Unfortunately embedding has been disabled for this video, but I highly recommend all the Juicers here (especially the ones that went to RIT) to give it a watch. It’s Gabe Newell presiding over a focus group with deaf gamers to learn more about sign language and generate feedback as ot how it could be applied to gaming (presumably Half Life 2: Episode 3, as there’s more than a couple of mentions of Alyx and DOG).

From the video’s description:

He [Newell] talks about it briefly in the second clip, so it sounds like maybe an idea that the he or the writers are working on is a deaf character/crush in Alyx’s backstory that influenced her and DOG to learn how to sign as a way of communicating around enemies without speaking. That would be fun to see how that worked into the story, and how the characters would act it out during the game.

I did laugh a bit as someone in the audience of this focus group mentioned how they see gamers when they’re back at RIT.  This could be a very interesting development if it’s fully realized, and I believe Valve should be commended for even making the effort in the first place.

Click here to go to the video.

Tags: ASL, deaf-gaming, Gabe Newell, games, valve, video, video games

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