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Every year more and more people join
the ranks of gamers, and new and innovative products are created to
feed this influx. However, despite all this progress, disabled gamers
have been routinely left behind.
Many of the most popular games and
systems are inaccessible to various forms of disability, such as
visual impairments. Equally troublesome is that the games that are
accessible are generally not playable by the mainstream market, due
to the very design quirks that made the game accessible in the first
place!
For instance, there are a number of
games designed for the visually impaired, but they frequently neglect
critical elements for the sighted (i.e. graphics). And therein lies
the problem -- games for the blind shouldn't mean games for only
the blind. Games for only the blind is a terrible model that
most blind people themselves hate.
Developers should try to make
games that work well for both disabled and mainstream gamers
to be profitable. With relatively minimal investment in what's simply
better user interface design anyway, game developers can capture this
additional market share that's eager for new offerings and has
nowhere else to go.
In this article I'll take a look at the
impact usability changes have had on the expanding gaming industry,
and argue how to make interesting games for a mainstream audience
that are accessible to the disabled. I'll use examples of games that
have interesting accessibility solutions, and get into which genres
are especially suited to such efforts.
Motivation for Accessibility in
Games
Why should game developers care if
their game is accessible or not? The strongest reason is that
accessible games are almost always extremely usable. Usability refers
to how easy it is for someone to pick up and learn a control
interface, and is a critical metric for game assessment. It is
strongly linked to accessibility, as games that are highly usable
generally have many design elements that make them accessible to
various disabilities as well.
The first video games tended to be
highly usable due to the lack of game complexity. Tennis for Two,
Pong's predecessor created in 1958, had a dial to move the on
screen paddle, and a button to serve. This interface had a clear
mapping and simple controls, and was extremely easy to pick up.
Simple
to learn, simple to play
As games became more complicated,
control complexity increased proportionally; the Atari 2600 had a
joystick and one button, the Famicom/NES had a directional pad and
four buttons, the Super Nintendo had a directional pad and eight
buttons, and the PlayStation 2 had two joysticks, a directional pad,
and ten buttons.
Luckily this trend has been reversing
to some degree in recent years with the advent of simplified and more
intuitive control schemes, such as seen with the Nintendo DS, Dance
Dance Revolution dance mats and Donkey Konga bongos, and
Guitar Hero controllers. In fact, the super-popular Wii
Sports tennis game feels very similar to Tennis for Two,
with the controls simplified to a serve button and a tennis swing
motion.
In large part because of this change
back to simpler, more usable controls, the Wii has sold millions of
units. In a similar fashion, accessible games have the potential to
reach a huge audience since they need to be highly usable, which in
turn makes these games very appealing to the mainstream market.
The other strong motivating factor for
the creation of accessible games is the untapped market share. To
wit, over the past few years games have been shifting in large degree
from "hardcore" to "casual".
As a result the user
base for video games has been steadily growing to include groups
which had previously been largely ignored, such as the elderly and
women. Many companies devote large amounts of resources to tap into
these lucrative demographics.
However, games are by and large still
unusable to a large percent of the population, specifically the
disabled. According to the 2000 US Census, some 18.6% of American
citizens aged 16 to 64 suffers from some form of disability -- that's
over 30 million people in the US alone!
Despite the fact that
not all disabilities prevent people from playing games, these numbers
are quite telling, and raise an interesting question -- why would the
gaming industry ignore such a large, hungry market share with no
where else to turn?
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Games that can work for both blind and non-blind players seem to have limited potential; text adventures and non-visual rhythm games aren't going to set the charts on fire. I don't really see anything convincing in your article that as a general rule you can accomodate one group without lessening the appeal for another group.
I am all in favor of making games and other interactive tools that allow disabled people to enjoy and participate in activities they could not before. For example, I would like to make a drum set that is activated by clicking teeth together in a specific way to allow people with limited use of their arms to play drums. However, I can't agree that making design choices and allowances for accessibility is a good way to broaden a game's appeal.
> wide array of abilities and senses.
I think the idea of this article was to say that using multisensory approaches, as you say, is appealing to everyone. And, as a bonus, if you take the effort to make sure that all the critical information for game play is represented in each channel, you also get access to a market with no competition.
That making games for the blind is a dumb idea, because you can make games where the critical information is in both visual and auditory tracks, that regular users will love that they're getting rewards from a wide array of both visual and auditory tracks and blind and deaf people will be able to play the same game too.
What I am missing in this article is the possibility to modify existing best-selling games to be playable by, say, blind people. Think about an extension for Unreal Tournament 3. Players, who can see everything, will get the normal playing experience like before. But why not integrate the mentioned sonar system not only for navigation but also to "show" where the blind player can find weapons, ammunition, health packs, other players a.s.o.? Plus, give them some aiming help or something like that so that they can aim and shoot as fast as the seeing players. Call me light-headed but I think this may be a way to "easily" combine both worlds. Do you have thought about that?
I’ve often wondered how other people view this issue, or if most folks even think about it at all. I myself fall into the category of a “visually impaired but not blind” so this kind of thing is something I feel pretty involved in. I’m currently finishing up my BA in VCD and soon hope to be working in the design field and believe me, I will not be making games that I can’t even see, let alone play.
My condition is something called keratoconus, which causes the cornea to develop a pointed look instead of the standard sphere. What this does to my vision is it makes all light (everything you see) blur and run down to the left, overlapping each other like a smeared wet painting. What this means for gaming is make certain situations difficult and some genres harder then others.
Bright light bleeds over and sometime absolutely washes out darker images placed below the source. An example of this is the guitar solo visual effect on guitar hero, the screen gets super bright and this harsh contrast makes the guitar tracks almost completely unplayable till the solo effect dies down. My work around is to wear a baseball cap as I play and when the lightshow becomes too overpowering I just lower the brim of my hat to cover it up, allowing the dark blue of my hat to wash over the now easily visible guitar tracks.
Font size and choice also are a large factor. Most games are fairly readable as long as they are large enough, while on the other hand some fonts are nothing but a pain just based on shape and color. Most futuresque fonts present the bulk of my readability issues. Eve Online, SWG, Tabula Rasa, etc all have a sci fi feel to the type and when you combine this with the large amounts of data presented in the limited space and have some sort of aesthetical choice like a light blue font on a dark blue background, you just lost my money. A current example of this is my set up on two current games: WoW and Pirates of the Burning Sea. WoWs font options are exactly what to do right. As long as there’s some size adjustments and font/background color options then almost anything can be made to work in my case. Pirate’s font is a pain for me to read and the brown on tan color scheme, while very authentic looking, causes splitting headaches within 15 min of game play. When something as simple as allowing a darker background and lighter toned fonts can improve some player’s experience, seems kind of silly to leave it out. The very least that could be done is a font size option.
These are two examples of how my condition affects my choices and options as a gamer. There are other issues and workarounds to be sure, but a good rule of thumb is if you plan on making a project more visually accepting, stand about 5 feet from your screen and see how well you can define what’s going on in game. You don’t have to be able to read the text, but if you can at least see spaces in between words and lines then you should be good. If you need to shrink fonts to fit all the data on one screen, then maybe all the data should be broken up into other bite sized panels. Photoshop cs3 is a great example on how to work with an enormous UI and still preserve screen real estate.
Some people can't handle complicated controls. Some people aren't coordinated enough to press two buttons simultaneously. Does that mean that we should only make games that involve only very few buttons and one joystick? No, it means that people who can't handle the controls shouldn't play them! Should we make games for people with only one hand, or only one finger, or no hands at all? This goes to impossible extremes.
I find nothing wrong with developing games for the disabled, but making them accessible and still fun for both the disabled and the non-disabled is idiotic. If someone doesn't want to or can't play your game, they shouldn't play it. It shouldn't be the game designer's responsibility to please everyone.
The second is somewhat similar to difficulty-related options in many games. You can turn on various (often HUD-based) aids to give hints or show other types of extra information that makes the game easier to play. In a baseball game I worked on, we had several different batting and pitching systems to select from.
Looking back, that approach was a mistake. You have to spend your time and resources making the default system razor-sharp instead of dividing resources between several different systems (such as ones that increase accessibility). It is probably a different story when you are making games in a controlled environment such as a college research lab, and you don't have to worry as much about the game's quality, profitability, and overall appeal.
Rene Sickel:Plus, give them some aiming help or something like that so that they can aim and shoot as fast as the seeing players. Call me light-headed but I think this may be a way to "easily" combine both worlds. Do you have thought about that?
This is certainly one way to approach the situation, though there are inherent difficulties with such an approach (i.e. are humans able to use echolocation to pinpoint an attack as well as sight?) Furthermore, the such a tacked on design suffers in that it doesn't improve the usability for the general population, it *only* helps the disabled group it is designed for. A better approach is to design a solution that improves the usability for everyone, to the point where the game becomes accessible to other disabled groups.
Another interesting approach might be to introduce handicaps which change the gameplay: In the FPS example you gave, perhaps the blind user who is using echolocation to find enemies is actually invisible, and equipped with an energy sword. Likewise, sighted players would have to have a sound cue to let them know when the invisible player is getting close. The difference in this solution is that it actually introduces a new play mode that the mainstream population can use as well.
How much effort and money went into the development of that function? How many more people can enjoy the game now that its been implemented. Younger and older demographics with little or no gaming experience, as well as disabled players who simply could not play the game unaided, thats a lot of people/money.
There will always be game houses that spend every cent on maximizing the potential of the game play, ui, graphics, etc and I don't think anyone is an advocate of reducing quality of play in any way shape or form, but I can't stress enough that its not about trying to please everyone, its about opening up your game to a larger player base, which no one can say is a bad thing, and about opening up the joy of gaming to more and more people.
Any way you slice it, people will find ways to deal with their limitations, no ones asking you to do it for them, but a little stress relief goes a long way.
Heres a great example of what a little accessibility can do for someone...
http://kotaku.com/337925/nintendo-australia-brighten-up-a-girls-christmas-day
No, I don't believe that is the case. Making games that blind people can play means *improving* the audio cues in a game to the point where all the critical visual information has a redundant audio analog. While this may seem like tons of work, keep in mind that such a feature will actually make the game more enjoyable/usable for sighted players as well, and can likely increase your mainstream userbase.
>> Jonathan Ferrell: And you can't possibly make a game for both blind and deaf people.
While you probably can make such a game (again, redundant information across audio and visual channels) the question arises of whether or not it is worthwhile. Accessibility isn't a silver bullet; you can't always apply the usability principles it relies on in every situation in a cost effective way. However, you should ask yourself: would this game's overall quality be improved with greater usability? Will, or could, this greater usability lead to an accessible game? If the answer is yes then you should consider trying to improve the user interface.
>> Jonathan Ferrell: Does that mean that we should only make games that involve only very few buttons and one joystick?
I'm not claiming that controls should be oversimplified. But there's a *huge* number of people who have difficulty using arbitrarily complex controls, and prefer to use simpler UIs. Look at how many people enjoy playing the "simple" Wii Sports games, which generally involve few, if no buttons. Why not make your interface simple enough that you can go after the same market?
>> Jonathan Ferrell: but making them accessible and still fun for both the disabled and the non-disabled is idiotic
Again, not every game can, or should be made accessible. However, many games genres, as I specify in the article, lend themselves to accessible variants which would likely increase mainstream user base as well due to the improve user interface.
Remember, if a game is more accessible to one group, it is likely more accessible to many groups.
That's exactly right, and thanks for the great example! Making a game accessible means increasing usability, which in turn means that it is more usable by MANY different groups. Doing that means more people will play it, and can ultimately make the game much better.
>> Neil Sorens: You have to spend your time and resources making the default system razor-sharp instead of dividing resources between several different systems (such as ones that increase accessibility).
Well, development priorities is always an important issue to consider. If you only have time to implement x, then you are better off just doing x, rather than trying to add in y and z as well. However, if you are in a position where you have enough time and resources to actually think carefully about where you want development to go, then planning on having a highly usable/accessible interface is a great way to increase the number of people your game will be playable by.