Faithful readers of the column may notice there hasn’t been a wealth of video game coverage over the years. Last October, I interviewed Xbox accessibility boss Anita Mortaloni, and also have covered Sony’s PlayStation 5 Access Controller in the past. By and large, however, my reporting on the intersection of video games and disability has been relatively nascent compared to other vectors of assistive technology.
Earlier this month, I sat down with two members of the Activision Blizzard team, Adrian Letta and Drew McCrory, to talk about the company’s philosophies around accessibility in game design as it pertains to the popular Diablo IV. The action role-playing (RPG) title, available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, has been in existence for over two decades, since 1997. Activision announced the fourth installment of the series at BlizzCon in 2019 and released a few months ago, on June 6.
Ledda, who serves as Activision’s director of inclusive game design, explained the company focuses on three pillars: accessibility, representation, and community. Ledda, who’s been at Activision for a decade and has a background in art and engineering, said he’s “always had an interest” in accessibility, diversity, and inclusion, saying it was “his honor to have established the role and function” of his job.
“The function of inclusive game design works across all of our teams that Activision Blizzard to help support ways over developers to think more inclusively about ways that their characters, their narratives, their features, all of them, can include a wider audience and help people feel like they can be invited to play and they will love our games,” he said of his role at Activision Blizzard. “Accessibility is a key part of it, probably my favorite. I’ve been collaborative [with] so many new teams here and individuals. It’s been just a joy to be able to do so here at the company.”
According to Ledda, working on accessibility has “been a journey” for everyone at Activision. The mission—making games that are playable by everyone—is an important one, but Ledda acknowledged learning about what makes for good accessibility isn’t easy and can involve a good amount of complexity. To that end, he said Activision has partnered closely with AbleGamers over time to learn more about the topic. Activision has sent more than a hundred employees, spanning numerous teams, to become certified in AbleGamers’ accessible player experience program. The training, Letta said, helps enable people to think more formally about what inclusive game design looks like, how technology plays a role, and ensure that everyone “feels welcome” to play. Ledda called this training process “foundational” to helping Activision “think more consciously about accessibility.” The company wants to ensure accessibility is a high priority at all times during a game’s development.
“This journey is something where if we bring allies with us and improve the education and empathy around accessibility, then we get better games, we get better engaged players, and we get more joy out of these gaming experiences,” Ledda said of working on accessibility at Activision.
McCrory, who is the lead accessibility designer of Diablo IV and has been with Activision for two decades, echoed Ledda’s sentiments by saying “how we stage accessibility in our development cycle… it’s a first-class citizen.” For Diablo IV in particular, McCrory stressed accessibility isn’t something that was shoehorned at the end of the development process; it’s part and parcel of the design process from the get-go.
“I’m a firm believer the only reason someone shouldn’t play one of our games is because there’s a lack of interest. It should never be because they cannot play the game,” he said. “I don’t want there to be any sort of hurdles from an accessibility standpoint for someone to enjoy the game. In general, we’ve seen massive leaps forward across the games industry. I’d like to think we’re really pushing the edge of this burgeoning area.”
McCrory said Diablo IV has over 50 accessibility features. In mid-May, coincidentally published on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Activision Blizzard wrote a blog post wherein they detailed some of the functionality and “combatting demons with accessibility.” Among the game’s slew of features mentioned in the post are motor-oriented enhancements like button remapping, visual aids like text and cursor resizing, and hearing aids such as cinematic subtitles. As he reiterated during our conversation, McCrory said he believes “the only limitation to adventuring in Sanctuary should be interest, not capability.”
For his part, Ledda said of the import of accessibility in Diablo IV: “When we’re thinking about a variety of accessible experiences in the games, we’ll often consider the creative vision of that game, then how can we enhance it such that folks who may have certain challenges or barriers can still experience and enjoy the gaming epicness that is there.” He added accessibility “are interpreted differently at the different franchises or the different kinds of genres, but the core heart is to deliver the best possible gaming experience often—and if not often, the majority of the time to ensure accessibility is designed consciously.”
Asked whether Activision looks to tech companies such as Apple and Google for instance, for inspiration on their own work, Ledda said Activision Blizzard and other companies often have the shared goal of removing technological barriers. McCrory seconded that idea, telling me Activision “definitely borrows standard user experience practices” from others. Both Ledda and McCrory caveated that designing for video games is unique from other aspects of tech due to the medium’s nature
“The reality is we have to be very concise with our features because players are asked a lot of questions and they’re often asked a lot of questions that demand very fast responses,” McCrory said of building accessibility into video games. “We have to build accessibility into each of those systems to allow players, regardless of where they are in their journey, to engage effectively with what we’re presenting them.”
Feedback-wise, McCrory said reception to Diablo IV has been positive thus far. He cited well-known accessibility gaming website Can I Play That?, whose Mike Matlock proclaimed the game as “one of the most accessible RPGs [role-playing games] I have ever played!” It’s a sentiment McCrory said he’s “incredibly proud of.” He noted Activision gets a lot of feedback and feature requests through the company’s dedicated email for accessibility. Accessibility is an evergreen endeavor; McCrory echoed an idea shared by so many others in accessibility I’ve spoken with by saying there will always be more work to be done.
“It’s [feedback] one of those things where I take it from a very humble stance because I am proud of everything that we’ve developed,” he said.
McCrory continued: “The honest answer is I haven’t shipped all the features I want to have in the game yet. While I think we have an amazing base right now, and we’re meeting a lot of the needs of our users, we’re not meeting all of the needs. I’m working every day with my team to make sure that we’re adding in new features to enable even more players to come into the game.”
Ledda added Activision Blizzard recently attended the Disability:IN Global Accessibility Conference, where he participated in a panel discussion on accessibility and the gaming industry. He shared an anecdote of someone coming up to him after the panel discussion to thank Ledda for his words, but also express how he’s never felt fully included in video games. The exchange proved meaningful to Ledda.
“This aspect of accessibility work that we’re doing now can mean the difference between whether someone feels included or feels excluded. What we’re doing in making progress and against across Activision Blizzard is ensuring that everyone should feel like they see themselves there [and] they see themselves represented and welcome,” he said. “When you ask about the reception on this work for inclusion in general with inclusive game design, we don’t have to look far to see the gratitude or the feelings of acceptance for the work that we’re doing. I think that’s key to ensuring that everyone can be themselves and be part of this gaming community. I know when I was growing up, gaming often seemed like a nerdy thing to do and people wouldn’t do it. It’s not cool. But these days, we’ve evolved so much more beyond that [in terms of] technology, interaction, entertainment, narrative stories, gaming—all of it comprises our gaming experiences. Accessibility is part of that as well.”
Looking towards the future, McCrory reemphasized his feelings on the work he and team have done on Diablo IV, saying that although he’s proud of the progress they’ve made in making the game accessible, the work isn’t over. He hopes that, because accessible design is good design, working on accessibility will be normalized to the point where people will require “less guidance and less direction” as people are educated and the mindset comes naturally. Internally at Activision, McCrory told me he regularly hears from people on different teams asking how they can become involved with furthering accessibility and inclusive design.
“The fact we have advocates all the way from the top of the company all the way down to the bottom—people really just doing all the meat of the work—means that we’re doing all the right stuff to find a great place in the future. I’m really excited to see where we end up,” McCrory said.
Ledda concurred with McCrory’s optimism for the future, saying he hopes accessibility and inclusive design becomes even more “empowered or strategized or centralized” at Activision and elsewhere in the industry.
Ledda continued: “Right now, the conversations around accessibility can seem like it is a special one-off [initiative] or a unique feature to this game. That’s great to celebrate. In the future, I hope that it is just naturally part of the conversation—that accessibility is not seen as its own topic necessarily, but part of the spirit of a certain topic or game. In the future. I believe that won’t be too far away. I think that conversations like these [about accessibility] will continue to grow on that journey.”
Read the full article here