Story x Story #137: Cari Watterton Interview
2nd May 2023
Our Senior Accessibility Designer, Cari Watterton, talks to Nigel Twumasi of Story x Story to unpack the story of her journey from a young aspiring actor to a career making video games accessible for more people. They discuss the process of designing games to be more accessible and challenge assumptions about including accessibility as they look at popular examples in modern day games.
Transcript
Nigel Twumasi
Hello and welcome to the Story x Story podcast where we discuss stories across pop culture, plus give you advice on creating your own. It’s episode 137 and today we’re going behind the story and I am your co-host Nigel.
And that’s usually where Tazziii comes in, but Tazziii has had her voice stolen by the voice gremlins or whoever is responsible for people losing their voice! So that’s why she is not on this episode. She’s recovering, but you will hear her on a future episode. And yeah, assuming she keeps a voice on all future episodes. Co just me, I will carry the weight of the interview and we’ll see how that goes, but with me because I need at least one other person for an interview, as you know, for our behind the story episodes, we like to talk to creative professionals across industries to unpack their journey. And today we’re going to hear the story behind Rebellion’s Senior Accessibility Designer, Cari Watterton! Cari, welcome.
Cari Watterton
Hello, thank you! So yeah, I am Cari Watterton, my pronouns are she/her. I am the Senior Designer of Accessibility at Rebellion and that’s a role that I started just over a year ago, and before that I was in game UX. So, one thing about me is that I just fully believe that games should be for everyone and I’m passionate about making games more accessible and inclusive.
Nigel Twumasi
Cool, I like it and we’ve spoken before, we’re gonna talk about that topic and your journey as well, so definitely looking forward to getting into it and then the topic of accessibility because it’s something that I think is worthwhile for everyone to know about and we’ll get into why.
So you can subscribe to story x story wherever you get your podcasts from. You can always send us your feedback and questions to feedback@mayamada.com, or you can throw them us on social media we are @mayamada on Twitter, @mayamadaTV on Instagram and TikTok, or @Tazziii on all the above. And we are working on our new Studio77 membership. It’s coming later in spring and you would have seen us do some videos and stuff on Twitch. Also, as we make comics, all that stuff we’re gonna put in one easy to find place on our website and give members access to that as well as early access to tickets to mayamada events and we have a bunch of events coming over the year. You can also join our discord today and be part of the mayamda universe and meet others in the community and we’ll have more on all of that in the coming weeks and months.
So before we get to picking the brains of our guest, let’s just find out what has been happening or what is to come in that main matter universe.
And one of the main things that we are working on by the time we listened to this, we would have made a start on it, which is our do I look like a gamer video game representation campaign. So this is something that we launched last year to promote inclusion and diversity in the video games industry and the response was very positive, great response, but we realised that the need still remains. So we’ve decided to make the campaign a yearly initiative and we’ll be building on the work that we did last year and continuing to push for diversity in games, culture and industry. So that means a new schedule of events, a new snapshot of 40 players and makers which we have done and you will be seeing (I’m trying to think about the timing of everything), well, if you haven’t already seen it, you will be seeing. And so we’re taking that snapshot of people to showcase the representation that does exist today and hopefully inspire future generations of diverse talent to come and join the industry. So we have already done our campaign launch live stream by the time you’re listening to this, but you should still be able to see the VOD on Twitch, depending on when you’re listening to this episode and we have kicked off this year’s campaign myself, Tazziii and some supporters from the campaign talking about what it means to us and what is to come for the rest of the year. So we do have a bunch of events and activities and appearances planned for the year – very excited to put all that together. So check out https://looklikeagamer.com/ and we’ll be updating that as we go. And you’ll be able to take part in all of that.
And I mentioned Studio77. We’re doing stuff on Twitch every month; we have our Casual Conversations With Comic Creators Series where I talk to a different comic creator. Again, depending on when you listen to this, you’ll be able to see my conversation with Kevin Li. Very deep conversation! I was actually surprised how the directions that went but he is a one time, so far, manga creator but his one manga won an award at the Japanese Embassy, so not a bad record there. So you can catch that conversation.
And later at the end of this month we will be playing games mostly badly. Well, at least for me, badly, but everyone else is pretty decent, but we have our games night each month. At the end of the month, usually Thursdays, so Thursday the 27th of April from 7:00 PM BST we’re paying with other Studio77 members and you can catch the highlights of past games nights on YouTube.
And if you’ve been listening to all of that and other stuff that we do and interested, especially if you’re a young, aspiring creative professional and wanting to get some work experience, do check out our show runners work experience programme. We’re creating opportunities for young people aged 16 and up to work with our team across comics, video games and content creation. You can e-mail us at hello@mayamada.com to find out more and eventually when we switch up the website, which we’re also working on in the background, there will be more available to see online.
OK, that is all the housekeeping. So with that said, let’s go behind the story with today’s guest. As mentioned, Cari is a Accessibility designer, which is to me a brand new role that I didn’t actually know until we like met or I was sort of introduced to it by one of your colleagues. So you came with a great reputation, like, you need to go and speak to this person! So, it’s been quite a learning experience because we have spoken before and it’ll be interesting to know about your journey to this role and the impact of the role in games in general, so we’re gonna get into that. But listeners of the podcast will know or just people follow mayamada in general that creativity is something that is important to us and just apply us to all different roles and all different industries. So we always like to ask our guests, and I’m gonna ask you this the same, Cari, what does creativity mean to?
Cari Watterton
Ohh gosh that is like such a hard question because I feel like I’ve gone through every single version of creativity that exists and I have 1000 craft projects all in progress sitting in my raft cupboard.
Nigel Twumasi
Of course. All right, so you’ve got some experience.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, exactly. What does creativity look like to me? I think creativity is just a way to, I think, comes down to just creation. It’s creating something, creating something that you’re proud of and that you get fulfilment out of and that can be anything. And even if that thing that you get out of it is just learning. I think, yeah, that’s going to be my answer. Just creating something the process of making something that just now exists, you’ve done that and you’ve gotten something out of that process.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, it was like that. The idea that there was nothing there before and then you came along and did something and now, is there something that exists? I always like that it’s quite a powerful thought and when you think about it like that you’re putting things into reality.
Cari Watterton
Mm-hmm. Exactly. And yeah, like the intention behind like whatever it is that you’ve created and things like that. I think it’s very cool as well.
Nigel Twumasi
All right, so I sort of touched on we’ve spoken before because you were part of our game pad online event last year at Samsung KX, which was a good conversation about accessibility. We had a whole panel of guests that was it felt like a lifetime ago. What have you been up to since then?
Cari Watterton
My gosh. Oh gosh, don’t ask me this question! What have I been up to since then?
Nigel Twumasi
Open up the calendar.
Cari Watterton
I know! Lets look at all of the 101 things I’ve got. I did the Access November campaign with Ukie, so I did a blind and low vision accessibility workshop alongside my good friend, SightlessKombat, who is amazing, so we had fun doing that. I did a couple of other podcasts. What else did I do? I went to like Philadelphia to go and to be part of the PAX Unplugged stand that we had there, cause we make board games, that’s a huge thing for me. And then I had a podcast that I was doing the day I got back from Philadelphia. And that was, that was a bad decision! I’m very, I’m very jet lagged in that podcast, so I won’t be doing that again.
Nigel Twumasi
I can imagine.
Cari Watterton
But it was an opportunity that I really wanted to take because it was with a really great company, Reed Speaker, that I’ve been doing some stuff with for personal projects. So I was chatting about Text to speech. I did another podcast about accessibility in games, mainly from there’s a little bit of like touching on recruitment, touching on making engines accessible. So that was the Evolution Gaming podcast. I spoke at GDC three weeks ago, which was amazing. That was like a huge milestone for me because I’ve. Been wanting to do that for years. And I’m still not quite over the fact that I’ve done. It so and even going to GCD in the first place was amazing and I… have been working.
Nigel Twumasi
It’s. Yeah, it it does sound like that. It’s. Yeah, I’m convinced.
Cari Watterton
I’m not convinced! That feels like a lot of stuff to do in a period of time. I feel like where have I managed to fit life and work in amongst all of this?
Nigel Twumasi
That’s a good question. Like, I mean when when you look into because some of that stuff was I guess last year and some of it is this year. I know GDC was fairly recently like, do you go into the start of the year with the particular goal in mind and like, are you also frightened by how fast the year is going?
Cari Watterton
Oh gosh, so on a personal level, one of the things I started doing was instead of having like a New Year’s Resolution I’d have like 10 things that I wanna do by the end of the year, and it would be like it could even be small things. It could be like; cool, I want to try and read a book this year. Yeah, sometimes that hasn’t happened like you know.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah. Give me both.
Cari Watterton
You know, I want to read a book this year. I want to, like, plan a holiday to do this. So, and then at the end of the year, I tick off which ones I’ve done and then I do a list of what I call “Actual Achievements”, which are things like “ohh cool. I got accepted into GDC.” At least I knew about that one ahead of time. So I wrote “talk at GDC”, I copped out of my list this year, and I put talk at GDC as one of my things, so you know.
So this year is the first year that I’ve gone in with an events plan where I’ve actually looked at like, OK, what’s everything happening this year? What do I want to be involved in? And that’s kind of because there were a lot of things that snuck up on me events wise last year that I then just felt like I didn’t have enough time to plan for. So this time I’ve gone cool, this is everything. And then I turn around to my friends and I was like cool. So August is my month is my month of being free. So this is when we go on a holiday together, I cannot do any other months of the year. Thank you.
Nigel Twumasi
Please make your reservations now.
Cari Watterton
Yes, exactly.
Nigel Twumasi
Makes sense. Makes sense. That’s. Yeah, that’s very cool. It sounds like you have to be organised in that sense for what you do.
Cari Watterton
Mm-hmm. Ohh yeah, it’s organised chaos.
Nigel Twumasi
I like that. So yeah, when it comes to video game accessibility, I feel one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to you last year and wanted to dig a bit deeper this year is that accessibility is something that you kind of hear, and I put myself in a category of person who thinks this isn’t necessarily for me. Which isn’t true, and I’m sure you will kind of speak to that, but also not quite understanding what it does mean to those who do need that in games. So for your role is that something you were always aware of, like even at a young age, is that something you always wanted to do, or did you discover it later in life? How did you find yourself working in that particular area of video games?
Cari Watterton
Ohh gosh. OK, so my journey is it’s it’s a wild one. So when I when I was growing up when I was going to near university, I actually wanted to go and be an actress. I was deeply saddened by David Tennant leaving Doctor Who and I decided that I was going to be the First female Doctor Who.
Nigel Twumasi
You made that decision.
Cari Watterton
So I made that decision. I literally decided overnight. I was like gonna be a vet and then I was like, no, I’m gonna be an actress. This is what I’m gonna do.
Nigel Twumasi
OK, I might have some bad news for you, but yeah.
Cari Watterton
So, Jody slightly, yeah she slightly beat me to it. It’s fine.
So I was all geared up to go into acting and then quite by circumstance, I was at an open day for Glasgow Caledonian because my partners with the time was looking to going to video games and I hadn’t really crossed my mind. So he was off speaking to the programming team and there was, like, the head of the arts course that kind of came over to me and said, hey, how do you feel about drawing stuff on a computer. And it was like an epiphany moment to me, because I’d spent my childhood like making comics and making magazines and making my own games on like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint of all things, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
On PowerPoint.
Cari Watterton
On PowerPoint. Oh, yeah.
Nigel Twumasi
You made comics on PowerPoint?
Cari Watterton
I have. I made comics on PowerPoint.
Nigel Twumasi
My brain hurts.
Cari Watterton
Yea. I had animations on PowerPoint. It was, it was… Wonderful. I am the Master of WordArt.
So, so yeah, it kind of just was an epiphany moment for me. So I went round and I came back from that weekend trip to Glasgow and I said to my parents, I’m gonna go work in video games and it’s the most relieved I’ve ever seen them. When I came back and told them I wasn’t going to go into acting.
So yeah, so I ended up I had quite a creative background, I really liked drawing, so I went into computer arts at Abertay and that’s where I kind of started to go “OK, I don’t draw as good as other people, so UI seems good. I like graphic design, I like UI, it’s nice, it’s got rules, it’s got structure to it. And it’s got a lot of psychology to it as well.” And then as I was looking into the psychology side, which is the UX design, I was considering all the different users and my honours project was all about accessible physical interface design, which is a fancy way of saying I made some origami kits. But it was about looking at like, how can I teach people to fold origami using different learning methods, different sensory methods, stuff like that.
And then yeah, I went into UX and I’d had this like thread of accessibility that had gone way, way, way back. And when I started getting a mentorship from Robert McDonald at Splash Damage, he was head of UI and accessibility. He started talking to me about accessibility and said have you done anything about it? I said, it’s kind of intimidating and then the more I looked into it like the less intimidating it became and, I said it goes all the way back and it was kind of because when I was growing up, I was homeschooled. And a lot of the people that I was surrounded with a lot of my peers in that group were home schooled because traditional schooling didn’t work for them because they had different capabilities, because they were, they were hard of hearing, or because they had physical limitations or learning disabilities. But that was never pointed out in that group. It was just here’s a group of kids that are all getting together, and today we’re going to go and learn about birds with the RSPB. You know, and it was a really inclusive environment and a really accessible environment as well because we looked at ways that we could learn things that would be better for the people with those varying capabilities like we did loads of things. We even learned a little bit of BSL because we had members in the group who were hard of hearing, you know, it was great.
So then when I started looking into accessibility in games as part of this UX thing, it’s sort of. It was another one of those moments where the same as I’d had at Glasgow Cali, where I’d gone. Ohh yes, this makes sense to me. I went ohh this, this makes sense to me. This absolutely does like it’s been something that I’ve kind of been dabbling in with the honours project with the UX design. Thinking about all kinds of users, not just a perfect user, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
So it felt like you were making steps towards it without always even necessarily recognising that you were specifically going to be there. You just took steps and then you discovered it along the way.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, exactly. Exactly like I left uni and I was like I like UI. I like UX. I like all of this stuff, so I kind of came out when I was a bit of a Jack of all trades and it was like trying to find that specialisation and then like I was trying all the different things and then when it hit accessibility, that’s what really kind of stuck and I saw the job advert Rebellion. I was like, I’m really not qualified for that, but I’d be ace at that. I’d be great for that. So yeah, so I’m really, really pleased that’s what I’ve become. My job is so fulfilling because my entire job is making sure that more people can play games. And that’s just…
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, what’s not to love?
Cari Watterton
I know. It’s just awesome.
Nigel Twumasi
So was Rebellion, was that than your first job in the industry?
Cari Watterton
No, no, no. So I left Abertay and I went to work at a small indie company called Puny Astronaut for a while. So that’s why I was doing UX design for about 3 years, she says, counting backwards. Yeah, about three years within the UX design there. And I was kind of again, this was more of the Jack of all trades side of things where I was doing everything from UI wireframes and testing all the way through to implementing and bug fixing. And that’s when I had that mentorship with Splash Damage and when I started looking at cool, how can we make this game accessible?
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, no, I get that sort of Jack of all trades, as is the nature of sort of small teams, small business. So I’ve have many hats and some of them I don’t even want, but. I need to have. I just need to make them fit. So, I get that.
What would you say is the biggest difference between going from a that small indie to, I mean, Rebellion, are in comparison pretty big big company, right?
Cari Watterton
Yeah, exactly. So they’re both indie companies. So there’s a lot of similarities in the way that the actual, in the way that communication vaguely happens, that there’s a lot that’s the same. But one of the biggest differences is the quality of the management and the quality of how they look after people. Being in a really small indie company, it was an indie company which had been a student team out of uni and then they they’d made a company and there was a lack of management training and stuff like that. So it was nice to go to somewhere like Rebellion where that was actually a thing that existed. I have a manager and he has my back and it’s amazing. He supports me in loads and loads of different ways. I feel valued, and I feel like there is a structure there. I feel like I know the places where I can go to ask questions and get answers and things like that.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah. No, I feel that. And and I certainly feel that as as again as a small company where you why didn’t do this out of university. So I and I I worked in in a different industry. So I I feel like I was able to bring some of that in there, but I can definitely see like some of the differences aside from money, obviously there’s that’s a big difference, but just the structures in place. And we’ve had the benefit of being able to have some young people work with us, some interns as well. Over the past few years. And I’m like learning like, OK, that’s that’s the differences. Because I know everything, and I don’t say that in a bragging way, just business and I was there from the beginning so I literally know everything about it, but then as a small business you you can’t then assume everyone else who comes in or just came in and go knows everything or knows what to do. So I really learned that in a practical way, not that I, if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said that. But I it’s the difference between intellectually knowing something and then practically like ohh you guys don’t know anything because you just got here. I need to write some stuff down.
Cari Watterton
Oh my gosh yes. Onboarding, onboarding.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, yeah. I’m like this is one of my things this year to is to get all that in a better place. So yeah, no, I feel that.
One of the things interesting you said was like your parents were happy that you were not going to be an actress but were happy for you to be in video games. And we’ve had people on and I’ve spoken to a lot of like young people in our workshop sessions who, to hear that they’re like, huh? Because their parents wouldn’t have said the same thing. But I guess is that because you had a creative upbringing, so they understo?od? Do they understand what you do, your parents, family?
Cari Watterton
Yeah, yeah, they understand what I do, which is really great. I had a lot of moments where when I’d be playing on the Xbox, my dad would come through and sit with me and I’d explain like, this is Dragon Age, this is what I’m doing right now, this is cool. We play a lot of board games in our house as well. That’s always been a really big thing. So even though they’re a little bit detached from video games, there’s still a lot of value that they see in gaming. And I mean, even growing up, we had lots of educational video games that my mum would get for us and my mum’s very technically minded. She’s like a technical author so. There was a level of appreciation, but also the relief of the fact that acting is like the most fickle industry, so I probably could have come back and said anything and they would have been pleased.
Nigel Twumasi
That’s fair, that’s the way it is. Just the whole. Yeah, just acting and production. I know a few people who are in and just it just seems difficult to say the least. So OK, that that. No, that’s that’s very positive because it it does make a difference when you have that family support to go and pursue something like video games.
Cari Watterton
Don’t get me wrong, they were super supportive when I was going to go into acting as well. They were very much uh, you know, follow your dreams. You do. You kind of a thing, but it was I think, like, yeah, it was just the kind of relief of the industry that was maybe gonna be a bit more stable.
Nigel Twumasi
I can appreciate that all right? Yeah. No, it’s good to know how you sort of found your way into that role. So I guess, yeah, we can talk more about accessibility and just to get an understanding because like I said. It’s just personally something that is not new in in terms of like, not completely unaware of it, but just how important it is and how. Even if you think you it doesn’t affect you, it probably does. I mean, what are some of the most common accessibility challenges that gamers may face, and that others might not consider just get like a grounding of what we mean by accessibility.
Cari Watterton
Ohh OK, so accessibility at its core is about access to an experience, so some of the accessibility barriers that people might face. For example, if you’re only playing with one hand, then you either only have access to a keyboard or a mouse, or you only have access to half of the controller. So immediately, like if you start to look at how many games can you play with just one side of a controller or just a mouse, or just a keyboard. And like also keyboard’s pretty big, I have very tiny hands and I can’t even stretch them across all of the QWERTY section. So like you know, considering where you put in your button placements and things that could be really difficult for someone who’s only able to use one hand. So that’s one thing.
There is obviously the classic is colour blindness. Everybody talks about colour blindness. There are different types of colour blindness and people will implement colorblind philtres to try and help that. But realistically, one of the things that you can do, which is the most efficient, is to just not rely on colour as a channel of communication. So when I say don’t rely on it, I mean use two visual channels so that could be colour and shape. So instead of having two circles, one that’s red and one that’s green, you have a red circle and a green square, and immediately it doesn’t matter what level of colour vision you have, you can identify those regardless. You know, so does that give you a bit of context then?
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, no, it it does. And and it’s very because what you described is very simple, but I would not. I would not have necessarily thought of it right away, just that simple change that can open up an experience for someone because I don’t have colour blindness. So it’s interesting to to hear that. So yeah, that gives a good grounding and like one of the things that I sometimes. Yeah. And I think, I might have brought it up when we had our discussion last year where sometimes when I hear from people who again don’t or think they don’t need accessibility and sort of look down upon it and it it frustrates me and I think the example I I gave was when Psychonauts 2 came out and they had a a difficulty setting where you don’t take any damage and they’re just this uproar and I couldn’t understand why. Just uproar. Like, oh, you’re making the game easy. And as if they were forcing on everyone. And it seems to me that there’s a section of players who who kind of argue that adding accessibility features detracts from the games experience or challenge. So, is this something that as a on the development side that you have to consider, is that even a false comparison or or compromise that needs to be made?
Cari Watterton
So this is a really, really interesting topic that you write loads of people bring up. So when it comes to designing with accessibility in mind, it’s not a case of want to change the design of the game or we want make it too easy, the ridiculously easy or something like that. The core of it is being able to access that clear pillar of what that game is about. So finding what the core of the experience is and allowing people access to that experience. So maybe in Psychonauts they decided that, you know, dying wasn’t part of that core experience, so taking damage wasn’t necessarily key to the other parts of the experience that they were looking at. If that kind of makes sense.
So you wanna kind of look at like, what’s the core experience here? What’s the what do we want the player to feel? Like you know, I think the other thing to kind of bring up is that you mentioned challenge. So games are made-up of challenges. That’s the whole point that a game is a challenge, so even if it’s just small things, but those levels of challenge differ from player to player in terms of their capabilities and what they’re comfortable with, so having difficulty settings immediately makes it easier for someone to adjust those capabilities. But alongside the challenge, the intentional challenges that a designer is putting into a game, there are unintentional challenges, which they will sometimes put into a game which makes access to those more difficult for people. So this is where we look at what are those intentional challenges, what’s that core experience and that design? And how do we make sure that there is access to that as openly as possible? Does that makes sense?
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, it’s that when you say unintentional challenges like again is, is it a case of like things you you wouldn’t have thought someone else would have difficulty with because you don’t have difficulty with them? And then just having to think about it, when you’re designing the game, is it that kind of consideration?
Cari Watterton
Absolutely. It’s like, yeah, it it’s exactly that. It’s the unintentional barriers that you’re creating like you know, if you haven’t thought about. Let’s give an example of you have an area of effect thing and when you enter this area of of effect you take damage. So there is a noise that is associated with that area of effect thing. So let’s say it’s like the area is on fire. So there’s like a fire noise going on, like crackling. Let’s say that there’s now a different one. That’s like a kind of healing flame that still has that fire crackling, and it’s a different colour now, we’ll say, or different visuals. But there’s a barrier there because someone without sight is only able to hear the audio cues, so can’t tell the difference between what’s the damaging thing and what’s the healing thing. If they’re just relying on those fire cues that they’re hearing, so it’s kind of like, yeah, thinking ohh we, you know, not thinking about how we can communicate that feedback to the player, not thinking about how something might become a barrier.
Platforming is another one, so you’ve got an object that you need to do a platforming sequence to get to, someone with muscle fatigue, they fall off and they go back to the beginning and they’ve already expended an amount of energy that they have to get to that point. And now they’re right back at the start and now every time they’re expending more and more energy and it’s causing them more fatigue till eventually they kind of give up. Whereas if it’s like there are almost more checkpoints along the way it’s still, you’re facing that challenge of the platforming, but was completing it in one section core to that experience or was it just, you know, being able to do it in stages? You’re still doing the same challenge. But you’re just not being severely punished and you’re able to kind of, continue on better.
Nigel Twumasi
And it kind of goes to the point about it sort of those changes can make the experience better for everyone. And one of the things like, I mean first of all, again, just back to the the Psychonauts example. Because it was, it was weird for me just on the face of it just seeing some so much uproar against something. But then I played the game, Psychonauts, I love the original and really enjoy the second one and had I not seen that uproar, I wouldn’t have even known that mode was in the game because my default is like I’d usually play just whatever the default difficulty is because I’m not really trying to make the game super hard, but I like a relative challenge. I’m more interested in the story and progressing through. So I just did that and and it’s like people getting so upset about something that is not being forced on them. It’s just, it’s so weird because I would have had no idea that that was in it. So there’s that. But then to the point about, like, it makes it better and I think I also brought this up when we had a talk because I learned it as I was putting the notes together for that discussion, sort of coming across the the the curb cut effect where the idea of like you make something more accessible better for one group of people and actually has benefits for others. So in the the example is like you know you cut or you put a slope in the the curb. So say someone in a wheelchair doesn’t have to have difficulty trying to get from, say, one side of the street and you know down the curb up a curb, you put a slope in and then you realise, ohh, if I’ve got a if I push in a pram, that’s easier. If I’ve, and I’ve done this many times, if I’ve got massive suitcase, I’ve overloaded with things because I went to a convention and I thought I was gonna sell way more than they actually ended up doing anyway, that’s my problem. I’m dragging this thing around I’m gonna go. Oh, there’s a there’s a cut in the curb. I’m gonna go there. That makes it easy, because I’m really sweating and off. I’m dragging this thing around so you see that in in video games where, yeah, you make something that is initially designed for one group of players to make it more accessible, it’s like actually is improves the quality of life for for everyone and and I think people often overlook that aspect of accessibility.
Cari Watterton
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So I think, like, yeah, the thing with it is that accessibility isn’t just about disability. Disability is at the heart of it, absolutely. But everybody is different and has different capabilities and the kind of impairments or effects that we might have on our capabilities, they can be permanent, but they might also be temporary or situational. So temporary would be like, you know, breaking your arm or a situational might be you’re playing on a train and you don’t have headphones. That you can’t hear the sound or you can develop impairments as well as you get older. One of my mentors likes to say that we’re all temporarily able bodied like I like. I love that because I love it because it’s grim, OK?
Nigel Twumasi
It’s grim, but it’s also true. He’s.
Cari Watterton
But it’s also true. I’m not a massive fan of the fair culture around like trying to scare people into it, but I think it’s more for me. I like it because like it’s relevant to me as well, like getting older. I now have problems in my thumbs with my tendons where from a life of drawing and painting and using game controllers. When I hold a pen or similar and for an extended period of time. My thumbs really really hurt. So like and my tendons are really sore actually. Yeah, there was an example where I was trying to play killer instinct with SightlessKombat and all the button mashing that happened. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I was just trying to mash all the buttons and I think we played for like half an hour and my thumbs hurt for three days afterwards. It was, it was that bad.
Nigel Twumasi
Did you win though?
Cari Watterton
No.
Nigel Twumasi
It’s not worth it then.
Cari Watterton
It’s it wasn’t. It wasn’t worth it all. It wasn’t. So he was trying to teach me to do all the cool moves and I didn’t have the capacity to take it in. I’m not a very fast learner with these things, so I was like, Oh no, I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But yeah, so that’s exactly it. Like, as you get older, you might have a reduction in vision or your motor dexterity. And like, I don’t know about everybody else, but I still want to be playing games where I’m like 80 and I’ve got like 10 cats, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
Life goals.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, exactly. It goes beyond like catering to players now and also into our future. But but like you said, like you know the effect for everybody, someone playing a game on a train without the sound, you know, someone playing a game and sort of having to pause it because they’re in the middle of like cooking dinner or a delivery arrives or something like that. You know, the ability to pause is one of those that’s so overlooked. Things like being able to have sensitivity settings set to what makes what is comfortable for you, you know, inverting a mouse or not. Sliders for FOV and for toggles for motion blur so that you can reduce motion sickness. Unlike so many of these things can be taken and can be used in loads of different ways depending on someones capability. Like, we’re all completely different, so making something that’s really flexible is a really great way to sort of help more people and enable more people to be able to play.
I think like just to quickly go back to what you said about the Psychonauts example, because I’ve seen it as well, there’ll be massive uproar about adding accessibility features in and making the game “easy” and all that kind of stuff. But there’s a really great quote from a GDC talk which I can never remember the name of, so I apologise, but the quote is that basically, “That’s not for me. I don’t need to have that feature on. But someone else being able to play the game in whichever way they can doesn’t detract from my experience. It only enables them.”
It’s literally that simple, like it doesn’t detract from your experience. It doesn’t devalidate your experience, you are setting your own challenges and your own limits and the game is being very specific as to which intentional challenges it’s giving you, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
Exactly. Yeah. And I think if Tazziii were here, she’d be saying yes because he said similar similar thing. If you want, we want more people playing games. That’s a good thing. So why do people get mad when more people can play games? Who knows? Mysteries of life.
But then just looking into the process a bit more, cause you are senior accessibility designer and what I’d like to know, I’m sure like people listening, is like the process? Like what’s the process to ensure that accessibility features are implemented in the game? I guess effectively because, you know, I imagine it’s something that needs to be brought up pretty early rather than later down the line, but can you give us an overview of that process to ensure that happens?
Cari Watterton
Yes, absolutely.
So it’s kind of split into two sections. One section is like your kind of big systems, so it would be things like menu narration or controller remapping, those big, chunky things which are systems in and of themselves that need to be made.
But then there’s also inclusive design. So out-with those large systems, like I said, we can unknowingly create barriers in our games and until we test them we don’t know if they’re going to be there. So by teaching developers to consider barriers whilst they design, we eliminate the need for retrofitting at the end of the project and the cost of accessibility is actually woven into the creation of that piece of gameplay and that development. So that’s the process basically, that’s the end goal is to have accessibility be everybody’s responsibility, everybody is thinking about the access challenges in the same way that they are thinking about how someone interacts with the system, you know, how does somebody bring this up? OK. How does somebody interact with this who perhaps can’t hear and things like that? And by doing it at that early stage and by weaving it into that, simply, it costs far less time and resources because we’re not thinking about it after the fact. You know, I think like a lot of people will talk about, accessibility is always left till the end and as a result it gets cut, but it can’t get cut if it’s part of the system, you know. So that’s kind of. That’s the dream process there. It’s the inclusive design mindset of designing with these in mind from the start and then validating that through testing. So having people come and test for access barriers, whether that is against the Xbox accessibility guidelines or whether that is a group of people with varying capabilities coming in and playing play, testing the game and reporting back on, like unintuitive barriers that they come across like, oh, actually for me, I find this really challenging, or I find this a blocker for my progress and stuff like that.
So that process with the testing and the validation of actually getting the users in that experience different disabilities and then on the sideline you’ve got dealing with all the big chunky scary systems.
Nigel Twumasi
And I guess because you mentioned like the cost and depending on at which stage you you tackle it, it can be big or or not? But overall is that one of the sort of challenges around accessibility, the additional cost or perception of cost, because I feel like there have been big strides in accessibility recently, but. If we look over the course of, you know, game development it’s something that has not always been and is is that one of the reasons why it’s just simply it is an additional cost.
Cari Watterton
I think it’s a combination of well, I I think purely it’s down to and I say this in the nicest way possible, ignorance. Like the same way that like before, we wouldn’t necessarily realise that something would be a barrier. That’s just the way that’s kind of gone and there’s been a lot of accessibility features that have been added into games because someone on the team is colorblind, so ohh OK. We now are aware of that. We have empathy of that situation. We can make accommodations for that we can, we can fix this, so I think it’s just kind of that ignorance and not realising that there are these different experiences even coming down to like not realising that someone without sight can play a video game like that’s something that could be quite quite a surprise to you people, like, because you think it’s such a visual thing, but really there is also we’re talking about consoles, we’ve got haptics and then on top of the audio, those are two sensory channels which you can use and like it shouldn’t, shouldn’t be any different for for different people to be able to access these games, so I think it’s more down to that. I think it’s more just we have regulations in place for our buildings and our architecture to like you know make sure that there’s ramps in and that there are accessible bathrooms and stuff like that. But I think it’s just because games is in its infancy, it just hasn’t quite hit.
Nigel Twumasi
Right. OK. That OK and-
Cari Watterton
Sorry, I say hasn’t quite hit games whilst living in the age of the Last of Us 2.
Nigel Twumasi
And God of War.
Cari Watterton
And God of War! And As Dusk Falls and all of those things. So yeah, what I mean is it’s still in its infancy. It’s still doing its things. It’s it’s here, it’s it’s amazing. It’s being talked about. It’s amazing the job even exists in the first place, which is fantastic, but yeah, I think like it’s not, it’s not on par and it’s not reached the same standards as some of the other industries exist around us.
Nigel Twumasi
Right. Yeah. And in, in, in your role is there, are there certain departments that you have to interact with more than others? Like who are the other, yeah, with other departments that you have to work with for the most part in your role?
Cari Watterton
Ohh I work with loads of people. The people I work the most with are probably UI because there’s a lot of accessibility that some of those bigger systems that hit UI things like text scaling and stuff like that and also a lot of we have like the coding and engine team and the design. I think, and production, I work with loads of people… and audio. I think probably the the the department I work with least is is probably like art in terms of like character art and 3D environment and stuff like that. But everybody else I work quite heavily with in terms of having regular meetings and finding champions in each of the projects. But I think like with arts, there’s there are more limited things because there’s less implication on the gameplay. So it’s more giving them a list of guidelines for how to visually represent things. But it’s kind of limited to that one visual channel that makes sense.
Nigel Twumasi
Right. Yeah, yeah, that make that does make sense. And I-
Cari Watterton
Sorry, I answered the opposite of your question.
Nigel Twumasi
I guess that was easier. Don’t I work with and? And as as you’re working with the other departments and to to bring more accessibility, is there, is there an example you can give off, like a particularly rewarding experience or achievement that you’ve had as an accessibility designer?
Cari Watterton
Ohh my gosh, I am constantly blown away by how amazing the team are. It’s always really rewarding when they make something or they come to me with an idea or something like because I have so much stuff that I’m doing. I don’t touch the engine, I don’t touch the tools. It’s it’s very strange. So I have to rely on the team to implement these things and and I’m always so impressed by how passionate they are. Impressed. No, I’m so… I don’t know, humbled, flattered, like, proud. I’m just like I’m surrounded by so many amazing people and that is what makes the job amazing is that there are so many people that are so passionate about this. So, so full of empathy for all the different kinds of players. And I think just seeing those people grow, grow in their confidence with accessibility as well. So it’s like it’s not just “I’m the accessibility person” it’s like here is me sharing this knowledge to empower you to be able to make decisions. And now there are those champions now that can help lead that and are feeling more confident in their abilities and do amazing things and have amazing conversations. And that’s just. That’s awesome.
Nigel Twumasi
No, it’s good to hear and out of interest is is the role of accessibility design is that is that common or is that like a rebellion thing?
Cari Watterton
So according to Ian Hamilton, my role it was the first in-house, UK, dedicated. Sorry, first dedicated, in-house UK role for accessibility. The US has been doing it for way longer than we have, so they actually have quite a few people in the in the US studios that been doing it. And there have been other jobs that have cropped up since mine as well. But I think it’s quite funny the way it’s phrased, cause I think if you stick enough things on the end of it then it will be the first of anything which cause, and I never like saying the first anyway, because especially me. Like I’ve been doing this job for a year and I’ve been doing accessibility for a couple of years and I am very, very small in comparison to some of the other people that have been doing this. But it’s just that the, there are so few people doing it that’s, you know, you you stand out, you go to GDC, you meet everybody and like you don’t kind of realise how much how much you know and then we’re kind of like all there together and there’s so much to learn from other people. So to answer your question, it’s not a very common role in a studio, but it should be. A lot of studios use accessibility consultants, which is more of a part time thing, but by having someone in a dedicated accessibility role, that means that I am, you know, in charge of all the documentation stuff in charge of holding people accountable for doing the things that I ask them to do.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, yeah. You see them in the kitchen like, “have you made the change?”. You see, let’s see, you know, in the meeting room and in the kitchen.
Cari Watterton
Exactly, exactly. And then also a lot of the stuff to do with educating everybody to make sure that everybody knows it’s their responsibility and then all of the sort of external advocacy stuff that. That I do and sort of along it as well, making sure that we have good channels of communication between our players and the dev team so that our players can tell us when they’re experiencing accessibility barriers, that’s a huge thing. Like we made some amazing changes to Sniper Elite 5 based off of feedback that we got from people on our discord after we opened the accessibility channel. People came back and said, I get really emotion sick. Can you put an FOV slider in? And they said I’m playing this with one hand and I find it really difficult with all the holds. And then we brought in like toggles and things like that. Additional kind of assists for manoeuvring the environments and again this is one of the things where it was like here’s an assist mechanic for moving around the level because moving around the level is not core to our experience. Our experience is about being able to plan and strategize and execute that plan. And you having, like, struggling to climb a wall, should not be part of that challenge, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
Right. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. And I guess, yeah, it’s good to have that feedback from players who who care about the game and is there. Is there an element cause I understand, I remember I had one of the first interviews we did for like our game pad online event was with a community manager and I raised the question of almost a double edged sword of getting feedback from the community. Cause, I mean I’ve been on Twitter, I see what happens. And knowing that you can’t do everything. So is there that balance when it comes, even when it’s accessibility of, like, how to balance the requirements that all the requests that come through from the communities? A consideration that you have to make or sort of balancing? You know there’s always all these facts like is the complexity of that goes into making games. It’s all these factors. So you’ve got like time and budget and… and mostly time. Do you have to sometimes make those sacrifices, or at least in terms of, like right now versus later?
Cari Watterton
Yes, absolutely. And that is probably one of the hardest parts of my job is because I feel the weight and the responsibility of all that, and I feel horrible because I know that making those sacrifices means that those people won’t be able to play the game.
But like you said, it’s a cost of. It’s scope, it’s scope and budget, and what we can do, and I think Sniper 5 is a really good example because, like I came in at the end of that project, we were very limited on what we could achieve because I was only it was only a couple of weeks before release and then it was what we could do in updates. So we had a lot of things through from the community and then it was a case of, OK, what do we have the scope for? What do we have the budget for? And at Rebellion we have different projects so after it gets launched we start moving people onto back onto their other projects. So we have a drain on our resources as well, so it was a lot of looking at what were the high impact but low cost things that we could do. So high impact as in like how many people is this going to be able to to reach you know or how often does this barrier occur in the game and then sort of looking at the cost and trying to to figure out those ones like you know we don’t want to do a low cost, low impact thing because yeah, that’s not going to help as many people as something that has a higher impact.
So, but yeah, there’s there’s so many things to consider. I mean, I ended up getting, I got a message through once on Twitter that was like, just delay the game by a month and add menu narration. And I was like, that’s not how that works. If it only took a month to add in, every game would have menu narration, trust me, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
There’s the one. Only took a month and then even if it did, you tried telling marketing for this this this day and it’s like there’s other people in this in this equation. But I get that and and it’s you mentioned. Like because we do the game design workshop and usually I mean I think I have to tell it to everyone. But usually when it’s younger and we’re talking like secondary school versus college or university, so the idea is to make a tabletop game and they learn about the basics of of game design. And I see the kids like they, they come up, good ideas, good ideas. But this session’s only two hours, so you you might need to cut some stuff, I’m just saying. And then I come back and then they haven’t done as much and like, Yep, that is scope.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, that is what scope is exactly and not over scoping. I loved, there was, rhere’s the MoSCoW system when I was in uni, which I really liked and that’s so, Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have. And the Won’t have is so important to say we’re not going to be doing this because it helps to just reinforce those. And then you immediately have, OK, we must have this. I do loads of game jams, so I do this all the time I go in and I’m, like, just obsessed with making sure that we get into the scope and we make-
Nigel Twumasi
OK, I need to get some tips from you.
Cari Watterton
We usually make board games in our game jams as well. My partner and I have big on making board games. But yeah, we’ll have like, what is the what’s the core of this? What’s the thing that we must do? What’s the kind of the juicy, fancy stuff that we could do if we get enough time? And what are we absolutely not touching and that immediately helps us to sort of align. What is this? I think like, yeah, that must have column. You know, thinking about what you need to play D&D as a player is some dice, which could even be digital, they could just be on like Google and the character sheet, you know, and a pen and that’s kind of it. Like you could have the players handbook and you could have the Dungeon Masters guide. You could have a character miniature all that kind of stuff. But you don’t need it, you know.
Nigel Twumasi
No, it’s true. And and I think that’s a good example, I’m going to have to use that. Although sometimes I’ve been a session and I’ll see people get like D&D inspired and you know I like to give space to be creative and explore ideas, but sometimes have to shut things down, go like, no, no, you don’t have time to go into a whole D&D campaign like reduce test goal flow. Just, yeah, let me just, I’ve seen this story before.
Cari Watterton
Encouraging like a vertical slice. like give me. Give me the essence of what it looks like, you know?
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, there you go. And I have too. I’ve seen some good, very good vocal slices from a initial sort of DND inspired thing. So yeah, scope. That’s the word of the day scope.
All right. So moving away from Rebellion a little bit and and all we’re having this conversation around the time of GAConf.
Cari Watterton
Yes, GAConf – Games Accessibility Conference. https://www.gaconf.com/
Nigel Twumasi
There you go. This is something that I know because you mentioned it when we scheduled the interview and yeah. So it’s new to me. Can you Tell us a bit about what it is, and what role it plays in the industry.
Cari Watterton
Ohh gosh yeah, so GAConf is basically a huge conference about games accessibility. It has two conferences a year. It has the European Conference which is happening in a couple weeks and it has the US conference as well.
They’re always super approachable, so they have, like, online versions that you can watch for free, and they make the experience accessible as well because they will have captions and BSL or ASL interpreters and things like that. The other thing that they’ve recently switched to over COVID as well is having people submit their talks ahead of time to get those captions. And what that also does is it opens up more opportunities for speakers that might not be able to physically make it to a venue or might have really bad anxiety, she says, raising raising her hand so might struggle with delivering a talk live and things like that, which is really great.
So, and the Games Accessibility conference it’s great at giving you lots and lots of different insights from lots and lots of different people, and I think I’ve watched the majority of the talks from the conferences in the past. Now it’s like, its overflow my brain with how much stuff that I’ve I’ve kind of watched and it’s always really, really interesting to see all the different approaches that people have and where everything aligns and where people have learned from other people like the amount of things I’ve learned from GAConf talks is astounding and they have a really great section on lived experience talks as well, so these are talks from people with different capabilities and those are just invaluable because it’s just again, it’s it’s building empathy, it’s raising awareness, it’s making sure the whole “Nothing about us without us” is like front and centre, so yeah.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah. No, it’s good at the. Yeah. For people, listen, if they haven’t heard of it then we’ll put a link in the show notes. So you can have some awareness of it because yeah, it’s an important topic and just looking at the why the industry, I think we touched on a few examples earlier already, but other examples from games, other than your own, some examples, some games that have added accessibility in sort of positive and new interesting ways.
Cari Watterton
Ohh, loads! Dead Cells had a whole breaking barriers update which they’ve added as well, they added like last year which was amazing. There were loads of accessibility updates Deathloop. Obviously you have things like God of War, the Last of Us that are doing amazing things As Dusk Falls is another incredible thing.
Nigel Twumasi
Oh I need to play that!
Cari Watterton
Yeah, I know. I’ve. I’ve seen things I’m like, oh, I really wanna. I really wanna play this. You’ve got. Blizzard is now looking at supporting screen readers on Hearthstone officially, which would be amazing, because there’s a quite big community of blind and low vision players playing Hearthstone and so like I played Hearthstone with SightlessKombat as well before we have a really good time playing that. I’m teaching him all of my terrible Hearthstone ways, but yes, and… I’m trying to think.
Nigel Twumasi
That’s a good list, yeah.
Cari Watterton
I mean, there’s there’s loads. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, I was trying to think of something particularly innovative, but there’s so many things that have, like, happened. And they’ve been amazing.
One of the things actually that I learned from GDC, which was fascinating because, I was listening to a talk on God of wars visual accessibility and they were talking about the audio cues that they were using. So the same way that the Last of Us has audio cues to tell you, like, when you’re aiming at a certain part of the body or whatever. And they said “when we looked at the audio cues, we looked at what the Last of Us had done and then designed similar sounds so that that audio language was consistent”. And that was something so simple that completely went like, I was like wow, that makes so much sense. Like, why didn’t I think of that like, the same way you have a visual language, you have an auditory language or a haptic language. So that was that was really cool. That was one of my big takeaways from from GCD.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, that’s good because even. When you think of like the PSI controller, you know triangle X, square, circle, same position, different games, and you just know and you just it’s become part of that language. So yeah, I can see that for audio and and like I mean God of War, I feel like I’ve mentioned enough times. Podcast is like my favourite game and I just recently finished Ragnarok and some some of the audio cues is like, because they’re all you’ll be in a fight and Mirmir will will, like, who’s the disembodied head Kratos carries around, will say, like, you know, to your left and and behind. And that game is so engrossing. I’ll sometimes I like duck to my left. It’s like what? And just turn around and like.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, it’s that that immersive, uh, use of accessibility as well that like again, that’s another curb cutting example of like, you know they have added in these additional like lines of dialogue to help guide players. It doesn’t just help players who are without sight, it helps everybody who maybe just you know, is maybe just focusing on something else and then, suddenly like ohh, OK, right.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, like throwing his axe. Yeah. So, yeah, I need to know who’s coming behind me as I’m throwing his axe in someone’s face.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, absolutely. The the devs from Santa Monica are absolutely lovely. They’re amazing. I had a great time with them, GDC, and just like listening to everything that they’ve been doing with God of War was incredible. Very insightful.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s there’s a lot in there and and again sort of back to my earlier point of like there’s a lot I probably miss because I barely touched the settings, I just because I’m able to play just as pretty much as the game is given by from what I’ve seen it just there’s just a lot in there, a lot that other people can learn from, so it’s good that that is in there so that other people can access the game.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, absolutely.
Nigel Twumasi
So and then just looking ahead slightly, because we’ve seen examples of, speaking of like large platforms, we’ve seen PlayStation and Xbox with different controllers around improving accessibility, so, like what do you see, evolve or how do you see this this field evolving to bring more accessibility to games in in the near future or distant future? If you wanna, I don’t know. In in the 100 years, I don’t know, but or or sooner?
Cari Watterton
Mm-hmm. So I think like, basically what I kind of mentioned before about uh, the inclusive design and weaving that in from the start, that’s that’s the ideal. That’s what I think we’re all working towards. Aderyn Thompson from Ubisoft had a fantastic talk at GDC that was Finding Our Way On The Path Less Travelled. And that for me was like the entire talk was about what is next for accessibility, which is this holistic, holistic design, stripping accessibility out of settings. All settings are accessibility settings and so all settings are for everybody you know, and looking at like how do we how do we keep that core design but make sure that we can access it. So yeah, I mean to be honest, probably most of what I’ve said earlier is plagiarised from their talk because it was amazing. So but like I think, yeah, a lot of that just. Being able to identify what those core pillars are and being able to weave in accessibility from the start.
And I think actually, I have a second answer to this that I’ve just remembered. What I would love to see more of is the tools becoming accessible. So the engines becoming accessible so that they can be used with like a screen reader or they can be used with simplified inputs and things like that, because then we can diversify the creators of games and then that will spark more innovation because they will be able to create things which solve their access barriers and I think that’s gonna be a huge step forward for innovation it’s like not just getting people in to play a game and say this does or doesn’t work for me, but diversifying our developers and our creators to people with different capabilities.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah. No, I agree. I think, because we talk a lot about diversity and inclusion and we come from it because everyone comes from it, it means something different to different people, right? So, but then it’s also understanding that as an industry to be more diverse, you need more people creating the games that come from different perspectives. So I think that’s a good point and that’s yeah, interest one, what interesting one to see develop over time.
Cari Watterton
Absolutely! Can I do a quick point on just terminology?
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, go ahead.
Cari Watterton
Cute. So yeah, cause I think with accessibility there is a lot of terminology around it which gets kind of sometimes a bit muddled.
So obviously accessibility is talking about the access to an experience and specifically about barriers that might compromise that access.
There’s also approachability, which quite often people will say accessible when they mean approachable and approachable, is more the ease of learning something or considerable care with like onboarding and stuff like that. So it’s not necessarily tied to any access barriers. It’s just that this was more approachable because it looks a certain way, or they built this in a way that the tutorials are really easy to follow kind of thing. You know?
And then there’s inclusivity and EDI. So I have to say, like, you know, a disabled character in your game isn’t accessibility. That’s inclusivity, and that’s representation, you know, and I think that’s really important to know as well as that. Like inclusivity is so important in its own right, but just having. Yeah, just having a character in your game that has a hearing aid or uses a wheelchair doesn’t make your game.
Nigel Twumasi
Have some people try to pass that? Not naming any names, right?
Cari Watterton
No, I haven’t personally experienced it, but I think like I think it’s just good to to spread that awareness from uh yeah.
Nigel Twumasi
We’ve we’ve been, we’ve been educated so. Before we get to our getting some advice or even more advice from you, do want to make sure we we get this question in because we like to talk about success and what that looks to be, what that looks like to people. And because we tell stories, so always thinking about how storytelling maps to to real life, and we’re all protagonists in our own story, and I just feel like every good protagonist has some kind of goal to working towards and some kind of vision or success. So for you, what is, what does success look like to you and are you there yet?
Cari Watterton
Oh gosh, I’m definitely not there yet.
Success, to me… Success to me is actually maybe I kind of am there success to me as being in a job that I love that I find fulfilling and having a happy life around me as well. I’m very career focused as a person, but I suppose one of my goals, this is really silly. I grew up in the countryside but my parents never had the luxury of being able to afford horses, so I’ve always wanted a pony, so I’m like, I wanna get my forever home and I wanna have a pony like and that’s got nothing to do with my job. It’s just.
Nigel Twumasi
It’s what you want.
Cari Watterton
That’s one of the things that I wanna. Yeah, so many things that I want in life. I wanna have a life that is that is happy where I am surrounded by amazing wonderful people and I do a job that I find fulfilling. That’s success to me, so I’m a little bit of the way there.
Nigel Twumasi
No. So it’s good answer. I did feel you were gonna say success would be being the the second female Doctor Who. But I guess that’s, maybe maybe that down the line somewhere.
Cari Watterton
Ohh my gosh, oh I missed a trick on that one.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, I think you got your priorities out of whack.
Cari Watterton
I know, I know. I need to go speak to the BBC.
Nigel Twumasi
Alright, so now we’ve got that that picture of success. Let’s get into our guest advice segment. In each interview, we’d like to ask our guests to give someone advice for aspiring creative professionals. So we’ve been talking video games and accessibility. So, Cari, what kind of advice do you have for others listening who may want to get started with video games in general or maybe specifically accessibility in video games?
Cari Watterton
So I think my piece of advice is just generally for anybody getting into video games. And this comes from my own story as well. I think it’s basically know that you are worth something. And also knowing your rights as someone that’s working on games, that’s an employee that’s that’s doing this. The games industry is born out of a passion for playing games, and we need to make sure that we look after ourselves. So, quite early on in my career, while I was still at Uni, I ended up getting fired from a games industry job and I felt like I failed, but like I’d be blacklisted from industry and I wouldn’t get anywhere, but ultimately it made me so much stronger.
I read contracts to the letter. I ask 101 questions about jobs when I’m applying for them. I make sure that I know my rights. I make sure that the company culture is gonna be right for me. And why do I wanna work for them? How are they gonna support me? How are they gonna value me as an employee? So doing your research on the company, making sure that it’s right for you. And also understanding that mental health is valid like mental health is important. Anyone can have bad mental health. You know, it’s like mental health is like having a cold. You know it’s you can just have it for a short period of time where you just don’t feel entirely yourself because of burnout or whatever. And mental health is not necessarily Mental illness. So like, yeah, just understanding that that’s important and completely valid as well. So yeah, know your worth. Look after yourself. Do your research. You are worth something. You are valuable. And you deserve to be looked after. And just recognise that your comfort and boundaries will be different to other peoples as well. So it’s OK to care about different things, like maybe your priorities won’t be in things like mental health and that’s totally fine. But like knowing what you want and how to how you want to get there is really important.
Nigel Twumasi
Yeah, I get that. I I like that. And I think that there’s a lot that, you know. I’m making notes and myself, particularly the mental health side. That’s something I’ve been. Sort of learning and about and understanding better than I had been previously. So yeah, no, very good, very good advice there. So yeah, let us know listeners what you think, if any questions you have as well, just feedback on the interview. Let us know feedback@mayaada.com. So before we wrap completely, we are going to do. The bonus round.
So this is usually the part that Tazziii would come in and then say we had to throw in, follow up questions or random things that didn’t quite fit in the interview. But I’m gonna do that and I just did. So this segment has now been introduced. So with that actually there’s just one actually might be a couple. But one thing in particular I just had to go back to making comics on PowerPoint. So one, I didn’t know you were into making comments because we also make comments. And so it was interesting to know what comics you were you were into at a young age or even like now, and just how did you do that on PowerPoint and why would you do that to yourself?
Cari Watterton
So actually in retrospect, I love working in Adobe Illustrator and that uses like you know, like the shapes and the vectors and everything. And to a very basic level, the same thing exists in Word and PowerPoint. So like using those shapes and manipulating them to.
Nigel Twumasi
Very basic, yeah, yeah.
Cari Watterton
Yes, yes, very, very basic. You must imagine – I was working on my mum’s old Windows 95 computer. OK. Yeah. I didn’t know that Photoshop existed. I didn’t know anything existed. I was just making things. What do I make? What comics do I make?
So for the home Ed Group, we had a magazine that I started and I had a comic strip called Vicky and Beth. And it was two women that lived together, platonically, and they would get up to shenanigans, and one of them was a little bit- it was a little bit pinky and the brain inspired – like one of them was a little bit sort of a little bit more aloof than the other one, was much more the brains of the operation. And so that was the kind of thing that would happen but it kind of bled into like I did, like a baking sheet. So it was a recipe of how to follow the recipe and I turned it into a comic strip. That was like showing how the characters were doing it, so one of them would be really neat and organised in one frame and in the next frame it would be like really messy. And yeah, so that kind of stuff. And then in PowerPoint as well, I used to do a lot of educational stuff. So biology is one I remember, I did like a big PowerPoint around some biology stuff and getting it’s just probably very similar to like XD, because I was linking up loads of buttons and stuff so I was making entire interface that like you could navigate through to like find different pieces of information.
Nigel Twumasi
Early start, you were there.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, This is why I said it was an epiphany for me and I went to all this stuff and I was like, I’ve been doing this for for years, just not realising it. Why would I do that to myself? I didn’t have many friends and it was fun.
Nigel Twumasi
I will accept that answer that, that, that, that makes sense. That makes sense. And is is comic something? Do you do you read now or is that not so much?
Cari Watterton
Ohh really not, not so much. Not so much. It was mainly born out of the fact that I liked drawing a lot and I liked writing. But comics I kind of found a bit difficult. I did a lot of like, novel writing and story writing, but I found it quite difficult to overlap the two of them, so I much prefer like a novel or just like looking at pictures of things. I don’t know what it is about visual novels. I feel like they look absolutely gorgeous and I would love to get into them, but I think it’s because they’re a little bit a little bit foreign for me. Like a little sort of gimmicky comic strip was easy enough for me to do as a kid, and to be like, wow, this is really cool and fun, but like proper graphic novels and stuff. I’ve never, I’ve never dove into yeah.
Nigel Twumasi
That’s fair enough. But yeah, no, I just had to. I just had to understand that PowerPoint thing because that is. Yeah, but I can sleep. I can sleep now, because we’ve we’ve resolved that.
Cari Watterton
No, it’s it’s OK. It’s like it was. I tell people that all the time and they’re like, what? What were you doing? What were you thinking? Honestly. It was just so much fun. I made my own version of Club Penguin that was like club dogs and then, and then I, then get this. I printed it out.
Nigel Twumasi
Ohh wow the whole way.
Cari Watterton
Which in the world of video games, something wasn’t quite right.
Nigel Twumasi
Actual physical copy of.
Cari Watterton
Yeah, exactly. Here. Go, please. Enjoy. Uh, my club, club pop or whatever it was. Yeah.
Nigel Twumasi
It’s self published. Technically.
Cari Watterton
No.
Nigel Twumasi
Oh well, maybe we can add that to the list of goals then yeah.
Cari Watterton
Ohh God. Ohh. My goodness. Don’t even. I’m doing so many things already, like you’re gonna add, like, get self published to my list? Like maybe next year, maybe next year.
Nigel Twumasi
That’s fair. That’s fair. Yeah. Alright. Well, Cari, thank you very much for taking the time to tell us about your dreams and goals and accessibility along the way as well. Appreciate that.
Cari Watterton
No worries, and my troubled. My troubled PowerPoint passed and my my best friend Clippy.
Nigel Twumasi
Ohh who can? Yeah, I mean now it’s going to be AI Clippy and he’s gonna he’s gonna come full circle. It’s gonna help you in all your life aspects.
Cari Watterton
I love and hate that paper clip with a passion.
Nigel Twumasi
It’s ingrained in just the certain generation. It’s just ingrained in, we we all know.
Cari Watterton
I know and I gave a talk to students before and they didn’t know what I was talking about. And I was like, no! I’m not that old, am I? Anyway, I’m so sorry. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so lovely to chat to you about stuff. Hopefully it’s all made sense and I haven’t rambled too much and yeah. Thank you so much.
Nigel Twumasi
Ah, it sounded good to me.
So hopefully, yeah, listeners enjoyed this as well. So make sure you are subscribed if you’re not already. We have many discussions like this, so subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And also while you’re there, give us a five star rating and review cause that helps us reach new listeners and fans of story discussions.
And we are also story creators, so you can discover our manga universe online as well as any conventions we pop up at, and all our titles are available at our online store, including the latest series Through the Fog, which is a story about a pandemic that I wrote during the pandemic. You can also join our discord for free, chat with us. And look out for our coming Studio77 membership. We’ll be having our video content, comic content and early access to tickets all available there. And one of the events you can get tickets for is our Do I look like a gamer? Video game Representation Campaign which is now live. For this year, we’ve got a yearly campaign now, so we’re making a yearly initiative with our photo campaign featuring 40 players and makers, as well as a series of events and activities that you can be part of. So yeah, we’re looking forward to bringing that to life again this year. But in general, stay tuned for more podcast episodes. Like I said, we have many creative. Interviews, video game discussions and deep dives into stories. Across pop culture. And you can always give us a shout directly. Our e-mail address is feedback@mayamada.com and our website with links to subscribe is mayamada.com/storyxstory.
So thank you for tuning in and until next time, stay safe. And remember, if you currently own a pony that you don’t need, I may have a buyer for you, so get in touch and we’ll talk. I’ll make the connections, but take care everyone.