[2022] Community Focus - Steve Saylor

Gaming is for all, and one Guardian goes above and beyond to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table when talking about accessibility.  

The Destiny community is filled with some incredible people, players that are not afraid to stand firm and be a source of positivity in a world that is in desperate need of the Light. One such person is none other than Steve Saylor. You may know him as Blind Gamer for his work in the gaming industry as an accessibility voice. He is blind, he plays video games, and he kicks a whole lot of butt. More importantly, he is also one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, which makes me incredibly excited to introduce you to him with our latest Community Focus.  

Let’s get into it.  

First up, thank you so much for speaking with us! Your presence in the gaming community is so incredibly positive, so let’s start off by talking a little about yourself so we can introduce you to our sea of Guardians. 

Well first off, thank you for speaking with me! I’m truly honoured by this (and yes, I use the letter u in honour because I am Canadian, so there! [laughs]). A little bit about me, I am a content creator, a Twitch Ambassador, and an accessibility advocate/consultant in the video game industry. I have worked on a few games people might have played such as The Last of Us Part 2, Far Cry 6, and most recently, Horizon Forbidden West where I consulted with the fabulous teams there to help make their games more accessible for disabled players. Oh, I’m also a huge Star Trek and Matrix nerd, so if you wanted to know where the Borg come from or why Enter the Matrix is the greatest film adaptation video game of all time, I’m your guy. [laughs] 

A large part of your platform centers around accessibility in gaming, what made you pursue that? What are some misconceptions that you wish could be cleared up about accessibility discussions? 

So, in 2017 when Blind Gamer was starting to take off, I was invited to a UX summit run by Ubisoft in Toronto where developers from all across the industry. Names from Rockstar, Naughty Dog, EA, and Bungie all gathered to learn from other game developers. I was asked to be on a panel about accessibility and I realized I was the only gamer and YouTuber in the room that wasn’t a game dev. I barely knew what accessibility was, including the day my panel was on; I had no idea it was entirely focused on accessibility. But I had an epiphany while I was on stage where I thought, “I’ve been telling myself I’ve sucked at games for years, but in reality, it was games sucked for me.” Right then and there, I knew I wanted to go all-in on accessibility advocacy. I re-focused my channel to talking about accessibility and that is what led me to be contacted by studios who wanted to work with me on making their games accessible. It was my calling, and I’ve been doing it every day since then.  

Regarding some misconceptions about accessibility, there are two that come to mind: 1) Accessibility only benefits a select group of people, and 2) All disabilities are on a spectrum and not an on/off switch. I’ll tackle the second one first. I’ll use blindness as an example, but this works with every disability; every person who is blind falls into a spectrum from one end being low vision and the other completely sightless. But it is exceedingly rare for someone to be completely sightless like Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. In fact, 9 out of 10 people who are blind have some vision. It just depends on where on the blindness spectrum they are. And that is true with most disabilities. You may have the exact same disability and yet have two completely different accessibility needs.  

Now for the first point, a lot of the work being done in accessibility is helping those who are disabled. But a lot of this work can benefit everyone, even for those that don’t have a disability or may even have a temporary one (like breaking an arm or a hand). This can even help with daily considerations, like a new family with a sleeping newborn, or a non-epileptic that lives with someone that is affected by photosensitivity. You want to get some quick Gambit matches in on Destiny, but you must play with the sound off so you do not wake up the baby? Turn on options like subtitles, which were created for those who are deaf/hard of hearing. See? The benefits exceed limited parameters. Also, our bodies are getting older, we won’t have the same eye-hand coordination as we had when we were younger. So, we will eventually need accessibility options to allow us to keep banking those Motes well into our adulthood if we want to keep playing the adventures we all love. 

How did you get started in gaming? How long have you been into games and when did it stop being a hobby and become a professional goal for you?  

I started gaming in the ’80s when my mom had taken my brother and me to a local video store called Jumbo Video where they sold the original Nintendo Entertainment System. My mom bought it while claiming it was a gift for my dad for Father’s Day, but I think she knew it was more than likely my brother and I would play more of it than he did. She was right, because my dad rarely touched it, which was great for us. I would try to play games as a kid, but I thought I really sucked at them and so I would watch my brother and my friends play them instead. I think that’s why I gravitated towards the Let’s Play genre on YouTube and Twitch when that started because it was pure nostalgia for me. But even though I would play as much as I could, but progressively found that games continued to get more complex as I got older. So much so, that I would eventually play fewer and fewer games.  

Eventually, in my late 20’s early 30’s, I stopped playing altogether and sold all my consoles, it was just too much of a struggle. That was an incredibly difficult time because I thought I would never play video games again; it broke my heart. Then something life-changing happened; in late 2014 I was having a conversation with my friends about gaming and I said to them, “You know, I’ve been telling you for years I suck at video games, why don’t I show you proof?” and the idea for my YouTube series, Blind Gamer, was born. I would record myself playing games and because I got to a point where I would laugh at myself at how bad I was at them, I thought it would be funny and entertaining to show that. I didn’t even think about accessibility as a thing until a few years later. Then, everything changed for the better. 

Over the years, Bungie has been making strides to be more accessible while making a pledge to be better in future updates in Le; if you could offer one piece of advice to the studio about how to make it more accessible for players, what would it be? 

I should say Destiny does have a lot of accessibility even built into gameplay. Even if it was not intentional, there is a lot there. The recent remapping controls on consoles was a huge step forward (and from hearing from some of the devs, a lot of work went into that, so if you worked on that and are reading this, you did a great job! Wow, that is a ton of work [laughs]). But of course, there is always room for improvement. I would say it would be lovely to have the ability to increase the text size in both the menus and HUD. There are times in the Deep Stone Crypt, for example, when you’re fighting Taniks and I can’t see the text of whether I was Scanner, Suppressor, etc. because the text was a little too small. So, the ability to increase the font size would be fantastic. I would also love the ability to re-size and move HUD elements as well to make it more customizable for players. The mini map has always been too small for me to look at quickly, so I barely use it. If I had the ability to re-size or move the mini map, then I could be able to use it more, and I know I’m not alone in having that trouble. Oh! If you can do something with text-to-speech narration, that would be amazing too!

   
The biggest question of them all, because it is tradition (come on): What class do you main in Destiny 2 and how can I convince you to come to the fun side of being a Titan? 👀 

There is literally only one class I main and that’s Warlock. I have tried Hunter once, but Warlock has been the only class I have played since 2018. I know people are scoffing at my choice, but all I gotta say is Warlock jump is the best jump. This is actually for accessibility too. Because Warlock’s jump is slower than a Hunter or Titan, it gives me time to see where I need to land, and I make fewer mistakes in the jump puzzles. I don’t think I’m super great at it, but my best friend and fellow fireteam member TheTeeMonster will argue that I’m much better than a lot of other Guardians he’s seen [laughs]. Funnily enough, Tee also does say I play my Warlock like a Titan where I think I’m a tank (I put so much into Resilience mods, don't judge). So no, not a Titan main but who knows, things change.  

With The Witch Queen coming up and so many wild fan theories out there, what is the weirdest theory you have ever had regarding the ongoing Destiny story? Any odd ones that ended up being true? 

I don’t know if it’s the weirdest theory I’ve read/heard or one I made up in my head, but the theory that makes my imagination run wild is the theory that our Traveller isn’t the only Traveller; there were infinite Travellers because of Vex technology. This also makes me think that if our Traveller is Light, is there one for the Darkness too? I have no idea if this holds any weight whatsoever, but it’s one that makes me think up many fanfic stories in my head [laughs]. 

With Valentine’s Day just passing and Saint-14/Osiris fans losing it over what is next, who is your favorite in-game relationship? For fun, who is your favorite “heart canon,” (a ‘ship that isn’t actually presented in-game but it is in your perfect world)? 

Oh wow! I mean yeah, Saint-14/Osiris is the best ship by far! But the relationship I’ve always liked would have been Zavalla and Eris. It was always hinted that the two were together or got together at some point, but we never saw it. But hey, if Zavalla can handle Eris being haunted by her fireteam then I think they can make it work. But I think my favourite “heart canon” that definitely wasn’t real would’ve been Cayde and Ikora. The two of them would’ve been amazing to see together [laughs]! It makes me sad that it would never happen now. :( 

If you identified with only one character in Destiny, who would it be? 

I know people reading this will probably think I’d identify with Brother Vance or Eris because of them being blind, and to be fair – they would be half-right. I do like Eris, she was always a fascinating character to me. I never understood the hate Vance got and was kind of disappointed to see that people didn’t like him, but I thought he was an OK gent. But yeah, definitely Eris because of her tenacity and passion to uncover mysteries long forgotten, and for being a total badass all while being blind, as well, which is pretty dang cool. 

And lastly: what’s got you the most excited about what’s going on in the world of Guardians right now? 

The Witch Queen, duh! [laughs] I just want to know more about what’s going on and how the heck does she have her own Guardians?! Like, what?!I’m really excited for the next few chapters in the Destiny story and then seeing where we go from there. I can’t wait! 

Thank you so much for chatting with us! Before we let you go: is there anyone you’d like to shout out? How about a few places where people can follow you and your passion?  

I, of course, can’t go without shouting out the person who got me into Destiny to begin with and that’s my best friend Tee Morris aka TheTeeMonster. I’ve known him for going on 15 years. We have always kept in touch via social media for a long time but weren’t super close. I knew he became a fan of Destiny 1 and streamed it on Twitch, so in 2018 when Forsaken came out, I asked him if he could teach me to play it and we could stream it together. He said, “absolutely” and we’ve been streaming Destiny almost every week since. Destiny is what allowed us to reconnect and become close friends, so I can’t go without shouting him out, as well as our regular fireteam of Nick and Brandon Kelly (Rev3Dood and Thermal Wolff) from the “Happy Hour from the Tower” Destiny podcast, TheBigMarvinski, and our Current Meta clan leader Danfinity, whom all have helped teach me what it means to be a Guardian.  

You can follow me, if you like, on Twitch, Twitter, and on YouTube. You can also find me on TikTok at BlindGamerSteve.  

Thanks again for speaking with me and EYES UP, GUARDIANS! We have a Queen to unalive!

 
That’s a wrap, another awesome Community Focus in the books and yet another Guardian getting a chance to share their Light with the world. It’s always a good time chatting with the community, thank you so much for hanging out with us for another laid-back Friday, especially with The Witch Queen’s launch being less than a week away! 

Are you digging that our Community Focus segment is back in action? We hope so, because we’ve got plenty more planned. If you have someone special that you’d love to see get a shoutout, feel free to hit up Cozmo, DMG, Sam, or myself with those names you want to see next! And in case you missed it, check out our bonus Community Focus that dropped earlier this week about the impressive artist known as Milkpack.  

In the meantime, stay fresh and be kind. See you soon! 

 "I should go," 
<3 Hippy