175: The Silent Majority

[xitel]

Quite accurate, and quite true. That's an unfortunate reality of the problem, but considering the sort of budgetary hurdles that full-on narration would require I don't see this ever happening. Not to mention the high degree of permutations possible in action-based games... when I say high, I mean near infinite.

Also, I forgot to mention the roguelike and interactive fiction based platforms, whose barrier to entry is much lower. Both act upon simple plain text which is easily workable with a screen reader. Nethack has been, and will remain to be a personal favorite of mine... though once you've ascended every role it does kind of lose its appeal. Heh.

In regards to the subtitles, I don't see how they hinder immersion, especially considering the fact that in a sane design draft they'd be toggleable. If you want them, take them. Variable font sizes for variable noise levels is an excellent idea. Also, and this is a bit more expensive in regards to developmental resources, The Night Watch... or whatever it was called, did some innovative and creative things with subs that I think contemporary games could take a clue from. Just a thought. Here's what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTWTR64wqsg

Again, I don't know how willing devs would be to try that, but it'd be pretty awesome regardless.

I was saying that it would break immersion because if you're in a dark area with just your flashlight, and all of a sudden the text "Bang" pops up, I would personally be less scared than actually hearing it. I realize that deaf players obviously would be unable to experince the latter, but still.

Also, my Dad is actually on the Nethack dev team, just thought I would put that out there.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I'm all for inclusive gaming; it's one way to sell more copies so it makes sense in business terms, just like regionalisation does so long as the costs stay reasonable.

What does worry me, though, is the possibility that making the game accessable will damage the experience for others, as did regionalisation in the Japanese release of Fallout 3... some games do depend upon colour effects to influence mood, or audio to set the tone, and removing those to assist vision- or hearing-impaired people would weaken the result. Imagine BioShock without the soundtrack and ambient noise; much lessened impact emotionally, and emotional impact is where story-driven games have to hit players hard. Or to dig back into a retro title, I find it much less satisfying playing X-Com without the sound; I can't imagine seeing a caption of [creek] evoking the same dread as hearing a door's rusty hinges open out of your line of sight. And, of course, there's the time-honoured tradition of marking NPC "ranks" by modifying the colour scheme... I'd hate to see those titles sacrificed on the altar of a faulty understanding of "inclusiveness" that can be more exclusionary in the end by forcing content cuts. That would be, in my opinion, leaving everybody out of the original game concept in the name of not leaving anybody out.

So long as these changes are user-selectable options, like closed-captioning on TV, I have no difficulties at all accepting accessable settings; but if the choice is between making a title accessable or retaining the dramatic or visceral impact of the game, I personally hope that developers will err to the side of impact.

-- Steve

 

[51gunner]

Summarizing Anton P. Nym's post into my own agreement:

I'm all for features to include more people in gaming, provided they don't come at a cost to my own. Don't cut corners and cues so that we're all equal in that sense: provide other cues for those that can't recognize colour or sound cues.

The blind gaming is really quite the concept: I can't even get my head around how you'd design a game with *no* visual whatsoever.

Edited: I'm also kind of fond of subtitling at times for my own use. I'm a bit hard of hearing, and games that have a lot of quiet dialogue usually piss me off because I can't hear it.

 

[John Bannick]

Actually, our small company, 7-128 Software, in Salem, MA makes accessible computer games. And Reid has been very helpful with making them accessible to gamers who are deaf.

As a result, the 7 educational PizzaGames we just shipped for children 2 - 7 all include Closed Captioning, as well as being playable by kids who are either blind or motion-impaired.

Making software accessible adds about as much time and cost as internationalization and localization. But it makes your stuff playable by more people.

John Bannick
CTO
7-128 Software

 

[Techni]

I kind of have to agree with the person who said the game is about atmosphere, which includes sound. Even with those hacks/subtitles they are missing 90% of the game. Hell, it removes the horror element almost altogether.

The Dead Space developers devoted a ton of time on audio, I've read interviews with the guy who handled the audio. They probably would take it as an insult to be told "hey remove all that, and do it visually" as it removes the effect they were aiming for (a sign saying 'be afraid' doesnt have the same effect as their beautiful audio engine). This simply isn't a game that can be enjoyed without audio. Radar would have made it far too easy.

I agree 99% of games should have this functionality (and support for the color blind), but not at the expense of delays or anything else that would be a negsative to 99% of the rest of gamers. But Dead Space and any other game with that much emphasis on audio really has no point.

I love my audio, I bought a surround sound system just for games. I'd hate if this caused devs to ignore audio cues.

 

[murphy7801]

i fear progress will be slow for your cause due to sound playing a vital role in some games and the fact that your a minority

 

[Magnumopai]

Forthe completely blind, they could have puzzle and text based games conveyed through audio.

but if an individual is blind AND deaf... uhhhmm..

 

[WendelI]

Hmm... i understand the article and i see the point of view but allot of the time game designers just don't see it or forget about the certain groups who need these aid. some other times they are just in a limitation, so they are unable to even think about such help for those who need them in staid they just try to get the product to the market. I personally like to make my creations colorful and visually informative to help the experience. But i know that gamers that are hard of hearing are in a tough spot since games without sound are kind of boring, and games like HAWX who rely on a Beeping sound to tell your that youre about to get screwed by a missile will be almost all guess work. Personally dough i think that the focus should be in helping these people overcome their handicaps with technology that changeing technology to acomodate their handicap. a good example would be hearing aids.

 

[vortexgods]

Ther

Gaming blind could be solved partially through more accurate sound reproduction for echolocation, but that still doesn't solve the fact that many blind people use touch to move around. So... I am curious as well. How could they possibly solve the problem for blind gamers?

Ah! There is a game that is perfect for blind gamers Zoip (which stands for Zork over IP, but should really be ZOVOIP, Zork Over Voice Over IP.)

http://unitycode.org/read/ZoIP

This article contains a good description of the technology:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/article.php/3675741

You would think that someone would port this to all the Z-Machine games. However, you should be able to play with a braille keyboard and the text read by the screen, which is how I suspect most blind people play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_game

 

[likalaruku]

Fantasy RPG games are deaf friendly, that with all the reading. I've played a few with such horrid or repetitive "abiance" that I've turned the volume off completely.