Amplifying Accessibility: Em Aspinall

What’s your relationship with Accessibility and Disability Representation?

FLOP
So, I see myself as an inclusive community builder, because I think it’s really important that there’s more safe spaces for gamers. Having worked on games that’ve had a lot of different kinds of communities, I’ve seen both the more negative and positive side of things. More positive, I’ve found, have come with those where we’re building up a community from the foundations with Accessibility in mind.

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about building inclusive spaces for gamers is because I’ve not always found that for myself, growing up. As an autistic gamer, I see a lot of toxicity around autism being weaponised against people – whether you are autistic or not. Just calling people autistic purely as an insult. It winds me up, and I felt like I needed to do something about it.

And I like building community, building connections. When I found out I was autistic, I had a lot of people turn to me like, “Oh, you mustn’t be good with social interaction then.” It’s always this real basic “Autism = Bad at Communicating,” which isn’t always the case. While there are still some challenges to communication, I also feel like I’ve actually made it a key part of my skill set.

Initially, I felt I was in quite a unique position to be able to take up a role like this and prove that it is doable for me, and for us, and your preconceptions are wrong! And the more I interacted with other community managers, the more I realised that I’m not alone in this. There are loads of Disabled and neurodivergent community managers out there, which was really wholesome to see!

ELIZABETH
Absolutely! That’s one of the reasons I’m doing this series in particular – there’s so many of us that’re quote-unquote marginalised identities. A lot of us are either non-binary, or femme-identifying, or autistic, or something that departs from the ‘norm’ – often multiple, with all kinds of intersectionality. It’s like, “Hmm, interesting, there must be a reason for this…!”

FLOP
It does make you wonder, doesn’t it? [Laughs]

What is a community manager? What do we even do?

FLOP
That’s a big question – I could list off a lot of things! What it means, for me, is accountability. Being the person that is looking after your players, and being the person that supports the dev team in that. It’s making sure that communities are safe, inclusive, and wholesome. Making sure it doesn’t just end up about the game, but the people playing the game.

From a practical perspective, it can include everything from player sentiment analysis to content creation. One of my favourite parts is gathering player feedback, and putting that together in a way that is actionable for developers. Asking what players like, dislike, what they need, and ensuring the game is providing everybody with a good experience.

ELIZABETH
I feel that’s a very specific skill to have. Oftentimes, it can be like a wall of noise when you’ve feedback and opinions coming from all directions; it’s very rare that people are pushing just for one main thing that’s easy to extricate. Dissipating that wall into specific strands of dialogue, and putting it down in practical ways, is a really difficult skill to refine – so good on you for loving that!

FLOP
I think the reason I like it so much is because of that challenge! [Laughs]

There are also some developers who feel like they need quantitative feedback over anything else. To be able to change something, they need to know how many people have asked for it, so there’s that mindset that I need to battle against. Particularly when it comes to Accessibility issues, where the ratio of players who need those changes implemented may be much lower than those who don’t. In those cases you can’t just rely on numbers alone to justify the importance of working on a certain aspect of the game.

So it is challenging, but I really enjoy that sense of bringing humanity to the data. That’s what community managers are there to do. Numbers are great – we love having tangible reminders that the game has legs – but your players are so much more than that. They’re people.

What does it mean to “represent” your company as a Disabled person?

FLOP
There’s a lot of fear in it. Recently I had a particularly nasty comment come through on the Southfield Discord, which fortunately got picked up by the auto-mod before anybody in the community saw it, but… it was still very clearly an attack on me, as the community manager. Just for the pure purposes of being malicious, when they realised that didn’t work, they found other ways to directly contact me instead.

That has had an impact on my own sentiment about my job, where there is that underlying anxiety about being the one easiest to pick out. To quote the vocal minority: “You’re what’s wrong with games now. You’re the reason the industry is failing.” I’m seeing that a lot, when it comes to having diversity in a team. They’re connecting EDI with what makes games not good, in their opinion.

Being the face of that, being that kind of person on the team – that isn’t a cis White man – does put a target on your back. But on the other side of that, I’ve made so many wonderful, wholesome, life-long connections with people now! Content creators who also come from marginalised groups, where I’ve been able to give them opportunities and collaborate with them so much!

My favourite comment from the Discord was: “Even if there wasn’t a game, I’d still be here” – which just broke me. For the whole day, I kept thinking about how this person felt I’d made a space that, before the game was even out, was still providing value. A big part of that was, I think, the neuro-inclusivity and how we don’t “tone police” anyone. People felt like they could just come in and connect, easily – which I love!

ELIZABETH
I think that’s so important – and not something I see all too often in the moderation space. It can be very difficult to discern true intention through text; a lot of it can be our own subjectivity and biases. If you’re naturally a defensive person, you might read some offhand server message and think they’re squaring up; they might just be joking, but you’ve assigned sincerity to it and taken it as demeaning, so that’s a ban for disrespecting a moderator!

FLOP
Absolutely. With Southfield, we’ve a concrete list of rules in our Discord. All of that is subject to a team of about five of us as moderators, who are all super observant of tones and nuance in what people are saying. If we see a message that might be a problem, we try to discuss where it might be coming from – give a timeout based on context, or even reaching out to them – before doing anything like a ban.

What’s important to me is maintaining everyone’s safety, so we don’t want to be leaping on people just because they worded something in a way that could be misinterpreted, or police them for the way they interact – because interaction’s the whole reason we’re here!

ELIZABETH
Because not everybody has the same literacy level! It might not even be their first language – we never know. Accessibility isn’t just about Disability; it can also be about cultural and language barriers, among others. There’s all kinds of ways to make the same space more welcoming for myriad reasons, because – as you say – these spaces are meant to have people in them, and we want them to enjoy their time here too!

How Accessible do you think Community Management is, as a role?

FLOP
It depends on the team.

ELIZABETH
[dryly] Oh, yeah.

FLOP
So… you know how we were talking about player feedback? Trying to communicate with devs, giving them actionable things from the community: I think that’s where Accessibility for community managers can sometimes fail. It’s a very difficult thing to turn around to a dev team and say, “Hey, there’s a problem with your game that you haven’t thought of.”

There’s a lot of pride in what developers make – and there should be! They work their asses off to make cool games! But when there’s something wrong with that cool game, they could be responsive to that or they could be defensive. From an Accessibility perspective, one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is how to communicate with defensive devs, in a way that isn’t absolutely sapping of my energy every day that I’ve had to talk to them.

I still mess it up. I still leave my day exhausted sometimes, because sharing harsh feedback from players has been so emotionally draining. Especially when there often isn’t any reason given. Sometimes you land on a jackpot of constructive criticism, but it’s very rare that people will take the time to do anything more than say what they hated and expect you to change it for them.

Having to unpack those negative reactions is hard. I’m not a mind-reader, so I can’t always give a reason to the team if they turn around, defensive, like: “Well, why? You’re supposed to tell us what we’re meant to do about it.” It’s draining. As an autistic person, having to deal with the nuances of the internal politics of a studio is draining.

It can be hard trying to think of ways to feed back, other than outright saying: “This isn’t about you, this is about the game.” But that’s the thing with developers, is that the game is about them. It’s to be expected that they can take some things personally. Imagine someone ripping your work to shreds and being expected not to find that difficult to manage emotionally.

ELIZABETH
The emotional drain is such a real thing. Often, there’s only really one community manager for studios like ours, on the more indie scale – so that’s a lot for one person to do. To be so invested in the studio, and the game you’re presenting; but also to be representing the community, and to be so invested in them. It feels like being Switzerland.

FLOP
Yeah, it feels very much like: whose team am I on? Am I devs first, or am I community first? And I often need to remind myself that it’s not ‘this or that’ – you’re on both sides, and you’re the mediator!

ELIZABETH
In a sense, you could view it that the devs and community are actually on the same team – because communities will flock to games that they want to see, and want to be part of. There’s an inherent kinship there. But then, if there’s conflict on the team, that sucks even more than being on a separate team! [Laughs]

FLOP
But then the other aspect of Accessibility in community management is… how do you switch off? [Laughs]

For me, I struggle with chronic pain on a regular basis. I’m very tired a lot of the time – and on top of that, I’ve got to manage my energy levels, manage my spoons when it comes to sensory overload. Being able to switch off from work is very important. But also when you’re one community manager – especially if you don’t have a confident mod team – there’s always weekend work. There’s always evening work, always early-hours “why am I getting pinged again and again” work. How do you switch off from that, and actually take your leave?

ELIZABETH
My most worn-out joke at the office is: “Grind never stops!” I’ll be out in town, or the team’s at a Guildford.Games event night, and I’ll be on my hands and knees taking photos, making sure I get the angle. And I’ll say that whenever someone gives me a weird look, like – GRIND NEVER STOPS!! Constantly on alert in case there’s photo opportunities, or something I can turn into content. Everyone else can just vibe away, but I’m panicking, like, “Need to make the most of it!” [Laughs]

FLOP
And don’t forget about social listening! You can’t just drop a post then walk away; you’ve gotta post then stick around to deal with comments, and respond to people, and make sure you’re interacting!

But I thankfully do have a lot of confidence in my moderators, and people who can take that strain for whatever reason! That’s a huge relief for me. I’m proud of every single one of them, and they help me find time to switch off, where I wouldn’t otherwise necessarily be able to.

How do you think the games industry interacts with Disability?

FLOP
I think that there are lots of awesome indie studios out there, and a lot of awesome independent devs that genuinely care and know how to tell really powerful stories about different experiences. I see less of that from bigger studios, and I see more of the performative stuff from bigger studios – and that frustrates me.

We’re only talking about “ooh, look at our lovely character who’s got Deaf” because it’s Disability Pride Month, right? It’s currently relevant, and then for the rest of the year they say nothing.

ELIZABETH
Very much the June Rainbow Profile Picture™ that has no relevance once the month ends.

FLOP
Yep, exactly that. And it frustrates me so much.

I think there’s also a lot of amazing Disability Consultants, and roles like Accessibility Designers that exist, but not many of them that are actually in employment. All those skills that’re just sat there, not being utilised… I could count on one hand the number of people I know who’re in a role like that, but even fewer being properly empowered to make big decisions and make a difference.

ELIZABETH
And it feels like when they are called in, or given employment, it’s more for deferral of questions like, “Oh, is that good? That thing works for Accessibility? Cool, get back in your hole now.”

FLOP
“We’ve got colour options for colour blindness, so we’ve nailed that – we’ve nailed Accessibility, right? [clicks tongue] Job done.”

But there’s so much more to it than that! And why is it an afterthought? Why have we made the whole game and you’re only now thinking about Accessibility? We need to bake that in from the get-go! It’s so much more than for Disabled people! It’s just good design!

Really simple things as well can just change the perspectives people have about it. It happened to me a few years ago when I finished playing Celeste. I genuinely thought I wasn’t gonna finish the game, but I’d try and get half-way or something.

I remember having this mindset of not being good enough to finish it, that it was just a skill issue – a ‘me’ issue. And that affected so many different games. I realised after I had this shift in attitude how widespread that mentality was. Finishing Celeste changed my brain because it meant that it wasn’t a skill issue. Maybe it took me longer, but did I still enjoy it? Yes. Did I get something out of it? Yes! Should I be degrading myself and saying I’m just not good at games? No, that’s just making me have a worse experience of games!

There’s this narrative in gaming communities where, if you’re not able to play at least ‘Normal’ difficulty, you’re not good at games so your opinion is greatly reduced in value because you play on Easy Mode. When playing Baldur’s Gate 3, there wasn’t an Easy – there was a Story Mode. It valued the experience, and valued people who choose that experience over just difficult combat scenarios.

That was amazing, just seeing the shift in perspective the change of a phrase can be. We need more of that, because that might also change people’s negative attitudes toward others who want to play games the way they want to play them.

What does equity look like to you, moving forward in games?

FLOP
I love that word. I love the word ‘equity,’ because it confuses people. They think, “Oh, equality, right?”

There’s a graphic that I really love, and have used at work, where it’s three people of various heights looking over a wall. The shortest one has two boxes, the medium one has one box, and the tallest who can see over without a box doesn’t need one. That’s equity. It’s not equal, it’s not everyone having the same sized box – it’s making sure everyone can see, and uplifting them appropriately.

I don’t really know, is the honest answer to what equity’ll look like in games. I do think something needs to change with how leadership look at training people in their business. In terms of the hierarchy, we can shout a lot about what we need and what’s right for us from an equity perspective, but it can feel like we’re shouting at a wall.

The change will really start happening when we see a real buy-in from people at the top, who’re invested in what people at their company are saying. Who won’t just listen and assign things like reasonable adjustments, but actively engage in the culture and attitude themselves. We need people at the top to accept that maybe they don’t get it right all the time – and that is okay, as long as you work to listen and learn along with everyone else. Just like I take accountability for our community, you have to take accountability for yourselves to ensure your actions and understanding are genuine. Leadership themselves need to do the training, not just organise it for their employees.

Lastly, do you have any favourite community interactions to share?

FLOP
I loved when we did the Closed Beta for Southfield, because the devs were cooking. They were really cooking. We were up for a week or two, and in that time we pushed four hotfixes. And every hotfix that dropped, the community in our Discord were like, “Ugh, the devs are cooking! They’re pulling out all the stops!”

And they were hyping up the dev team! They were celebrating every bug that got fixed, and just showering the devs with praise for how quickly they were working! Every single hotfix, and they were met with such a wave of positivity throughout the server. And that felt so nice, because it’s more common for people to drop negative sentiment and disappear. “Okay, here’s a bug. Bye.” You don’t always get as much positivity, especially when a game’s still in a scratchy state and needs to be fixed.

People were bug-reporting, and then those same people turned up and were bothered to give the positive interaction at the end of it. I appreciate that so much. And people were saying how good it felt to be part of the process, and that’s what really got me. They felt they were having an active role in making the game better – and they were! But it’s the fact that they saw that, and that they were engaging with that feeling. That was really special.