Access and Challenge, with Greg Haynes

Greg Haynes is the Lead Games User Researcher at AbleGamers, an organization dedicated, simply but profoundly, to making sure that everyone can play video games, regardless of disability. That's a huge mandate, serving a dauntingly large and diverse group of players. So in this interview, Greg talks us through AbleGamers' philosophy and approach, from research via Player Panels, to workshops and consultancy matching with developers, to their rightly-celebrated work on what is now known as the Xbox Adaptive Controller (controller formerly known as the Adroit Switchblade), to what might be next. You can find out more about AbleGamers on their website. You can also follow Greg (and AbleGamers) on Twitter. ——— • Here's Greg's piece for the AbleGamers site, with its timely addendum. • Here's that stunning Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on itch.io. • Here's some context on AbleGames' work with Crystal Dynamics on Marvel's Avengers, and specifically Cherry Thompson's work on the game. • Here's the Game Maker's Toolkit "2019 in Accessibility" video. • And here's that Noclip podcast about Sekiro. • The golden strawberries in Celeste do count, but they count exactly the same as regular-ass strawberries—so there's absolutely nothing in the entire game, including the best ending, that requires a player to mess around with the golden strawberries at all. • And Brolylegs is impressive as hell. Street Fighter is the game he plays at a tournament level, and he recently beat Dark Souls—with his face, he hastens to point out—on his Twitch channel. • Here's the other interview with Greg that I mentioned. ——— "All The People Say (Season 3)" by Holly Hyperion. "Hobson Street Blues" by Bob Zurke, arranged by Fud Livingston, performed by Bob Zurke and His Delta River Band. "Cherry" by Don Redman, performed by Harry James and His Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.