“I think everyone understands better now what social isolation is, right?” Steven Spohn asks rhetorically, looking back over the last few years. Spohn is the senior director – and frequent public face of AbleGamers, a charity that finds ways for people with disabilities to access games in ways that work for them, and come together through play. He’s passionate about his work because of his belief in the unifying power of social gaming and its subsequent communities.
This August, Spohn hit his goal of raising over a million dollars for the charity through the Spawn Together campaign, which was launched in 2020 and coincided with his 40th birthday. (For his 39th birthday he made friends with The Rock.) Beyond that, the greater attention brought on during the pandemic has allowed AbleGamers to do more for people with disabilities who want to play games. “A lot of it is very unsexy,” Spohn says of their recent work. But he’s quick to rattle off some significant milestones. “We’ve been able to balloon the staff up to 14 people. We now have a director of peer counselling who was a doctor at a university.” However, challenges remain, particularly as demand continues to grow. “You know, a year ago, it would have taken a year to go through AbleGamers’ support process. We want to drive that down to two weeks. We don’t want you to have to wait a year for your controller. We want you to be able to get what you need right now.”
Many people admire and actively support such a cause. Nonetheless, the current social and economic troughs people have been thrown into during the past 18 months might make some ask how much of a priority gaming is in our daily lives. “It’s valid to ask because oftentimes AbleGamers is raising money alongside money being raised for people who have cancer,” Spohn says. “The truth of the matter is they can both be great and important causes. It’s not a matter of our cause being more important than others. It’s not, but it is equally as important to someone who doesn’t have cancer, who is unable to move any of their muscles, and the only thing they can do is use their mind.”