[nabs-l] [Blindtlk] FW: accessible video games

Fri Sep 16 22:18:42 UTC 2011

This is a reply from the Blind Talk list.

 Chris Nusbaum

"The real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight.  The 
real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of education that 
exists.  If a blind person has the proper training and 
opportunity, blindness can be reduced to a mere physical 
nuisance." -- Kenneth Jernigan (President of the National 
Federation of the Blind, 1968-1986.)

  Visit the I C.A.N.  Foundation online at: 
www.icanfoundation.info for
information on our foundation and how it helps blind and visually
impaired children in MD say "I can!"

Sent from my BrailleNote

 ---- Original Message ------
From: "T.  Joseph Carter" <tjcarter at spiritsubstance.com
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] FW: [nabs-l] accessible video games
Date sent: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:45:36 -0700

In short, it's not an easy task, and I can't even imagine how to 
do
it for a great many of the games on the market.  I say this as 
one
who has spent some time making video games.  Three cases 
illustrate
the problem I think:

Case 1: Final Fantasy X, Playstation 2

This was the first Final Fantasy to feature recorded voices for 
most
major characters.  It was one of the top-selling games in the 
Final
Fantasy franchise and frankly one of the top selling games on the
platform.  (At one time it was THE top-selling in both 
categories,
but I no longer know if either is true.)

As I said, most major characters' dialogue was recorded, instead 
of
being a string of text on the screen.  Minor or incidental 
characters
however were text-only.  A screen reader for those didn't exist, 
and
would've been distracting.  The cost of voice actors may have 
been
prohibitive, and if it had been done it might not have all fit on 
to
one DVD.

But it could have been done.  Mostly.  Most of the overdrives
(special attacks available only when enough of something has 
happened
to a character) would have needed significant changes to become
non-visual.  When Tidus tried to learn his father's famous Jecht 
Shot
(a sports move), memories appear in different portions of the 
screen
and you have to manipulate the controller in response.  It's not
hard to do it simply mashing buttons, but it's still completely
visual.

And then there's exploration, finding treasure, knowing where the
road forks, etc.  We navigate with a cane and manage just fine, 
but
even with terrain clue sounds (which exist but need to be 
improved
for our purposes), we just don't have the kind of feedback we get
from using a cane that would tell us where we are, and where we 
are
going.

But it could be solved, and because most of the game (battles and
whatnot) are turn-based, some means could be found to do it.

Conclusion: This kind of game could be made accessible, and it 
would
be very cool and clever, and it would fit right in to the game
experience if done right.

Case 2: Super Metroid, Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The game involves your character running around a complex side 
and
vertically scrolling maze of tunnels, platforms, doorways, 
elevators,
and the like.  Crawling, floating, flying, and energy-sucking 
alien
creatures are everywhere, and you blast them with various 
weapons,
pick up recharges and ammo reloads left floating where they were
before you disintegrated them, and make complex jumps, climbs,
swings, and the like while avoiding hazards in any direction.  I 
have
no idea how to make this accessible.  Wish I did, because it 
would be
awesome!

Conclusion: Probably not able to make it accessible, at least not
using any scheme I can think up.  If another developer can, 
that's
awesome.

Case 3: Bejeweled 3, Mac/PC and coming sooner or later to iPhone

Bejeweled-type games play out as a grid of colored gems.  There 
are
three now, and they all follow the same premise I outline here, 
and
many, many clones.  You play by taking two adjacent gems and 
swapping
them either horizontally or vertically.  You can only swap gems 
if
this creates one or more "matches", strings of three or more gems 
of
the same color either horizontally or vertically.  These are 
cleared
and gravity causes those above to fall along with new gems to 
fill in
the holes.  The game ends when you can no longer make a swap.

This basic game could be made accessible in quite a clever way, 
at
least on touch-screen devices.  When you enable the touch 
accessible
mode, simple swipes on the screen no longer swap gems.  Instead, 
they
let you "hear" the gems.  Each color has its own "resonance" 
sound.
Power gems would make their color sound and another sound at the 
same
time.  A flame gem could crackle, and a star gem could maybe make 
a
tinkling sound.  The other special gems are the hypercube and
supernova gems, and these too could have their own sounds.

Control would be to touch with one finger to select a gem.  Touch 
and
hold to get a verbal description of the gem (special gems have a
tool-tip type thing on the Mac/PC version already).  Swipe with 
two
fingers in one of the cardinal directions to swap with the gem in
that direction.

Sounds great, innovatively accessible, and fun to play right?  
Yeah,
and not even hard to write it!  I dunno how you'd interface it so 
you
could do this with VoiceOver enabled, but it would be fun and it
would bring many of you into one of the greatest time-wasters 
ever
invented.  *grin*

Adding voice tags to menu controls and badges and the like would 
mean
the Bejeweled Guy (don't know his name) has a lot more to say 
than
"Welcome back", "Go", "Level complete", etc.  But it wouldn't be 
that
difficult to add to the game at all!

There's just one problem.  The game has other modes, and some of 
them
are timed.  You could not keep track of the board with all the 
gems
cleared and new ones falling from the top and still meet the time
challenges which depend on split-second recognition of visual 
info.
And changing the timing to make it "reasonable" skews the scoring 
if
you mix accessible and standard play, which matters on the iPhone
where you can share your scores online.  If you find a way to 
make
the timing fair and equitable, you will find sighted people 
playing
this mode in order to cheat and get higher scores than their 
friends
making these modes completely unfair for the blind player to
"compete" with friends.  (Disable the screen maybe?  It's an 
option!)

Or would we be content to have a game where only half of the 
modes
you could play were accessible?

Conclusion: The most promising, because it requires the fewest 
mods
to an existing game and the lowest development cost,  but it 
wouldn't
be accessible on the computer.  Then again, it takes the touch
screen, so long the bane of the blind's existence in the 
technical
world, and turns it into the key to accessibility!  Poetic 
justice in
that.  Only about half of the game modes could be made easily
accessible to the blind, and would we really consider half a game
better than none?

Now I've got absolutely NO idea if anyone at PopCap Games, the 
makers
of Bejeweled, even care that we blind folks exist!  My guess is 
that
they've never thought about it.  But if they want one of their 
games
to be about as ubiquitous amongst blind iPhone owners as a deck 
of
brailled UNO cards is, they'd seriously consider a limited 
version of
Bejeweled 3 for the iPhone with the above accessibility features 
and
offering only the untimed game modes.

In fact, they could use the Bejeweled 2 engine (since we won't 
miss
the new prettier graphics) and just add the new gems.  I'd miss
Diamond Mine mode, but content myself with Butterflies, Zen, 
Classic,
and Poker modes.  I don't often play the two timed modes 
Lightning
and Ice Storm.  The eighth mode, Quest, is a combination of the 
other
modes plus a few others in short challenges that get downright 
hard
before you get your ivy leaves!  Oh MAN did I work for that!

*ahem*

Anyway, I might be willing to investigate the matter, see if I 
could
contact someone at PopCap, and see if they'd be willing to 
discuss
it.  They might ignore me, or they might say they're not 
interested.
If you think I should, and if this thread isn't active sometime 
next
week, gimme a nudge and I'll see if they're interested in doing
something that no other mainstream game publisher has ever tried 
to
do before.  There's perhaps a legal issue associated with them 
doing
it as I suggested, but I'll commit to giving them royalty-free
license to whatever intellectual property in this message they 
need
to implement it.

They can gimme an iTunes code for the result (for demo purposes 
only
of course!) and maybe mention either my name or the NFB somewhere 
in
the credits for the inspiration and I consider myself 
compensated.
Maybe in two or four years, we'll have video game development as 
one
of the things a person can sign up for at Youth Slam, who knows?

I'll put this Pipe Dream to rest before I become tempted to go 
and
play, well, Pipe Dream.  *grin*

Joseph
Gaming nerd

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 06:06:26PM -0700, Humberto Avila wrote:
This question was asked on the student list.  Read below.

-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org 
[mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Patrick Molloy
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 6:00 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: [nabs-l] accessible video games

Hi All,
I'm curious to get your thoughts on this question that's been in 
the
back of my mind recently: Why haven't mainstream video game 
companies
even attempted to make their products accessible to blind people?
Wouldn't it grow their profits? And would it be all that 
difficult to
make a video game accessible? We have described movies, after 
all, and
there's the blind driver car.  If they can make an accessible 
CAR, why
not video games? What do others think about this issue?
Patrick

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