Abstract
In this interview, Mark Barlet digs deep into the past of accessible gaming equipment and discusses the potentials, conditions, pitfalls, issues, and (sometimes) clashing ideals, goals, or demands when it comes to working with game developers, designers, or studios on accessible gaming technologies. As co-founder and Executive Director of the international non-profit organization AbleGamers, he has been an advocate for less streamlined and normed game and peripheral designs that offer a higher degree of configurability and adaptability for over a decade now. Barlet also worked on the precursor and the prototypes of the Microsoft Adaptive Controller and in this interview he gives insight into the production process of the device and the frequently mentioned “inclusive approach” they chose, namely the inclusion and consultation of persons with diverse abilities and the experimentation with diverse modes of play or habits in the design process. Naturally, in the process of narrating his experiences with the game economy, Barlet also sketches the “becoming of AbleGamers” and the oftentimes exhausting efforts of communicating with and convincing game studios that accessible technologies and software are not only of social, ethical, or political value, but also a quite profitable concept.
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Notes
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PhpBB is an Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free and open-source.
- 2.
Interesting to add that a few days before our interview, Microsoft surprised almost everybody with the announcement that it will acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion. https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/, accessed 20 March 2022.
- 3.
“Microsoft XNA […] is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA, accessed 22 March 2022.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Rigopulos, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 5.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAX_(event), accessed 22 March 2022.
- 6.
“Includificaton. A Practical Guide to Game Accessibility” (2012), https://accessible.games/includification/, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 7.
https://accessible.games/accessible-player-experiences/, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 8.
You can access the presentation of “APX: A New Approach to Data Informed Design for Accessible Games” by Christopher Power, and Mark Barlet online, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6fsPMqAmU, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 9.
Power, C., Cairns, P., & Barlet, M. (2018). Inclusion in the Third Wave: Access to Experience. In M. Filimowicz, & V. Tzankova, V. (Eds.), New Directions in Third Wave Human-Computer Interaction: Volume 1-Technologies (p. 163–181). Cham, CH: Springer.
- 10.
https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag-3.0/, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 11.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_Part_II, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 12.
https://accessible.games/certified-apx-practitioner-course/, accessed 22 March 2022.
- 13.
See, for example, Mark’s Keynote at the Games for Change (G4C) 2020: “The World now understands AbleGamers’ Mission”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQalLR6v-GI, accessed 22 March 2022.
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Barlet, M., Ochsner, B., Spöhrer, M. (2024). Interview with Mark Barlet (AbleGamers). In: Spöhrer, M., Ochsner, B. (eds) Disability and Video Games. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34374-2_6
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