Interview with Mark Barlet (AbleGamers)

Abstract

In this interview, Mark Barlet digs deep into the past of accessible gaming equipment and discusses the potentials, conditions, pitfalls, issues, and (sometimes) clashing ideals, goals, or demands when it comes to working with game developers, designers, or studios on accessible gaming technologies. As co-founder and Executive Director of the international non-profit organization AbleGamers, he has been an advocate for less streamlined and normed game and peripheral designs that offer a higher degree of configurability and adaptability for over a decade now. Barlet also worked on the precursor and the prototypes of the Microsoft Adaptive Controller and in this interview he gives insight into the production process of the device and the frequently mentioned “inclusive approach” they chose, namely the inclusion and consultation of persons with diverse abilities and the experimentation with diverse modes of play or habits in the design process. Naturally, in the process of narrating his experiences with the game economy, Barlet also sketches the “becoming of AbleGamers” and the oftentimes exhausting efforts of communicating with and convincing game studios that accessible technologies and software are not only of social, ethical, or political value, but also a quite profitable concept.