What Being Neurodivergent Means in Game Development

[Music] thank you hello this is uh this is Monica thank you for coming to our talk about what being neurodivergent means in game development um before we started there's a couple things I just want to say first of all this is a safe space we want to make sure we respect each other everyone feel comfortable and as this is a neurodiverging panel we understand everyone is different have different accommodations so please do whatever you need to make yourself feel safe and comfortable and the second thing is uh please after this talk rate US on the GDC app uh it will be very very helpful to get your feedback on how we can do better the third thing is after the talk we're gonna have a q a at the wrap room uh it's gonna be on the the same floor on the other side so um if if you know if we can cannot answer your question

right here please come to the wrap room where I'll be there and uh that's it um hello I'm Monica my pronoun is she day and I am a game designer currently working at Shell game I have been diagnosed as neurodiverse uh before I had memories over the years I have been through a lot of different experience I went from trying learning how to mask myself learning how to behave normally and struggle with it to today I'm standing here try to tell everyone that it's okay to be different and in the game industry it's sometimes a very good Advantage um this is why I decide to give this talk because uh during the covet I think a lot of a lot of things happen and to me I started to know this is there's I have a lot of friends who are neurodivers who are like the most

talented Game Dev I've ever known however a lot of us share the struggle of having to work in a neurotypical working condition and has to follow the rules that does not really work best for us um and the other thing is I've seen a lot of like team that has like a neurodiverse team but the game is still designed very oriented towards neurotypical it has something to do with what we assume gamers are which is not really the truth um so to My Hope Is by giving this talk we can start a conversation about how to design game and how to make game that is for everyone um the third thing is um the the my most driving force of giving this talk is I have been helping with some students and Mentor some students and I have a lot of people asking me um I have ADHD I'm I'm on the Spectrum I don't know if I'm able able to be a Game

Dev to me it's very shock because of course you are and I as someone who went through many different career I can see game development is definitely the career for me it's the only place I've been thriving so but then I look around I couldn't give a lot of good example because there really isn't a lot of games that I've talked about this topic yet so I hope by giving this talk by showing like so many talented people on a panel we can give like more people be like yes you can absolutely Thrive to be uh be neurodiverse and being a game deaf um I'm very lucky today we have eight different speakers from very different backgrounds and to share their own stories so I hope you enjoy the talk I hope this is like inspiring and um yeah we're starting the first and the best uh one of the best

thank you uh we have Samara Jade Sandra sandek her and her name her pronoun is she her and she's a narrative designer all the way from Australia [Applause] day so as you might have heard I'm a Samara Jade Teresa sendek so uh welcome to neurodivergence masking and the workplace where for the next six minutes I'll be uh shouting words at your face about uh what it is to be neurodivergent masking and what your workplace can do to uh help you or help your co-workers out so a little bit about me is uh yes I'm a narrative designer writer QA Tech from uh lovely narm or uh

uh as the as the white fellas they call it uh Melbourne um so uh all that's basically um so you know I'm good to talk I I was a writer in narrative designer on Game of Thrones Taylor crows I'm writing for uh a team uh well one of my local teams uh Dragonair Studios on Enchanted um I also worked on a an Amazon Alexa skill uh called daily boost it is uh with um Taverna voices it's not up there uh and all the rest of it I'm also on G14 classified materials hush hush so I'm going to begin with a few comforting habits um the first thing also from Australia I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land the alane peoples uh secondly I'm going to begin well I'm going to begin the actual talk now with a uh a pithy quote

under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded we have never seen anyone not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief we have never seen a totally seen human being so segwaying uh right into that uh we have uh one of our best buddies from the darkest dungeon Baldwin so where we go with this talk is the uh Baldwin has an ability in Camp it's called let down the mosque so if Baldwin does this uh he relieves a lot of stress on himself it helps keep him calm it helps keep him push helps him push through the dangers of the darkest dungeon unfortunately it wigs everyone else out they're not used to seeing a leper this is this is like they're not they're seeing something they're not used to so it's what it's like to mask for

neurodivergent people it's to cover up anxiety cover up and put anxiety and grief on ourselves and um it's most it's because wider Society won't see us um as uh sorry I got my notes on my phone because I can't read it on the laptop um yeah everywhere I go I mind how I walk I don't touch certain metals and it's because I'll feel sick if I do and I uh need to mind how I speak because I um I believe it or not was uh assaulted in primary school because I talked funny so why are we having this talk and why am I breaking out social Moors and laying out some trauma so simply put Practice What You Preach with us with accessibility and you really can't uh begin to design or develop for accessibility unless you start at the studio itself

so Basics uh the keep it simple silly version of masking is hiding character traits to look like everyone else we're mimicking uh in short we look like you we talk like you we act like you because we'll get the bad stuff like bad stuff will happen to us if we don't uh like like we like we have to act uh we have to do this we have to do this act because we can't perceive the world in the way a label neurotypical would there was a study um it was a study some time ago about let's just pretend this is a box sorry it was between uh neurotyping like neurotypical and autistic kids now the researcher said there was a very special way to open the box these kids like the neurotypical kids followed the exact same pattern Lift It

Up Lift it down turn it upside down shake it all about and then open the Box autistic kids just skip the process and open the box unfortunately under masking we have to do it the long ways method otherwise uh you know we get screened at we get assaulted we get blamed for when uh vaccines go bung so it's acting and that takes us to performative societies and what I mean by that is exactly what's on the side Society itself is theater and daily life is a stage so another example there is like you might be you know walking down the street and then you see someone trip and they go oh I've been fine I would have been fine if I wasn't for that thing right there and then they just continue their merry way that's performative society they just like this act this dance that

people try to do to make sure everything else is fine and seemly it's a front that's part of uh masking for us so masking is the deliberate and often painful attempt to look like everyone else again we must think like you we must talk like you we must act like you to save ourselves so Solutions masking is bad yes it puts stress on us it puts stresses on the team and if no one else and if no one really knows who or what they're dealing with consequences can be severe so the good news is uh the things that can help us neurodivergent people can also help everyone else in the uh in the building so it's a win-win uh key items in meetings so things like uh fidget Spinners fidget cubes uh like if they wear collars collars that works too

um anything to basically help stem it just takes the pressure off us uh in any given situation I don't exactly have a stim toy with me but you might have noticed me rolling my shoulders and clenching my fists having a nervous chuckle now and again and then pausing to punctuate a point that's all stem that's stem material for me and that helps me helps keep me calm and collected and deliver this presentation uh nextly uh if we do get overstimulated if we do uh if like the walls are closing in around us and we need to bug out we need an area to calm down in this can uh also work for uh neurotypical peoples like if they're just having a little too much uh on their plate so if this does happen please keep in mind that uh over stimulation and a meltdown is trauma we're doing it to escape a painful context and the Brain will do anything

it takes to make the pain stop so in regards to that I have a lot of sick leave lots of it most anglophonic palm trees will have at least like five maybe ten days of sick leave like written into federal law have double that because you're gonna have you're gonna run into coma with depression anxiety fibro um Celiac the works there's just a lot of commodities um and lastly have some non-verbal non-written communication so uh I'm slightly dyscalculic I can't do maths my sister is uh dyslexic uh she struggles to read and I have a lot more uh friends and family who just they can't talk they can communicate just fine just in our not with the pie hole it's way more common than you think like if it and if you've got deliverables do just like you know if it can get the point down faster by like uh writing it down by doing a pretty picture or

hell if you've got time let them uh let them make a build and you would go who actually made a build uh one time and worked fast now capping off remember please that we are human we are doing our best autistic people are Specialists forced to live in a general Society the like mass media today demands every little bit of an ADHD person's executive function and post-traumatic people uh still trying to navigate Horrors no one was really meant to withstand evolutionarily speaking like wheat and believe it or not we all do talk to each other we are watching you and we do know when and how you treat us differently everyone on this panel has gift wrapped you a cookbook on how to help your fellow neurodivergent people it's one thing to

stick a11y on your web page it's another thing entirely to execute it now executed thank you no pressure so uh going up yep I would also like to take the opportunity to introduce the wonderful magnificent magnanimous Mr radian G [Applause] foreign I am meridianchi and uh I'm not really going to have any slides up there I'm just going to tell you all a story instead uh I'm ready and G my pronouns are he him and I'm an indie Game Dev artist writer and game journalist I am also dyslexic

I actually didn't know for most of my life I thought the words and letters moved around for everyone it definitely made certain aspects of school difficult growing up and it's a huge barrier when a great new book comes out that everyone's talking about and I haven't read it that said I don't dislike being dyslexic I just don't like when things that could be accessible aren't I want to start off my section with a quick story once I was talking to someone online about where we thought our Spirits would go when we die and I know that sounds like a dark topic to some but to us it really wasn't it was interesting and I remember them saying to me that they wish the afterlife was a library filled with books of everything that ever happened in history and you could just sit down and read it forever um I jokingly but also seriously said well I wouldn't wish that because I'm

dyslexic to which they said well you're dyslexic on Earth that doesn't mean you'd have to be dyslexic in heaven my reply my dyslexia is a part of me I wouldn't want to not be dyslexic in heaven that would be losing a part of myself I would want heaven to be accessible the person I was talking to went silent for a few seconds and said you know I never really thought about disability like that before so I hope today that anyone here who assumed anyone disabled would choose to be abled if they could to also rethink the way that you see disability when things are made accessible to me my dyslexia can even become an advantage sure I'm more likely that my peers to have a typo but I'm also better equipped than my peers to check if something is accessible last year I worked on an indie game where our ux UI person Star St Germain shout out made an alien font from scratch it was awesome one of our mini

games involved looking at two lines of characters and seeing if any of the symbols were mistyped in the second line I was the one a star came to to check over all the symbols and let her know which ones were too similar or confusing especially to a dyslexic guy we worked together to change the few symbols that needed changing and ended up with a much more accessible game because of it accessibility Consulting is powerful and rewarding and I love doing that now not to say it's all positive to be dyslexic in games I've also had rather poor experiences in gaming due to it too if a game is not accessible I can't play it I have been recommended games and downloaded them only to not be able to read the UI and have to tell my friends sorry I can't play with you but you know that just that's just how it is sometimes and I've also been to cons

where I felt embarrassed that I have to turn away or walk away from a game demo that somebody's showing or spoken to with derision when I ask a developer for help with a demo that isn't accessible and they treat me like a liability um you know I can tell when I'm being treated by someone in an ableist manner it's it's not hard to pick up on and it's not fun um I admit that I actually cried once in a demo chair at Pax because I was struggling to play a game and people weren't helping me and it was you know it was frustrating I'm not afraid to admit that like sometimes it is hard yeah all of that said though the Silver Lining is that every day in this industry I want to work towards building a better tomorrow and I know that sounds cheesy but I really do want to build a better tomorrow for accessibility for inclusivity so that less people have to feel the bad

side of all of this I have brought up several accessibility changes at both Dev and journalism jobs of mine and they've gotten implemented relatively quickly whenever I bring them up these changes and step forwards don't just make working a better experience for me but also everyone like me that comes here before or after me um I'll end this off by saying that um if if y'all ever want to hit me up my Twitter is right up there if you're dyslexic and you want to talk to someone and build community that's awesome if you're not and you just have questions or anything you want to say feel free my DMs are always open and last but not least dyslexic folks in gaming untie sorry unite thank you [Applause]

all right next up I'd like to introduce our uh first uh remote guest of the night the wonderful Cameron Hopkinson thank you good morning everyone um which is currently 6 a.m here so if I seem a little drowsy please bear with me um so my name is Cameron I am a game access voice consultant comparison programmer from New Zealand and I am autistic attending events such as conferences and networking events is often described as crucial for anyone looking at breaking into the camps industry yes I have struggled a lot at events to being autistic this will be a quick test about a few things that events kit can do and have done that will help make them more manageable I am going to focus on in-person events um just because of time um also my setup is a

pseudo um sorry force of GDC but Jake so bear with me for that as well um but first a quick disclaimer autism is a disability that has a vast number of symptoms severity of each of these symptoms varies partly from autistic person to autistic person text speaking there are some autistic people that are not verbal they cannot talk at all there are some like me who have what is called selective mutation where we cannot talk in certain situations and there are autistic people that have absolutely no problem speaking whatsoever well there was a lot of overlapping our Collective autistic experiences there is no Universal autistic experience not everything in this talk is going to reply to you every autistic person for taking the following into consideration will help make your events more accessible to autistic people yeah one thing that you can do to make your events more accessible for its people is

to have a dedicated quiet area this gives people a space figure if they need to decompress because everything is caution to be too much this kind of space can easily be the difference between an autistic person having about done on an option so if you're running an event please consider having a dedicated quiet area the only thing to keep in mind with this is that there will need to be people there to enforce it otherwise you risk the room simply becoming another space for networking which kind of defeats the purpose of that space uh networking of if you're rehearsing a networking event avoid playing music when I have gone to networking events that have played music it has generally just made the event louder they can get harder for to make out what anybody is saying a lot of autistic people have auditory processing difficulties they make it hard to make out what a person is saying if lots of other people are speaking um and everyone yelling louder to be heard of everyone just worsens the issue and it's

not like music will be audible but any one of everyone's trying to yell over it anyway if it event is the party then feel free to play music but if the end of the event is for people to network please keep it off um and since then flashlights which can be a feature of or what shows and other occasions can be highly distressing to a six people and can easily lead to meltdowns one way to make your event more accessible to autistic people is to avoid these if at all possible now for reasons to avoid flashing lights is because of the risk of seizures for people that have epilepsy which happens to be a common core Mobility for autistic people which means a lot of autistic people also have epilepsy seizures are serious and can easily lead to Serious injury so minimizing the risk that someone could have a seizure is very important not only just for the sake of your attendees but for the sake

of your wallet because lawsuits can and do happen um enough way to make your event more accessible is to restrict a number of people who are teamed a lot of Game Dev events uh will try and shove as many people into a space as physically possible which makes events inaccessible to us for two reasons the first is that to give immensely event becomes a lot of people trying to yell over each other which as I've explained already is an issue the second reason is that it makes it now impossible to move around without people bumping into you generally autistic people do not like being touched unexpectedly filling your event up to fire capacity makes this inevitable also restricting the number of people at your events helps physically disabled people as it is near impossible to move around a current venue using Mobility AIDS such as a walking stick and a wheelchair

something I've seen some conferences do is have stickers at registration that they can play that potentially is complex on their badges to tell people what kind of interactions they're comfortable with for example you can have stickers to medicate whether you're a coat pugs just hand check or if you won't be able to not touch you at all you could also have stickers about whether you would want people to start conversations with you or wherever you just want to be left alone it's just great forward to see people for multiple reasons first forward let's autistic people easily dictate how much contact they want with others a lot of autistic people do not like being hooked especially by people they don't know so having something on your back should tell people not to hug you will help you keep that from happening particularly it makes it easier for specific people to initiate conversations with people a lot of us struggle with social cues and neurotypical people so it can be hard to determine if someone is wanting to chat or not these stickers can help mischeck their awkwardness

um anyway that is a small Edge non-exhaustive list of things that can be done to help make events more accessible hopefully that helps some of you who are looking at organizing events in the future um that is me um and yet if you want to I won't be at the Q a afterwards because virtual so feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or anything like that otherwise I will pass on to Emily [Applause] hi uh my name is Emily Stell I'm going to talk a bit about my journey uh and career in the industry um I'm sorry I'm going to talk a bit about my personal experiences finding employment and self-acceptance through games um

I'm at the very start of my journey and career in the industry in general um and actually oh I'm at the very start of my journey and career in the industry and actually work in general last year I started my first job ever as a Junior game designer back home in the UK I'm also artistic it's one of my professional and professional goals to one day be able to say that without all the accompanying anxiety there's still a lot of stigma and misconceptions surrounding autism and I even worry that being openly artistic could hurt my career especially as a designer where communication is such a key thing I spent a few years not in employment education or training and the word communication became something of a specter for me as an autistic person it's easy to look through job descriptions and see requirements like excellent communication skills and think well that

excludes me uh but there's something that took me some time to figure out finding something difficult isn't actually the same thing as being bad at it but how can someone with condition that's usually characterized by a deficit in social communication actually be good at communication well part of it is practice perhaps I've gained these skills a little slower than most people but I can still learn and grow and improve even in difficult areas part of it is sheer force of will struggling with something often means spending a lot more time thinking about it than the average person and a big part of it is that communication is a really big concept and not all of it is actually required to be effective in employment so I might not always remember to ask you how your day was but I can communicate my ideas about video games effectively

all right so maybe finding communication difficult doesn't actually exclude me from being a game designer is it possible that being autistic makes me a better game designer uh this is a slightly difficult issue for me I think there's a tendency in businesses to advocate for diversity exclusively because of the benefits it can bring but there's still an argument to be made that the advantages are irrelevant and including more people is reason enough to do something but I won't push that point too hard right now because there are many positive traits associated with autism and a lot of them are very useful in game design things like curiosity creativity and attention to detail but for me it's passion I've never been as interested in anything as much as I am in video games and I used to think that was quite sad like some kind of personal failing

but now to have the opportunity to channel that passion into a career and a purpose I find it's actually a strength that helps me in my role every day and for me that passion runs so deep that I don't think I could do anything else starting work in the games industry has been both the hardest and the best thing I've ever done in my life I spent a lot of years thinking I wasn't capable of very much receiving my first job offer was a real turning point for me and it wasn't until that moment that I actually wondered if I could do it through finding a place in the game industry I was able to start on a path of wondering what else I might be able to do that I didn't think was possible just being here is a pretty big one um employment or the right employment can have such a positive impact on a person's life but it's unfortunately something that's just inaccessible to

most autistic people I would really love for as many people to be able to find their own place and I hope that the games industry can be one of those places for more people so if you would also like to try and help make a place for autistic people I have a few really simple points that anyone can think about patience and awareness a big struggle for me on a daily basis is being perceived as rude when I don't mean to be I find that a lot of people don't ever actually examine social conventions and one thing you can do is ask yourself why you think something is rude and whether it's possible to interpret it differently and it's okay if the answer is no it's just a good habit to examine these things so a simple example is eye contact does a person need to be looking at me to listen and understand and why does staring make me uncomfortable is it from ascribing a meaning to it can it be

done accidentally and does that change how you feel don't assume needs uh you'll hear it a million times but every autistic person is different ask what a specific adjustments would help an individual and don't assume what an autistic person is and isn't capable of don't assume what's obvious things like Unwritten rules I find it really difficult to Intuit what's expected of me if something needs to be done then say it and if something needs to be done in a certain way explain that and if you want to be genuinely helpful explain why understanding for everyone uh not everyone is open about being autistic most people at some point in their lives will have met someone who is autistic without even realizing and having a lot having more patience

and awareness for people in general can go a long way uh thank you for listening uh [Applause] okay up next we have Alana linnaire hello everyone I am Alana rhymes with banana if you have an American accent if you don't it does not and my pronouns are she her and I am the lead Dev and founder of toad house games and team toad house todos games is a visual novel in the game Studio let me just set myself up here one second please thank you uh we're making call me Sarah Sarah is c-e-r-a it is wish listable hint um it's about making friends as an adult and it touches on therapy tools that are

useful for people who don't have access to therapy um I'm also the person getting a second I'm pregnant and talking is hard okay um I'm also the person who organized the Palestinian itch bundle last year that made almost a million dollars for Palestinian Aid so although I organized it thank you to all of you I'd like to take a minute just to thank you because without you it wouldn't have been as successful so thank you to everyone who donated volunteered participated uh I organized it but you made it possible so thank you everyone Applause for yourselves please [Applause] and today I'd love to chat about writing neurodiversity or neurodivergent characters for and stories for neurodivergent gamers so neurodivergent is the term when someone's brain processes learns and or behaves differently from what is considered typical one scene is a problem neurodiversity now recognizes the human population is diverse and brain behaviors that deviate from the typical

can be beneficial as many people on this panel have highlighted um although not magical so be careful you're not like thinking for example rain man that movie or there's many examples of magical they're magical beings oh of course they're creative they've got bipolar disorder not like that beneficial not magical um it does include things like autism ADHD and dyslexia it isn't limited to mental illness so narrative origin is a big umbrella mental illness is a smaller thing um I focus a lot on Mental Illness but we do touch on neurodivergency so that said let me reintroduce myself I'm Alana Lanier I'm the founder and Lead David Toad House games and I write games for mentally ill and neurodiverging Gamers uh however when you're writing about heavy topics like I typically do because visual novels are a great medium for that uh you do have to write mindfully or you can trigger your player so what is triggering there is a slang term in our community that triggering is just getting really really angry about something I'm so triggered you I hate it but um when I

use the word trigger I mean a medical term it can cause serious health consequences it has nothing to do with being weak or too sensitive um so for example I lost my dog my dog was 18 years old lived a very long life I got her when I was 12. I lost her and two weeks later I was streaming on Twitch this beautiful indie game called what comes after it takes place on a train it's about the afterlife are they dead are they not it's great play it but there's a dog on that train and I would not have had a live audience to watch me mourn my dog if I had known that it touched on dead pets um so trigger warnings and and content warnings are useful in in aiding Gamers who decide if a game is safe for them particularly in that moment it's not meant to make the world a soft place where we can't write about these things it's about giving information to your Gamers that they can make the decision for themselves I would have waited six months to play the game about the Dead

so um games used to really add to the stigma if you think mental illness um horror games that take place in mental Wards you know that type thing so I'll be talking about those I'm going to highlight really quickly because I want to get to my point we're running out of time um three really great examples of narrative versions in gaming so Celeste there's breathing exercises built in there's distinct challenge levels to match the player and it accurately depicts a panic attack feeling to those who haven't experienced one before very useful life is strange realistic themes and mental illness portrayed accurately characters are more than their own their illnesses they're proper people and there's a link in game for health seeking resources very useful and hellblade sasuna accurately portrays what it's like to hear voices and experience psychosis created with input from people who lived experiences of psychosis and allows player to experience psychosis via sound design environment and puzzles amazing games please play them but what do they have in common they allow neurotypical people

so not under Divergent people to experience what it's like to have mental illness so if you already know what it's like to have mental illness those games are aren't really an escape for you they're kind of just a reminder these are important games and still should be made however they're not able to be played by many neurodivergent people like I can't play hellblade so this has been called from call me Zara she's our therapist um so what do I do that sounds great how do I do this um I have a couple of tips for someone who is trying to make games for neurodivergent people so remember your fantasy it's your North Star I'm of the belief that video games are fantasy we have power fantasies money fantasy superhero fantasies my fantasy for all of my games is feeling loved and accepted so a lot of people don't feel that in real life so I want them to escape their life play my games and feel loved and accepted I'm so I sound emotional I'm not emotional I swear I'm just pregnant

[Laughter] um show examples of how to handle tricky situations so for example in good looking home cooking another game of ours we have like vignettes that take place in the commissary Universe um Amira self-harms and Kenta another character immediately takes care of her needs and assures her she's safe with him he basically sees it and goes up to her and goes hey saw that happen didn't like it you probably feel like garbage so don't feel bad that it happened I don't want you to feel bad that you're self-harmed but please can we talk about it so maybe you don't do it again because I'm your friend and this really concerned me so not only does it give an example to people on how to handle the tricky situation if they see friends of harm but I got a lot of emails um from people going like that's what I needed to hear no one told me that in real life and I really needed to hear that so that was lovely makes up for all the hate I get from doing the palace today um list common triggers so in the beginning of all our games um I list all the common triggers that I

can possibly imagine that happened in our games because it's ultimately up to us to ensure our own personal safety um so give your Gamers all the information they need in order to make a good decision for themselves so write about the topics write about the hard stuff go ahead torture your characters it doesn't matter but tell your gamer so they can go Doki Doki literature Club maybe not for me write mindfully do we really need to see all the details or can we leave some of up to the imagination of our players does the character need to live through trauma in front of us or is the aftermath what's really important to our plot that's going back to our North Star we have a vignette called rule for confidence um Sophia is a trans woman she's one of the main characters in it I made sure she was not misgendered the whole time I made sure that we talked about how she felt about things not show the trauma because trans people were the demographic we were writing for why would we re-traumatize the people they live it why do that to your gamers and remember your audience are you writing to educate those who uh know

about neurodivergent who don't know how neurodivergence feels are you writing to make those with mental illness feel represented so these are my key tips and for those of you who aren't neurodivergent in the audience how do you do it we'll have some tips for you too hire those with lived experience believe it or not they're really good workers naturally brings a different point of view to the table keeps hidden biases out of your games and then there's also cultural consultants and sensitivity readers so cultural Consultants or people you interview as part of your writing research beforehand and they're great for reaching out with questions really quick ones but especially like doing good looking home cooking it was really handy to diem Osama every time I was like I'm not sure coffee is that actually allowed during Ramadan and he would give me like the list of rules and it was really handy and sensitivity readers they read your game at different stages to make sure that things aren't that obvious to you or pointed out and remember to make sure that they know their suggestions are extremely welcome

so for a good looking home cooking we had a Korean translator who was also a sensitivity reader um because Jessica texts her mom and Grand and she was just making sure that you know like the conversation sounded authentic to a Korean mom-daughter exchange and she said my texting app is blue and yellow can we do that because a lot of people use this app so we made a blue and yellow and it made the game better so it's important to let them know suggestions are so here's my socials I'm gonna go sit down because I feel like passing out um please call call me Sarah wishlisted on Steam uh Toad House Games is our visual novel Studio team toad house is our fan club and everything else that we do I'm Elena and I would like to introduce Patrick who's remote right great enjoy thanks Alana hi I'm Patrick uh my pronouns are he him I'm a UI artist and user experience designer based in Japan I was diagnosed with ADHD and auditory processing disorder around the age of 10. I was going to start this presentation with an anecdote something

to convince you that although ADHD doesn't seem like a big deal because it's so common it can affect work performance relationships and even employment status but then the anecdote was just going to look something like this chart there was going to be a prologue for context too many details and then I go down a rabbit hole to a related Side Story I realize I get distracted so I'm apologizing and that's seven minutes so we will not do that instead we'll start with a simple agenda I'll explain what ADHD looks like at work and how we can make things better together people with ADHD have chemical imbalances in their brain that cause symptoms neurotypical people experience but in hard mode symptoms vary based on nature and nurture while gender race disability and class can have a huge impact on how someone is treated everyone's ADHD is different which is why I've asked other game devs with ADHD

to review this talk for starters these are some of my symptoms inattention our nervous system is actually interest based rather than importance based really anything that breaks consistency neurotypical people go into 30-minute Twitter rabbit holes a few times a day adhders do this every 30 minutes and forget their job interviews and anniversary dates before breakfast also breakfast we forget breakfast a lot we understand the work but the context can disappear hyperactivity I won't realizing I won't realize I'm tapping my foot during a meeting until someone gets mad about it impulsivity uh what to eat what to wear I just acquired a rabbit farm in Nebraska it varies depending on the day at work this means I get excited by ideas and interrupt people in meetings and then I apologize often so far these are common symptoms that probably fit your image of ADHD but what

kind of person loves note-taking proactively organizes focuses like nothing else and does well in group settings all of these are actually coping mechanisms that I've had to learn over the years they're examples of masking ADHD like Jade talked about earlier I have working memory issues so if I can't keep up with my notes I'm totally lost I'm a proactive organizer because I get overwhelmed by a bunch of raw data without filters I get into these hours-long flow states where I just forget about everything and it's another rabbit hole and hopefully I haven't forgotten about another job interview I have difficulty reflecting internally lots of people benefit from a group brainstorm but I don't even realize I need to brainstorm until it's too late uh by comparison solo projects also become difficult and boring all that being said please challenge your expectations of what ADHD co-workers are good at while understanding how much work it can take us to compensate

to remove barriers for people with ADHD we need structure consistency and care structure bear with me on this I'm about to rehash a Fast Company article that you've definitely already read too many times but this is important without structure I am a hot pile of garbage let's try to keep meeting short I fade around 40 minutes if you have to go long have breaks with snacks have a clear agenda that's shared beforehand so we have time to prepare and freak out I may take my own notes but it's good for everyone to agree where meeting minutes will be stored and who's taking them give as much notice for meetings as possible and allow people to choose when they present I have difficulty focusing when I'm thinking about what I want to say it's better to share my work first so I can focus on note taking for the rest of the meeting consistency right here if you need me to do something that's important a physical

reminder is my last line of defense against my ADHD I like it when people give me an Urgent task and have a Post-It reminder to go with it but please check with your ADHD co-workers it can come off as super passive aggressive like a Post-It war with a roommate if you're working remotely send me a message not yet if you're working remotely remotely send me a message after you add that jira ticket it's like a digital Post-it kanban boards like Trello are great visual tools to organize tons of information into bite-sized cards a couple of notes here when people go outside these systems I lose tasks and forget them so please use them plenty of talented adhders find project management software overwhelming try not to make these systems a hiring requirement and be willing to train new hires I structured my day into big blocks of time to enable flow States Emily told me flow states are like beautiful Jam sessions interruptions are like a record

scratch that makes the beat almost unrecoverable there's this thing called The Switch cost effect where even neurotypical people take 23 minutes to recover their focus after an interruption as small as a random text message plan check-ins and meetings encourage everyone to set up office hour availability and don't push those boundaries unless it's an emergency care folks with ADHD do stuff that in our non-adhd friendly world can come across as rude for example I often don't make eye contact with people during conversations because I can get distracted by facial expressions during meetings I may work on an art task or a sketch doodling actually helps me focus on you think of it like spare processing capacity that if unused starts working on another task I need to keep myself engaged with something or it'll take over every spare process in the office if I'm wearing headphones yes I am ignoring you and no it's not personal uh sometimes I'll even turn off

messaging software all of this is to help me get my work done speaking to managers here many of us prefer to sit in quiet areas that aren't near entrance uh entrance or busy area for obvious reasons and lastly let's just say what we mean Alyssa Sweetman told me how the anxiety of guessing intent in a workplace that's filled with jargon stressed her out every day bottom line do your research and check in with your ADHD colleagues as well as your neurotypical co-workers some may be keeping their ADHD to themselves so it's important to remember that this is private medical information I know I've had in mind because I worry it'll keep me from getting hired somewhere um and giving this talk has been a pretty big milestone in accepting my ADHD so thank you for listening um a special note to the people a special thank you note to the people that offered me feedback on this talk and gave me permission to give them a shout out you can find me on Twitter at Chicago

and you can sign up to play test the mobile RPG I'm working on called cyborg Immortal through the website right there thanks a lot [Applause] and I'm going to pass it to Ezekiel that is the wonderful Ezekiel who is next I did not miss Q at all right hello I'm Ezekiel I'm a game designer and a project lead from Norway that loves his wife coffee Albert locks and his kids I'm 25 years old and I'm a real engine fanatic since the unreal development kit in 2004. I'm the project lead on digitally adapted training a collaboration with Norway's large Specialist Hospital and the founder of AE Siri and white serpent Studios we do rapid prototypes consultancy and also medical software and today I will talk to you about the

ethical responsibility of accessibility so oh sorry it all started with a friend of mine suffering a brain stroke in his 40s his drive and Iron Will to rehabilitate made me look into the possibilities of games in brain drama rehabilitation back in 2019 I pitched an idea to the large Specialist Hospital here my idea was to reinvent how we approached brainstorm Rehabilitation and how we developed games for it by developing a VR framework for accessibility that allowed us to tweak and adjust features for each individual patients to their specific needs we managed to include patients that normally wouldn't be able to play games in rehabilitation traumatic brain injury and stroke patients often exhibit neurodiverse traits they may have Aphasia lack of concentration or disorder vision loss of hearing and for us to include everyone we made several systems some of which are quite normal in games today so we created

midi games based on the feedback from Healthcare personnel and from patients using the accessibility framework that we built VR games and we are in games they see up to 200 percent increased engagement in training so this is very important and here are some of these systems that we did create for the uh project if you had individual VR control schemes like Auto grab hold to grab click to grab in order to meet the mouse of people with paralysis games are also playable with one arm and we can toggle a switch to convert the right controller into the left controller if needed for visual adjustments we had highlighted colors and gameplay and elements like height contrast and easy to read fonts with voiceover after TBI or stroke up to 30 to 40 percent of the people have impaired wishing and visibility improving invisibility and adding voiceover helped our users quickly identify important

information but also immersion is very important we avoided artificial things like omnipresent voices rather everything comes from a natural source in the world and this is more comfortable and this less disconcerting for people especially those that struggle with attention another important element was creating a relaxing environment we built our world with relaxing colors a tropical island with a cozy Beach sunbeds books fruits and other things you'd normally associate with relaxing this was important for us to sell the illusion to our users we also avoided having distracting colors and cluttering our world finding a balance between believable and overwhelming can be challenging but with the help of early workshops during development we were able to strike a balance um early and the early hands of an experience with our user was Paramount to achieving our goal clustered and overwhelming worlds loud

sounds flashy imagery omnipresent sounds and out of place elements can be very hard for neurodivergence users the infamous 100 volume splash screen still haunts games to this day and can cause problems for a lot of players especially those that are newer Divergent some are even exhausted before they start to play the game this is not good we have to think diversely about our games and adding features that help neurodiverse players in any games not just applied games is very important I encourage everyone here to think about accessibility to a neurodiveroscope not just the normal or scope of accessibility after all there is 1.2 billion people that are neurodivergent so why is this an ethical issue and why should you care well the lack of diverse accessibility features in games isn't just a gameplay issue it is an ethical issue it excludes people from

partaking in an activity that brings all layers of society together not only in applied games but in all games while we still face challenges with internet connectivity and Hardware quality games has the potential to be the place where you can socialize as equals where social constructs and barriers doesn't have to hinder us if we want a diverse and understanding tomorrow we need to experience each other without limitations and Prejudice this will be even more important as the metaphors whatever shape or form that will take becomes reality so I ask for you everyone here today help the world become a better tomorrow by adding by thinking diversely about accessibility and please do not leave any gamer behind thank you I'm Ezekiel [Applause] [Music]