vimes Posted August 8, 2009 ... and why they keep on nailing their characters : Gabe Newell talks to a group of deaf/mute for 30 minutes to gather information about deaf/talking communication. It's surprising - in a good way - to see Newell appear not as a spokeperson or a tech guy but more of an inquisitive creative mind. The second and third videos are the best. j2LnP3JgbM0 Np5KTAm7kac Xy8xjOChxtY Also, if I got that right, the last guy in the video made Gollum's face animation for LotR and is now working at Valve; no wonder their facial expressions are the best out there. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lobotomy42 Posted August 8, 2009 I took sign language class for a couple of months, but now I've forgotten most of it. Maybe I can use Half-Life as an excuse to get back into it! Seriously, though, it's nice to see a major games studio think about accessibility, even tangentially. Despite the fact that many, many physically disabled people do play video games, there's rarely an attempt to make games playable via "non-normative" means. This doesn't really change that (or the expense involved in doing so,) but it could be a cool little acknowledgment. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nachimir Posted August 10, 2009 Really interesting, thanks Vimes. I'm noticing a growing rift between my favorite creators (in any medium), who tend to do a lot of this kind of research, and people who idolise their kind of creative work, but seem to think it's due to some form of special magic rather than this kind of hard work and inquisitiveness. At the architecture panel at Develop, Victor Antonov was talking about how they designed City 17. Locations (even rooms) had stories written for them covering what happened there two days, two weeks, and two years ago. Rather than then telling them right in the players face, this was simply background material that the environment artists would build into locations. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
