Posts Tagged ‘advocacy’

20
Dec
2019

The “forced microphone” policy.

categories: personal; word count: 416 words

Whenever games allow you to use the microphone, Bub and I opt out of this without fail. We also tend to mute the mic on games that allow us to do this. But whenever games force you to use the microphone and listen in on others’ conversations and there is no way to prevent this, even if this game is otherwise the best game, this is a game that we take a hard pass on. And we have to do this because Bub has to be protected.

Bub’s vocal inflections let everyone know that he is disabled, and this is something that he can not hide. It would then make me make the incredibly hard choice of not playing the game with him so that people on the other end of the game did not hear his vocal inflections, or having him play alongside me and risking being asked inappropriate questions about him (“is he retarded?”, “is your son retarded?”), or making fun of him for the way he sounds. So I would either play the game that I had bought him without him to protect him, which would exclude him, or I would run the risk of Bub being bullied and made fun of by attempting to include him if a bully is on the other end of the mic. So the easiest way to solve both of these problems is: don’t buy games that force you to use the microphone. Research the game, find that out, make that decision. Done.

The only way that we work around this is if you can choose who you party, or team, up with. If I can select friends of mine who I trust to play the game with, that’s different. That makes the game playable. But if it’s a random distribution of players and there is forced mic use, I don’t purchase the game and we don’t play it.

I wish more game developers took this into consideration, because I am sure that Bub isn’t the only person that something like this applies to. I am sure that there are many other disabled individuals out there who have to stay completely silent on the mic during games like this in fear that they will be bullied if if they speak. There may be individuals who have severe social anxiety for whom forced mic use petrifies them, and this may apply to them too. There are aspects of gaming culture that need improvement. This is one of them.

18
Dec
2019

When your MMO has a “no addiction” Reddit…

categories: MMORPGs; word count: 520 words

This is when you should know that you have a serious problem, Blizzard.

Please note that this is not me “knocking” the Reddit for existing, as it clearly has a purpose and has helped a lot of people curb their addiction to World of Warcraft. It is doing a great thing by existing. I acknowledge that it needs to exist. What I am “knocking” is the fact that this Reddit even needs to exist in the first place.

I am “knocking” the fact that a sizable number of people are getting, or have gotten, addicted to World of Warcraft and that this is occurring in a disproportionately high number with this MMO than it is with any others out there. You don’t hear about this happening with other MMOs in anything other than trace numbers, adjusting with the fact that there are individuals out there who will get addicted to any MMO, any game, or anything that crosses their path (since I am not shaming anyone for addiction, that I know that addiction is something that an individual can not in any way help, and realize that someone may, say, get addicted to the latest Final Fantasy MMO because it crossed their path and World of Warcraft did not…).

I am also “knocking” the fact that with an MMO this size, and with the number of people that have gotten addicted to it, that Blizzard has done nothing to curb this or even mitigate it in any way. After all, their addiction lines Blizzard’s pockets. Being as vague as possible, I actually knew someone that was offered a lucrative job that could have turned into a career that World of Warcraft messed up for them. This didn’t even materialize into a job for them. They went right back to playing World of Warcraft after this job offer fell through for them, and I am almost positive that they continue to play World of Warcraft to this day not realizing, and probably not caring, how big of a problem that this is — that this is actually addiction if this cost them an actual job. They probably rationalize it as “this job not being worth it”. They are, or were, someone that I had known for a long time, and after this I honestly never want to hear from or see again. I don’t want them around my children. And although I just said up there that I am aware that addiction is something that a person can not help, rationalizing away one’s addiction, and treating people horribly is something that can be helped, and this is absolutely something that this person would do, so I don’t want them around me because that would expose my children to them and that is something that I do not want.

Based on my last interaction with this person years ago, they were plainly emotionally abusive to me.

At some point, Blizzard has to realize that their MMO is this addictive and step in, though.

The question is, when? When will they stop turning a blind eye to this level of addiction in their players?

05
Dec
2019

Now that I’ve gotten all of that done…

categories: personal; word count: 417 words

Most of what has been needed to set this blog up has been accomplished!

Here’s hoping, at any rate.

I did the pulmonary function testing that my lung doctor needed to have on file for me this morning. When I started needing to have these done, I sucked so hard at these that they took awhile to do, pun definitely intended. But now that I’ve needed to do them with more frequency, I’ve gotten used to them, and I haven’t had to repeat any part of them… that’s always good. And when I was done with that, I got to do another six-minute walk around the area in front of my lung doctor’s office with one of the new nurses working there, which is always good for causing brief desaturations in my oxygen levels, but I mean, what isn’t these days? Luckily for me, my saturations always come back up. I don’t have some of the diagnoses that my friends have, which is always good. I count my blessings that I have asthma, and some of my friends — probably a few more of them than I realize — count their blessings that they do not have, as I’ve sometimes put it, “my level of asthma”. Ever named nebulizers? Held funerals for them as you dump them into the trash canister out front when they “die”? That’s what we’re talking about here, folks. Daria Morgendorffer humor is my thing, at least as often as I can muster it up. And that’s actually fairly frequently, because it does help out.

When you’re a “frequent flier” in the spoonie department — and a fairly young person for being a member of that department — you find that being civil and polite helps you get through the day, even though you also find that coming home and venting to your similarly minded (and bodied) friends also helps you get through your day when you have to deal with all of the bureaucratic nonsense that comes with being a card-carrying member. It does seem to surprise the people that you interface with, though. Oh, she’s actually thanking me for handing her page after page of forms to fill out? She’s actually polite about this? Yeah, I know that you’re just doing your job. I’m not going to make your life more difficult because you handed me the forms that you had to hand me. I know that you had to hand me the forms. I know that I have to fill these out. Carrying on…

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