------------------------------------------------------------------ Playability Podcast Episode 20: Isaac Vega Run time: 14 minutes, 57 seconds Episode recorded by Rebecca Strang. Playability is produced by Mike Risley. Transcript auto-generated by Temi and edited by Rebecca Strang. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Music intro: 00:00 Rebecca Strang: 00:09 Hello and welcome to Playability, where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host, Rebecca Strang, and I'm joined today by Isaac Vega from Plaid Hat Games. Isaac's work includes City of Remnants, Dead of Winter, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, Starship Samurai, and Neon Gods. Welcome to the show, Isaac. Isaac Vega: 00:31 Thanks for having me, Rebecca, I appreciate being here. Rebecca Strang: 00:33 Yeah, we're really happy to have you. So, your work, especially Dead of Winter, is brought up a lot when there are discussions where people are looking for games that are inclusive or have a wide representation in the story or the artwork. So, can you tell us a little bit about what accessibility and inclusivity in gaming means to you? Isaac Vega: 00:53 Well, for me personally, I mean it started off as just trying to see more of people like me in, in games. All too often... Even in my first game city remnants, I really wanted, you know, the lead character that was part of the human race to be someone of color because you just don't see that very often. And I just wanted something that helped to include everybody. So when you have access to choosing a character, you can have access to someone that may look like you or may kind of represent someone that's close to you in your life. And also just to allow for the community to feel like it's open to everyone instead of a certain group of people. Rebecca Strang: 01:35 Yeah, it's great when you can see yourself reflected in the stories that you like to participate in. Isaac Vega: 01:42 Right, and not only that, it's also good for people that may not have access to different types of people to just see that representation in order for them to have a little bit more empathy and understanding of maybe some different points of view that they did not consider beforehand. Rebecca Strang: 01:59 Definitely. And so depending on the person or the publisher, designers can have a varied the level of involvement in the game once it's passed that design phase and it's ready for development and art. So typically for you, uh, when you're working at a game, how far beyond the design are you involved with its development and art direction? Isaac Vega: 02:20 So as far as developing the games, anything with my name on it, I am the full designer usually on, unless I have a code designer, and then also some of the games that we have here in the office, I was also art director for a time with Plaid Hat Games, so some of those I oversaw as far as covers and the art and the representation in those games too. Over the last two years I've kind of phased out my art director role and my brother Sam actually has taken over as the art director here at Plaid Hat Games and I started really as a full time art director on Dead of Winter, so I think it's kind of nice to see that Dead of Winter does get brought up so much because of how much influence I had over the project and the characters in the story in that game. Rebecca Strang: 03:04 Yeah, definitely. So when you're making decisions regarding the design development or the direction that the art is taking, what are some of the decisions you've made specifically with accessibility in mind? Isaac Vega: 03:18 So I want to make sure that I try to offer a broad enough scope of everybody's stories that we can, not every game can do that. There's only so many characters that you can include in a game. There's only so many stories that you can tell sometimes, but Dead of Winter was a unique bag because we had an opportunity to have a giant cast of characters. And when it comes to accessibility, you know, you want to make sure that you have some representation of things that aren't necessarily the norm and you know, especially when it was coming in where we want it to represent a blind character in Dead of Winter. That was something that I thought was important, but how would a blind person be in this situation. We also want to stay true to the story and make sure that someone can still do the things that they need to do by still also being true to the condition that they're in. Rebecca Strang: 04:11 And so what are some of the steps that you take when you're writing a character or a story that... It's a perspective that you personally don't have experience with? What are some of the steps that you take to make sure that you're making that representation accurate? Isaac Vega: 04:26 We here at Plaid Hat try to do as much as we can to reach out to other people that do have that experience. We also try to do research on other people's experiences and just talking to people that are close to us and hopefully trying to do the best we can. Now there have been some liberties and some things in the past that we haven't necessarily done that with and we're just trying to improve that quality as we move forward because sometimes you just don't have those people in your scope and sometimes people that you just don't think about it. But that's definitely something that's coming to the forefront of our minds as we move forward to make sure that we reach out to people as much as possible and try to get their feedback on how they would feel if they were represented in this game. Rebecca Strang: 05:07 Sure. And does that extend to the play testing that you do as well? Isaac Vega: 05:11 Unfortunately with play testing it is difficult to get a wide enough scope of people because, you know, there are certain limitations when it comes to deadlines that you kind of need to take, who you can get. You know, whoever's available, whoever has playgroups that are able to do plays consistently, who have the time to give you the feedback that you need. So, and then sometimes it's limited to just where we are. So it's really about, it's expanding that network we've done over the years trying to expand our network as much as possible and kind of collating the ones that are doing really good work and being able to give us good feedback. But as far as demographics of our play testers as something that we are actively paying attention to, I can't really say that that is the case. It's definitely something that we should probably consider. But with the way that things work in our industry, sometimes it's about just getting it to the table with anybody who's willing to play. And unfortunately, I wish that wasn't the reality, but what does help a lot is taking our games to conventions and being able to play with people there because we have such a breadth of different types of people that do go to conventions and they're willing to give feedback and it's kind of the right atmosphere for that, but unfortunately we can't be at conventions all the time. Rebecca Strang: 06:28 Sure. And I know prototypes aren't exactly cheap either, so you've got a limited amount that you can work with. Isaac Vega: 06:36 Right, you know, and you know there's, there's some times where we do take, take a little bit of extra effort to kind of put things out in certain places where we feel like we'll get good feedback. Like we, we've sent some stuff out to different countries and things like that where we can go ahead and get feedback from play testers that are not necessarily speaking from the American standpoint either. Rebecca Strang: 06:55 Oh sure. Yeah. That's great. So if you had to pick from the work that you've done, the three things that you're most proud of that you've been able to accomplish with your work, what would those be? Isaac Vega: 07:06 I am most proud of number one, the communities that come up and the friendships that can be made around my games, that it means so much to me when I am able to see, oh, people that I've just like, oh, we didn't know each other before we started playing this game and we love this game and now we're friends. And that that just like touches my heart in a way that nothing else could because it's just like, wow, like something I did helped two people meet, you know, and make a relationship that may have not been there if I hadn't done that before. And that is always something that just, that just hits my heart so much because it just, I just, uh, I, I still can't believe that I get the opportunity to do that. And the other thing is that people do recognize my work for the representation that is in my games and that that is valued. People see value in that and that they appreciate that. And I, I've been lucky to get so much great positive feedback for that. And that has been so much to me too because it was something that just kind of came out of me naturally being someone who is Latinx and also gay, seeing that my stuff is accepted just for me kind of being who I am. So that really touches me. And then the other thing is, is just the opportunities that this industry has given me and the people and friendships that I have personally been able to make because of it. And those things has... holds so much value outside of everything else that does give me value. Those, those three things are just means so much to me. Rebecca Strang: 08:50 Yeah, definitely. And regarding your first point, actually, the first that I played a game with a stranger at a convention was to play Dead of Winter. It was at Geekway and we heard that somebody was looking for players to play that have winter. And my group loves playing the game. So we met up and now every year when we see Zac at Dead of Winter [meant to say Geekway], you know, we, we always say hi and it's, it's such a great way to, like you said, meet new people and build new relationships and friendships. Isaac Vega: 09:23 Yeah. Yeah. It is. And I, that's, that's why no matter what, I will always love this hobby. No matter where my life takes me, I'm always going to love this hobby because of the amount of connections that can be made just by sitting down and playing some games. Rebecca Strang: 09:36 Yeah, definitely. So what would you like to see more of from the gaming industry going forward? Isaac Vega: 09:43 I think it's going in a good direction as far as representation with the art and the stories and the characters. I see a lot more of that. I see a lot more companies paying attention to it and I see a community that is also asking and hungry for it. So I think we're going to keep going in that direction. I'm really proud that that is the direction that we're going in. But I would still love to see our conventions, our group events represent that more doubt that our games are starting to represent it. I think it's going to help pull more of that into our industry. And I think there are some great shows that help do, you know, especially female gamers feel, uh, are starting to take more precautions into making female gamers feel safe. Um, and helping to making sure that our community is growing on, you know, making everybody feel safe and welcome and hopefully expanding the amount of people that can play. And I just want to continue seeing more of that. I'd like to try... I always, I always tell people that I'd like to buy games for my house for gamers that have never played a game before or only know board games as Monopoly and things like that. Right? Because I want people to feel like they can go ahead and try this out and jump in and, and, "Oh, I've never thought of myself as a board game or, and I want to go with the do that." And I just want to continue to see the industry welcome people like that more and more. Rebecca Strang: 11:13 Yeah, I agree. Isaac Vega: 11:14 And because I think that's what's gonna lead to us having a more diverse group of people enjoying what we do. Rebecca Strang: 11:20 Yeah. It's, it's been great seeing kind of the bigger focus on accessibility that people are talking about it more. I feel like it's a lot more visible than it has been in the past right now, which is great. And do you have any projects coming up that you can talk about that people can look forward to hearing more about? Isaac Vega: 11:38 I am working on another Crossroads game. I can say that. Um, but I cannot say what it is or what it's about unfortunately quite yet. But I'm really, really excited about it and it is a lot of work. I was working on it right before we started this podcast and I'll be jumping right back on right afterwards and it's hopefully going to be something that's interesting and new and interesting spin but offers players some interesting decisions when it comes to a different story moments in games. So I hope the habit out soon enough but it will still be awhile. Rebecca Strang: 12:15 Sure. Yeah. I can only imagine what the note taking and spreadsheets or whatever look like for managing all of the storylines and intersections in those games. Isaac Vega: 12:27 Yes. Yes. The last one. That's quite a bear. Rebecca Strang: 12:33 So are there any tools that you can talk about that you use for keeping yourself organized when you're working on games with that kind of scope? Isaac Vega: 12:41 Um, mostly what I utilized is Excel and then I work mostly in InDesign. Rebecca Strang: 12:45 Okay. Isaac Vega: 12:46 In order to, you know, kind of put my, all my prototypes and things together. Rebecca Strang: 12:50 Sure. Isaac Vega: 12:51 I typically use the Numbers now, so for you Apple fans out there. Um, but yeah, I utilize that a lot. Lots of spreadsheets like you said. Note taking is terrible sometimes. Like there's lots of little sheets around my office, let's like scribble things down. And then luckily... My brain has failed me multiple times but it still works well enough to remember months. That's good. So those are the tools that I use. We'll see which one fails for. Rebecca Strang: 13:28 And are you, I know this new game won't be out for a little while, but are you going to be at conventions doing any demos for anything else with Plaid Hat this year? Isaac Vega: 13:37 Yeah, the first convention I plan to be at is Origins. This year I will be at Gen con, I probably going to be at SHUX again, which is Shut Up & Sit Downs' convention and BGG Con is right here in my home area, so I'll be at at least the, not BGG spring, but the standard BGG this year. Uh, I don't know if I will be at any others, but, so, you know, that always changes. We never know! Rebecca Strang: 14:04 Sure, and for anybody who would like to keep up with you online. Where can they find you? Isaac Vega: 14:10 They can find me on Twitter @IsaacsAshes and they can also email me at isaac@plaidhatgames.com. Rebecca Strang: 14:17 Awesome. And is there anything else that you would like to share that we haven't covered? Isaac Vega: 14:22 No, I think I'm all good and I'm working away. Hopefully you'll guys will see something from me soon and I look forward to seeing you all at conventions or in any kind of settings that we get an opportunity to play game. Rebecca Strang: 14:34 Yeah, definitely. All righty. Uh, well for everybody listening, if you have any questions or comments that you'd like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod@gmail.com and you can also find us on major social media platforms @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening and I hope this episode helps you play with a new perspective.