albatrossdeveloper

[albatrossdeveloper]

a friend wrote this fantastic blogpost on burnout and i want everyone to see it

A LOT of disability in games and creative fields is a result of burnout. this is a really cool good outline and basic guide to get started addressing it. https://discographette.online/posts/thinking-about-how-people-manage-burnout

[albatrossdeveloper]

Have you ever seen someone press the same button on a vending machine repeatedly, past when you feel like you would have figured it out? Have you ever seen someone do something the worst possible way you could imagine, but then find out they've been doing it this way for years? Thats usually the effect of pain and exhaustion. When pain and exhaustion is pathologized because its affecting somone's life so frequently and intensely, it is called brain fog. We call pain and exhaustion brain fog, i know it is so sanitized, but bear with me. This needs to play into your game design. Don't you think the guy at the vending machine and parents trying to dissociate out * loud child noises* alike deserve to have fun and play games? People often claim that genre goes against it, which has always been so confidently stated that I just had to laugh at it. I love these genres when they meet me where I am, and I am secretly a mastery gameplay person. I mean mastering controls feels so damn good, although I can't really do it myself anymore due to my fibromyalgia and medications for it. Celeste is what I get, and although I am ride or die for Celeste I also want to play more games like it, but they are all so damn inaccessible. Games and gameplay that requires mastery, genre literacy, and problem solving rarely accomodates people with brainfog or motor control issues. It will give you the option to skip it, but that is robbing these players of all that fun you made! It's a tricky job. Accessibility in games is really nuanced and difficult. It is also ultimately a problem that you can creatively solve, just like any other aspect of the game. Get creative, be a little genre weirdo, people with brain fog will always be itching to try out games that we think we can fully complete.

[albatrossdeveloper]

cmon child safety lid you know it's me

[albatrossdeveloper]

XOXO Accessibility: My Experience Attending

All right, this is what I do, and for once I'm actually excited to do it?? 

I went into XOXO jaded as hell. I have every right and every reason to be. Access is both easy and hard, complicated and simple. An event can do everything within its power to create accessibility, but if your crowd is full of people who block the ramps and stand in front of people sitting in rollators, disabled people will still be kept from enjoying themselves, and be forced to put on a brave face for it. XOXO was the rare kind of thing where I left uplifted, and thinking maybe there is a future for people with physical and cognitive disabilities to be allowed to participate in the larger community of artists. 

Every talk had CART. It wasn't perfect, the outdoor tent had them stage-right in the front, so they couldn't see the slides which showed some of the more difficult words people were using, but holy shit they had CART at every talk. This shouldn't be an issue like it is, but it creates access for everyone; not just deaf and HOH individuals, but people who have sensory processing disorders and just able bodied and minded people who missed a word or two. The events at the mainstage had the CART done from the back it seems, and I noticed it was much more accurate. 

As for the comfort level at the events, guys, I did fucking floor time. I was flaring pretty bad those two days, the chairs weren't incredibly comfortable, and I wanted to change positions. So I sat on the floor, which is already rare for me to feel that confidence, and a volunteer asked if I needed anything like a chair, and when I started explaining just thumbs-upped me and walked away. I was astounded, usually I have to explain myself, but they just went on "I don't have to understand I'm just here to help" style and did their job without making me feel weird. Genuinely, that was probably my most uplifting moment of the event, stopping dead in my tracks of an explanation I shouldn't feel the need to give in the first place, feeling safer than I've felt to just be a little autistic weirdo who needs floor time than I probably ever have. I go to chronic pain support groups regularly where people will look at me funny for sitting on the floor. The fact that in support groups I get more side-eyeing than I did at XOXO just speaks to the atmosphere they cultivated that we're allowed to truly come as we are. I've had so many iterations of this experience, all well-intended usually, but this is by far the most comfortable I have ever felt. 

I'm the kind of sensitive person who gets caught up in this minutiae. I noticed every single cable was well covered with an accessible ramp that would have passed seattle's legal qualifications for how we have to cover our EV chargers as to not trip people on sidewalks, and the ramps were always immediately made clear for me when people without mobility aids were crowding them as soon as I came into view with one. Everyone who I interacted with did literally everything within their power to help me deal with my very severe grass allergy. This always bothers me at conferences, and at GDC I was running on 4 benadryl at a time multiple doses per day because yerba buena is like swimming in histamines for me. I didn't have to take any benadryl until the last day when I went to a Slack organized meetup in a park, and I hadn't brought my rollator and was given a chair to sit in so I could continue participating in the conversation. At no point did anyone stand in front of me excluding me from the group, this happens often when I'm sitting in a rollator, I was always a welcome member of groups and circles of conversations. 

There was one big issue that happened, and everyone who marked ourselves as having access needs were emailed about it the day before. They usually have tiling on top of the grass, to make the terrain easier to navigate. It was BUMPY as hell, and I definitely struggled to navigate it. This was the biggest access hangup I hit, but I was notified it would happen in advance, and it was made clear to me that one of the main organizers was absolutely scrambling to try and make it right. When I asked if there were any plans to mitigate it, I was told options had been exhausted and was actually offered a full refund of my pass. I had an incredible experience, and I don't feel like it impacted me enough to make that necessary, but I cannot stress how fucking rare it is for people to literally put their money where their mouth is on these issues. Everyone who is disabled and/or using mobility aids I talked to was definitely struggling with it, and anyone who was there and dealing with it in some capacity please feel free to comment your experiences below, as mine isn't enough to give a full picture. My fellow attendees did everything they could to make it easier for me to navigate, and even the food vendors helped me make sure everything I bought was something I could move from their space to the tables in or on my rollator without sauces going flying. 

Covid measures are their own thing, and this event had some great policies in place. NUMEROUS types of masks were available, and I'm finding myself wishing I'd taken pictures of all the different types available. This is just a summary of my experience, and I’m so happy it was so positive. I left this conference feeling artistically fed and uplifted, which is a genuine first for me. Thank you to everyone involved in organizing for your hard work! 

[albatrossdeveloper]

Carrie projecting her period cramps onto Freddy

[albatrossdeveloper]

[albatrossdeveloper]

yes, there are that many really disabled people on the internet actually

When I was less sick I used to think, "It seems like such a large portion of people on the internet are disabled, it can't possibly be that large of a percentage of the population" and then let my ableism demons tell me it was because they were faking (the same ones that told me I was faking, until I made myself really ill.)

But now that I'm sicker and wiser I realize I was logically just wrong because

The internet is disabled people's lifeline. There are more disabled people on the internet because OF COURSE. People who aren't disabled can be less chronically online because they don't have to be. This is textbook selection bias!

But actually also I was almost right, because there are way more disabled people in society than you would think! They're just systematically hidden and excluded from public spaces for abled peoples' convenience! 🙃

Anyway maybe this will help you understand and/or explain to abled friends and family.

[albatrossdeveloper]

Cleaned things up

Sorry for lesbian and miku clutter, I thought this browser was logged into my old middle school era personal blog and IT WASNT so just pretend you didn't see that ok

[albatrossdeveloper]

notice how linkedin isn’t on maslow’s hierarchy of needs

[albatrossdeveloper]

i opened MSpaint again after years

[albatrossdeveloper]

if you’re a white creator and your brown/black characters are always sassy, reckless, aggressive or cold and your white characters are always soft, demure, shy and introverted you should think about maybe why you did that

[albatrossdeveloper]

watched "i saw the tv glow" today and ooh boy was it too much for me. incredible art, im gonna go dissociate for a day or three now. As art I'm amazed and fascinated by it. im gonna go sleep in my lesbian granny square cardigan my best friend made me for ideally 3 days yeah

[albatrossdeveloper]

Really the kicker about discussing colonialism intrinsic to certain fictional tropes/archetypes/genres/what-have-you is that white bitches et al get SO mad about it. "Ohh so I'm not allowed to play farming sims? Wearing a silly hat makes me a fascist now?" I was just exercising critical thought but yknow what? Just for you? Yeah it does

[albatrossdeveloper]

what if baba came into your house and said PER SON is PUSH and started pushing your ass around

[albatrossdeveloper]

kind of obsessed with this comment from the aoteaora nz subreddit….

[albatrossdeveloper]

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[albatrossdeveloper]

Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.