The Besties - Accessible Gaming with Steven Spohn

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

This week, we're joined by AbleGamers' chief development officer to talk about the complexity and importance of including accessibility features in games, and also, pizza. Really, lots and lots of pizza talk. We also discuss Far Cry 6 for a few minutes!Other games discussed: Metroid Dread, Final Fantasy 14, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Satisfactory, InscryptionAbleGamers: https://ablegamers.org/Steven Spohn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenspohn Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I wanted to continue a discussion that I brought up last week regarding Yoshi and whether there is an actual Yoshi named Yoshi. And I wanted to follow up that discussion with if there is an actual Yoshi named Yoshi, which you guys certainly argued for heavily. Griffin, I know you weren't here, but there was an argument. Yeah, this is fun. This is fun for me. If that's the case, when was the first time we met that Yoshi? Oh, I see. case when was the first time we met that yoshi oh i see well okay if we want to go in order right that the mario's is a baby in super mario world 2 yoshi's story correct yeah yoshi's island sorry i apologize right i did a goof there so i think it's got to be the first Yoshi that like finds you and says, I could eat this baby.

I could do it. I'm a dinosaur after all. But doesn't. To me, that's the one true Yosh. But that's like an assumption that his name is Yoshi. It's never actually confirmed. We know his full name. I mean, we've danced around saying it enough, right?

Yeah, it's a powerful name. His name is T. Yoshisora Munchakoopas. Right. I mean, his name is T. Yoshisora Munchakoopas, and you say it because it matters. But that's the green one. That's from the Super Mario World instruction booklet, if my Yoshi lore is correct,

which means Green yoshi from super mario world is t yoshis or munch koopas but green yoshi dies in like level one it's also worth noting that apparently that is his the name of his it's the scientific name for his species is not his it is not his like business card it is like his homo sapien all right it could also be a hive mind situation where they are all yoshi you know what i mean yeah you just need to really explore like i don't think people have just thought about this enough is really the the larger issue yeah and i guess now that we've settled that if you take bowser's shell off does he die that's something i've been thinking about a lot what a nude what a nude we've never seen him nude he would die i think yeah i think he'd die all right

well that was a quick one nude bowser don't you can't say something like that out loud because it will make people's phones do it. My name is Justin McElroy and I don't know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know that's apparently funny to Justin. I played a game of... I'm taking Russ's energy. I'm siphoning it off of him for his birthday. Okay. I'm taking the burden so he can be a little bit more down-tempo.

That's my goddamn... Are you done, Griffin? Oh, yeah, I'm done. Okay, my name is Russ Frustrick and I know the best game of the week welcome to the besties where we discuss the latest and greatest at home interactive entertainment it is a video game club but just by listening my friend

you are a member we're going to talk about a video game this week no question about it definitely but we're also going to have other conversations as we are want to do uh still circling around gaming of course plant keeps trying to make us talk about film it's not gonna happen he's traveling so we can talk about whatever we want yeah now we can really talk about

game now it's just we the game so welcome we have this is also very exciting we have this is throwing a special guest that's right it's steve spawn of able gamers hello steve welcome to the the call welcome to me yay it's not my podcast i've decided i'm taking it over uh yeah we're gonna talk about film so uh let's let's break into the old the old classic uh the the one where there's a giant guy and he's a Henry, and then there's a guy in the woods that's a Bigfoot. It's going to be a great one. This is all about the Henderson family.

It's great. This is going to be the entire podcast. This is in the Criterion Collection, right? Recently added? Yeah, sure. Welcome, Steve. Can you talk a little bit about yourself? Just give me the elevator pitch on you as a human being if you're gonna be taking our show over

you gotta make sure you got the special you're hiring me before you read my bio that's amazing um yeah uh so i am by day the chief development officer at able gamers the charity helping people with disabilities play video games on the internets. And I'm also sort of a part-time influencer. I try to influence people to eat pizza as often as possible. Really, I feel like that's how you should use

your following. Like, if you have over 50,000 Twitter followers, you must influence pizza. I think that's just a rule. Have you tackled Pineapple yet? I have. That's why I uh i have that's why i don't have a million followers because i lost like 900 000 when i was like it's okay if you want pineapple on your pizza no you didn't even endorse it you just said go you chase your

i was like hey and you enjoy your happiness whatever topping that means to you uh well thank you steve for for joining us i really appreciate it obviously people might know we we talked a little bit about accessibility last week and it occurred to me as as i was speaking that i was speaking predominantly out of my ass um and i first for the besties we got into a conversation we had uh we had limited expertise in um and so i thought the best thing to do was to talk to someone who actually knows a thing or two about the topic we were discussing Which Steve certainly does in quite large amounts And so we are thrilled to have him And we're going to be talking about accessibility today in gaming

And what we can do to make it better, basically Russ will be talking, I'll be listening Yeah You know Yeah, and then we'll talk about far cry 6 son yeah yeah it's uh it's a it's a video game steve just as like a jumping off point can we just like very simply maybe it's not a simple request but very simply define what accessibility means to you or the community at large i don't even know if they're the same thing, but how do you sort of define it? Specifically through the lens of gaming.

And the short answer is that accessibility is individually defined. And that's what makes accessibility a complicated animal to tackle for some. The truth of the matter is, when you talk about accessibility, people think about ramps and they think about elevators and subtitles in movies and video games and those are all accessibility but to someone who has perfect hearing you may not need subtitles so it's not accessible to you it's just a nice feature if you happen to be washing dishes while you're trying to watch your latest episode of whatever on hbo max sponsored now by steve's one um noted pizza um but you know the great thing about accessibility is that good accessibility is just good design um the basic way that i always like to introduce people to the idea of accessibility is the curb

cut effect and for those of you who don't know what curb cut effect is it's generally what it sounds like it's those cuts in the curb that you see when you're walking around the city that are slanted on the corners and you see wheelchairs and whatnot rolling up and down them so that we don't have to jump up six inches of concrete. Well, what they discovered was they put those in because of the ADA, because a giant legal document in America made cities do this. They didn't do it of their own volition. Well, what they discovered was after these had been in for a while,

it was not predominantly wheelchairs that were using these. Yes, the wheelchairs were coming up and down the curb cuts, but it was also your local street vendor, your delivery person who wanted to not jump up over the concrete, your mom or your dad with a baby stroller. It was a curb cut effect was an accessibility feature, something that was meant to be used for people with disabilities. an accessibility feature, something that was meant to be used for people with disabilities. But once it was implemented into everyday society, everyone was like, oh, crap, that is a really cool thing. Now I don't have to jump up on this curb and bust my ass on the sidewalk. So now it's something that we all just expect to be there.

And that's the same thing that any good accessibility feature is. It's something that's there that gives benefit to everyone. And everybody has a good benefit for having it in their lives. Yeah. Yeah. Justin, I mean, you just mentioned it as well,

but Justin mentioned last week talking about subtitles and the fact that he watches everything with subtitles because he has small kids. And some hearing loss. I mean, yeah, it isn't, but that is like a perfect example of something that like so many people use regardless of their hearing ability, because it's just, you know, easier and more convenient, which I think makes perfect sense. Microsoft calls it the baby in the room example. That's literally what they call it. The idea is that take the context of someone who is hard of hearing or deaf out of the equation.

And just is this someone who has a baby? Would they be able to watch your show or participate in your visual product without waking the baby? If you can, then it's probably at least on the road to accessible. If you can't, then therefore you have failed. at least on the road to accessible if you can't then therefore you have failed from the outside sort of looking in uh and i definitely play games like if an accessibility feature seems like a way of kind of filtering out annoying design in in the first place i will also opt for it like despite the fact that I don't necessarily need it. I feel like this is, again, from the outside looking in, a thing that is becoming more

prevalent because of this conversation taking place around accessibility features in games. How do you sort of track that trend towards the more widespread adoption of accessibility features in video games over the last decade or whatever? Well, if you're someone like me who's been doing this for almost 16 years, you can feel it. It's almost a vibe.

It is going to a convention 16 years ago and having literally no one care about accessibility and today having a job where there's not a week that goes by that I'm not talking to another big name publisher asking about how do we make our game more accessible and one of us at AbleGamer is telling them how they can do that. And you can feel it almost in the air. But my best concrete example is a long time ago,

we went to the Game Developer Conference, and this was back in, oh boy, probably 2012, like an eon ago. And we did a YouTube video where we asked one simple question, and it's still up on YouTube now in which we said, have you ever thought about designing for gamers with disabilities? And a whole bunch of people said, no, a couple of people said yes. And one jag off laughed at us and walked away. And yeah. And, uh, you know, and that's the best part of those kinds of experiments is you go and you ask developers, what are they thinking? Where is their brain at when it comes to the audience in front of them?

And back then, people just weren't thinking about people with disabilities. Now, they are. When you talk to developers and people with disabilities, I feel like the goals, if you were to like zoom way out, are probably aligned. Like a game developer and certainly game publishers want everybody to play their game. And people with disabilities

would like every game to be very accessible. So like what, considering that the goals are theoretically aligned, what do you think are like some of the stumbling blocks? What's keeping us from getting to that point where we reach sort of parity there? What's keeping that from happening? I think it is happening slowly but surely. I think at this point it's an inevitability.

There are people who are dragging their feet and you know some of it is because they don't want change some of it is because they are afraid of accessibility they're afraid it's going to harm their game it's they're they're afraid that you know the audience is not going to be receptive to the idea of these features that are in the game specifically to support people with abilities different than their own and you know part of how you do those like any social change is you just push if you're an advocate and if you're an ally then you accept willingly that people understand what it is they need and you help them push that narrative and so when we're talking about games right we're just talking about good

game design um as you know as an anecdote there's um a really infamous time where uh i was on a panel at pax east and able gamers had decided to do a game of the year kind of award and we ended up awarding it to star wars the old republic the mmo and uh when we got up there you know we did the panel it was really cool at the end of it we brought up the the lead developer and was like here here you go here's this amazing award you know thanks for including people with disabilities in your game design and the guy pushed back and he was like well we actually didn't design for people with disabilities we were just trying to make a fun game and accidentally i did some accessibility stuff so

i don't know that this is really the word that we should be getting and this is in public which uh anybody who knows me knows i can be a little bit hot-tempered when it comes to stuff like that so i was like actually uh good game design is accessible design. And you design for people with disabilities by making things relevant to everybody. And so therefore, you did design an accessible game. And I'm just glad that you're including people with disabilities. Of course, dude got like super red faced and mad and walked off. But, you know, it was one of those the situations where you know uh someone was trying to say oh well i i would never design for people with disability and it just happened accidentally

i gotta say um i don't know who who that was but he's like a pretty wild mystery to the situation they were in did they kind of mr magoo style wander into this room and then just like what oh what okay no i don't think so some pr person just threw him into the room here except this real quick he's like no no steve this came up last week as well and i wanted to get your take on it what is a victory what is like an all-out victory look like chris plant specifically mentioned um including accessibility features in the certification process like a game cannot be published on an xbox or a whatever switch without certain features do you i mean there probably already are if i had to guess certain

accessibility features that are required but is it uh are you as able gamers like pushing for a more wide reaching requirements? So it's a complex question. So number one, there is a legal binding agreement now called the CVAA, which essentially says if you have text in your game, if you have the ability to multiplayer chat, that it must be accessible. It must be accessible, it must be compliant by regulations. So if we have voiceover communication, or we have text chatting to other people, then there must be certain basic level adaptations like closed captioning and like audio subtitling. Those are kind of things that must be into the game in order for it to be compliant with

the law but that's just a very small segment of it and that's mostly pushed by you know major players up in where they may be for legislation um able gamers you know did some like consultation with that and kind of cautioned the government you know listen um these are a bunch of old white dudes making decisions about barely understanding the internet like it's not it's not something that we really recommend this is something that game developers and players all know needs to happen it needs to be a thing so that people with disabilities can participate and you know it is taking its time as i said i've done this for you know a decade and a half now uh and it's taken a while it's not an overnight thing but we're watching

the industry slowly correct itself and they're doing it willingly and i don't think that means there needs to be a law saying there has to be accessibility i think given a little bit more time we will see most games have accessibility to at least some level. Steve, I have two questions. The first is this. You're allowed one. How much does it chap your ass

that no one can seem to agree where to put the subtitles choice in the menus? Why do I have to search for it every single time? Why can we not agree if it's audio or visuals or gameplay or accessibility? I swear to God, every time it's a new mini game, trying to find subtitles. That's very true.

The weird part is you're making sort of a half joke here, but the truth of the matter is it's something that is thought about a lot, especially in game development, because they're like, oh, well, you need a special menu just for accessibility. And others are like, no, I don't want to be be othered i want to have it in the middle of everything so that people can find it very easily under visual and there is there is no uniform because every studio believes something different about where accessibility should be and unfortunately even some of the studios that do it still kind of believe that it should be a hidden thing where if you really, really want accessibility, you're willing to crawl through the menus to find it.

My actual more serious – well, I guess that ended up being fairly pertinent question. But the thing that we were sort of dabbling in last week and trying to wrestle with was this idea of finding a balance between accessibility and difficulty and does challenge of a game. Like where does that fit in the accessibility conversation? Because I think where we were kind of getting stuck is games for a lot, like in a theory of fun, it sort of established the idea of, of fun in games is this process of like

learning or trying to like uh pass through a challenge and that's where like the satisfaction of that is the fun and if you remove that to if you lower that to a certain extent you're you're it's no longer you know you're you're losing something in that so how does the the balance between like accessibility and difficulty, what's that conversation like? Let me throw it back at you. So to all three of you, what is fun to you? Well, other than getting pizza and a bunch of drinks and a barbecue, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I'll jump in and say, because I think a lot of this came up last week as well, and it's certainly the area that I've done the most research in since then. This idea, you know, Metroid Dread is a game that we all praised. It's unquestionably going to be in the Game of the Year conversation. I had an enormous amount of satisfaction playing through Metroid Dread and conquering it even though i realized that like a lot of the boss fights really tough for me and stuff like that um and so i got that level of like you know or i was playing outer wilds last night and another game where i got a lot of satisfaction in

getting to the end of it now the counter example which i'm sure uh you mention, but I wanted to sort of throw in here is why can I not like, certainly I can have that experience playing a game how I want to play it. The counter example is why couldn't someone else have their own version of that experience, which might not be the exact same experience that they have, but still enjoy it, despite, you know, some disability or something that they might but still enjoy it despite you know some uh disability or something that they might be dealing with is that sort of the the long and the short of it it's putting the cart before the horse so the question still remains is is if you if let's try a different angle if you if the three of you had to sum up fun for you, what you define as what makes the game fun, what makes you have fun, what would be the one sentence, five word answer?

Progress? Like, I think that's the best way that I can sum it up, just looking at the types of games I play, right? Like, I play a bunch of RPGs, JRPGs, MMOs, life sim stuff like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. And I think that the same thing kind of applies to like, I love a From Software game. And I think for me, it is less about the satisfaction of beating it, the satisfaction of like overcoming the difficulty of it, and more about what like what i have learned or the knowledge that like my my skill in this one very specific thing on planet earth has has improved somewhat i think steve said five words christian so you failed yeah well i did a

really bad job well technically i technically I said one word, and then I expanded. Too many words. I'm going to take a stab at it. For me, fun is when the game feels good to play. Very not specific.

I would say... No, but I think that's relevant. I think that'll come up. The satisfaction of problem solving. That to me is fun as it relates to games, be it puzzle, action, whatever, adventure, like whatever the genre, I feel like the satisfaction of problem solving is what's like at the core of quote unquote fun game design.

And the good games have more sophisticated problems to solve. And I think with emergent gameplay, you see people sort of creating their own problems. I mean, that's what speed running is, right? Like no one has tasked you with, no game has tasked you with like, do this in 30 seconds by finding all the glitches. But like, it's a created problem

that is being solved in an innovative way. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so for me, it's a it's a created problem that is being solved in in an innovative way yeah exactly okay and so for me uh it's two words social connection for me no matter what game it is whether it's a multiplayer game and i'm playing with friends in real time or it's a single player game i'm playing the game and then talking about said game with people who have also had that same that same gameplay right right? For me, it's all about the shared experience. It's all about the connection of video games. That's what I love. And that's how I define fun, whether that's a video game or a movie or a book or whatever. So now you have four definitions of fun. And everyone who's listening had their own

where they agreed with undoubtedly one of us or at least part of us and some part of another's and that is why you can't break the accessibility conversation down to should this game have an easy mode should this be a thing where a director has complete control over it should this be something where we define it on Rails. Because you can't define fun as an abject concept. It's 100% defined by the individual, same as accessibility. So when we have the conversation about accessibility and whether or not something needs accessibility, we can break it down into various levels,

and AbleGamers does, and we can talk about that later. But for this particular question, where you're asking, how is it that you define should a game have accessibility and how much accessibility? If you're talking about, you know, a Metroid Dread, you're talking about a game that has very, very little accessibility options. And therefore, you're locking people out of the experience altogether. It's not a matter of can they have the same level of fun as you or can they even have fun in the game they can't even set foot in the game because the the door is completely closed to begin with so you have a baseline where you need to have certain options

so that the majority of people can play and then from there then you can have the debate of is this fun is this a good video game? Does it have progress? Does it have connection? Does it have puzzle solving? That's more preference. But we're talking about just being able to entry level get into the building before you even worry about if there's a staircase or an elevator. Yeah.

So you mentioned about the majority of players and sort of that baseline. And we talked a little bit about that in the legal document you mentioned earlier, the CVAA, is that correct? Mm-hmm, yep. So obviously Metroid Dread has subtitles. I think that's the only accessibility feature that jumps to my mind. What would you want to see from a game like that that would count as like a baseline?

Okay, this is at least trying. Well, I'd have to do a deep dive on the video game itself and pull apart the game and the mechanics and whatnot in be difficult, that brings up the question, same as Sekiro, which is, what is difficult to all of you? The same, if we were to go through the entire thing, I would guarantee the four of us have a different idea of what we consider difficult. Because it's based on our own brain power, our own physical ability. Because it's based on our own brain power, our own physical ability. Just like everyone listening, what is accessible and what is difficult to you will be different answers. But how do they correlate together? Well, we're talking about the ability to complete something, right?

So, and here goes back to the equality argument, right? So, if the three of us are... Completely just kicked Justin out of this, sorry. So, the three of us are standing on a baseball fence, right? And we're trying to look over top. Then, you know, maybe one of us is shorter than the others and maybe we need to stand on a box. Well,

if all of us are standing on different level boxes we can all see the game and then everything's fine. It doesn't mean that one of us necessarily gets an advantage over the others. It's just something that evens the playing field. And that's what really good accessibility is about, is if I'm in a game like that and I can barely get through it, I can barely push the buttons, but I love the world and Metroid is my favorite.

And God, I love watching it for hours and hours and hours. And all I want to do is watch videos of people playing this. But I really can't do it well myself because the monsters just murder me really easy and i just can't do it there's very little negative to putting in a mode where you would be able to get through that or if there's a puzzle there's very little reason that you can't put in visual cues or audio cues to help you get through that is an option that can be turned on and off so when we're talking about accessibility and different difficulty levels and what you can put in a video game to make it easier you have to look at what would make it where everybody can

play it and no one has an advantage so you mentioned that your preference is having that social connection through playing multiplayer games stuff stuff like that, or even just playing single-player games over Discord. Specifically on multiplayer, how do you sort of address, like, you know, the game that jumps to mind is Apex Legends, very fast-paced, PvP, competitive shooter. Obviously, you can do things like subtitles, certainly, colorblind settings, stuff like that, but you wouldn't probably be able to do

something like oh an accessibility feature that might like increase auto aim for example right probably not work so how do you sort of approach pvp competitive games pvp games are harder to balance because number one it is about you versus me it's about my skill level versus yours my knowledge of the game versus yours my twitch ability versus yours and so it's harder to balance that for accessibility but it's not impossible so what you do is you tackle the underlying groundwork for example if you know each of us are playing a game and we're all on the computer and, you know, Griff needs his sensitivity at 40 and, you know, Justin needs it at 90 and Russ needs it at 10 and I need mine at 3000. Who cares? It doesn't matter what, how fast I can move the

mouse versus you. Can we both hit the target on the spot on the screen for the target to be dead? Well, as long as we can do that, it comes down to who's better and who's faster at it, right? I've removed the barrier of who can move their arms faster. And instead, I've made it to where can you move it at all? And is that relative to your position in the world? That's an accessibility feature. that's an accessibility feature. So it comes away from making the game easier or making it something where there's no challenge.

And it just puts it down to, can I even operate the game in the first place? And I think one of the big problems of why you get into discussions like you did last week and why there's some controversy still amongst gamers is that they conflate the issues right so i just said in one instance we need to add accessibility features and having the difficulty change shouldn't matter right but then i also said for a different kind of genre of game

that we don't want to add those kind of features we just want to add the base level we want to be able to get in the door so to speak speak, right? So people cross those arguments. And then they're like, oh, well, Steve wants us to just go into a PvP game and everyone just auto lock and push a button and die. And that's not what I said. What I said was that for a PvP game, you need to have the ability to even look at the person to be able to shoot them, let alone whether or not you can actually play the game.

And for a different game, you need a different set of accessibility features. That's why we can't make checklists. And instead, we're just encouraging people to think about accessible design. Now that makes perfect sense. And I know that's something that you certainly encourage to start like sort of minute one

when it comes to game development. You really can't jump in in the last phase of it and say oh we have some money left over let's start adding accessibility features right exactly i mean if you include from the get-go you know one of the arguments we get so much and i'm gonna bet is somewhere in questions and answers at the end of this is well what if someone can't afford to do it and you know the truth is that it does cost money to develop accessibility features as it costs money to develop anything but just the same as you put money into graphics and story you have to put in the playability as well and if you do that early in the development cycle then it's

not so costly and it is affordable for every level whether it's just one person in the studio or a mega juggernaut that has hundreds of developers. And so that's why we designed the accessible player experiences over at accessible.games, which is a website you can go to right now. Developers can check it out and they can see exactly what it is when we're talking about designing with accessibility in mind. And it's sort of the part where people's eyes glaze over if you're not a developer so bear with me if you're just a gamer uh but it it's imagine a deck of cards where you could grab a card out of the deck and you could be like oh okay well this is second channel. What does second channel mean? Well, second channel means if I'm giving you one piece of information,

like there's a reticle on the screen that you can shoot with, or how do I know that I've hit my target? Well, it lights up in red or it makes a noise or it comes up with an arrow over the person's head. Those are all examples of second channel where you're delivering the same information in multiple ways so that whether you have an accessibility challenge or it's something that you're just playing out missed you might get that information from a different way and so there are a whole

bunch of those different patterns available and it's what we teach at open gamers to developers but it's also something that we're starting to see players adapt where, you know, well, we want remappability, right? Well, great. I also use the same controls you do. I just do them differently. That's another card in the deck. So same controls, but different. And that kind of language is what is slowly removing this fog of war almost over accessibility where people don't really understand what it's all about and making it more clear where people can understand, oh, okay, you're not asking to change the game.

You're just asking that the font size on your game be able to be adjusted from 10 or negative 12 in the case of some games all the way up to 50, you know? Yeah, that is wild that you mentioned the hit marker thing because that is a feature that I remember when it was added to cod i think that was the first game that i remember seeing it and i instantly was like oh this is great because i you know maybe i won't see like the puff of blood when i get in a hit if i when i hit someone this is like so much more satisfying it feels great never in the 15 years i've been playing call of duty games have i ever considered that

to be an accessibility feature but of course it is like that's a a vision thing that's a uh you know an awareness thing that definitely counts and has just been folded into the default at this point so that's like kind of mind-blowing to me it is and it's a it's an example of what we just talked about with second channel you hit the person it makes a small little splash animation on your reticle where you see oh that changed i can see eight points on the star now instead of four and it also goes and it does like a small audio alert in it as well and you can see the character do a little shoulder movement where it got hit and so those are three different ways it's telling you the same thing hey where you just clicked on the screen that was where you were supposed to click amazing let's let's put the rubber to the road a little bit and and get to talking about

uh far cry 6 which has which has i can frame it this way more accessibility options than metroid dread uh so maybe maybe that's a good starting point but Yeah, we'll do that, but first, Griffin, I want to make some money. That's what it's all about at the end of the day. That's what it is. And, Steven, I think that's something we can all agree on, right? No, I hate money. Damn it, Steven! Oh, sorry.

Well, wait a minute. Hold on. It's my podcast now. No money, never. We never take money. No. This is the world's first bartering podcast. So Far Cry 6 is the next...

Let me frame it. Far Cry 6 is the next Far Cry. They did five... They've done a few of them at this point. A lot. More than six. That's true, honestly. Much more than six.

I would say maybe double it just to be safe. And then I'll do some research into the exact number. And this one is bigger. And you get a rocket jetpack. Let's start there. And then we can sort of flesh it out. You get a rocket jetpack and it's bigger. And if you like Far Cry this is this is far cry baby

wow griffin i'm glad you took the lead there you have a lot of really interesting i had a lot of people say like we missed you on metroid dread because you have a lot of sort of erudite thoughts about it and so i'm trying to really bring the insights yeah so far cry is an open world action franchise that sort of pits you against, usually, typically, you against a tyrannical overlord that sort of established a pattern for Ubisoft

games that lasted for, till now, from, it affected so many of their franchises like Assassin's Creed. It's about developing an open world and sort of turning it to your control basically um and this is the sixth one the fifth one was uh more of a sort of dealt with like americana and rural america and the idea of like religious cults and white supremacy and and it sort of dealt with those without actually saying any of those things specifically.

It more was like alluding to it. But Far Cry 6 is more of a – like takes it back, I think, more to the original formula. You are on a more, I guess, tropical – it's an island once again, maybe a couple islands actually. once again, maybe a couple islands actually it is a sort of stand-in for Cuba, sort of a Cuba analogous country that is run by

again, a bad person that you are trying to overthrow with some other rebels and yeah that's the base pitch of far cry 6 and it's not bad it's yeah okay it's just it's i've reached a point i can't remember which assassin's creed game i hit the point with where i was just like i don't really want to do this any like i don't

really want to play this this specific game anymore yeah you know what it reminds me of is sky uh skyward sword which is when skyward sword came out on the wii and it was like the epitome of the zelda game that they had been making for the last like 50 years and we're all kind of like done you know what i'm kind of done with this i don't need to see this anymore and breath of the wild followed that up and was like oh this is exactly what i needed a total like refresh and that's sort of where i'm at with far cry at this point where it's like you've run this pretty much into the ground from like a design creative standpoint yeah that i'm kind of ready for them to move on it was syndicate assassin's creed synd, the one where you played as a brother and sister, I think, where I was just like,

I've already played this game a bunch of times. And then to their credit, the next game you saw put out was Origins, which was a pretty drastic departure. And this is not that for Far Cry. Steve, I know you played a bunch. What is your first blush reaction? Far Cries are always fun

because you just get to be goopy and silly. I have long said I don't think I would like Far Cries alone. I wouldn't like it as a single player game. But as a duo game where you're just in there with one of your best buddies and just gooping off, I don't know that there's a lot better games in the industry that do it better than that. You know, there's not a lot of games where, where you know i was playing with my friend guy the other night and we were uh in like a little army base area there where he was up in the sky in the plane shooting down planes and i'm on the ground battling the bad guys with my cat and he knocks a plane out of the sky and it lands on my

cat and i get to scream you killed my cat and i just get to be super hammy about it and he gets to be like oh no and it's just you know it's just silly fun and you get to sort of be goofballs about it and there are a lot of games in this industry that that take themselves very very seriously it's you know we we definitely have a a culture shift of games that are very you know i don't love the terminology try hard because i think we all try at different levels but there there are seriousness levels to video games that i feel uh have gotten away from being goofy and that's what i love about far cry is it just lets you go you know blow up an entire aircraft carrier with a flamethrower which is great yeah there is a

part of me that kind of wishes that they went more in the direction that the saints rose series went which is to say like more ridiculous scenarios and not because all the far cry games even though i agree like you get like pets wearing hats and they eat people and that's like outrageous but at a baseline there is like a weirdly like very serious grounded nature to the like stories and i kind of want them to just abandon that and just have like a fucking far cry on the moon well you've just described just cause right like that's true it has a competitor already which is just cause which in my opinion all the stuff and i agree with you steven like all that stuff is fucking fun but there's another series

that does it i i think that like it leans into it more and does it have multiplayer though just cause co-op that i don't think so i don't think it does which i like far cry is really only i can't think of another open world game like that that has like co-op to that extent throughout the entire thing yeah i think that what i think this is a really interesting like um it's sort of like a mirror version of the conversation we were having before the break almost like we planned it that way juice no no no no i mean in our in our in our expectations and how those expectations were met right the place where you made us earn money that part yeah yeah right now we're in the we're free of the shackles of commerce.

No, but where I very much approach almost every game, unless I am forced to do otherwise, as a single-player experience. And in that sense, there's a lot of areas in Far Cry 6 where it drags. There are way too many times when you are like just far enough from where you're trying to get to that it doesn't make sense to like scare up a jeep or a plane or even a horse and you just end up like trudging through some some landscape for a few minutes and and it happens

way too frequently like you desperately need just like and well i mean just cause solved it with like a parachute and grappling hook combo that you can use pretty much whenever you want to so there's there's too many drags like that there's also like in the story missions wait like right before we came on here i was in one where it's like a chase where there's all these people shooting at you and it's very cinematic and i have like my um gun that is specifically designed with the type of ammunition that blows up cars and it's like six times i've done it now and i just get like blown up or like the person they got ai driving the car right so it's like crashing into a ravine stop randomly whatever and i get blown up and like

this idea that they still want to have these like you know quote-unquote challenging sections where like it's not fun like don't make me do this again like this was fun and cinematic the first time through uh but like to do it multiple times to try to get it just the way they want me to do it feels kind of counter to everything else the game is doing but like i could see where if you're playing with somebody else wouldn't necessarily have those sorts of lags right like it wouldn't it wouldn't drag in in some of those same spots yeah especially for for me and i and i know exactly what quest you're talking about because we also did it in our playthrough like nine times and it

was very annoying it was very annoying and you you blow up so easily too um but yeah which is weird but i i i agree it is that that particular mission runs very counter to the blood of the game which is do whatever the hell you want as long as you get the mission done and that one's like nope you're gonna walk this path and if you don't you do it again can we pivot to sort of talking about the accessibility options again because i think i i nope nope okay nope well um i then i like um there's a great there's a really good before that i have something i did want to touch on because i didn't want to just to make it just like a retread i did because people would be mad there is i would say the biggest new mechanical thing are these things called supremos which are sure that's what they're, and they're like ultimates that you get for killing a bunch of people,

and then you get to do an ultimate attack. They're wild. One is like a huge rocket jetpack. One is like shoots a salvo of rockets. The one I'm using currently lets me see through walls and also came with a gun that shoots through walls, which makes fighting tanks a joy, an absolute delight, I gotta say. So that is like the big there's also pet like uh pets which is not a new thing for the franchise but like

the supremos are like the big which is like a nod towards more arcadey kind of gameplay with but it like it doesn't feel like a cohesive shift. Listen, I have a cat that does more damage if I have money in the bank. I have a gold-digging cat. I don't know how you get better than that. Yeah. To Griffin's point, I remember Ubisoft, like,

really shouted from the rooftops about their focus on accessibility. This is not the first game they've had like hardcore accessibility features. I know Assassin's creed valhalla had a bunch and i'm curious what is your take on their efforts uh this time around do you think they're on the right track or do you think uh they're just kind of doing it for the publicity i definitely do not think they're doing it for the publicity um but that said you know i give the the rating of accessibility and far cry maybe uh six and a half or seven there's things they missed um

do you get do you guys actually use like a rating system to like determine no i use it uh uh when talking on in public spaces uh because numbers are so arbitrary um long ago we tried to do a number system and it just doesn't work because my 10 is not the same as your 10 so speaking purely from me that game is a six and a half and a seven you know but to two of you it might be a 10 and to another it might be an eight like there's there's literally no you know there's no way to put it into a new market. I kind of want to know what your 10 is, though. What's a 10? What's your 10? For me, a 10 would be a Fortnite.

And it's weird because there's two weird pushbacks. You get their number one, ew, Fortnite. Which, okay, no matter if you want Fortnite, it's still accessible. But PUBG and Fortnite are two of the best in the business for my bang for the buck because they have so many different options. One of the things I don't like about Far Cry is the fact that I have to rebind every single thing. So I move forward in a game by right-clicking on the mouse. I don't WASD, and so i have to rebind every single

vehicle in the damn game to do the same thing whereas in pub g they just go oh you're driving now cool this must mean you want the same control oh you're walking that probably means you want the same controls so you know you don't have to rebind every situation and that's more of just the annoyance of that takes you know 10 minutes of my life and then I never do it again. But in this case, I feel like Ubisoft likes to follow checklists, and that is just such a dangerous game to play where you're trying to be like, hmm, is it accessible? Well, let's see, we got one of these, one of these, one of those, and that's not how you do it.

If you really want accessibility, you follow a program like the Accessible Player Experiences from Able Gamers. You take the course. You learn how to design thinking about people with disabilities. And then you have people with disabilities play your damn game. And then you listen to their feedback and what's going on. And then you take multiple people's feedback. Because every studio should have in-house representation for accessibility. There should be a person who has lived experiences with disabilities and

education and accessibility in every studio so that they know what they're talking about. Uh, and some of them do Ubisoft does they've hired some friends of mine that, that work for there, but they have their own lived experiences and their own expertises. And for that reason, you need to run it through multiple people so you know no advocate out there is going to be like i know everything about everything and because they don't so you know you need

multiple perspectives just like on fun everybody views accessibility a little bit different yeah 100 yeah it's funny you mentioned the checklist thing because it does seem like that's a ubisoft thing not just for accessibility but also from a design mentality because it's funny you mentioned the checklist thing, because it does seem like that's a Ubisoft thing, not just for accessibility, but also from a design mentality, because it's like, oh, we need towers or we need like, you know, they follow these beats because it makes for a very reliable development cycle. And it kind of ends up feeling very cookie cutter from game to game. Absolutely does. You know, sometimes people ask me, you know, why do we why do we worry about accessibility in games like that what the hell do you mean steve when you say social connection so my my goal here is to make griffin cry so that's what i'm trying to do so

you're close all right i'm gonna try to push you over so um one of my favorite examples to to give people when we're talking about accessibility is sometimes like i said people's eyes glaze over, they stop listening. So you got to bring it back to something people can relate to, right? So I know you guys have a very tiny family so I don't know if you'll be able to relate to this but I'm going to give it a shot.

So there was an expo in Chicago very much like a PAX East where it's all about disability and cool things you can do if you're disabled with technology like shower curtains that you can clap at and they close or a robot that helps you eat food which me and my friend Craig turned around and used it to give the developer a middle finger which he was not happy with. It was a $42,000 robot

he was not happy with and figured out how to do it. We were there and we were playing uh you know our games over at the able gamers booth area trying to get people to realize that they could in fact do video games if they wanted to and there was a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister there with another brother who was in a wheelchair maybe seven to eight years old reclined backwards 45 45 degrees, tray table on the wheelchair, heart monitor, oxygen tank, head turned to the side, drooling a little bit, really a profoundly disabled child.

And they had been staring at our booth for a while. We had Forza on display and they were obviously wanting to come over and check it out, but they just wouldn't. So it took some charisma, and fortunately mine is like a plus ten, and I walked over and like, hey, let's give it a shot. Why don't you come over? No, no, no. We can't, we can't. Yeah, you can. Come on.

Let's try it out. So we get them over there, and it's me and the founder of AbleGamers, Mark Marley. And we're there in Chicago just sort of checking out what it is that this kid can do. You know, what kind of abilities does he have? And he really doesn't have much. He's not ambulatory, cannot seem to move any muscles, and the family's kind of expressing this and whatnot.

And they're like, well, there's no way that he could possibly play. And we're like, well, hold on. And while we're talking, we notice that his foot is moving. So we're like, well, hold on. And while we're talking, we noticed that his foot is moving. So we're like, aha. So we confer and we're like, all right, cool. And we've got this device there, sort of like the Xbox adaptive controller. Ours was called the Adroit Switchblade. And basically you just plug switches like the Staples Easy button into it

and it pushes a button just like it would on your controller. Well, we noticed his foot and we asked permission to remove his footrest, then the parents were like, okay, and we removed the footrest. Mark holds up this gas pedal-like device, just like in a car, holds it up to his foot. The car comes roaring to life, speeds across the speedway, slams into the wall, and the kid just starts bubbling and giggling, lights up like a christmas tree

and that's absolutely the best thing i had seen in my entire life which which would be a fantastic story if it ended there but the next day the dad comes up to me walks up behind and goes you know steve squeezes me on the shoulder and now this dude's six foot tall makes the rock look like a small dude i'm only five and a half foot off the ground in my wheelchair. And so I'm looking up. Hey, is it okay? And I see he's got tears in his eyes. Mr. Sonto, are you okay?

He goes, Steve, I just had to come back and I had to talk to you. I had to tell you thank you. And I'm like, oh, it's no problem. This is what we do. You know, it's our work. No big deal. I'm just glad that, you know, your son can play. And he's like, no, you don't understand.

He squeezes my arm harder and goes you gave something back to my son i'm like well it's no problem he's like my son is non-verbal he can't communicate with us but every saturday morning we watch cartoons together and i lay on the couch and he has his head in my lap and we sit there and we cuddle and watch television and cartoons and it's great but every time a video game commercial cuddle and watch television and cartoons and it's great but every time a video game commercial comes on he wiggles and bubbles and i know he wants to play but he can't and you guys gave that back to him and i'm just at this point falling out of my wheelchair it's okay i'm happy to help and you know it was one that moment that i realized that

what we do is not about video games what we do here is not about video games it's about connecting to one another no that's that's fantastic it must have felt so amazing it was it was phenomenal and it's the reason why we have done this for so many years because those kind of stories that's just a dime a dozen there's a million different stories i could tell all having the same outcome slightly different variations of a disability presenting a barrier and us needing to show someone a small bit of technology that can help you overcome that barrier. Wow. I wanted to make sure we had a little bit of time for reader mail. We had a few questions, so I'm going to start jumping into those if you're cool with that.

Wait, hold on. Wait one second. I got to jump in, and I gotta ask, Griffin, did you cry? His tears go back in. It's like an in and out. I do this thing sometimes where my tears go in. Precisely. He's been seeing a doctor for it, and they

have made no progress. It's gotten worse. Every time I tell the doctor, they're like, cool. I'm like, okay. First question comes from Grosmeat. Do you think loot boxes and similar gambling adjacent mechanics are an accessibility issue um i would say that game gambling is an addiction addiction is a disease and devs exploit this to build monetization platforms where they get more money from the game it's certainly an argument

that can be made that it is something that people with disabilities can fall to because they have to. So we all agree that loot boxes, even if they are fun, even if you do like gambling, they are something specifically designed to get money out of us. Right. So sometimes if they're cosmetic, that's OK. That's your bag. If you want to get new skins, cool, good for you. But the part where it becomes dangerous, and I don't call it an accessibility feature, but it is a thing where I have personally spent money on a game where if I get this

particular item in this loot box, it'll make things easier for me in a game that is borderline not playable because it's so difficult. So I have spent money on a game in order to make it easier for me in a game that is borderline not playable because it's so difficult. So I have spent money on the game in order to make it easier for myself. And that is the mechanic where that's what they want. They want the game to be hard. So if you spend this $20, it'll be a little less hard and you won't be so miserable. And, you know, that is certainly a design practice and philosophy by the publisher. It's not one that I particularly love.

On the flip side, I do like doing loot loot boxes i think they're fun to open but you know that's uh that's the weird crux of it is you know it's supposed to be a fun thing or we're supposed to be talking about how it's a bad thing because it's addiction but for someone with a disability it could be that they're just trying to spend that money because they really want to play the game and they need that item that is in the loot box and therefore now you're kind of putting a disability tax on the game yeah that's interesting um i had another question this comes from joshua amy i'm curious about the steps devs can take or or are taking uh to better support neurodivergent players those with autism adhd working memory deficits etc and that's part of what our accessible design patterns are

on the accessible.games website and the course that you can take to become an accessible player practitioner where we actually teach developers to design professionally with accessibility in mind. There's things like total recall where perhaps players need to review the completed objectives, or maybe they need to review the controls for the game, and the game will automatically

remind you. There's a cool new game called Inscription that just came out from Devolver, which I'm really digging. It's like a super card game that's like creepy and eerie, and you're kidnapped, and you keep getting murdered by a weird guy, but you do a roguelike card game to try to defeat him. I'm not sure how beating a killer in cards kills him in real life but whatever we're

gonna ignore that part it's fun that sounds dope to be honest it is yeah uh it's essentially pokemon yugioh yeah it sounds like it sounds like the yugioh cartoon so but it's really fun um but it it has this neat little thing where if you are, say, sitting down at the table to play cards and you don't do anything for 15 seconds, it will pop up on the right hand side with a W and an S and it'll highlight the S. It's telling you to push the S button to pull back away from the table so you can see your cards. And that kind of just really light reminder, that light guidance from a game is what really helps people who are neurodiverse. If maybe, you know, you take a lot of medication or you have challenges where you're remembering things might be hard. Those little gentle reminders are so great. And it's something that we teach in video games so that the game can help you play in a very light way.

Yeah, no, I definitely consistently forget stuff like inputs while I'm playing. So it's always super helpful. Yeah, I mean, you talk about like a Far Cry, like Far Cry has where you literally need a third alien arm in order to push all the buttons you need to play the game. Those are so many keybinds. And I mean, I know, I don't know if it happened to y'all, but it happened to me where, you know,

we didn't play for a week and came back to the game. We're like, what are the darn buttons for this game again? Yeah. One more question. This one comes from Robin, but spooky. I think that's probably a Halloween Twitch Twitter name. Good guess, Russ. Yeah, that's probably a good.

Thank you. Thank you. A lot of insight. Okay. The question, I wonder how do phobias, ooh, very appropriate for Halloween? How do phobias factor into accessibility in gaming? I personally am terrified of all bugs to the point of it being a physical phobia. While I recognize this might not be the same level accessibility features, I can sometimes get anxiety attacks from a bug appearing on the screen, even something like butterflies. Well, I wouldn't expect games like Hollow Knight or animal crossing to work around my phobia do you think that there's something that game developers can do to help so game developers are already doing things to help uh there's there's really fun ones like in satisfactory where um you build factories but you also run out and explore and murder and get resources just like every other game.

But they have a cool mode called arachnophobia, where if you're like me and you're afraid of spiders, and I really do have arachnophobia, where I don't want to look at spiders. You can change them to pictures of cats. It's great. And I think it's really kind of cool. And so these modes, I think, are great as a way to go around those kind of phobias and fears. I mean, PTSD is no different where, you know, you have a warning at the beginning of your game.

If it's extremely bloody, you could turn the blood off so that you don't have to see it and because maybe it'll trigger a really difficult part of your brain which will give you a hard time or a bad day just because you happen to see one scene of violence maybe you didn't want to see that and so you can turn it off and you can enjoy the rest of the game same thing for phobias all those kind of things i think they're absolutely great and i don't think that they detract from the video game at all it's it's again allowing an option to exist in the game for someone who needs the option but leaving it turned off by default for those who don't yeah one thing i was really an example that i was really surprised by lately is um final fantasy 14 for their next expansion they are adding two classes and each class has like a little icon

so you can like tell which class everybody is when you're in a party with them. And for one of the new classes called Sage, they had they had gotten feedback from people that it was like setting off their trypophobia, which is fear of holes in stuff. like very shortly after changed the icon for it which i i don't know maybe it's a misunderstanding of uh who is good at this and who is not but i was surprised to see square enix so quickly take that feedback for final fantasy 14 like their biggest game right now um when that is not necessarily something i would expect i love it i love when they when they take things into consideration. It's unfortunate, but we have a generation of people who very much believe in F your feelings. And that's not the way we should be. If there's a segment of your population that's saying, hey, this icon is bothering me, can you just change it slightly? And you can do that with relatively no cost,

relatively no effort. Why wouldn't you do that? Totally. Hey, Steven, something just occurred to me that I wanted to ask you real quick before we wrap up. I do like pizza, yes. Oh, good. Okay, that answers it.

Hey, when a cinematic begins and there's a huge button prompt that tells you how to skip it, is that an accessibility feature or is that as i've always suspected a tacit admission that they didn't work very hard on the cinematic and that you should probably skip it you should probably skip it yeah okay good that's i thought that but i wanted to double check i i love that i love it when you press a button they're like oh you're

trying to skip it okay here's the button you press to skip it not that they're like from the jump this hey listen we don't want you to waste a second on this thing because we certainly didn't i love it when they do when they're like push escape to skip or just push any button to skip and you're like you're eddie just get out of it and then you have the other company who's like all right if you push three seven up arrow and alt at the same time we'll skip like wait do i have to solve aVinci puzzle to get out of this way? Hey, who's been playing other... Do we have time to talk about other games? We are running a little long.

Maybe we could do like a light speed version of what else are you playing? I brought this up. I have not been playing any games. We are on, I believe, the third in as many months shut down of a school due to uh a a covid uh exposure so it's been it's been kid city over here non-stop 24 7 i finished the dlc for outer wilds which is very weird to me because i was not able to play the original outer wilds because of motion sickness we're talking about accessibility i was just not able to play it it always made me sick um this one i tried a bunch of different things.

What worked for me was playing in a very, very bright room on like a smaller laptop screen actually sort of helped me get over it. I'm not going to go super in depth because it is a very complicated thing, but it is incredible and definitely one of the best gaming experience I've had this year.

So if I lost patience with the original, would I lose patience with this? Probably. I think it's more condensed, so that would maybe help. But yeah, I mean, you're not a patient person. I don't understand how you play it, to be honest with you. This is one of the things I take the most flack for. I know people love The Outer Wilds, but I tried it three times. I never got past hour two. I'm just like, yeah, this is a game.

You know what it is? I think it shows its hand way too late. It takes too long for you to get that like, oh, wow, this is an amazing moment. So I think that's why a lot of people, I mean, I bounced off too, not just because of the motion sickness, but also like, I'm not getting why people are into it. But once it clicks, me is in like a movie they'll take an hour to get to the point of the movie because they're like well you're in here now sucker enjoy your popcorn and put in a video game if i'm not entertained after 15 minutes i'm just

gonna turn it off and go play one of the other 75 billion games that released that week yeah i feel the same way usually i i don't know what i think the only reason i stuck with this one is just because of the praise and i was like well i gotta do this i did the same way usually. I don't know what, I think the only reason I stuck with this one is just because of the praise. And I was like, well, I got to do this. I did the same thing with Nier Automata with slightly different results. But there is a part of me that just like wants to know the, you know, canon of like, oh, these are the games you need to play.

But sometimes it's just too much. Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast. It's called The Besties. We will be back with you next week to talk about other games. This week we discussed, well, gosh, it's not a long list this week. Far Cry 6, Metroid Dread a little bit, Outer Wilds. What's that one called? Echoes of the Eye is the DLC.

Inscription. Inscription. Thank you. Satisfactory. Satisfactory, right. Yes. I think that's probably it. what's that one called uh echoes of the eye is the dlc and inscription inscription thank you satisfactory satisfactory right yes i think that's probably it we should plant's not here this is usually his job and usually his job none of us paid attention until this moment in the outline we're like oh crap yeah okay i think we got it that's probably enough we got it we got it steve steve where can people find you if they want more of your great insights and pizza influence you can find me just about anywhere online steven spawn s-t-e-v-e-n s-p-o-h-n and on twitch the phonetic version of it s-p-a-w-n is probably where you've heard me running around

the internet raising awareness people with disabilities um last september we raised a million dollars for charity and uh that was one and that's not even counting the twitch no yeah all total it was we brought in about two flint three and that was just like that is specifically from spawn together and all those amazing humans out there who raised a hundred dollars at a time and the power of of teamwork is really understated in our world. And I mentioned that very specifically because there are some great people in our industry. And as I'll probably never be invited back because I talk too much about pizza, it's a good shout out to everyone out there that you can make a difference, and I'm using my time to plug myself to remind you all that you can make a difference in any charity cause that you believe in, whether it's people with disabilities or anything out there, just by being an advocate on your Twitters and your Instagrams. And remember that people like me are out there fighting for these causes, but we don't have our power unless you are also out there doing the same. out there doing the same. And if you want to follow AbleGamers and support the cause of disability,

you can follow AbleGamers on just about every social media platform that has ever been invented or will be invented. We have a time travel machine. Steven, I would say that if you believe that talking about pizza would preclude you from coming back

onto the besties, it is pretty tame subject matter compared to... I mean, it could have been worse. You could have talked about books, you know? That's true. Oh, wait, I do own this podcast, so I can invite myself. Whatever you want to do. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. That's going to do

it for us for this week. Next week, we'll be back for blood. With our discussion of back for blood. That is going to do it for us, though. So until next time, be sure to join us again for the besties, because should the world's best friends

pick the world's best games? Is that still an okay sign-off, or do you have something different you want me to do, or boss? Woo! We're just going to do woo from now on. We're going to put a Ric Flair woo at the end of every episode.

You're the boss. Woo! Besties!