[nabs-l] drastic change for video games

[Ignasi Cambra]

There are several games available for modern video consoles that are accessible to us because of their use of positional audio. With headphones on, it's actually possible to play them. An other important thing is that most console remotes have a vibrator, which can vibrate at different amplitudes. For example I remember a PlayStation 1 game called Teken 3. The amplitude of a vibration was different when you hit your opponent and when you got hit, which basically allowed a blind person to play. I bit many sighted people on that game, and finished it in arcade mode many times. You just need to have the patience and the time to figure out which games are playable by us and which games aren't. In my case I found a very nice guy at the store. He would let me buy a game and exchange it if after a couple of weeks I saw that it wasn't accessible. He even took care of making a list of all games that I found to be accessible, in case an other blind customer comes by. We rarely get to find such efficient employees, but they exist...

IC
On May 28, 2010, at 9:49 AM, Josh wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> As I said before, first we gotta change the law. second, decide on a standard for audio game programming. third, make a good solid game company, made of multiple people, assigned their own task or tasks to make game creation more effective. perhaps collaborate through skype and dropbox. next change the law so games in a specialised format for people with disabilities may include sounds story lines plots music and characters from video games as longg as the game is in a specialised format for people who are blind visually impaired or similar disability that prevents them from playing that brand new accessible video game console.
> now, when the company has enough money, the company should save some. now use that money to develop your own game console, or take a standard console, re-flash and modify it for accessibility by disabled people. now go to game conventions and show off your new game console. eventually my brother and sister's generation, and even my generation will get old, lose eye-sight, and won't be able to play their favorite video games. so lets make a kind of national library or international library service nls for video games in specialised format. Sorry guys I'm not a programmer, just putting out ideas. now to make a great game, lets compare it to a book. a sighted person can go out and read a harry potter book, get it in print, I can sit down beside that person with my audio book or braille book from nls and read it, talk about and enjoy it along with my sighted friend. so lets incorporate that into games. first, lets put games on instead lets put them on blueray disks, lots of space, or maybe 32gig flash drives, read only flash memory. lots of room there to store data. when a blind person wants to play a game with his or her sighted friend, the person plugs headphones in, the game turns on accessibility mode when the console detects headphones plugged in. Point is we can't have one guy here and another there trying to do it on their own. a company, an organised company has to be started with both short and longterm goals. laws gotta be changed so we can make and sell good high quality games, we gotta take our games to the conventions and really mount a presence there. weneed the nfb and ACB both involved in this. who cares if you like them or hate them point is they're a big big organizations and they can help!
> but will they?
> now if blind people can help design accessible games, game consoles, and the like, working for soni or EA-games that'd be great! for too long here is how we made games. on guy starts a game company, uses visual basic, another starts his own company uses a different language and another and another. most of these die very fast because its usually too much work for one guy to make a really good game or he doesn't have the skills. we gotta organise, and either push game companiess to include accessibility, or organise and make one or two big game companies, have a standard, assign tasks, make our own or modify existing game consoles for accessibility. not only will it be enjoyable for the player but it'll make new jobs available, and let the sighted community know by our presence at gaming conventions that we want to be included in the video game fun as well.
> 
> Josh
> 
> -- 
> Josh Kennedy jkenn337 at gmail.com
> 
> -- 
> Josh Kennedy jkenn337 at gmail.com
> 
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