Games People Play

Jennie Bovard:
Well, hello and welcome to Low Vision Moments. It's the podcast all about those sometimes frustrating, potentially embarrassing, but often pretty comical things that happen when you are just trying to go about your day with a visual impairment, blindness, or albinism. I'm Jennie, hey, I'm your host. This here is episode number 23 and our very first episode that will also be available with video on YouTube. Honestly, not sure how I feel about the new requirement to have to brush my hair and shit before podcasting, but I must say we've come a long way from literally recording from within a cardboard box. I'm in my home office still, but no more cardboard box. Here we are and I'd like to extend a warm, warm welcome to my lovely guest, our first video podcast guest. She is the creator of Albinism Up Close. That's a project that seeks to spread awareness and provide resources about albinism, visual impairment, and blindness. That sentence sounds familiar. She's also what I would call a prolific ray of sunshine type gamer. She's got a great presence online, she's a streamer. I'm just delighted to meet you, Dani. Welcome to the podcast.

Dani Marie:
It's so good to be here. I can't get over your use of the word prolific. Prolific is probably not what I would have imagined.

Jennie Bovard:
I settled on it after a lot of other ones.

Dani Marie:
I love it.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, well take it as a compliment.

Dani Marie:
I will.

Jennie Bovard:
Take it. Eat it out.

Dani Marie:
I will.

Jennie Bovard:
What else do you want the people to know about you?

Dani Marie:
You covered the big things. Honestly my big thing right this second is, I'm trying to become an accessibility advocate in the gaming space as well, so that we can get games that work for all of us and not just those of us who might have working eyes. We'll see.

Jennie Bovard:
Well, I'm so happy that you agreed because this is kind of, serendipitous is the word, not serendiphidous. I don't think that one's a word. This all kind of fits together in a nice little puzzle because I wanted to do an episode about gaming for a very long time. I want to talk about a couple different types of gaming, but I hope that you can turn me from the noobest noob that ever noobed, into someone who might enjoy video games again. I'm going to give you a little bit of my history with video games. We'll start there, okay? They really exploded.

Dani Marie:
Awesome.

Jennie Bovard:
They really exploded in popularity video games when I was growing up in the nineties. I used to enjoy them a lot more back then. Then for various reasons, my interest really waned over the years. I don't really play much video games at all these days, but I'm going to tell you my very first low vision moment video game related. Okay. It was this circus game and the first level was really hard to beat. It took me four, five days at least, over a really hot summer to beat the first level. Nothing special. It was just this regular Nintendo game and it actually came on this cartridge that had 31 games in one. It was a circus game and for that entire time trying to beat that first level, I was sure that I was a horse running and jumping through these rings of fire, okay? Even as a young child, I got to thinking this seems kind of cruel, rings of fire, but it was a game and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the challenge until I got to level two, Dani.

Jennie Bovard:
When I got to level two, I realized I was playing a different kind of horse and this horse looked a lot more like a horse that I've seen in real life. It galloped and moved more like a horse. It was a different colour than the horses in level one. After I got game over in level two, which didn't take long, I don't know if I ever beat level two if I'm being honest. I was very young. I went back to level one to investigate, why are these horses looking so different between level one and level two? Well, it turns out the horses in level one had lions' manes, and so they were lions.

Dani Marie:
It's so funny how that translates.

Jennie Bovard:
This was one of those by myself low vision moments though.

Dani Marie:
Oh yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
I don't think I've ever told anybody before. I think this is the first time I've ever told anybody. I just kind of kept it to myself. I wasn't about sharing.

Dani Marie:
I'm just so honoured.

Jennie Bovard:
I mean the regular Nintendo games, I used to enjoy a lot of video games, even PC games way back when, Commander Keen and PC games rather like Quake and Doom. Those really straightforward, first person shooters. You're walking around with a weapon. Best bet is to just shoot anything or just otherwise destroy anything that pops up in front of you. That's how you beat a level.

Dani Marie:
Listen, that's the best kind game, where you literally shoot all the things and you're done. I don't want to precision game where I can shoot my friends. The amount of times I've shot my friends.

Jennie Bovard:
That's what I'm getting at. That's exactly what I'm getting at. I enjoyed those kinds of games, they were straightforward. Side-scrolling games, Mario, right up until I was saying Nintendo 64, and then things just got too realistic.

Dani Marie:
See, the Nintendo 64 for me was actually one of my absolute favourites, including Super Mario 64.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes.

Dani Marie:
I think the idea that they could create this big world like that in this little game, it was just mind-blowing at the time. It was so cool. It got me hooked.

Jennie Bovard:
It was super cool. It was still really, I don't know, it was still Mario, but it was very more open platform. You could run around and do things and explore things like you never could. It was still not the realistic busy that I experienced with even from PlayStation up. I was kind of like, "That's too much real life. I'm guessing too much as to whether that's something I need to shoot or collect. What is that off in the distance? Do I shoot you? Are you on my team," right?

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
I just threw up my hands and I was like, "That's it. This hobby's not for me anymore. I think I need to do something else."

Dani Marie:
That makes me so sad. This is literally on my Twitch profile. That is the era of gaming that got me into gaming. All of the 3D platformers that came out with the Nintendo 64 like Super Mario, 64, Donkey Kong was out around that time.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh, Donkey Kong. Yeah.

Dani Marie:
Yeah. Stuff like that. I think around that time, I want to say, we got Banjo-Kazooie not long after that in a 3D platform kind of world. Aside from that, when you mentioned stuff like Doom and Quake, my mind when I think of the 64 always goes to Goldeneye 007, which was the first-person shooter and it was revolutionary. I am such a fan.

Jennie Bovard:
It was.

Dani Marie:
I'm a fan girl.

Jennie Bovard:
I had it.

Dani Marie:
It's so good. That was one of the big games that my brothers and I played together. It was always like a battle. This is the blind side of it. My brothers are, I have two, and they're both norm. They have normal vision, I guess you'd say. Their eyes work appropriately.

Jennie Bovard:
They work, damn them.

Dani Marie:
Yeah, they work. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It must be nice. It would always be like, "Okay, we're going to play. Okay, I'm going to be third or fourth player. I can't be first or second player because that's on the top of the screen, okay?"

Jennie Bovard:
Yes.

Dani Marie:
I can't look up there unless I literally stand in front of the TV.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes.

Dani Marie:
That always got me.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes, making all the good points, Dani. You mentioned playing with your family and that was really something that we did, all of us. I have two siblings and we all of played these games at different times together and my friends too. There came a time when they were really into certain games and that's what they were doing that day. I'm just like, "Okay, I'm not playing this game so I'm just going to go do something else." It was a little disappointing, right? A little isolating.

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
For you, it doesn't seem like you threw up your hands and said, "The hell with this," like I did. It seems like you've been playing consistently for years.

Dani Marie:
Yeah, I got very into it that era, Nintendo 64. I was super into it. After that, I stayed into it for a little while. We got the PlayStation too, so that era of things, I was very big into Kingdom Hearts, but I was also big into first-person shooters and trying out different stealthy games and sometimes racing games. I tried a decent variety, as long as it didn't involve too much reading. Anything that was real-time strategy. Any kind of strategy, kind of turn-based stuff, lots of RPG heavy stuff with tons of dialogue to read, I didn't really get as much into that. There was a time where I took a really, I feel like several years off from gaming, I just didn't play very much. The past two years have been me getting back into gaming hardcore. It's been such a joy. I definitely missed it when I didn't have it.

Jennie Bovard:
I'm relating so hard right now.

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
If I was there I'd be hugging you. Relate hugs all around. You mentioned the text.

Dani Marie:
Mm-hmm.

Jennie Bovard:
I don't get it. Of pretty much after I think Super Nintendo, maybe 64, it was like, "You have all this screen to use. Why are you using that tiny little space? Why you making the text so small guys? Wow. Why? You got this whole screen and the maps. Come on, go home with your maps, make them bigger."

Dani Marie:
Oh yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
I got, I don't know, turned off, disillusioned and I just turned away from it kind of all together up until present day. I'm curious for you, you play online, you're a streamer. What's the online gaming like for you, as someone who's visually impaired?

Dani Marie:
It is such a mixed bag. Such a mixed bag.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah. Tell me about the mixed bag.

Dani Marie:
I will say there's a couple of intersectionality to use it, to use the fancy word for it. Really when it comes to being someone who identifies as a woman in gaming as well as someone who has any kind of disability, especially a visual impairment. If you ask most people who identify as women in gaming, if you ask them what it's like to play online games, you're going to get similar answers. It's sometimes scary, sometimes a little salty.

Jennie Bovard:
I've heard.

Dani Marie:
When you find the right group-

Jennie Bovard:
The salty.

Dani Marie:
... The salty, yes. Oh salty. I get salty a lot.

Jennie Bovard:
Like salt in the wound.

Dani Marie:
You know when you've tried tubing something for six times in a row and that seventh time it just doesn't work out and you are about to the point where you just want to literally throw everything against the wall, that salty.

Jennie Bovard:
Thank you. Thank you.

Dani Marie:
That's my version of salty anyway.

Jennie Bovard:
I'm learning.

Dani Marie:
It's a mixed bag, like I said. It can be not fun with the wrong people. When you find a crew of people who, I guess understand you a little bit and who you vibe with and who aren't going to poke at your shortcomings in a way that's mean and hateful, then it can be really fun. It can be so much fun. The amount of things I get from gaming is, the list is long. It's long.

Jennie Bovard:
I feel like we're talking about anytime in life when you find a community, right?

Dani Marie:
Yeah. That's true.

Jennie Bovard:
With gaming, it sounds like you went through a lot of trial and error, just like a lot of us have done in real life, trying different hobbies, trying different things on for size to figure out what works, right? Then it sounds like you've kind of found a nice community and you found sort of your niche in that world I hope. I hope it's not often scary and gross and salty. I mean I wonder, we talked about shooting your friend or frigging up the mission. Have you ever had an online flub that pissed someone off, or even something that's just really ridiculously funny?

Dani Marie:
Yeah, I've had a lot of those. I've had a lot of those. I'll say that I've had a lot and I've got a story at the end that kind of, it'll make sense. With the group of friends, I have a small sort of, we call ourselves the squad. There's like four of us because so many online games are capped at four people per team.

Jennie Bovard:
Okay.

Dani Marie:
There's a group of four of us and we play almost every Friday night. For the longest time, we played Halo Infinite. For those who don't know, Halo Infinite is one of the newer instalments in the Halo series, but it has a fair amount of accessibility. The highlighting of enemies is really good. It has text to speech.

Jennie Bovard:
So sorry, highlighting of enemies?

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
This is what we need.

Dani Marie:
Your enemies are literally a bright colour and you can change the colour.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes ma'am.

Dani Marie:
Yeah. Your team is a colour and your enemy is colour. It's all this whole thing for people who are Halo OGs, it was red versus blue. The original colours were red and blue, but now we got such a huge, nice, bright variety of colours to choose from. It's so lovely. I enjoy it.

Jennie Bovard:
That's amazing. You said there's text to speech?

Dani Marie:
Yeah, there's text to speech, which will read out the menus and things like that, but it'll also read things in game, which is really handy. When you run by something that you want to pick up, instead of just trying to desperately read the tiny text on the screen as it goes by pretty quickly, it will actually read to you. That's the main thing that I use it for. That one purpose right there, is one of the big things I struggle with in games is reading pickups and things like that.

Jennie Bovard:
Wow.

Dani Marie:
It's great.

Jennie Bovard:
Those are incredible.

Dani Marie:
It's really great. I'm really happy with what they did, honestly to make that game accessible. That game, it's a first person shooter, right? It's the kind of game where you have a squad and you're going against another squad and you shoot the other people. Normally there's no friendly fire or anything like that. There are certain types of matches and things like that that you go into and it's for rank, which isn't a big thing of mine. I'm not really the kind of gamer who's about leaderboards and being at the top of things and being the best. It's not really been like that for me. It's about having a good time and we do. On occasion, on occasion we have jumped into ranked matches and there have been times where we have had some friendly fire incidents.

Jennie Bovard:
So it happens?

Dani Marie:
It does happen. It's also a big thing in Halo with vehicles and they're a little wonky when you drive a vehicle. It takes a minute to get used to. I have definitely played on teams with strangers.

Jennie Bovard:
Anytime blind people drive vehicles, it's going to be wonky.

Dani Marie:
I know. You know what's really funny is, I'm usually the designated driver in Halo. I usually am. I think it's because I just enjoy it. There have been times where I've been coming around a map and somebody spawns in and I don't see them quickly enough and I just ran them over and now, "Look, you've spawned and now you're dead again. I'm really sorry." I have ran my friends off of cliffs in a vehicle with me.

Jennie Bovard:
I want people to tune into the podcast here, no context. Sorry, Go on. Go on.

Dani Marie:
Right there. That's the spot. Yeah, video games are a trip. You can do stuff like that. Here's the fun thing though, to round that back, the squad that I play in, like I said it's just four of us, one of my other friends in that group is also visually impaired. She has a different condition than I do. We play together and the other two have decently working eyes. There was this incident that we still laugh about to this day. It was like a capture the flag game. We were running through and one of our other friends has the flag. Two of the other team are waiting for us, watch for enemies or whatever. I'm running behind the flag bearer and I'm like, "I got your back. I got you back. I'm coming." We're running down the map and we come around into this room and suddenly I'm dead. My friends had murdered me. They had just murdered me mercilessly.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh no.

Dani Marie:
The funny thing about it is that they were the friends with working eyes.

Jennie Bovard:
Yes, yes.

Dani Marie:
It happens to everybody, was the point.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah, yeah. Look, everyone falls in potholes.

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
Whether it's because you're blind or not paying attention, shit happens. That's great.

Dani Marie:
It's so good.

Jennie Bovard:
I love it when it happens to them.

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
I mean that is just kind of, it's like, "How does that feel?" No, I'm just kidding. It's good that you can laugh about it. I'm learning. We haven't even been chatting that long and I'm already learning. "Jennie, you need to pay attention to the type of shit you say when you explain the reasons why you don't play video games." It's because I gave up, right? It's really just because I didn't keep trying different solutions, which is really, if you care enough about something, I think you'll pursue it. You're convincing me that I might need to give some things a try.

Jennie Bovard:
I will say, I do play a lot of other kinds of games. I never really stopped playing games. Although I sort of put video games to the side for a while. I play a lot of board games and we always played board games growing up. I've got a shelf overflowing with board games. It really got us through the pandemic. When you were telling the story, I was like, "Ooh, who did she tick off by killing? Did she mess up a mission? What was it?" It wasn't that at all and I was pleasantly surprised.

Jennie Bovard:
I have a former relative who I will not name. They are a former relative and they would get so annoyed. It would just rub them so the wrong way when we would be playing a board game with the family and I would take a little bit of extra time to count the spaces. If we're playing Monopoly, I have to count each space 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etcetera. Whereas a lot of people, they just skip to the space. They don't tap the board each time. They don't need to pay that extra focus to make sure they don't accidentally cheat or whatever. It would get this family member just so, I could see their blood boiling and they would say shit like, "Oh, just let me move for you," or, "Oh, just let me read the card for you," because-

Dani Marie:
No.

Jennie Bovard:
.... Usually back then, Yeah, yeah. That's not okay.

Dani Marie:
There's always one. There's always one.

Jennie Bovard:
At first, it really pissed me off. I took the time to try to explain to them, "It just takes me an extra second. I just need to get my magnifier focused," or what have you.

Dani Marie:
Mm-hmm.

Jennie Bovard:
Eben after that, it grew from annoying into hilarious because every time, not intentionally, I wouldn't take time intentionally. It became really funny to me that this person who holds themself in this regard, they think they're a very intelligent human being, they couldn't understand that it's just my eyes that don't work. My brain is mostly okay.

Dani Marie:
Mostly.

Jennie Bovard:
My intellect does not affect it. Yeah. Right.

Dani Marie:
Why is that to go to though? Why is that always the thing people think like, "Oh, you're taking your time. You need some other help."

Jennie Bovard:
"You must be dumb," like no.

Dani Marie:
It's just my eyes that don't work. Hello. That's so funny.

Jennie Bovard:
I would just relish in it. I just thought it was so funny.

Dani Marie:
As you should.

Jennie Bovard:
I play games with my husband or friends all the time. I do little things if we're playing Risk and I'm like, "Okay, I want to attack that country, the one that's shaped a kidney over there," because I can't really quite read it. After a time you memorize the map and you're like, "Okay, that's Mongolia," or whatever, right? I don't know. Do you do a lot of board games?

Dani Marie:
I don't. I like board games. I never had the family atmosphere that we sat around and played board games so I don't own a lot of them. I've played probably the basics and they're really fun. I'd say the closest thing I really get to board games now is just tabletop RPG games.

Jennie Bovard:
Okay.

Dani Marie:
It's the closest.

Jennie Bovard:
I've recently kind of gotten into those too. Zombie Survival and we have this Plague the board game and we have this crazy Die Hard tabletop type game. This has just been in the last, I don't know, five, six years or so, my husband and I have started getting into them and obviously the friends that we rope into playing with us. You better bet that I'm knocking things over.

Dani Marie:
Always.

Jennie Bovard:
The little figures. I don't need minis, I don't need these things. They do nothing for me. You've got to count how many zombies you killed or whatever, right? I'm constantly knocking that shit over. They're good sports. They all know I can't see. If I was to go into a group, and I have once or twice, I might feel a little less comfortable. Do you play with mostly people who are visually impaired?

Dani Marie:
I play with a fair variety, I'd say. It always is a little weird. It's definitely nicer when you come into the situation and they know you're visually impaired. I feel like it's fine if they assume I'm more blind than I am and ask me something and I'm like, "No, no, no, actually I can do this and this. It's fine." I would almost rather them do that, than assume that I can see them all the way across the map and be like, "I'm over here. Hi."

Jennie Bovard:
I mean it does help.

Dani Marie:
It does. I have played with people who don't know though. The reactions sometimes good, sometimes questionable. When it comes to video games, I remember one time I was playing, it was a game called Back 4 Blood, it's actually a zombie game as well. I played with this random crew I'd never met before and just had a good time. At some point throughout the mission, I got the courage up. I said something about, I don't even remember what triggered it, but I was like, "Oh, actually I'm visually impaired. I'm legally blind. My eyes don't really work." They were like, "Really?" They had no idea. It was really cool. It was kind of satisfying to be like, "Yeah, I'm so good you didn't even notice."

Jennie Bovard:
Incognito.

Dani Marie:
Right. Yeah, no, that's just something I pride.

Jennie Bovard:
Yeah. Honestly though, I don't know if it's pride or you just want to slide in there like anyone else. You know what I mean?

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
You don't want to make a big deal of it all.

Dani Marie:
It's probably that.

Jennie Bovard:
You don't want to have to talk about it all the time. It's exhausting.

Dani Marie:
Mm-hmm.

Jennie Bovard:
There's always that debate within my myself, "Should I just get it out all out on the table? Should I just tell every person I meet at every given chance?"

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
"Hey, I'm visually impaired and here's why you need to know." It's nice sometimes when you can just kind of slide in there and no one really is the wiser, right?

Dani Marie:
It is.

Jennie Bovard:
It's kind of satisfying. I think with games, so last year I learned how to play Dungeons and Dragons. I'm in my thirties and I just learned how to play last year for a little documentary called DarkVision, all one word, if you ever want to YouTube it anybody.

Dani Marie:
Amazing.

Jennie Bovard:
This documentary was really all about how inherently accessible Dungeons and Dragons specifically can be. I think that is speaking to most role playing games. I mean it was such a fun experience. I didn't know how I was going to like it, but I was down to participate and try to learn. I had so much bloody fun. My character was just a big exaggeration of myself. She was this beer loving, food seeking, fighter elf. All she wanted was to eat and drink and fight and just get shit done. She was always the one like, "Okay, let's stop dilly dallying. We're not looking for romance, let's move on."

Dani Marie:
I love that.

Jennie Bovard:
I had a lot of fun, right? You can do shit you can't do in real life.

Dani Marie:
Yeah.

Jennie Bovard:
It was such a nice escape during Covid. It was like, "I'm a back flip out this window real quick just because I can."

Dani Marie:
Mm-hmm.

Jennie Bovard:
It was so inherently accessible. In that case, I played with other players who were visually impaired and we used different adaptations. We used the app. There's a Dungeons and Dragons app that you can use, that was accessible with voiceover. Anything that you can use for accessible note taking we used. They used Digital Dice, which I didn't even know existed. I was kind of like, "What?" Anyone can do this. Do you D&D? What do you role play?

Dani Marie:
I have so much to say on this topic. I do, I play in a couple regular tabletop games. There's entire Discord server, there's probably more, but there's this entire Discord server I'm in. Discord is a communication app kind of forum with text and video and all kinds of different integrations and stuff. It's pretty cool. There's this particular server called Knights of The Braille, and I found this actually last year. This was when I really got into tabletop gaming. It is a server full of blind and visually impaired gamers and other gamers with various other disabilities as well. I learned so much from these guys playing. You don't need anything but your mind to play a game like Dungeons and Dragons or any other tabletop. There are so many out there in any genre. You can literally be absolutely anything. There's a game where you can play entirely as cats.

Jennie Bovard:
That really strikes me as hilarious. Okay.

Dani Marie:
It's so good though, you're demon fighting cats though.

Jennie Bovard:
I've got to remember this because I've been trying to get my husband into Dungeons and Dragons and I'm sure that he would like it. I enjoy playing in-person, so I want to get him to come with me with a couple of the people that I played with before. Our DM, our dungeon master was amazing, but he won't do it. I think he's scared he's going to get hooked. If there's cats involved, if there are cats involved.

Dani Marie:
There are cat races in D&D as well.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh my god.

Dani Marie:
I'm no expert, but they exist.

Jennie Bovard:
I'm sorry. I keep getting sidetracked by these little tidbits that you're giving me here.

Dani Marie:
It can be arranged. It's fine. That is really the cool thing about tabletop game, is that truly even someone with zero vision whatsoever, playing with the screen reader, you can do exactly what you're talking about because some games, not all games are accessible because if you know anything about online accessibility and document accessibility, it's not as easy as create a PDF and send it to your players to use. I'm just putting that out there for anybody who thinks it is. It's not.

Jennie Bovard:
It's easy to make it accessible, just to check the accessibility. Anyhow.

Dani Marie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is. Like you said, dice rollers, discord itself, you can get these bots and Discord where you type something in chat and it will literally roll your dice for you. You can ask your smart assistant to roll the dice for you as well, which is so handy.

Jennie Bovard:
I love that. I love that. I love that there are options now. I'm so glad you came to talk to me because it's really, Dani, damn you honestly. I'm happy and I'm a little upset because I don't need any anymore hobbies. I don't have enough time for this, but I really want to give back in particular D&D and I want to show you, I have a prop here with me. I don't know if you've ever seen one of these, but when I went and learned to play D&D for the documentary, the director got me this gigantic, it doesn't do it justice, it's this gigantic 20 sided die.

Dani Marie:
It looks like the size of a pool ball. It's real big.

Jennie Bovard:
It's real big. It is heavy too. The other people I played with, they used the digital, well one used the digital dice and then one used regular dice. She had a crap load. She was like a seasoned D&D person. Every time she would roll, she would just use a handheld magnifier, whatever works for you. This puppy, my hands are not that big, but it takes up my whole palm. My favorite thing, of course it's high contrast, it's blue, it's got white letters and they're large print. They're large print enough for me. The best thing about this is how dramatic it is when you roll it, Dani. The digital dice don't sound. I'm going to roll it real quick and then we're going to wrap this up.

Dani Marie:
Do it.

Jennie Bovard:
I got to see what this sounds like, okay? I just dropped it. It's so dramatic. One more for good measure. Listen to this thing.

Dani Marie:
It's so big.

Jennie Bovard:
I'm not big on the minis. We had some around when we were learning, little towns and people and whatnot. It was cool to have my little character, but I was like, "I'm going to take something out with this big die."

Dani Marie:
You could. I will tell you, I bought my first official set of dice recently and I bought a metal set.

Jennie Bovard:
Ooh.

Dani Marie:
I actually have them here as well. They're not as easy to see as your.

Jennie Bovard:
It's shiny.

Dani Marie:
It is so shiny and it's heavy and when you pick it up, it's cold.

Jennie Bovard:
Ooh.

Dani Marie:
The amount of sensory joy I get from these and when you shake them together.

Jennie Bovard:
Oh.

Dani Marie:
I just dropped it, but it makes it really nice sound.

Jennie Bovard:
I love the sound.

Dani Marie:
It's sounds nice. Even if you don't use them, just get you a bag of dice.

Jennie Bovard:
Just to roll them around in your hands.

Dani Marie:
Just shake them around. That's it, that's all we need. It's so satisfying.

Jennie Bovard:
So many levels of satisfaction when it comes to gaming. I love it. I'm having so much fun. I could do this for a lot longer, but you've stepped away from an event to graciously come and record with me today. I want to thank you for that. Before we wrap it up, is there anything else that you wanted to chat about?

Dani Marie:
I just want to say that if you're afraid to get into gaming because you're not sure if it'll work for you, that there is most likely something out there that will work for you and that there are some really, really, really great organizations who are trying to help connect people with resources that will actually let you jump into gaming as an outlet. So much of us need that escape. We need that escape and we need that social experience that is gaming, where you can make friends and you can be somebody else for a little while, but also learn to be a little bit more yourself, which feels like a rare gift sometimes, especially lately. It's been a struggle for a lot of us for a lot of different reasons. Just try something, just look around, ask questions, Don't be afraid to try it.

Jennie Bovard:
I think trying it and trying different things is such a key thing and a social aspect. Such good advice, Dani. I can't thank you enough, honestly. If people want to connect with you online, if they want to learn how to get involved with gaming or otherwise connect with you, how can they do that?

Dani Marie:
On all social medias I am Dani Marie AUC. If you want a little bit of an easier way to look that up, you can just go to albinismupclose.com and all of my stuff is linked on that website. You can find everything I'm doing through that website I think, and see a little bit about what I write about. There's some gaming stuff coming up in the future, so keep an eye out for that. That's pretty simple. It's pretty simple.

Jennie Bovard:
Awesome. Oh my God, I need to find time to play some more games and socialize and have fun and escape. You've really helped me turn over a new leaf I think today, so thank you so, so much again, Dani.

Dani Marie:
Thank you. I was so excited to have been your very first video podcast.

Jennie Bovard:
Thank you for listening and watching. If you've got any feedback or suggestions for the podcast, I would love to hear from you. No salty people please. Send an email to podcasts@ami.ca or leave a voicemail at 1-866-509-4545. Once more, that phone number is 1-866-509-4545. Make sure to mention Low Vision Moments in the message, please and thanks. Come and follow me on Instagram. I'm there under Uberblonde4, that's U-B-E-R-B-L-O-N-D-E, and the number four. Mark Aflalo is our technical producer with the patients of a saint. Thanks so much to manager at AMI Audio, Andy Frank. He's a level 14 rogue in case you didn't know. Until next time, who wants to challenge me to a Tetris duel? Come on, I can take it.