Dragon Age Wins "Accessible Game of the Year" Award

[Andy Chalk]

Dragon Age Wins "Accessible Game of the Year" Award

Dragon Age: Origins [http://www.ablegamers.com/], a game that offers "some of the most astounding accessibility options seen in any game this year."

It's a fact of life that some games have better control schemes that others. For most people, that's as far as it goes; crappy controls are an inconvenience but rarely an actual impediment to playing a game. For disabled gamers, however, it's a different matter entirely and as gaming has grown into a mainstream entertainment medium, concerns about accessibility are becoming increasingly common. Like everything else, some are better than others and for 2009, AbleGamers has decided that the best of the bunch is none other than BioWare's hit RPG Dragon Age: Origins.

The game earned kudos for its multiple levels of subtitles, "extreme mobility options" that allow gamers to effectively play with either the keyboard or the mouse, fonts that help compensate for color impairment and more. It also received praise for being "cognitive friendly," which AbleGamers said is relatively uncommon in most major releases.

"Perhaps the most underrepresented disability in mainstream games, cognitive impaired gamers can pause the action quickly and as often as necessary in the heat of the battle," AbleGamers said. "Orders can be issued during the pause, allowing anyone to keep up with the game no matter the level of cognitive impairment."

"What makes this title so exceptional is the level of options given to the gamer to choose their level of accessibility," it added. "Options are the key component to adding accessibility without harming the overall gameplay of any title. As long as developers like Bioware continue to add accessibility in layers of options that enhance their gaming titles, disabled gamers will continue to be able to play great titles such as Dragon Age: Origins."

"The Dragon Age team is honored to win this award," said Dragon Age: Origins Executive Producer Mark Darrah. "We try to appeal to as broad of an audience as we can and accessibility is certainly part of this effort. It makes me proud to have the game this well received by this community."



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[The DSM]

For some reason this article made the bottom of the page go wierd, dont know why.

I think they where right with this. It is very easy to play, but to play well, it takes skill.

 

[Cmwissy]

I consider myself an intermediate skilled player - and I found this game extremely difficult on normal.

Then again - I only really controlled my Rogue and Healer and left the rest of the party on Custom tactics.

 

[TheNamlessGuy]

DELETED

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Congrats Bioware. Equal Opportunities Fivez!!

I mean how many games even make the effort? I know very few websites do. What efforts does the Escapist make to make it accessible to those with a disability?

 

[Nimbus]

Congrats Bioware. Equal Opportunities Fivez!!

I mean how many games even make the effort? I know very few websites do. What efforts does the Escapist make to make it accessible to those with a disability?

Do websites really need to make an effort? Isn't that more the browser's responsibility? There's really not much a website can do.

 

[AC Medina]

This is great; I, for one, had never put much thought into how people with different disabilities can/can't enjoy certain games. Definitely something to think about, and something that every gamer should promote because...we want as many people as possible to enjoy great games, don't we?

 

[Accountfailed]

This is great; I, for one, had never put much thought into how people with different disabilities can/can't enjoy certain games. Definitely something to think about, and something that every gamer should promote because...we want as many people as possible to enjoy great games, don't we?

You mean like... like mac gamers?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I coulda sworn that the most accessible game of this year was Forza 3, with its one button racing gameplay. The game will actually automatically break for turns.

 

[Snowalker]

Cool, I guess... I actually thought they were kinda difficult to get used to, but whatever.

 

[Knight Templar]

I coulda sworn that the most accessible game of this year was Forza 3, with its one button racing gameplay. The game will actually automatically break for turns.

Thats accessible to people who are not racing fans (like me) and those who don't play games at all. But Dragon Age is accessible to people who don't play games much, as well as those who have disabilities, even people who have learning difficulties or mental issues.

At least thats what the award is for, the console version of Dragon Age to my knowlage doesn't have an option to change the font or things such as that, but I've never really thought about it much.

You know, that alone makes this award worth more than any Gametraliers or Destructoid game of the year award. It taught me something, how many awards do that?

 

[Jared]

Hooray, it won something!

Indeed! Now it needs to win Game of the Year! lol

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Congrats Bioware. Equal Opportunities Fivez!!

I mean how many games even make the effort? I know very few websites do. What efforts does the Escapist make to make it accessible to those with a disability?

Do websites really need to make an effort? Isn't that more the browser's responsibility? There's really not much a website can do.

Oh boy are you wrong. I have been researching things like this for my final year project in by BSc Degree. There are sets of guidelines and rules to follow to make your website as accesable as possible. Here's a useful link [http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag]. Unfortunately it's a topic frequently overlooked in web design.

 

[similar.squirrel]

That's nice. Kind of glad they didn't go the obvious route and choose MW2 with it's Nom4d scheme thingy, nice though that gesture may have been.

Mirror's Edge could have used some kind of visual tweaking for colour-blind people...All that red..

 

[House_Vet]

I love it because I think of it as essentially really gory chess - you can stop and think for five minutes about what spell to use next and then... Where did the week go??

 

[Alex_P]

Do websites really need to make an effort? Isn't that more the browser's responsibility? There's really not much a website can do.

Specialized browsers (or browser plug-ins) can alter how information is displayed, but it's up to the content creator to mark up the data correctly.

Disabled users benefited greatly from the widespread adoption of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which, when used correctly, separate content from presentation. (See CSS Zen Garden for an above-and-beyond demonstration [http://csszengarden.com/].)

Other web technologies hamper disabled users. At the peak of Flash's popularity, many sites were using it for their basic interface rather than just specialized applets, cutting off access for users of screen readers and users who relied on their browsers to up-size the text. (Some shopping sites also shot themselves in the foot with this kind of interface -- making your entire site a single Flash thingy also meant there was no way for users to bookmark or link to specific products. Oh, how dumb people were a decade ago!) One of the huge downsides of the more recent streaming video boom is that almost none of the goddamn videos have text captions; captioning is pretty easy but accessibility has kinda fallen by the wayside on YouTube.

Furthermore, designing for true ease of use requires doing more than just ensuring access. Screen readers naturally present information in a very sequential fashion, for example, so a lot of hierarchical content (all the tabs and menus and little link boxes that many modern websites tend to use) can lead to an annoying information overload.

-- Alex

 

[theSovietConnection]

It's also good to see a game like Dragon Age win this award because of how popular the game is. Maybe more games will start adopting more options to make games easier to access for disabled gamers.

 

[DC1]

Cool beans. I'm not disabled but it adds to my enjoyment when a game uses subtitles. It can be a big factor in my purchasing decision.

 

[Booze Zombie]

It doesn't matter what issues you may or may not have, you need to pause Dragon Age to think about what's going on, there's normally a lot of people/creatures/monsters/undead attacking you.