Hello again. I know it’s been a while again, but things have been quite busy the past couple of months. During this year’s E3, I covered things a bit different than previous years. Rather than recording video summaries after each conference or event, I decided to do live Mixer streams for each major E3 2019 conference this year, and I think things went quite well. You can find all my E3 coverage on my YouTube channel under the E3 2019 playlist.
I have also branched out into regular podcasting. In addition to a few other guest appearances on Blind Bargains, and a new podcast by Brandon Cole, I was invited to be a co-host on the A4G Podcast starting in early June. Riley Rose Frazy and I are now hosting the Accessibility for Gamers (A4G Podcast), every Sunday. In each episode, we cover a different game topic or two, talk game accessibility, and what we’ve been playing. Riley has also featured a few guests on A4G from the game accessibility and development community.
Starting in May, I also started attending our city’s local IGDA game developers meeting. I’m not an official member yet, but have attended several meetings since may, including a smaller group meeting dedicated specifically to VR. These meetings are fun, interesting, and a great way to meet people. I’m also hoping to introduce more developers to game accessibility, and may even speak at a later meeting. Stay tuned.
Finally, I’ve also recently started another fun and interesting project. Mario Maker 2 recently came out on Switch, and there are a group of us who are trying to make levels that can be played by someone who is totally blind. I got inspiration from someone on Twitterr who posted a couple of level codes for such levels. I played them, and and started having ideas myself. We have been communicating now, and are trying to develop a consistent audio scheme, so a blind player can try any of our levels, and not have to keep learning new audio cues. We have also resurrected the #BlindMario hashttag on twitter, and encourage others to join us in using Mario Maker 2’s creation tools and sounds to create some truly unique and accessible levels.
I even reached out to Patrick Klepek, of Mario Maker 1 fame. He regularly does Mario Maker Mornings, and plays people’s levels. He was also part of the huge competition between himself and Dan Rykert from Giant Bomb, and those were some fun videos to watch. He may be interested in trying some of our #BlindMario levels on stream, which may get the accessible Mario Maker levels trend going.
If you want to try these levels for yourselves, the Course ID’s are below. Be sure to play them blindfolded. There are audio cues that indicate jumping straight up, jumping forward, running, sliding, pipes, and other gameplay, that we are working on solidifying. Enjoy.
My First #BlindMario level: KXK-6DG-DPG
And these 2 levels are what inspired me to creat my own levels. I started with his audio cues:
F2c-K63-L0H
M76-0H8-BLG
That’s it for now.