How accessible is being a gaming content creator?
Influencers and content creators have rapidly become one of the most visible aspects of the games industry. In courting them, publishers and studios can readily access vast audiences on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch, and guarantee coverage. For creators, this can lead to lucrative partnerships and, in some cases, celebrity in the games industry and beyond.
As appealing as this makes content creation as a career in gaming, and for all the ostensible benefits, top-earners highlight a lifestyle of stress, isolation, and constantly battling for relevancy. For disabled creators, these difficulties are magnified in a career beholden to algorithms and inaccessible platforms. Though content creation has become an accessible way for publishers to find undiscerning coverage, it remains inaccessible for users.
Mollie Evans is an EDI advocate who has been a content creator for six years. She tells GamesIndustry.biz that content creation should allow disabled influencers a way to work safely, from home, and to their own schedule. The reality, however, is less inclusive.
"The push for constant content can be difficult," Evans says. "A lot of disabled people cannot keep up."
That constancy takes the form of a grind to capture the attention of algorithms that govern what we see across social media. Frequency is the accepted method: posting often, in specific categories.
"Platforms like Twitch, Youtube, Twitter, and TikTok like to put your content in one singular box and serve it only to people they're confident that box applies to," says Laura Kate Dale, an accessibility critic and consultant who has been a full-time content creator for over a decade. Chasing these algorithmic whims, however, is often contrary to the needs of disabled creators. To the point that, Dale says, "for the longest time, I burned myself out as a disabled creator."
Skirting exhaustion, however, appears to be unavoidable for those seeking growth. This is true for nondisabled creators, but according to
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