- [Carlos] Let's go, let's go.
(cinematic music)
- Ah, you were crouching.
- [Josef] This is Carlos, a blind gamer
who uses the game sound design
to listen to his opponents movements and fight them.
- And because you're my friend.
- And that's me, getting my ass kicked.
My name is Josef and I'm a filmmaker.
Also, a bit of a gamer.
I wouldn't say that I'm a gaming expert,
but I do play video games every day,
even if it's just on my phone.
And I know that I'm not the only one
because video games have grown to be
one of the most popular forms of media in the whole world.
In 2021, there were roughly 227 million gamers
in the United States, which means odds are,
you're probably a gamer too.
From Mario to Call of Duty,
I believe that there's a game out there for everybody.
But my ability to play every video game,
it's definitely something I've taken for granted.
And then I met Carlos Vasquez.
You see, the accessibility movement in gaming
has heated up in recent years, allowing players like Carlos,
who is completely blind to effortlessly pummel his enemies.
This video is about a community of disabled gamers
who are pushing the limits of video games.
Carlos is a gamer from Texas who's competed at EVO.
That's one of the largest fighting game tournaments
in the world.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot,
he's also the drummer in a gnarly metal band.
("The Flames We Rise" by Distartica plays)
Carlos is able to play fighting games
because of accessible settings and design features
like sound cues, but I'll let him explain.
- I remember my brother got the Nintendo 64.
They said it was for both of us, but at the time,
I was like, "Well, how would I play", right?
So you kind of felt like an outsider.
Once you realize that there's a platform
that only moves from left to right
and the characters are sort of framing
in that 2D environment,
that all you gotta to just learn the buttons.
So I would just basically sit down
and listen to my brother play
and kind of get familiar with the sounds,
'cause at that point, I could still see the screen,
but just know that it was a square shape,
but I couldn't see what was coming through.
I could see flashes of light.
So I just started realizing
that the game design has certain sounds.
So if a character gets hit, there's a grunt to it,
and if they're getting hit,
let's say with the staff or a sword or whatever,
you can hear the slicing,
the banging of metal against the person,
or, there's all this little, little details.
- So basically there's a specific sound effect
for anything that happens in the game?
- Exactly.
- Carlos is not someone you want to encounter
in Mortal Kombat.
- So you say you want to do a match, right?
Want to do a quick match?
- Yeah, let's do it.
My palms are sweaty.
- Mom's spaghetti.
- Okay.
(video game characters grunting)
Woo.
- Carlos uses a stereo headset
to hear which side of the screen I'm on.
When I move to his left, he hears me out of his left ear.
There's nothing I can do.
(Josef chuckles)
I'm sensing a theme, Carlos.
You really like the violence of Mortal Kombat
and the heaviness of metal music.
(Carlos laughs)
- [Announcer] We'd like to welcome you
to a stream dedicated to emerging blind players.
We hope you enjoy your stay.
Thanks for tuning in.
Rattlehead will start soon.
- Yo, what is up, stream?
It's Rattlehead coming at you guys
on another evening of streaming.
- [Josef] Carlos is part of a community of blind gamers
that chats on Discord
and hangs out on the streaming platform, Twitch.
- I got into streaming
because I wanted to showcase skill, actually.
Here's this blind player who's putting all this work.
But I didn't want it to also be like,
"Oh look, I can play, I'm blind" or whatever,
and just focus too much on my disability, right?
I want it to be more like,
"Hey, I can hold my own against these top players.
"I'll make them forget that I'm visually impaired."
- Could you tell me about the community
that you're part of on Twitch?
- A lot of them will hit me offline,
and I even had players that will come and tell me,
even the disability, they will tell me like,
"I didn't want to discuss it or I want to keep it secret,
"but I see how you go about it."
It built like that, and then now with Discord,
we sort of created an entire community server.
It's called Blind Gamers Hub,
and it doesn't matter if you're blind or not.
We try to build just a community of players.
- [Video Game Announcer] Your eyes betray you.
- Carlos found a way to give back to his community
by creating his own tournament
made specifically for blind players.
The Sento Showdown, what is that?
- The Sento Showdown, ah!
It's a organized tournament
specifically for players who are blind
and visually impaired who are fans of Mortal Kombat.
They give them the chance to be in a tournament setting.
- How'd you come up with that name?
- [Carlos] So there's this character
named Kenshi in Mortal Kombat.
He's a blind character,
and he wields this sword called Sento,
which guides him throughout his fights.
- [Josef] That's really cool.
- Yeah, so now we call it the Sento Showdown.
- Carlos, you're one of the nicest people I've ever met.
- Right on, dude.
I really try.
So it's like,
'cause I felt what it's like not having friends
because of my disability,
and I feel like, people shouldn't have to go through that.
- Before I met Carlos,
I used to think that accessible settings in video games
were just made for players with disabilities.
Surveys estimate that roughly 15 to 20% of the population
identifies as disabled.
However, accessibility,
it's not just for those with profound disabilities.
Accessibility is universal,
like parents using subtitles while their newborn sleeps
or people watching TV in a noisy bar.
Even features that were specifically designed
for disabled players are used by non-disabled players too.
Do you know any sighted players
that you sound cues like you do?
- Now I do.
If you were to ask me this question,
I don't know, five years ago, I would tell you no.
- Right.
- They said, some of them implemented that themselves,
where it's like,
"You know what, I can't even play with sound off anymore.
"The sound does help me improve my gameplay."
- So you're teaching them how to play like you guys play?
- Yeah, because we tell them,
get yourself some good headphones and turn off your monitor.
- How does that make you feel
that sighted players are asking for your help?
- It's, I never thought it'd be,
it would turn around like that,
because it was always us asking for help.
So it, it feels great
to kind of have that shift of momentum.
- [Josef] After Carlos competed at pro gaming tournaments,
the creators of Mortal Kombat approached him and they asked,
"How can we make our game even better?"
- What happened with NetherRealm Studios,
they made it where you can now interact with those objects,
so they call it interactables, that's what they call them.
Here, for example.
So when you're near it, you...
See?
- I can throw him so far.
- Here's the thing though, as a player who's blind,
how would I know if I'm near an interactable
that I can use on the stage?
There's no way to do that.
- [Josef] So Carlos asked them to create a sound cue
that would ping
whenever you got close to an interactable object.
- I was now aware of objects around the stage
that were usable during the fight.
So they added that to the game
because of something that I said,
and now to me, that was the biggest thing.
- This is just one example of popular accessibility features
coming from disabled gamers consulting with studios.
People like Paul Amadeus Lane
and organizations like Able Gamers and Can I Play That
and DAGERS all share their expertise with game developers.
(dog barking)
This is Morgan Baker, a game developer
who went deaf during your teenage years
and now consult with studios
on how to make their games more accessible.
So, Morgan, when you're working with game developers
and you kick down the door
and you enter the room to give them your advice,
what are the first misconceptions you're trying to correct?
- That accessibility has to exist
at the expense of the quality of the video game.
So I think there's a common misconception.
I can tell you right now, that's not true.
- What is true?
- It can really actually even enhance
and bring out the best of the game design
when you make your games accessible.
Plus, also too, you have more people playing your game.
I've never heard any developer anywhere say,
"Oh gosh, darn, I don't want anyone to play my video games."
- So when do you think accessibility and video games began?
Well, I bet it's earlier than you think,
'cause we have to go back 70 years to 1950.
Meet Bertie the Brain, a 13 foot computer
capable of playing tic-tac-toe.
Josef Kates designed the machine in 1950
to challenge visitors at a Canadian exhibition.
If people couldn't beat Bertie,
then Kates would just lower the difficulty,
making it easier,
kind of like changing the difficulty in games today.
Then, a decade after Bertie, Reg Maling invented
the first patient operated selector mechanism.
That's the name of a sip and puff typewriter
for those who were unable to use their hands.
This new invention gave people multiple ways
to use a typewriter.
25 years later, Nintendo used this technology
in their own invention.
- To use a sip and puff, you basically have a tube
and you blow and it mimics A, B, select, start
using just a simple tube.
And then it also has basically this chin strap
that you put on your chin and you can move it around.
And one of the earlier moments
where a major company actually went out of their way
to design for accessibility.
- [Josef] As technology progressed,
features such as subtitling,
colorblind settings and control remapping were all developed
before being implemented into video games.
In 2020, the Game Awards created the first ever
Innovation in Accessibility Award.
That year, the award went to the blockbuster hit,
The Last of Us Part II.
And I actually got to talk to the developers
about how they created this game
by working with consultants.
- Alex Neonakis and I went to the Accessibility Conference,
and one of the, the people in the audience
just raised his hand and was wondering,
"Would it ever be possible for a game
"like The Last of Us Part II
"to be accessible for the blind?"
At the time, I mean, the first thought in my head was no.
And I was like, "Okay, well, let's talk about this.
"I mean, maybe."
Once we got back to our studio,
we actually reached out to Brandon again
and brought him in as a consultant.
- Another one of the consultants
that this team worked with was Morgan Baker.
- Disability is, it's a spectrum,
so we needed to talk to a broad range of consultants
to come in.
- I went in, I checked out their build.
They brought me into some very specific pain points
that they ran into related to deaf
and hard of hearing access.
- You know, we have a feature
which is like an arrow on the subtitle
and it tries to point to the direction of the speaker
for the subtitle.
We weren't sure, "Was this useful?
"Was this good?"
But then Morgan was able to play it
and tell us, "Yes, this is great."
- The advancement of video games like this
shows that the accessibility movement
is growing faster than ever.
Also, fun fact, The Last of Us II
is one of Carlos's favorite games,
and he's already beaten it many, many times.
- Yes!
The Last of Us Part II!
Oh my God, a game that I actually completed
without any sighted assistance.
- But they didn't make it easy, right?
- They made it also where you could play it
at the hardest difficulty, so they didn't make it,
they didn't make it easy, right?
They made it to where everybody can play
however they want to play.
- Carlos, why do you think video games
are such a big part of your life?
- I feel like playing games
sort of made me feel like I was holding on
to the other side of me that had vision in the past.
- Well, that's all the questions that I have for you,
but I just want to say,
thanks for inviting me into your world of Mortal Kombat
and metal music, and this was just really awesome.
- Thank you for having me today.
I appreciate it.
- Oh, also, one more thing.
Would you be interested in a rematch?
- I'm down, we can do that.
- [Josef] All right, let's do it.
- [Carlos] Let's do it, let's do it.
- I mean, I don't think I'll be able to touch you,
but it is fun even to get my ass kicked.
(Carlos laughs)
(video game characters grunting)
- Oh no.
- Oh, I didn't mean to do that.
- Oh!
- Oh, no, you're gonna have to edit that out.