 Live from Houston, Texas. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Houston, Texas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Pooja Sivaraman, a TechTruth reporting fellow. Our guest today is Adina Shanholz. She is a game evangelist at Microsoft. Adina, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You are known as the Faye Technologist. Yes. What is that about? Okay, so the secret behind that is when I started my job at Microsoft, one of the biggest things that they told me is like you have to consider about how you're going to represent yourself. And I gave it a lot of thought, like a lot of thought. And Twitter is only like what, 14 characters. And so I'm like, well, I'm a technologist. And I wanted that, I wanted something about technology in my title. And when I looked at the character limit, I had room for a three-letter adjective. And I'm like, Faye, Faye means fairy, and it means weird. So I chose F-E-Y, Faye Technologist, the weird fairy technologist. And I'm like, that's pretty apt. That's pretty apt. I'm a huge weirdo, like, you know, reviews killing all my secrets out. Yeah, so I went to your talk yesterday on nine things every game developer can do to be more inclusive. And I loved it. I thought everything you said was great. And so you're a gamer yourself. And I wanted to know from your experience as a gamer and at Microsoft, what are some examples of games that have just not been inclusive, that have really bothered you? Like small things that they could have made, that they could have changed so easily that they just didn't do or forgot to do. So something that, okay. So I don't want to rag on any games because it's like, that's just poor form. I have a couple of examples of really good things and really unfortunate things. So I mentioned yesterday, one of my points was gender is not a binary, which is like, I felt like some of the audience laughed at that because some people, it's like, well, of course not, but other people are like, I don't understand what that means. And what it means is that a gender, not a binary, girl and boy is not the only options out there. There are people who identify with neither, with both, or, you know, don't like labels at all. So when it asks you to choose your gender in games, that can be a little off-putting, so much that sometimes you just have to put the game down and just be like, okay, well, man. So that was a bummer, or it just removes you from the gameplay. And sometimes it's like a really small thing, a really small thing. And one game that I personally really, really love is Read Only Memories, which is made by like a queer gaming group. And their game is first person, so there's no art of the player character themselves. And they ask for your pronouns when you start up your game. And they give you options and they include three non-binary options as well as an option to include custom pronouns. And that's an honestly, like it's a small thing in terms of development because it's a variable. So if you're technical, like, you know, like all game stats are variables. And so it's just like when the dialogue comes where you're using pronouns, you put in the custom pronoun. It's not that hard, especially since you have to do that anyway with girl pronouns and boy pronouns, you know? So that's a small thing that makes a huge difference. And I've been playing Pokemon for so many, like since it came out, since I was like five and it came out. And they have been, you know, are you a girl or a boy is the question? They always ask you at the beginning. And it's like, you've been doing this, you've reached your 20th anniversary. It's time to like include more options. And I know it can be hard, but you know, it makes a difference to your audience. Yeah, it's time to get a little progressive. You know, yeah. And I think, so I was at another talk and a great example I heard of just like a piece of technology created was an onion peeler which was created for people with arthritis. But it ended up being so popular that, you know, even people without arthritis loved it and started using it. So similarly in gaming, have there been developments that were made to be more inclusive but just ended up being loved by the entire audience in general? Absolutely, like in fact, all of those accessibility things or inclusivity things that you can do are actually really good for people who are able-bodied or able-gamers. So one example of that, that's like super-duper common closed captions. Closed captions are like something everyone uses because you can't predict the noise level of what's going on around you or whether or not, you know, did you actually know that the average gamers in like their mid to late 30s? So most of these gamers that are buying your games actually have kids. So you might have to like play games after like the family's asleep or something like that. So people play without sound all the time. So there's plenty of cut scenes that you go in that are like plot relevant or game relevant that you read the closed captions for. One thing that like could be done better is like closed captions for graphics in games because sometimes you have to go up to like the graphics in game and read a sign but if you don't have closed captions for it, sometimes you can't actually read the graphics. That's one thing that could be done with closed captions but like that's the thing that I know like everyone uses and I always make sure to turn on my subtitles for my games, whether or not because it's always good to like make sure you understand and process what's going on because there's a lot of things to process in game. Yeah, I think one statistic I found really interesting from your talk was you said that 20% of the gaming population has some sort of disability. Right, and you can never predict what disability that is and that's from Able Gamers. That's like a website. Okay, so can you speak more to that and ways in which like game developers have taken that into account or maybe not taken that into account and ways in which they could? Right, improve. Okay, so here's a common one, color blindness. Like that affects a lot of the population. I don't have the statistic on me, so you know, I'm not going to pretend there but I know that like color blindness is a pretty common one. So when your game is color based pattern matching and you're playing your mobile game you should always have an option to turn on color blind mode where instead of colors you have patterns or something like that. It's like an easy switch so that you're still pattern matching but you're taking to account color blindness. And I know one game that like does it really well is like World of Warcraft where they have different palettes for different types of color blindness. Now you don't have to go above and beyond with that one but that's, you know, color blindness is just like just a really common one. So it's used a lot with color based games. So that was an easy example. Other examples are remappable controls. So remapping your control. So it's actually built into like an indie engine like Unity. So Unity straight up like if you use, they abstract it so that you can do like use the horizontal axis and use the vertical axis and those horizontal and vertical axis will take from a number of inputs which when you start your Unity game the player has the option to remap those controls. So if you want the right arrow button and the left arrow button it can be mapped to whatever keys you need. So for a non-gamer can you put that into perspective as to how those features can make it easier? So, okay. Yeah, sure. Let's say I have no use of my left arm. I could be holding a baby, so temporary disability or I broke it, also temporary disability or, you know, I just maybe only have one arm. And when my game asks me to hold the left trigger button the right trigger button and something like the A button as well. That's something I definitely need to take. The programmer is expecting the player to have use of more than one hand to do that. So being able to remap those controls so I don't have to necessarily use buttons where I will have to configure my hands in such a way that's either impossible or just painful will allow it to be like, oh, I can hold the A button, the B button and the left trigger or the right trigger control with one hand. Okay, that's so interesting. And I think these conversations, like something like that is, you can overlook that if you're a developer who is not thinking on that level. And a lot of these times these conversations can be uncomfortable for people about, you know, increasing representation or, you know, making games more accessible. So in your opinion, what's the best way to go about it? Do you think that increasing the diversity from the employer standpoint can somehow like spark some of these conversations and create more inclusive gaming? Absolutely, like, oh my God, yes. So there's so many things, there's so you to impact this is like, where do I even start? So when I started my talk yesterday, nine things every game developer can do to be more inclusive, I purposely started my talk with expanding your network. Because as professionals, we are always networking and we are always talking to people and always meeting people and that opens lots of opportunities, you know, that's like the basics. But one thing that we don't realize is the people we surround ourselves with is reflected in our work. Whether that's your personal life, your professional life, like anything in between, like just who we meet and talk to influences our decisions. So if we surround ourselves with the same type of person, that is reflected in our work and it's reflected in our employment. So like, if we have a certain type of person that like we expect to be a developer, like a male developer, then you know, women are gonna find it hard to like, oh, you're a woman, you're not a developer. I don't expect that. So just increasing your network of people that you interact with. Like you can do that in your personal life or volunteer. Like honestly, volunteering is a great way to meet people with life experiences that are different than your own. It will reflect itself in your games or in your software even. So that's one thing. I love starting that way because it's very important. Another thing is that you could take, so employment is just like, that's a big one. Yes, higher, more diverse people. Like that just goes without saying, they're like doing that and taking the steps, that's a different, that's a conversation for another time. It's like that is important, but it is how to go about that. It's just a separate conversation. But another thing that you can do on like a personal level, if you're a writer, writing narrative in your game, you can take the steps to write about people of a minority, whether or not you're a part of it. Yeah, that's something I love that you said is, yes, you said you don't have to be a male to write a male character. Exactly, and that's just to do it. Like of course, there are plenty of women who write male characters like duh. So same applies for any other type of character. You don't have to be blank to write about blank. And one game that I know that has, where I know they've taken the steps to do this is Dragon Age, because I've heard, like I see great, I have not actually played Dragon Age, but I have attended a lot of, I've attended multiple panels where I've heard the lead writer talk about his experiences as a white male, cis, hetero dude, like, you know, and how he has taken steps to try really, really hard, gone through a lot of iterations of characters to write about characters of all genders, sexualities. And I think that's like, you're doing your research. So that's just really important. Adina, we're just about out of time, but I wanted to know if you had any advice for gamers. We've been talking so much about what employers can do, what developers can do, what about gamers? Can gamers make the experience more inclusive? Oh man, God, that's a, that's almost a loaded question. Okay, well we only have a little bit of time, so. Yeah, so if you're a gamer and you're out there and you go online and play like multiplayer games, rule number one, don't be a jerk. Okay. Because that's a problem. Like you don't know the background of anyone that you're playing with, and what you can do is just kind of like be nice. Don't make assumptions about who that person is. Don't make assumptions, be nice. Like just, you're there to play the game, so play the game. I think this is a great note to end on, don't be a jerk. Yeah, yeah, I'm just friendly, be nice, good human advice, right, exactly. And it's unfortunately not reflected all the time in the gaming community. And I, you know, I love gaming. Everyone loves gaming. You gotta be nice and respect that. Adina Shantholz, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. For Rebecca Knight and Pooja Sivaraman, this has been theCUBE's live coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference here in Houston, Texas. We will be back soon. Was there a moment? D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D- D-