No Time for This S*** – My Trip to RockStar Games

Early spring, Boston 2011, a friend and I were heading to PAX-East. My friend had a very hard time traveling. He was profoundly disabled and did not own reliable transportation at the time. If it wasn't on the para-transit run by his city, he did not go anywhere. We had met a few years prior, and he had joined me on my mission to combat social isolation for people with disabilities at AbleGamers. We were going to take our message to the game developers at PAX.

It was clear to me at the time that the road to accessibility in the gaming space led through those that made the content. There was very little that I could do outside of the industry to move the needle. I decided to take the message to them.

My friend couldn't fly, that meant that for him to accompany me, we had to drive. I drove from my house outside of Washington DC to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, parked my car, picked up a rented accessible van, and after we were all packed up, headed across the state and north to Boston.

Roaming the Floor

This was peak PAX era, and this was the second year of PAX-East. Our plan was simple, we made up a flyer, something that spoke about how to make games accessible and why it was important, and our goal was to hand it to as many game industry people as we could find.

As we roamed the floor, we came across the Rockstar booth for the game L.A. Noire. It was a huge, all-black booth, black walls, black carpet, and a huge neon sign high above with the game logo. A worker at the booth with a fantastic smile asked us if we wanted to try the game. Unfortunately, as is common even to this day, the booth was double- or even triple-carpeted, and there was no way my friend's wheelchair was going to be able to traverse that gauntlet.

The gentleman asked us if we had any questions about the game. I explained what we were there to do, to talk to a game developer about how they should make their game more accessible so that individuals with disabilities could enjoy it. He smiled, nodded his head, and said, "I'm not the right person you should be talking to. Let me go get you something." With our flyer in hand, he headed into the booth as we waited outside.

About 10 minutes later, a very tall gentleman emerged from the dark hole that was their booth, our flyer in hand, looked straight at me, and said, "What do you want?"

I started giving him my spiel, really emphasizing what was on the flyer. He stared directly at me, not acknowledging my friend at all. After about 45 seconds he cut me off and said, "I don't have time for this shit," and walked back into his booth.

The Power of Twitter

This was peak PAX, and it was also where Twitter was really starting to gain its foothold as a social media platform with the power to make waves. For the first time in modern history, the average person had the ability to create real problems for marketing teams. Prior to this, we had seen several examples of average citizens creating headaches for multibillion-dollar corporations. We understood the power that Twitter brought to those smart enough to use it. And use it we did.

While I don't remember the exact tweet that we sent, it went something like this:

Just got told @rockstar booth, "I don't have time for this shit" talking about game accessibility.

It got engagement. Several people who followed us showed their anger at being told such a thing. For the time, its engagement was okay. I put the phone back in my pocket and we moved on to the next booth, talked to the next game industry insider, and had a great rest of the day.

Checked My Email

The next morning I woke up and checked my email. Much to my surprise, there was an email from someone at Rockstar. The email asked about the tweet we had posted and wanted to know more about what happened. I rushed into my friend's room next door and said, "You're not going to believe what I just got in my email, Rockstar sent us an email." We were quite excited because we didn't think our tweet would go anywhere, but clearly someone saw it.

Instead of going to breakfast, I wrote an email back explaining from our perspective what had happened. I was very detailed and explained that we just wanted to talk to somebody about game accessibility and how important it is. I hit send and went about my day.

Later that day I received a reply. In short, it said: that's not exactly what we heard happened, but it is very close, and we are very upset that that happened to you. What would you like for us to do?

I explained that our goal was really just to talk to some developers about how they can make their games more accessible so that individuals with disabilities could enjoy all of this amazing content that was coming out. I said we simply wanted a phone call with a few developers, that would be perfectly fine, and in fact far more than we had ever hoped to get.

That's Not Good Enough

The person at the other end of that email said that was not good enough and that they owed us more than that. I stressed that we really just wanted a phone call and nothing more, but I got pushed back.

"No. Let's bring you here to the studio. We'd love to host you and talk about it face-to-face."

And so we planned the trip for the coming months. As I mentioned, my friend can't fly, so he has to take ground transportation. Rockstar wanted to do the visit at their New York office in lower Manhattan. The decision was made that the best way to make this trip was by train, I would drive back to Pittsburgh, park at the station, and take Amtrak all the way to Penn Station.

Rockstar assured us they were going to take care of all of the expenses. They booked train tickets for myself, my friend, and his two caregivers. We boarded in Pittsburgh and settled in for the long, local trip across Pennsylvania, stopping in every small town and big city until we finally arrived many hours later.

As we rolled to a stop in Penn Station, we were greeted by a familiar face. The same smiling gentleman who had met us at the Rockstar booth a month or two earlier was waiting for us trackside. His name was Mario, and he informed us that he was going to be our host while we were in New York. He ushered us through Penn Station to an awaiting accessible van, illegally parked, ready to take us to our hotel.

Welcome to New York

I've stayed in New York half a dozen times, and the truth of the matter is almost all hotel rooms are a bit of a compromise. A spacious single room in DC would be about a third of the size in New York. That's just how that city works. But that's not the hotel that Rockstar put us in.

We pulled up to the Greenwich Hotel, owned by Robert De Niro. They had booked four rooms for us. One for me, one for my friend, and one for each of his caregivers. In all of my time staying in New York City, I had never been in such a beautiful hotel room. I distinctly recall a sign in the soaking tub, this beautiful monstrosity that I could probably have swum in. The sign read, "Please be careful, this tub can fill up in 90 seconds or less." Given the size of that tub, that must have been a torrent of water. (No, I did not test this. We were too busy.)

Mario informed us that he was going to give us an opportunity to get settled in after our epic train journey, and that we would all be meeting for dinner in the lobby restaurant at around 7:00 PM.

7:00 rolled around and we all headed down. There we found a table reserved for us that sat close to 14 people. We had no idea we were going to need all fourteen of those seats, because over 10 Rockstar developers showed up to the dinner, welcoming us, greeting us, and drinking with us. My friend and I thought this was going to be the conversation we wanted, our opportunity to talk to developers about how video games are so important to the social well-being of people with disabilities, but we were shut down almost immediately. "That's not what we're doing this evening. That's for tomorrow," the lead developer said. "This evening is about drinking and eating and getting to know each other." And that's exactly what we did.

We all somehow got to our rooms that evening, with instructions that the van would be by to pick us up at 9:00 AM to take us over to the studio.

Excuse Me, Mr. De Niro

The next morning, we were standing outside the hotel, the bustling streets of lower Manhattan unfolding in front of us. We could see the van circling the block looking for a place to park. Where the Greenwich Hotel sits, there is a large curb down to the street. The van needed a spot where the ramp could extend onto the sidewalk, but there was no parking available.

What there was, was a very expensive car with a driver parked at the end of the block. My friend went down and got the attention of the driver. "Excuse me, sir, could you please move your car? I need the van to be able to park there so that I can get into it." The hotel concierge had noticed the commotion and walked down to assist. We explained the situation and he spoke to the driver, who promptly agreed and moved his vehicle as soon as the van got close.

We later found out that was the personal driver of Robert De Niro. He always has his car waiting there to take him wherever he needs to go. My friend got a real kick out of the fact that he had asked Robert De Niro's car to get out of his way.

At the Studio

We were genuinely excited to be among the first people outside of the Rockstar universe to be invited to the studio. Rockstar is notoriously close to the vest when it comes to inviting people into their space, and we understood the gravity of the privilege we had been given.

Rockstar had a conference room set up for us. We demoed the game, talked about what could be done better, and shared what we had originally wanted to discuss at the booth. All in all, it was a fantastic experience, and the developers actually made changes to the game in the day-one patch based on our feedback. I was really proud that we had made a positive difference for people with disabilities.

The studio visit wrapped up around 1:00–1:30 in the afternoon. The plan was to meet for dinner at The Pier on Wall Street around 7:00. Rockstar encouraged us to explore the city, told us the van was ours, and that all we had to do was tell it where we wanted to go. Mario joined us on our adventures just to make sure we didn't pay for anything. We decided to take the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, because my friend had never been on a boat.

I'm on a Motherfucking Boat

Honestly, all we wanted was to take the ferry so my friend could have a boat ride and we could see the Statue of Liberty. We didn't actually have any business in Staten Island. When we got to the ferry terminal, I found a transit cop and told him our plans. He explained that we would probably have to get off at the other side, they don't allow you to remain on, but he would see what he could do.

We boarded the ferry and found a place to sit next to the windows so we could watch the Statue of Liberty pass and my friend could have the experience of the waves and the water. The transit cop found us and said it would be okay for us to stay on the boat when we reached Staten Island.

When we got to the other side and everyone was getting off, someone came to us and said, "I need you guys to leave." We all got a chuckle when the transit cop, an older Black woman, said in the most New York accent I'd ever heard, "No, no, no. They're part of the boat now. They're going back with us." And so we sat there and waited for it to go back to Manhattan and our awaiting van.

Dinner at the Pier

We got to dinner at The Pier on Wall Street, an amazing Cuban restaurant, where we were joined by some of the developers we had spoken to that day, a few we hadn't met yet, and the VP of Publishing who had sent the original email and planned the entire trip.

The dinner was fantastic and the conversation was riveting. At one point the VP asked, "How was the train ride over?" I explained that it was fine and that we were looking forward to the trip home in the morning. She really pressed me on the details, how long did it take, how comfortable was it?

Throughout dinner she was checking her phone often, stepping away to take calls and coming back to pick up right where she left off. It was clear there was a lot going on. We later found out she was going back and forth with the game's QA team, the Gold Release Candidate was due to the publisher that evening so they could start pressing the Xbox discs that consumers were going to buy, yet there she was at dinner with us.

As the dinner wrapped up, she leaned over to me and said, "Hey, I think we're going to change some of the plans for tomorrow. That train ride was far too long, so I've arranged for transport to take you all the way back home." And sure enough, the next morning there was a medical transport van waiting for us with two EMTs, ready to drive us all the way back to Pittsburgh to pick up my car, and then take my friend directly to his house.

Conclusion

When I got home, I sent an email thanking Rockstar for their hospitality. It was more than we could have ever imagined, and I told her so. She replied that they still had more to give. They arranged for AbleGamers to have a booth at PAX-East the following year and cut us a check for $25,000 to pay for it, the first five-figure donation we had ever received. In 2012, we were set up right next to the escalator going down to the showroom floor. Every developer walking into that convention had to walk past us. It had started with a flyer, a tweet, and a man who didn't have time for this shit. Funny how that works.