This Blind Gamer Teaches Me to Play Mortal Kombat

- [Carlos] Let's go, let's go.

(cinematic music) - Ah, you were crouching.

- [Josef] This is Carlos, a blind gamer who uses the game sound design to listen to his opponents movements and fight them.

- And because you're my friend.

- And that's me, getting my ass kicked.

My name is Josef and I'm a filmmaker.

Also, a bit of a gamer.

I wouldn't say that I'm a gaming expert, but I do play video games every day, even if it's just on my phone.

And I know that I'm not the only one because video games have grown to be one of the most popular forms of media in the whole world.

In 2021, there were roughly 227 million gamers in the United States, which means odds are, you're probably a gamer too.

From Mario to Call of Duty, I believe that there's a game out there for everybody.

But my ability to play every video game, it's definitely something I've taken for granted.

And then I met Carlos Vasquez.

You see, the accessibility movement in gaming has heated up in recent years, allowing players like Carlos, who is completely blind to effortlessly pummel his enemies.

This video is about a community of disabled gamers who are pushing the limits of video games.

Carlos is a gamer from Texas who's competed at EVO.

That's one of the largest fighting game tournaments in the world.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, he's also the drummer in a gnarly metal band.

("The Flames We Rise" by Distartica plays) Carlos is able to play fighting games because of accessible settings and design features like sound cues, but I'll let him explain.

- I remember my brother got the Nintendo 64.

They said it was for both of us, but at the time, I was like, "Well, how would I play", right?

So you kind of felt like an outsider.

Once you realize that there's a platform that only moves from left to right and the characters are sort of framing in that 2D environment, that all you gotta to just learn the buttons.

So I would just basically sit down and listen to my brother play and kind of get familiar with the sounds, 'cause at that point, I could still see the screen, but just know that it was a square shape, but I couldn't see what was coming through.

I could see flashes of light.

So I just started realizing that the game design has certain sounds.

So if a character gets hit, there's a grunt to it, and if they're getting hit, let's say with the staff or a sword or whatever, you can hear the slicing, the banging of metal against the person, or, there's all this little, little details.

- So basically there's a specific sound effect for anything that happens in the game?

- Exactly.

- Carlos is not someone you want to encounter in Mortal Kombat.

- So you say you want to do a match, right?

Want to do a quick match?

- Yeah, let's do it.

My palms are sweaty.

- I'm all spaghetti.

- Okay.

(video game characters grunting) Woo.

- Carlos uses a stereo headset to hear which side of the screen I'm on.

When I move to his left, he hears me out of his left ear.

There's nothing I can do.

(Josef chuckles) I'm sensing a theme, Carlos.

You really like the violence of Mortal Kombat and the heaviness of metal music.

(Carlos laughs) - [Announcer] We'd like to welcome you to a stream dedicated to emerging blind players.

We hope you enjoy your stay.

Thanks for tuning in.

Rattlehead will start soon.

- Yo, what is up, stream?

It's Rattlehead coming at you guys on another evening of streaming.

- [Josef] Carlos is part of a community of blind gamers that chats on Discord and hangs out on the streaming platform, Twitch.

- I got into streaming because I wanted to showcase skill, actually.

Here's this blind player who's putting all this work.

But I didn't want it to also be like, "Oh look, I can play, I'm blind" or whatever, and just focus too much on my disability, right?

I want it to be more like, "Hey, I can hold my own against these top players.

"I'll make them forget that I'm visually impaired."

- Could you tell me about the community that you're part of on Twitch?

- A lot of them will hit me offline, and I even had players that will come and tell me, even the disability, they will tell me like, "I didn't want to discuss it or I want to keep it secret, "but I see how you go about it."

It built like that, and then now with Discord, we sort of created an entire community server.

It's called Blind Gamers Hub, and it doesn't matter if you're blind or not.

We try to build just a community of players.

- [Video Game Announcer] Your eyes betray you.

- Carlos found a way to give back to his community by creating his own tournament made specifically for blind players.

The Sento Showdown, what is that?

- The Sento Showdown, ah!

It's a organized tournament specifically for players who are blind and visually impaired who are fans of Mortal Kombat.

They give them the chance to be in a tournament setting.

- How'd you come up with that name?

- [Carlos] So there's this character named Kenshi in Mortal Kombat.

He's a blind character, and he wields this sword called Sento, which guides him throughout his fights.

- [Josef] That's really cool.

- Yeah, so now we call it the Sento Showdown.

- Carlos, you're one of the nicest people I've ever met.

- Right on, dude.

I really try.

So it's like, 'cause I felt what it's like not having friends because of my disability, and I feel like, people shouldn't have to go through that.

- Before I met Carlos, I used to think that accessible settings in video games were just made for players with disabilities.

Surveys estimate that roughly 15 to 20% of the population identifies as disabled.

However, accessibility, it's not just for those with profound disabilities.

Accessibility is universal, like parents using subtitles while their newborn sleeps or people watching TV in a noisy bar.

Even features that were specifically designed for disabled players are used by non-disabled players too.

Do you know any sighted players that you sound cues like you do?

- Now I do.

If you were to ask me this question, I don't know, five years ago, I would tell you no.

- Right.

- They said, some of them implemented that themselves, where it's like, "You know what, I can't even play with sound off anymore.

"The sound does help me improve my gameplay."

- So you're teaching them how to play like you guys play?

- Yeah, because we tell them, get yourself some good headphones and turn off your monitor.

- How does that make you feel that sighted players are asking for your help?

- It's, I never thought it'd be, it would turn around like that, because it was always us asking for help.

So it, it feels great to kind of have that shift of momentum.

- [Josef] After Carlos competed at pro gaming tournaments, the creators of Mortal Kombat approached him and they asked, "How can we make our game even better?"

- What happened with NetherRealm Studios, they made it where you can now interact with those objects, so they call it interactables, that's what they call them.

Here, for example.

So when you're near it, you... See?

- I can throw him so far.

- Here's the thing though, as a player who's blind, how would I know if I'm near an interactable that I can use on the stage?

There's no way to do that.

- [Josef] So Carlos asked them to create a sound cue that would ping whenever you got close to an interactable object.

- I was now aware of objects around the stage that were usable during the fight.

So they added that to the game because of something that I said, and now to me, that was the biggest thing.

- This is just one example of popular accessibility features coming from disabled gamers consulting with studios.

People like Paul Amadeus Lane and organizations like Able Gamers and Can I Play That and DAGERS all share their expertise with game developers.

(dog barking) This is Morgan Baker, a game developer who went deaf during your teenage years and now consult with studios on how to make their games more accessible.

So, Morgan, when you're working with game developers and you kick down the door and you enter the room to give them your advice, what are the first misconceptions you're trying to correct?

- That accessibility has to exist at the expense of the quality of the video game.

So I think there's a common misconception.

I can tell you right now, that's not true.

- What is true?

- It can really actually even enhance and bring out the best of the game design when you make your games accessible.

Plus, also too, you have more people playing your game.

I've never heard any developer anywhere say, "Oh gosh, darn, I don't want anyone to play my video games."

- So when do you think accessibility and video games began?

Well, I bet it's earlier than you think, 'cause we have to go back 70 years to 1950.

Meet Bertie the Brain, a 13 foot computer capable of playing tic-tac-toe.

Josef Kates designed the machine in 1950 to challenge visitors at a Canadian exhibition.

If people couldn't beat Bertie, then Kates would just lower the difficulty, making it easier, kind of like changing the difficulty in games today.

Then, a decade after Bertie, Reg Maling invented the first patient operated selector mechanism.

That's the name of a sip and puff typewriter for those who were unable to use their hands.

This new invention gave people multiple ways to use a typewriter.

25 years later, Nintendo used this technology in their own invention.

- To use a sip and puff, you basically have a tube and you blow and it mimics A, B, select, start using just a simple tube.

And then it also has basically this chin strap that you put on your chin and you can move it around.

And one of the earlier moments where a major company actually went out of their way to design for accessibility.

- [Josef] As technology progressed, features such as subtitling, colorblind settings and control remapping were all developed before being implemented into video games.

In 2020, the Game Awards created the first ever Innovation in Accessibility Award.

That year, the award went to the blockbuster hit, The Last of Us Part II.

And I actually got to talk to the developers about how they created this game by working with consultants.

- Alex Dianoki and I went to the Accessibility Conference, and one of the, the people in the audience just raised his hand and was wondering, "Would it ever be possible for a game "like The Last of Us Part II "to be accessible for the blind?"

At the time, I mean, the first thought in my head was no.

And I was like, "Okay, well, let's talk about this.

"I mean, maybe."

Once we got back to our studio, we actually reached out to Brandon again and brought him in as a consultant.

- Another one of the consultants that this team worked with was Morgan Baker.

- Disability is, it's a spectrum, so we needed to talk to a broad range of consultants to come in.

- I went in, I checked out their build.

They brought me into some very specific pain points that they ran into related to deaf and hard of hearing access.

- You know, we have a feature which is like an arrow on the subtitle and it tries to point to the direction of the speaker for the subtitle.

We weren't sure, "Was this useful?

"Was this good?"

But then Morgan was able to play it and tell us, "Yes, this is great."

- The advancement of video games like this shows that the accessibility movement is growing faster than ever.

Also, fun fact, The Last of Us II is one of Carlos's favorite games, and he's already beaten it many, many times.

- Yes!

The Last of Us Part II!

Oh my God, a game that I actually completed without any sighted assistance.

- But they didn't make it easy, right?

- They made it also where you could play it at the hardest difficulty, so they didn't make it, they didn't make it easy, right?

They made it to where everybody can play however they want to play.

- Carlos, why do you think video games are such a big part of your life?

- I feel like playing games sort of made me feel like I was holding on to the other side of me that had vision in the past.

- Well, that's all the questions that I have for you, but I just want to say, thanks for inviting me into your world of Mortal Kombat and metal music, and this was just really awesome.

- Thank you for having me today.

I appreciate it.

- Oh, also, one more thing.

Would you be interested in a rematch?

- I'm down, we can do that.

- [Josef] All right, let's do it.

- [Carlos] Let's do it, let's do it.

- I mean, I don't think I'll be able to touch you, but it is fun even to get my ass kicked.

(Carlos laughs) (video game characters grunting) - Oh no.

- Oh, I didn't mean to do that.

- Oh!

- Oh, no, you're gonna have to edit that out.