Episode 15: Troy Chaplin  Welcome to Community and Code, the podcast where we talk to the human beings behind the commits. I'm here today with Troy Chaplan, a front-end developer, a WordPress engineer, uh one of the organizers of Word Camp Canada and also the author, I believe, of the block uh validation plugin that does a block accessibility uh validation plugin on WordPress.org where that checks whether your Gutenberg blocks are accessible or not. Welcome to the show, Troy. >> Hey, thanks for having me on, Chris. >> Yeah, no worries. Uh tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do with WordPress. >> Uh I grew up in a small town in Newfoundland. Um I found I was always involved in something creative, whether it be art, design, you know, drawing. I I drew constantly on on walls and all kinds of stuff. So as I got older, I started to get into what ended up becoming graphic design. Um, I spent the first 10 years of my career being a graphic designer and and and doing a lot of print production materials, books, magazines. Uh, you name it, I probably did it. Um, but halfway through that point in my career, I realized that that print was probably not going to be my future. So, I decided to start teaching myself web. And a friend of mine had told me quite early on, he had discovered WordPress. and he said to me, this is probably 2016, 2017, and he said to me, "Look, I found this really cool thing called WordPress, and I think it might be something big. We should kind of follow this." And, you know, a couple years after that, I I got lucky to go and join my friend at Carlton University as a web developer, and we started the transformation um across campus, moving away from a legacy content management system into a customuilt WordPress enterprise solution. >> That's awesome. Yeah, I I spent a lot of my early uh development career being afraid to call myself a developer. Um I I referred to myself as a web designer, not a developer because I also was way way more into the like graphical side of things. Uh I uh I taught myself HTML but I didn't really consider that coding. Um I took like graphic design and things in college and I was more like interested in that. But then I discovered uh by accident really that uh because I had a I started learning WordPress uh also uh and there was a point at which I um I was working with a local web de web designer um who needed a developer a back-end developer to do this thing for a site that he was building because he was really just front-end uh focused um and when I didn't have to worry about the design stuff I realized that I really liked doing the work a lot more because you don't have to follow all of the trends and uh that was a thing that like you know we were u my partner and I were freelancing um and that was a thing that was kind of a struggle is like the like web design trends were always changing we wanted to kind of put our own sort of mark on the sites that we built but also we needed to like pay attention to what other sites were look were doing and looking like and um and when I didn't have to make those calls uh it made my job a lot easier. >> Yeah, design is a tough business because everybody's got their opinion um and you know they they all can look at something and and tell you exactly what they like and what they don't like and you know it's not always rooted in design principles and it it makes it really tough for myself. I don't really think I was the best designer. Um I just had the understanding and I could take a design and I could create five other templates with it. So that's where my strengths were and that's something that I leaned on quite heavily as I made the transition from a graphic designer into a web developer. Um I got the opportunity to work with a really great web designer and it made my life easier by being able to take those templates and kind of just build them out into something bigger. Um, but I really definitely enjoy the coding side of it more. Like taking those designs, seeing it come to life on page, seeing how users would interact with it and and how they felt about the site and what their feedback was was really exciting to me at the time. Like being able to take something that came from my head and then put it out in into the world and and seeing people use it was was really interesting to me. >> Yeah. Yeah. talk about a little bit uh about what it's like the needs or demands of working within uh sort of the edu space because I know that there's a lot of very sort of specific uh things that educational institutions are like very focused on and interested in that aren't necessarily the same as like a regular quote unquote regular website or like an enterprise website. Actually, there's some probably correlations with enterprise websites in some degrees. Um, but like I know that the EDO space, edu space is a very sort of uh world unto itself. >> Yeah, I guess there's there's several areas like the world that I work within. I look at it as as a typical agency style environment where you know while we do have one main brand and one template that we try to adhere to at all times there's 800 different sites and at least eight over or definitely over a thousand content editors and they all have different things they want different needs. So you know I treat them as individual clients and and I think that's the best approach where we look at what their needs are. Now I think what it makes us a bit different from enterprise is that you work with that one client but we have to take that information back and figure out is this something that can be used for a wider audience and then what would those requirements be and how can we make it so we don't build oneoff things all over the place and how can we leverage it for you know more goals >> and is that uh that collection that that uh yeah that collection of 800 sites is that 800 individual single site WordPress installations or is that uh one massive uh WordPress multi-sight or is it like a combination of the two? So for many years we were doing single installations. Um I think at some point we got to maybe 200 or so 250 sites and realized that maintaining these individual installations with you know individual file folders was not going to going to be sustainable for much longer. We looked at a various a bunch of different solutions like deploy HQ was a really good one for us where that was able to deploy from GitHub and push up to our servers and it handled it but again it was slow like the process would take >> almost a full day if not overnight. Um myself and a colleague Mike had developed a tool called WordPress multi-tenant. So we we took WordPress and we built a multi-tenant application with it. So we leveraged composer. So we were handling all the installation through composer. At the time not a lot of premium plugins offered um the ability to download with composer. So we started just maintaining our own repos with a composer file to make our lives easier. And then through the use of sim links, we were able to create an environment where we had one centralized set of resources from WordPress to the plugins to our themes, but then each of the individual sites would use a sim link to point to where that centralized location was. So we still maintained individual databases and individual installations for each site, but we finally were able to move into a singular code base and that significantly improved our our working life and our workflow and you know everything that comes with that. Um now though with our more modern um setup we have we're moving into a a hybrid theme. We're not ready for block themes just yet but we're moving into a hybrid theme. It's all Gutenberg powered. We have decided to go multi-sight with that one. So, we're currently going through a process of migrating those 800 and something sites into our new multi-sight environment. >> Yeah. Um is there do you have um do you have like when you're working with content editors? Um I know so like at Pantheon one of the one of the things that we do is we have this concept of upstreams which is similar to sort of like the the thing that you were talking about where it's like it's basically you have a centralized repository. You maintain that central code repository. You can put whatever sort of base plugins and things that you want in there and then each site within that uses that upstream can also have their own custom code. Um, and for a long time, um, Pantheon was was really pushing people toward upstreams instead of multi-sight. Um, and then I kind of said, don't do that. Um, because there's a need. There's there's like there's two different needs, right? And the way that I uh ultimately are sort of articulated the difference between that kind of an architecture and multicight is is where if if a singular uh database with overlapping users and a shared shared ability to like pull up content from different sites, if that is a a single database home for all of the the data uh is a feature and not a bug, then that's a good argument for multicight. If you want distinct stacks with uh separate governance over data and users and whatever, then that's a that's a a good uh it's it's better to do that as a as sort of a single WordPress site. Do you see that sort of same kind of tension too when you're uh working with um with especially because I know that in some cases not all but in some cases particularly under the the edu umbrella um they do want to have really distinct data governance and like like no we don't want our users touching those users over there even if they're like even if they're only touching sort of superficially like just you know shared database but like not accessing those sites. >> Yeah. Yeah. So in our our environment everything that we are doing at least in this current multi-sight is is public facing. So we don't really get into the conversations of the the data that's in the database from that level. >> Um we do actually have a setup in place where we we build security groups that work with our active directory and then so if I add you into a security group you have access to sites A, B and C but that's the limit of where you can go. >> We also leverage editor roles. So, at least when you log in there, you don't have access to everything an admin have. And that's, you know, a wise choice to make sure that folks that don't really truly understand what plugins and themes do and what they're for, and they don't need to understand that. Um, we like to curate that editor experience a lot, too. So, that way at least someone who's coming in can get in, get what they need to do done as quickly as they can, and then move out and go on to all the other things they need to do during their day. So, Humanmade uh worked with WP campus over the summer to build out a uh sort of a state of WordPress in higher education uh report. Um and one of the the results of that that I distinctly remember and have been thinking about basically ever since uh is the amount of sort of training that teams need to do. And this could be whatever development team, whoever's touching WordPress the most, those teams need to do like a significant amount of training to the actual users of the site. Um, you know, just like getting people familiar with and comfortable working with WordPress. Do you uh do you see that as well at Carlton? >> Absolutely. It's it's definitely a critical piece. Um, I don't feel like it's it's good for us to provide folks with a site and not at least give them some sort of an intro sort of overview tutorial, provide solid documentation. U, we're really big on video tutorials. So, our process right now is is when someone gets a site, we we do offer them some training, whether it be them one-on-one or if they have a small group within their department or their unit that needs to manage content. So, we do offer that. Uh we also have a great site that offers um a lot of written tutorials and then we do a lot of video tutorials on top of that. And um the person on my team, Charlotte, who had put all of that information together, made a really nice flow. So it's almost like >> course style where you come in, you start with like the first section, you move your way deeper, you get into the advanced stuff. So she's really tailored something that you can follow along as if you're taking a course. Mhm. >> Um, so I feel those are really important things for our end users to make sure that that they're comfortable, but I also find that that by doing good training and offering good documentation, it will reduce the amount of support we have to do, >> right? Yeah. Did you ever look at uh or at least during your time have you uh has your team looked at other CMSs like has Drupal ever been on the table? >> I don't think so. I mean, I kind of came into Carlton. I I came here in 2009. And at that time, there was already a project in place to start moving um a few sites. I was think 36 sites I believe into WordPress to do a pilot project. So, at that time, like the whatever decisions were made were already made before I kind of came on board. >> Um so, I don't really know how that came about. >> Yeah. talk about uh talk about switch gears and talk about a little bit your involvement in Word Camp Canada. Um how did that come about? Um, and maybe I guess what's uh what's a little bit different that from your perception uh about the Canadian uh WordPress community that would be distinct from uh you know the rest of the North American WordPress community or or other parts of of the WordPress ecosystem besides uh your boots and uh A's Um well I got involved I mean I I was I was an organizer for Word Camp Ottawa for several years um before CO happened. So now when when all that sort of kind of I can't say went away but you know when when CO wasn't the hot topic anymore and camp started to come back there was a few folks from previous Word Camp Ottawa organizing teams that got together and they wanted to put on Word Camp Ottawa. So after going to that last year and you know talking to some of the organizers and some old friends there and I said like I'm interested in helping out next year like what can I do and then you know the call for for you know new organizers came out and and I submitted and you know I wasn't able to make it to that first meeting but I think they had already had an understanding that I was already committed at that point. So, I remember getting a follow-up, I believe, believe it was from Shantaa within a couple of days after that, >> and she said, "Yeah, congratulations. You're part of the team." And, you know, we just kind of went from there. >> What brought you into the original Word Camp Ottawa group in in the first place? What drew you to uh to the WordPress community in that way? I think it was just wanting to get involved, wanting to to meet new people and find resources and get networking like we were doing a lot of the stuff at the times when you know we were learning as well and and you could go online and find all those resources but there's also something about having that connection to be able to just message someone or have a chat with them and get that information and and change exchange stories and and to me like it's it's one thing to go online but I love communities like Slack act like what we can do on make and what we can do on post status and the people that are there and the resources you have and like those are very invaluable. So for me at that time I wanted to become a part of a community and and start to meet more people who had similar interests to me. The first word camp Ottawa happened at U of uh sorry University of Ottawa. I should clarify that. Um um and I I actually got to speak at that one. I applied to speak and I got to speak at that one and that was my first my first experience with a local camp my first experience with speaking um and I I just wanted to become a part of that moving forward. It kind of goes back to I think about and I wrote a post on the Word camp uh Canada site about this about my first experience at a word camp and I I got lucky and I went to Toronto in 2009 and that was my first camp experience and that was a really great experience like I still have lasting friendships from that camp and and that was something that I really picked up on quickly is that that the friendships that you make in this community, >> you know, are very strong friendships and and they they will be with you for a long time. And that's one of the beauties of a word camp. Like I walk away from word camps not only with knowledge but new friends that I know I can reach out and out to and and ask questions to at any point and they're all going to be super helpful. Yeah, I that was actually uh a thing that I wrote about in my recap post for uh Word Camp Canada was that it's it's been a number of years since I've been to uh a word camp that wasn't a big word camp that was a more uh local or or yeah more local word camp. Uh and Canada word camp is kind of a weird outlier. We can talk about that in a second too, but like it's still I mean it capped at like 250 people, right? So like something like that. So like it's still consider compared to US uh or EU it's like significantly smaller. Um and that's about the size of Word Camp Salt Lake City when I was running that. Um that's probably where we sort of maxed out at is that that sort of range. Um, and it the thing that I took away the most from that was that it really felt like like all all word camps to a degree for me at this point since I've been around uh the WordPress ecosystem for a long time um feel like an opportunity to like reconnect with old friends, people that I worked with at other agencies, whatever. Um, but it really felt like um because it was smaller, it felt like even more concentrated and it felt like no, these are people that like like I'm happy to spend time with. Um, even the new people, even the people that I just met, you know, at at the event, you know, and that was one of the things that like I really took away from uh from being at Word Camp Canada. Um, from your perspective, having done uh having organized or been involved in Word Camp Ottawa and Word Camp Canada, are there were there any differences in how the Canadian Word Camp was organized versus the Ottawa, the sort of local word camp? >> Yeah, I think there was quite a few. But uh before that there was a question that that you had posed a bit earlier about the differences between a word camp in Canada versus a word camp in US. >> Now I haven't gone to a lot of camps outside of Canada. I got to go to word the last San Fran actually right before it became word camp US. I was in San Francisco in 2014. >> Yeah. >> Oh yeah. Nice. So and that was so large to me that was very overwhelming. Like I come from a really small town. Ottawa, I call it the big city but a little town. Um, it was a lot. It was a lot to take in. What I find the biggest difference is the scale. Yeah. So, I find and like like you just mentioned like coming to something like Word Camp with less people. It just felt more personal and you were you were talking to some of the folks for longer periods of time because you weren't, you know, surrounded by like a couple thousand people. You were surrounded by a couple hundred people. So those conversations I find can get a bit more intimate or they can go on for longer because you're not trying to figure out who do I need to go see now or who can I go meet oh that's that person over there that I want to go see like >> I I just that's what I found from from San Fran um compared to what we do up here in Canada. >> Yeah. Yeah. I remember going to Word Camp San Francisco uh 2013 2014 um and uh feeling Yes. overwhelmed. I had the the deep sense that like they the there are people that I recognize their like handles that I was like afraid to to have a conversation with um because like this is a big important person and I'm just a you like whatever. Um so like there's a lot of imposttor syndrome like there were people that I wanted to to talk to or introduce myself to but I was afraid to. Um and that was also I mean that was a long long long time ago. Um, and uh, you know, since then I I did a bunch of speaking and I was involved in Salt Lake City and whatever. Um, but uh, but yeah, it was definitely like a lot it felt a lot harder to to get into that sort of mode of of networking. And I felt I I think I almost felt like like a failure too like walking away from that and not having those conversations because like I felt like this is your opportunity to like you know get into the in crowd or whatever and like you know they're right there you can just say hi and it's like no I am too much of a wallflower like you know like um I'm very much of the like like I I'm I get a lot out of being in social situations but I also like if I don't know people, it's really hard for me to like motivate myself to uh um to get into to insert myself into a conversation with with people that I just have never sort of met in person or met at all really. Um yeah, so I >> go ahead. >> Yeah, I was I I I completely understand like I'm I'm I find myself I'm awkward at best when it comes to the majority of social situations. So, you know, usually if it's a group of folks, I'm a bit more comfortable if I know at least one person in that group. But, um, but I find like going back to like San Fran 12 years ago versus, you know, even just word camp just a couple of weeks ago, you know, I found like I I really kind of opened up and and my ability to go and approach some of those folks that probably would have intimidated me 12 years ago, right? you know that was so going back to San Fran I I got the opportunity to to meet Mark is his last name pronounced J jquith I believe >> yeah yeah yeah >> yeah so I got the chance to meet him at one point I had a conversation with him and I think for me that was the eye opening moment and that was really towards the end of the camp >> and but he was so friendly he was so approachable and that to me was like okay at that time him and like Andrew Nason like those were like sort of the big guys in in in the WordPress world at that time and for him to be very approachable and really open to conversation and stuff that showed me what this community was really all about and there was really not a lot of ego that you get from a lot of other conferences and stuff like that. So that made me really appreciate um the community that much more. Now fast forwarding into Word Camp Canada like we had a lot of big names at that camp. I mean Matt was at the camp and and he was very approachable as well. Um, you know, there probably would have been a time and place when I would not have wanted to go and talk to some of those folks, but but you know, this time I I relished that opportunity and and was really excited to to meet some of the names that we had coming in. >> Yeah. Yeah. I remember Jakeith and Nathan uh I remember seeing them across the room and being too intimidated to talk to them. So, you uh you props to you. Props props to 2013 you uh for actually opening the conversation when I couldn't. Um, so, so you've been working on uh this uh Gutenberg block accessibility validation plugin. Tell me about how I mean I I imagine I I think I can maybe even see where the sort of origin story for this thing because uh if you're working at Carlton and Carlton is is concerned about accessibility then obviously your website uh needs to be uh accessible and there needs to be a way to inform the users of the site that the the site isn't super accessible. So I I imagine that that just sort of like is is the use case for how this emerged. What um sort of I guess when did you decide that this was something that you needed to to work on and build? >> It was pretty early when we were building our our current Gutenberg implementation where the realization of how easy it was to publish inaccessible content with Gutenberg it kind of it was a bit mind-blowing to be honest. for example, the table block. The ab the fact that I can just throw a table block on the page. There's no header by default. And at the time, maybe it's changed in code, you know, in the last year, but at the time I was looking at it, there was not a way to force the header on by default without doing a variation block. Nor was there a way to remove that option from the editor. So, there was always a way to allow a table block to be published without a header. Mhm. >> At one point I was there was I was trying to figure out how how we could, you know, tackle this stuff. There was really no validation in core that I knew about at the time. But I saw a video by Ryan Welchure and he had been talking about the post locking functionality in core and the light bulb turned on immediately. I said, "How can I check attributes in blocks than block post publishing if they didn't meet the accessibility requirements that we have to adhere to in Canada?" >> So, I started just to build this thing on my own trying to figure it out and and one thing led to another and a first iteration of a plug-in came together where I was checking I think it was um I started with the table block. I added the button block because I wanted to make sure that folks were not able to publish buttons without text or a link. And I also started working on images because alt tags in my opinion are one of the biggest misses as far as accessibility goes. >> Um yeah, and then I just kept working on this plugin and you know we had a different iteration of it internally. So there was some separation that had happened there because we do things just a little bit different like we force it all internally and it's all required. Whereas the plugin that I'm building for public consumption allows you as a content editor to choose your level of um I guess validation and what you want to validate. So there's a big settings page and you know if if you're not as concerned around um heading levels or structures or if you don't care about the table header, you can turn it all off or you can give warnings as a way to, you know, at least educate folks but not block them from publishing. or you can be as heavy-handed as we are at the university and just make sure that folks just can't do it at all. Um, over the summer though, I think was the the biggest thing I really wanted to do with with the plug-in itself and and I built a validation API ultimately. Um, I like the idea that that the plug-in offered the ability to validate some of the core blocks, but to me, the big win was being able to allow other developers to leverage all of the stuff that I had already written in the most simplistic of ways. So, I happened to go on vacation to Newfoundland and my family were going to bed a bit earlier. So, that gave me hours and hours at night to just just tinker with this. And I think in the course of a two-eek vacation, I had built the majority of this. I called it at the time the developer API. And I started building some of my own little plugins with it to test it and and now it's a fully functioning API. And just a couple days ago, I extended that functionality to now include post meta in the validation in the same way. Um, so yeah, there's there's some other stuff I want to do with this plugin and I'm really just trying to position it as a really fantastic powerful validation API for developers. >> Have you been getting uh any sort of like feedback or or conversation around uh around the plug-in? And I know that when we talked in person, you're talking about uh Joe Doulson, who is very active in the WordPress accessibility community, had uh submitted some some poll requests, but uh have you have you gotten been able to like interact with people that are using it? >> Not as much as I would like to, and I find that is one of the hardest parts about this world right now because there's so many options. There's a lot of great accessibility tools out there, so it's it's hard to catch the attention. And you know, I'm not really a well-known person either. So again, it's, you know, I'm already fighting that up uphill battle. Now, I did get some really great feedback from some folks like Joe you mentioned, for example, had saw the plugin and submitted a few feature requests. So I kind of pinged Joe on the side and talked to him a little bit and really appreciate, you know, him taking the time to put those features in and they made it into the next release. Um, I had some conversations with a lot of folks at Word Camp Canada. I one of the goals was I wanted to try to sit down with some more developers and get some feedback and demo my plugin. >> So I got a lot of great feedback there. I've since put in a a long list of issues of things I want to build out on the plugin. Um one of my favorite ideas and it's something I actually have started working on already came from Ryan Welchure. um he had suggested what does the possibility of moving away from writing the checks and the strings and all that in PHP what would that look like if I moved it to the block.json and that would just remove one whole other layer and then simplify the integration for an external block. So I thought that was a fantastic idea. So now I'm trying to figure that out. But that also means I need to wrap my head around how translation worksh >> and how does that work when you're pulling a string from a block.json. I've never had to handle that before. So, I'm actually quite excited for the challenge and learning how that works. And I'm going to need to find someone that knows how to properly test it to tell me if I did my job correctly or not, though. >> Yeah. What kind of uh approaches are you using? Do you or I guess maybe the first question is do you have um sort of uh testing in place uh as you're as you're building out the plugin or is are you mostly just sort of testing things uh manually as you go? Right now, it's all just manual because I want to be able to get in there and see how the experience is in the editor. Um, I mean, I I definitely do need to go in and start adding some unit tests before things start to grow a little bit too big. But, I don't think I'll ever get away from the manual testing because >> to me, the the plugin's also got to feel good for the users. And I and you know, there's no testing unit that's going to tell me if that's a good experience or not. So, um, there's always going to be an aspect of the the human element has always got to be here because I I I do I'm a big proponent of making sure that the UI is as clean and as as as nice as it can be for the end user. >> Yeah. What are your uh what was what would success sort of look like for for the block validation plugin in your mind? Like what are you what are you hoping that this will sort of achieve if if you reach your goals? H I mean I have a I have a couple of pretty lofty goals. I mean I think realistically I mean >> more developers seeing this plugin and looking at it as a viable solution in their work in order to help validate blocks or post meta. I I would just I would love to to know that more people are using it and and it's working well for them and then maybe we get some more contributors that could help grow the plug-in. >> Mhm. I think that would be a best case scenario. I mean, if I wanted to look at big picture, I mean, I keep seeing stuff like the abilities API and the interactivity API crop up in WordPress. I I really do truly think we need a validations API. And I think at some point I might just take what I've done and throw it up and as a discussion and hope for the best. You know, that's my pie in the sky. And you know, I don't know where it's going to go until I put it out there in the universe and and I I fully plan on doing that at some point. >> That's awesome. Yeah, I I I agree. I think it would be really uh I I think it's really valuable um just from a a user education standpoint. I' I've played with it a little bit. I probably haven't configured it uh to the right degree because I really just sort of threw it up on on this site actually. Um just to just to get a a a sense of of what it does. Um but even just from the perspective of knowing when you're doing things wrong. Like it seems like it should be like it's like you said it's it's super easy to to not even realize that you're creating inaccessible content. And so just from like an education standpoint, like I know because I've worked with >> I mean I worked with Brienne Ritfeld who's like one of the like biggest accessibility advocates in the WordPress ecosystem and probably beyond and like just is amazing to work alongside. Um and she has drilled several things into my brain um over the years of of working with her. Um, but like it's still like it's it's there's because it's so easy because there's so much variability and because like the rules aren't super fixed like there's things where it's like well in this case images are a great example. In this case like you definitely need all text but in this case the image is just decorative so it doesn't necessarily need all text. there there are there are there's nuance and it really requires accessibility really requires like a human in the loop. Um so just having something that that gives you feedback that kind of suggests like hey maybe you should be doing this thing is is super valuable and I I do think that um pulling that into core is uh maybe a lofty goal but it shouldn't be super unrealistic. like I feel like it's it's a thing that that could be um really valuable to to anyone. >> Oh, thank you. I like to think so. >> Yeah. Um so, let's uh let us switch gears a little bit to uh you mentioned uh before the recording that you're a little bit of a of a RPG nerd. Um let's let's get into the nerdiness. What sort of nerd things are uh you what what are you nerding out on these days? >> Uh well, I haven't jumped into games in quite some time. I mean, the last year of of life between building this validation stuff >> and doing the word camp work has consumed a lot of my time and then, you know, everything else >> is all about the family. So, um, but now that word camp is done and I'm stepping back a little bit on like developing for five and six hours every night after I, you know, develop all day at work, >> right? >> Um, I I'm jumping into uh Ghosts of Yote was a new game. So, I I really enjoyed the the the last Ghost of Shushima. >> Now, there's also a couple RPGs that are on my on my wish list. I was reading about one the other day. the name escapes me, but I'm trying to catch up from like the last couple of years of of gaming releases. Uh, I also just grabbed a copy of Elder Scrolls Online. I'm quite interested in that one. It also seems like something my wife might enjoy. She's also RPG fan, so >> looking for something that we might be able to play together would be would be ideal, especially for the winter. >> Yeah. What uh what what draws you into uh role playing video games specifically? like what is what was the sort of your introduction and like what was the the thing that like pulled you in and was like yeah this is this is the thing for me. >> Everything about the Final Fantasy series is what drew me into games when I was growing up. I mean I got I got the Nintendo Entertainment System and everybody was playing Mario and Duck Hunt and I got Final Fantasy and it was game over for me right from that point. There's just something about leveling and building a character. And then, of course, as RPGs evolved over time, you know, being able to customize that character, not being locked into what that game and what that that creator was trying to to make this character be. So, you kind of break outside of the mold. And I think you can relate it back to a lot of the D&D stuff. I didn't really play a lot of that as a kid. I did just maybe for a year or so. But just the idea that that what you're creating is unique to you. you can you can do whatever you want to do with it and and I think that aspect of RPGs is is really appealing to me just and the open world concept and just being able to get lost in those things for hours on end. And I mean I remember playing Skyrim and I think the first first month or so I played Skyrim. I played for like 40 hours, but I accomplished nothing in the big picture cuz it was all about exploring and and you know, leveling and and building the character and like just fun stuff like that that I like to get lost in. Yeah, I really enjoy the thing that I I love the most about role playing, whether it's video games or whether it's tabletop role playing games or even like some some tabletop board games even is like the storytelling is getting lost in a story. And I remember the first time I remember when I played uh Final Fantasy 7 uh back in the day. um like just like that. It blew me away like the level of like before that it felt like the story was kind of like you know oh your princess is in another castle and like it was it was there but like it was a little bit like forced but like Final Fantasy 7 uh like Chronocross like things like that where like the story is really really immersive and deep and like even like uh Kingdom Hearts the the the you know like it it was really like elevated video games to to an art form. Um that that was really like on the same level as like you know reading and reading Lord of the Rings you know like except that you are Frodo you know. >> Yeah. I remember times when like just my friends and I would would like, oh, the new Final Fantasy's coming or here's the launch trailer and we would like just totally geek out over the animations of all the the deities or dieons or whatever they decided to call them in those games and you'd see like Bahamut like rise up and how great the graphics were. Like those were like just I remember those being super exciting moments to get to see the improvements cuz to me I found RPGs had the biggest graphical improvement year over year with what they were trying to put out there with the stories and like >> like you said with the story like you also need to have those those really strong visuals like you had to make it look like you were watching a movie at times and >> Final Fantasy in my opinion did it leagues above everybody else to a certain degree and it was just always excited to see what they were going to come up with X. So, I I always have a I always have a special place for Final Fantasy in my gaming heart. >> Did you ever uh get into those uh sort of interactive movie style uh games? I'm thinking of things like Fantasmagoria. I think Wing Commander had had one where it was like they they like Wing Commander was is a great example because they had Mark Hamill play one of the characters. Yeah. So, they have actual actors and but it's really like the game itself is like almost like a mist style point andclick sort of thing, but then with these like liveaction clips uh interspersed depending on like what you unlock or or what you find. Did you ever get into those sorts of things? >> There's one that really stands out and and I absolutely loved this game. I I like Sean Ashmore as an actor and he did Quantum Break. That game was fantastic on the Xbox. So that had that sort of like you'd play the game and then there'd be like a movie clip and like you would you would sit there was I think one part that was like a 25 minute clip. I was watching an episode essentially. >> Yeah. >> I I really enjoyed that game. Like it was a good break from something where it's like action like non-stop versus this game had a good action then you could sit back and it felt like something I wanted to have snacks. I don't snack when I'm gaming, but this was one of those ones where I definitely had to have snacks cuz I was essentially watching a movie and that I just got to play in between clips, right? >> I remember thinking that that at the time that that was the future of what games were going to turn into, like they were going to be more cinematic and and more cinematic in in from like a production value. And I mean, honestly, that that's not not true. It's just it's not that thing that I thought it was at the time, right? Like I thought I thought I was so I was so uh adamant that that was like where gaming was going to that um my my senior year in college my plan was I didn't actually do this thing but my plan was um that I would uh spend one semester so I I was my final project uh my senior project was going to be like one of those sort of point-and-click kind of uh interactive movie sort of games. Um, and so the first semester we were going to spend filming all the video stuff. The second semester is me figuring out how to turn that into a game. And I ultimately didn't do that second part. We did the movie. Uh, I did a an interactive CD ROM instead, but like um I I had was just convinced that like that was going to be the future. And of course that's not those games pretty much died off, but they were replaced by things like I mean you look at Balders's Gate 3 um which is one of the top grossest the most highly grossing games in I don't know how long um ever maybe. I don't know. Um but like the I mean the budgets are definitely there. The there's like professional voice actors doing things uh doing the voice acting. Um, in a lot of CA cases there's like mocap like you know like the actors are doing things that are being recorded and um and the the cutscenes and things are a lot of times cinema quality and now like the graphics are getting to the point where like like it's pretty darn close. I mean if you compare that to like even just film CGI like from 10 years ago like we're way beyond that in terms of what you could just run on a PC. Um yeah, I think that it's um just where where things have gone is is really interesting. Um and things it does it does feel like um like things are moving or have already moved in a um it to to elevate video games into something that is comparable to film making and you know novels and like I mean it really is to me like an art form. Yeah, if I'm correct, I think the video game industry is actually bigger as far as like it's at how much it makes compared to the movie industry and the music industry, too. So, it's it's probably one of the one of the biggest grossing forms of entertainment going right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wild. Um, so Ghost of Yo-kai, I've heard about that. Uh, tell me about uh what is exciting about Ghost of Yo-kai. I I I I know about it because I think there's some Critical Role uh friends and uh and voice actors that are doing uh some of the stuff in there. So that that's how I've heard of it. >> Yeah. Now, I haven't dove into the game yet. I I actually just installed it over the weekend. But uh I I played the the first version which was called Ghost of Sushima. >> And that game I think I put in about 90 hours into that game. Like just an unreal amount of time. I just I loved it so much. I think I finished it. I could have probably finished it in about a 40 45 hour mark, but it was just there was something about it. I just enjoyed going to do all of those extra side quests. Like mo I find most games once you get to the end game, it feels repetitive and you just don't care anymore. >> Yeah. >> No, this game I wanted more. So, I chose to not go and complete the game because I just wanted to keep exploring and >> kept going and somewhere around the 90 minute 90 hour mark I decided, all right, it's time to time to wrap this up and move on. It's been like six months. is, you know, tons of other games, but there's something about the samurai genre and and the way that game controlled and the way it felt. It just felt really good. It was fun. The combat system was great. It had enough of an upgrade system to keep my interest going. So, um, when I saw the next one get announced, I immediately pre-ordered it and I looked at it and I said, "Well, that comes out right before Word Camp, so I'll see you in November." And here we are and I'm about to dive in. So, >> awesome. Well, thank you so much, Troy, for coming on. Uh, for anyone who's interested in learning more about you or finding you online, where can people find you? >> I just actually rebooted my personal site for the first time in in a decade. So, I'm now going to be blogging at troychaplan.ca. Um, you can also find me on post status or make WordPress if you have any questions or want to touch base or if you want more information around the block accessibility work I'm doing, you can check out blockacibilitych checkcks.com. Um, yeah, I think that's pretty much it. >> And the plugin is on WordPress.org, so you can download it, uh, just in your WordPress admin, uh, and and install it and and play around with it. Well, thanks again, uh, Troy for coming on. Thank you everyone who is watching or listening to this in the future. And for everyone else, uh, we'll see you on the internet. >> Awesome. Thank you very much, Chris., Episode 15: Troy Chaplin, YouTube, 01kgjm0wk4xmb046yygfpvc175.