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OJR

Accessibility in Gaming - A semi-structured rant.

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So this is something that I have had bubbling inside me and it's time to vent. I know it's somewhat gauche to whine as what is possibly only my fifth post, but perhaps I'll get a sympathetic ear. But as a tl,dr - Modern Gaming is Less Accessable to Visually Impaired Gamers. Also any suggestions on how I can improve my lot, and any other stories of people who've found disability becoming more of an issue in gaming.

So I've been at this gaming malarky for a couple of decades now, but even before that (since I was born in fact) I've had quite a severe visual impairment, among other maladies. Without boring you with details my retinas are scarred and I'm myopic, which means small detail is difficult for me to pick up, and I have to get close to things to see them. And I just want to lay out things that have become part of modern gaming that have made enjoying my favourite hobby more difficult than once it was.

1 - Online Passes

So everyone hates online passes, yes? Awkward codes that must be typed in using a controller to unlock content. But those codes are so muddily printed in such a confusing font, in what seems like grey ink most of the time. I kid you not I am more often than not forced to take photographs of the little cards that come in my new console games using my phone and zoom in on them. I've even had to resort to uploading them to my PC to be able to see the digits, and when 0 looks like O, j looks like i, G looks like Q or O or 0 or even B. 1 looks like...look, you get the idea. I implore game makers, if you're going to insist on packing these codes in? 14pt Arial Bold please!

2 - Screen Resolution/UI scaling

So I run from the console and drop a load of cash on a decent gaming PC, and though online codes are still there one may just copy and paste. But a new problem has reared its head. I crank up the resolution to see the games in all their glory and, to my horror, many games do not allow UI scaling. I've literally had to ask for refunds of games that had no demo and an unusable UI. Strategy games are the worst for this, and I'm a big strategy fan. I can turn the resolution down and sometimes the UI is usable, but then the game will look far worse and I'm wasting all that processing power I spent two months wages on.

3 - Motion Control

An entire section of gaming control that requires you to be further than a certain distance from the screen. Move, Kinect and Wii - all useless to me. I suppose I could set their sensors up behind the TV or to the side, but that's hardly ergonomic, and I literally have to be within one or two feet of most screens to see them. Am I just going to have to accept there's going to be a whole group of games I'll never get to play? Am I even missing out?

4 - Head Mounted Displays (Though this may be slightly positive)

I pondered a solution to the motion control issue, and then thought about HMDs. But anything available in the commercial space is useless. The phrase "Like sitting eight feet from a 60 inch TV" does not sell something to me. If it said "Like sitting 6 inches from a 19 inch TV" I'd be down. I've even had shop demonstrations of video glasses and they just don't work for me. However, the reports of the Oculus Rift certainly give me hope, with the idea of a screen that takes up my whole field of view, along with 3D. Seeing will be believing.

All the way up to the end of the last console generation there was very little keeping me from my games. All the way from the NES up to the PS2 and PC pre 2005 or so was a fine time. But resolutions go higher and the assumption that a person can see lots of small detail or be more than six feet from their screen just does me in. I can assume that people with physical impairments are probably not happy with the motion control developments too.

Should I even complain? The disparate, broad nature of physical and mental impairments that can hamper a person's enjoyment of the interactvie medium would make accessibility for everyone almost impossible. But I can't help but feel aggreived that every current innovation in gaming is making it hard for me to enjoy games. What is a reasonable request.

Oh, and one shout out to Civilization 5, and the option to disable UI scaling along with a gorgeously usable UI treatment. Bravo Firaxis. Bravo.

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As a developer, I make games at 1024x768 on a 14 inch monitor, so yeah I promise to continue writing everything like a ham-handed caveman. Also it's funny that someone who basically can't read; can write perfectly.

And it's funny that you're Derpy, BUT ANYWAY-

I've never used an online pass, but yes that's annoying.

I completely stay away from PC games. This stuff you're saying about not knowing what kind of technical features it'll have: I hate that. I don't have a good PC and I NEVER know how well anything'll run. PC games are a nightmare for me, just as someone who doesn't know what a motherboard looks like.

Motion controls: You're missing out on Mario and Zelda for the Wii, and Dance Central for the Kinect. As someone who's fully into Video games and who's had all the chance in the world to play all the motion games I want: Those ones are basically it. And they're great, actually! So yes you are missing out.

Tangent: Colourblind stuff in Video games is really interesting to me- it's why the jewels are all different shapes in Bejewelled. A lot of games'll have the option to swap colours out for stripes or something, it's surprising how much it comes up. In most cases, though: If you can't see the difference between red and green, you are fucked.

TANGENT RANT: Fighting games are complete bullshit for accessibility, to anyone. When Street Fighter 4 came out, I had NO IDEA what a charge move was.

Charge-left, Right, underlined left-right, PunchPunchPunch means NOTHING, and it especially doesn't mean anything about pressing L1.

The game does not, anywhere, tell you how Supers or Ultras work, how to gain Super meter, why characters flash yellow sometimes, how to do a focus attack, or anything. It's a joke. Years after that, they released Marvel VS Capcom 3 which was even worse.

ON ANY CONTROLLER. I'm not playing this on an arcade cabinet because IT'S NOT 1996!

MvC 3 has Spider-Man and Wolverine on the box, you'd think they'd be aware that people are coming into this for the first time. The X-Factor mechanic is ONLY explained in Youtube videos made by other people, it's not mentioned in the game. Nothing's mentioned in the game, I combed through it. I understand if they don't wanna lay out fighting strategies to beginners, but why is every fighting game intent on alienating new players? I'm not even joking when I say they should license the guys at Shoryuken.com to just put their videos in the game.

I brought this up on a forum once and got the shit kicked out of me for being a scrub, and also that it's all written down in the manual. The god damn paper manual! Some games are less bad with this, Mortal Kombat makes a good effort.

Anyway yea, that's my accessibility rant. My disability is that I didn't win EVO before I bought Guilty Gears.

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I would say that while all of your points are completely reasonable, you are just in too small of a minority for it to matter to game developers. UI scaling SHOULD be easy enough to implement and I imagine would do a lot to help, but asking for anything past that will just run into a cost/benefit problem. The only reason you see color blind modes in games is because it represents a significant portion of the population (isnt it like 10%?).

On the subject of motion gaming I would say you are not losing out. I guess if you are into Zelda/Mario or other Nintendo games then there might be a couple Wii games but besides that what Ive played has been pretty uncompelling (IGN.com) or isnt motion-control exclusive.

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Should I even complain? The disparate, broad nature of physical and mental impairments that can hamper a person's enjoyment of the interactvie medium would make accessibility for everyone almost impossible. But I can't help but feel aggreived that every current innovation in gaming is making it hard for me to enjoy games. What is a reasonable request.

I'm hoping that higher-DPI screens will start the trend of developers realizing that they need to control for this kind of stuff, because it's starting to show on some laptop screens too. Hopefully they'll generalize their solution so that you can turn it on for lower-DPI monitors too.

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I'm hoping that higher-DPI screens will start the trend of developers realizing that they need to control for this kind of stuff, because it's starting to show on some laptop screens too. Hopefully they'll generalize their solution so that you can turn it on for lower-DPI monitors too.

When HD TVs first came out, Dead Rising and Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts got really told off for using tiny font on all their text. I think they both made it a company-wide point to not do that again.

Side-note I know 2 people who play games and have one hand, so stuff with controls is just automatically something I think about now.

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The only reason you see color blind modes in games is because it represents a significant portion of the population (isnt it like 10%?).

Even colorblind modes aren't that common, take League of Legends, a game with millions of users oh which I'm assuming a lot are color blind, and it involves lots of colored healthbars and minions. It just added colorblind mode earlier this year and it's been out since 2009.

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I think it's more of an issue of developers not being aware in general than a cost and benefit thing. I certainly would have never considered some of the issues brought up by OJR. I've been on projects for web games in the past where text had to be added for blind kids as part of the government grant. The studio may have never even considered it were it not in the contract.

Often adding little options like those can tend to be a collective 2 hours of people's work by just making a separate button the controls something that should be already scaleable, like the UI.

I don't know what you'd do to solve motion control games where you don't have to sit so far away, especially since every motion control system right now tends to be super clunky, especially Kinect (where you have to stand the furthest away).

God, those online codes are already bad enough as it is. I never understood the reason to print them so small, is it to prevent online code theft in some strange way? Why not have them big like credit card numbers since more often than not there's a large chunk of white space still around them anyway?

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What does colour-blind mode entail in games, usually? Just switching to different colours, or more elaborate stuff like replacing colours with symbols?

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Holy shit, there appears to be some sort of protective plastic film on the lampshades!

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What does colour-blind mode entail in games, usually? Just switching to different colours, or more elaborate stuff like replacing colours with symbols?

When it's called out like that, it's usually higher-contrast colors (or at least, contrasting in a way that'll show up if color-blind). That said, things like the Bejeweled fix are often not called out and end up helping everyone.

To see what something looks like color-blind, you can use this Chromatic Vision Simulator iOS app. It is pretty cool to just wander around and look at stuff under the different kinds of color-blindness.

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I imagine that it does get pretty frustrating when a game could be completely playable, except for one issue that could be relatively easily fixed by the developer. I know a part of web design training these days are lessons in ADA standards and usability, but I imagine there probably is still very little of that done with games.

There is no reason to not be as vocal as you can about it, or maybe get a group of some kind going to petition developers to improve their accessibility. In some cases, it probably is a matter of money, and they just aren't going to add in accessibility for a small group of gamers. But being vocal about it may make them think about it for future games early on in development when the time can more easily be budgeted for it.

I think it's interesting and sad that the most accommodating developers are usually the ones selling the least copies, instead of a company like EA or Activision who could easily afford to make it a standard in their companies.

Or maybe it just has to do with PC games being more flexible overall with different hardware (both digital and meatspace) than EA's and Activision's console games and ports.

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First of all, thanks for the responses. I shouldn't be as surprised at how reasoned and valid you've all been, I guess I'd just become internet-jaded. I don't know about the big/small developer thing, though I think smaller developers and indies are more likely to listen to and act on fan input. I heard stories of honourary Thumb Brendon Chung changing a display settings to make Flotilla run better on Scoops' netbook, and the above quoted story about Grimrock. Also the two games that pop into my head on both sides of this are the 2K Games flagship PC title Civilization 5, with it's awesome UI, and the very indie strategy classic Sins of a Solar Empire by Ironclad and published by Stardock (Starduck? Stardog? Starforce?), and a UI that is incredibly fiddly and difficult to manage for those with sight impairments.

It's sometimes the little things than can make all the difference too. Fallout 3 and New Vegas allowed a player to change the UI colour. That's a tiny but incredibly useful detail, allowing a person to switch to a colour that is most comfortable. Plus their friendliness with the PC mod scene means that one needn't suffer elements they don't like, just find a mod to change it or even build the mod yourself.

So I think I may compose two e-mail lists. One will comprise developers such as Firaxis, Bethesda, Blendo Games, Gearbox and the like. They will recieve a kindly worded missive on how appreciated their interface choices are. Special honours will go to Q Entertainment for making a flagship Kinect game, and sequel to Rez, that DOES NOT NEED KINECT! That, my friends, is freaking genius. The second will include developers such as Ironclad, Paradox, Blue Byte and off to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft detailing politely how I'm very disappointed in them and that they should be more considerate in future. Nintendo gets something of a pass for not making 3D an essential part of the 3DS, and for essentially releasing 'large print' versions of both of their last handhelds. Mmm, pixels big as dinnerplates!

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