[games_access] same proposal in multiple tracks

[Eelke Folmer]

Hi Reid,

On 9/30/07, Reid Kimball <reid at rbkdesign.com> wrote:
> Our goal from day one has always to affect the industry at large to
> make games for all. I'm not sure what you are suggesting specifically
> other than "use our resources wisely". I personally want to talk to as
> many people as I can about CC in games. I'm willing to prepare for how
> ever many sessions I'm allowed to.

I appreciate your dedication but the problem is as can be seen from
our past attendance figures is that it is incredibly hard to attract
people to our talks. The concept of game accessibility does not sell
well compared to the dozens of other "cool" talks that are going on at
the same time. If you are dropping several hundreds of dollars on a
pass to go to GDC, you want to be entertained and see the latest games
and hardware.

I'm merely suggesting of trying to do things a bit different this year
and not focus too much on the talks alone, we can spend our resources
better. Talks are good to get us in but they also take our time
(preparation/attendance). What if we can spend that time outside of
our talks talking to game developers handing out our top 10 flyers? I
am not saying we should skip the talks but in recent years it hasn't
brought us the audience we hoped for and I don't see that changing
soon.

Handing cliffy B / Ken Levine/ David Jaffe/ Lord British what not our
little flyer can have a potentially bigger impact than an X amount of
talks for the same small number of people with hardly any influence on
game development which just show up because they symphatize with us.

The point is if you talk to people personally I cannot imagine someone
not rooting for people with disabilities, but on a collective level
disabilities are ignored since there is just too much distraction and
other cool stuff going on at GDC. Given that, why not make game
accessibility personal and go out there with our cool four ghost
Shirts and talk to as much individuals as possible and hand out as
many leaflets as we can?

Having a few good high quality talks at the end of the conference is
good because then we can tell game developers that are interested HOW
to make their games accessible, but we do want to make sure we HAVE an
audience this year, and i'm just worried about that.

Cheers Eelke








>
> On 9/30/07, Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yeah but god of war II has sold a gazillion copies and has naughty
> > scenes in it. ;-)
> >
> > I guess with game accessibility we do have a little bit more credit at
> > the GDC on getting our proposals accepted, but we do need to get more
> > people at our meetings and we actually need to make it this year's
> > goal to affect at least one or more games that are currently under
> > development (like Reid/Me did with Killzone 2).
> >
> > We only have a limited amount of people available so we should spend
> > our resources wisely. If hardly anyone comes to our events like last
> > year we should seriously consider alternative ways of reaching out to
> > the community. Having an X amount of talks is good to get us in. But
> > giving a talk takes preparation and that time can also be spent in
> > different ways. Getting a booth is already an improvement, and I
> > volunteer to be there as much as possible. But if there are other
> > booths with lots of people playing fancy cool new games, well then I
> > think that is also an opportunity for us to go out there to hand out
> > those little flyers with 10 little accessibility tips and just talk
> > with people about disabilities. That's why we need those shirts too!
> > (Accessibility Taskforce). Its sad but true but with regard to
> > "sexiness" we cannot compete with any fancy game title out there.
> > Fortunately only one person can play at a time at such booths so the
> > other 50 bystanders could be ready to listen to us.
> >
> > just my 2 cents.....
> >
> > cheers Eelke
> >
> >
> >
> > On 9/30/07, d. michelle hinn <hinn at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > Basically we should not turn in any identical talks -- but the same
> > > idea --  [cc] -- can be presented to different audiences in different
> > > ways because there are a lot of facets of [cc]. It's no different
> > > than seeing 30 talks on the schedule about God of War II broken up
> > > into parts depending on the audience. :)
> >
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
> > Department of CS&E/171
> > University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
> > Game interaction design        www.helpyouplay.com
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
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>


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Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
Department of CS&E/171
University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
Game interaction design        www.helpyouplay.com
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