Re: Blind Games - The Next Battleground in Accessibility!
I appreciate your opinion a lot, Jayde. Although it might not have sounded like this at first, and I now realize my initial post could have been a little too harsh or bitter, I do really appreciate it and I do understand the situation. I spent hours and hours of immense fun with my brother and a friend of ours playing Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and Deception, the tomb Raider games (even those were playable, to a certain extent and in certain parts), Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, GTA and others. And you are right, a let's play recording can probably be a reasonable substitute for a personal explanation or introduction to the game that I haven't thought of.
I see there are many VI gamers out there who are quite content with playing mainstream games as best as they possibly can, sharing their experiences with that and trying to come up with new, even cooler and even more inventive techniques to overcome the accessibility issues. I was just trying to say that I�
39;m not and don't want to be one of these people for entirely personal reasons, that's correct, but also that such issues do undoubtedly exist. And I would be very interested in getting examples of mainstream games that are really 100% accessible (including all the textual information such as menus, character descriptions, move lists, maps or whatever is relevant for the given genre of the game), without the need to use a lot of fast guess work and often trial and error as well as the need to look up additional information from external sources other than the game itself (including its documentation and website but possibly, and ideally, built-in interactive in-game tutorials), or of an accessible game that has truly reached the full potential of its genre that's available to it, meets the modern standards seen in mainstream gaming, such as several extensive singleplayer and multiplayer variations, an achievements system, downloadable content, and that has very rich,
complex, professionally produced high-quality audio, a complex, long and interesting enough plot and truly challenging gameplay mechanics that are not difficult to master in principle but that do actually make the game hard and rewarding to beat in the end. Every single game out there does lack at least one of these criteria, mainstream or accessible respectively. And I'm saying that it's entirely possible to come up with a truly accessible game that's a worthy equivalent of its mainstream counterparts in the same genre in terms of the modern standards listed above. Yeah, it would most likely take years of intensive work, loads of money or an incredibly resourceful and creative leader personality to get audio and voice acting of acceptable quality for lower prices than what's common in the mainstream business or to get financial support from various grants or services such as Kickstarter, and a single person wouldn't probably manage to do this alone, it wou
ld probably be necessary for several people to join their ventures in order for this to succeed, as is common practice in the mainstream industry. So it's not going to be easy and it's not going to happen very soon either, most likely. I just want to say that I do believe it's entirely possible in the future, and how distant or close this will be in the end depends solely upon us, upon how much we do or don't strive for this goal. I'll do what I can to become a part of this myself and I hope it's not going to take too many dozen years. Smile
That's all. I think we're not actually arguing over anything, but rather that we are merely looking at the same coin from the two opposite sides, so let's suffice with that. :-)
Lukas
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=144481#p144481
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