uh clash of clans so i can only imagine how much they were but they were saying like one of their best customer was has spent like a hundred thousand dollars already this is a two-year game but that's that's that's what like we we as developers you know internally we're like

that's crazy right but like the decision makers of the company's like we need to recreate that it's like why do we want people promote you know we can promote choice of course you know it's their money they want to do whatever they want but there is kind of like a a line there where it's like all right we can't actively brainwash them into i don't know there's a moral side of that where it's always tricky i think it always in the end hurt us because you can either milk the cow too much where they're completely depleted and they will never come back to gaming which is the fast way of doing things and a lot of developers do that right you get the money now but like i always favor sustainability i want these players to come back 10 20 years um and i do in a weird way like being on a game developer sign i know more game developers don't don't play games than they actually play games now and a lot of it is not i don't think it's partially because of how the

industry is going but all of us you know kids and family too but i think because how complicated things i've gotten too um where you're gonna have to jump through and i think a lot of it too we know how it's how the sausage is made so it's like it kind of like we're always analyzing when we're playing three games we don't enjoy it as much but um yeah that makes sense yeah like i know dio kojima um [Music] he uh i think he was behind uh death standing but he's someone that doesn't play video games at all really and so you you're definitely right uh talking about that i think even like the adventures of mario for example they don't really play video games at all they're more focused on creating that experience but uh they're more interested in doing that than actually you know getting the reward of playing the game it seems like yeah and i think it's one of those things

where i think at least speaking for yourself it comes pretty dangerous like if the reason why you got into making games isn't the reason why you're making games anymore uh i think that lends to a lot of burnout for developers where they're like so detached from what they're doing so like i'm i've never had it done to this before do this before where i had to schedule my game time where i'm like forcing myself to play like an hour to two a day to kind of re-inspire reinvigorate that that kid inside me that wanted to get in the industry in the first place and i know a lot of developers that don't do that and they just burn out and they just do other things um outside of games and just it's a paycheck to them so um i don't know to connect back to you know why we're doing all this i feel the communities being so disconnected kinda is um kind of doing that to themselves right because we're so disconnected

we're slowly forgetting why games are being made and why they're being enjoyed and it becomes more too much about the business and uh that becomes you know more realistically uh people are are are kind of like um uh wasted what would you say uh kind of giving that up a bit right there they're they're they're less about the players and more about just making the money so i think a lot of that you know what we're talking about being more inclusive diversity you know we don't go back to that kid inside of us who wanted to be in the industry in the first place we just become that mean old guy who just wants to collect money and call it a day man i don't know what it is but it seems to be that way in the simplest of terms in my point of view yeah i mean it helps you make money too right i mean you want to have something that's sustainable you want to have something that people um enjoy playing um [Music] and i think that that's the key word sustainability like

we want to have as many different types of voices as possible in our games to include as many people as possible like people with disabilities for example uh i think and then just focusing on you know let the game speak for itself don't feel like you need to add all this on top of it if it's a great game to start with you don't need to add all these you know in-app purchases just let the game be the way it is and it's interesting you brought up scheduling time to play video games as well i think that that's some some of the struggle i have you know writing about video games and also playing them and esports is it going to be like am i going to stop enjoying them but i don't think that's the case and especially with me as a journalist i should be playing as many different types of games as possible so i think that's a wake-up call for me to to broaden my horizons as well and to enjoy different things and new things well uh i'm right there with you let's start a movement play more games not too much

honestly just make it a schedule like okay i'm gonna play you know god of war on monday then she's saying call of duty then you know fall guys all went you know and i think i think that makes all of us saying because [Music] you worked on call of duty but sometimes in call of duty you get you get in a cycle where you keep losing and you get progressively more mad at the game and other people and you just want to play more and it kind of gets into like a little bit of a hateful cycle and you just get so upset at the game and it's nothing it's more about you than the game but sometimes it's nice to take a break and [Music] and look at other things like for example i would only read star wars books when i was little but my parents forced me to do battle of the books where i read a bunch of different types of books and brought my horizons and i think if people in the industry do that i think we'd come up with some great ideas and i think it'd just be more sustainable as a whole yeah yeah i think yeah exactly what you said we gotta reach outside of our

comfort zone um our people that are not like us talk to people who are not like us it shows right in other ways that that just improves quality of life for everybody and uh i want to thank you we are at the hour mark for coming on the podcast and broadening my horizon um and giving more insight of what a real journalist does [Laughter] and uh this is the time where i actually hand the mic over to you to give attention to give a shout out anything you want to talk about yeah obviously where my heart is at is uh with duchenne muscular dystrophy and my parents actually started a foundation when i was diagnosed when i was five years old called crew duchenne um c-u-r-e-d-u-c-h-e-n-n-e and that's dot org and you can find out more information there and raise money for research and something related to video games that we're doing is we're

hosting a rocket lag i keep saying rocket lab i mean rocket league it's kind of like a rocket lab i mean the rocket cars but we're hosting a rocket league tournament with guys that have duchenne and friends and family on october 10th so that'll be fun that'll be on twitch you can check us out there support some guys who do shin and see how we interact when we game and like i said earlier it's been great for me to to meet new people to have duchenne and to be able to talk to them about the same issues and so i think gaming is great for that and it's been great for me to be competitive like i said earlier and to to connect with those types of people so that's kind of what we're doing um in partnership with ptc which is a pharmaceutical company developing treatments for duchenne and so we're going to host that tournament uh raise money for creation and really uh bring bring awareness i think is is the main goal of it is to a lot of people don't know duchenne what is that so we're trying to bridge that knowledge gap as well

and then i'm i'm also going to be starting a channel where i talk to cam developers not unlike uh right here uh but it'll be called dev talks and i'll be reaching out to the game developers uh talking uh to them interviewing them and then playing their games with them at the same time so that should be a fun thing and when i get started on twitch definitely follow me there again um and on twitter uh is the best place to find me all right man and uh i know you're being around bush of course i'll be on the show yeah let's see everybody yeah let's do it but uh yeah thank you for for all your work man for sharing your story uh raising awareness and uh sharing the knowledge man because i'm i'm like the old guy dude like what is the streaming thing what are these kids doing i i think streaming personally is like a whole another beat to cover for journalists yeah that's so crazy man and it's not i don't i don't even think it's uh

as dr suspect puts it's not the peak of the mountain yet like it's so much more to it funny enough man we i work with them like we were buddies on call of duty yeah advanced warfare right yeah advanced warfare yeah so to see his success has been um awesome now we were good buddies i mean he always had that personality before he started so he just ran with it but it's one of those things where he kept paying attention like he said right we're so everybody in this industry is so focused in getting to their next thing where in his case he was able to kind of survey what was going on with streaming and made that move and succeeded in a huge way took advantage of what's going on and i think as long as we're not tunnel vision every industry being connected uh we can we can really move on to the next step and evolve as an industry as a whole right definitely which is the next major thing well i want to thank you for coming on

man welcome to my apartment and all that and uh i want to wish you the best dude yeah youtube brandon good talking with you sorry to you thank you okay [Music] you