Re: Inclusive gaming from a blindness perspective
The problem iternal gamer is that if you are talking about mainstream games the simple fact is that "they" ie, the major companies like capcom nintendo etc don't! care, there's simply not enough money in it for them to care, and even if by any chance their developers or designers could be informed of the situation, well your not going to get to talk to those people since they're all pretty much locked away in a bunker in japan.
In terms of independent games though, there are actually plenty of games where a blind or sighted user can have completely equal access and equal participation in the community, interactive fiction, muds, brouser games, and most recently accessible ios titles like King of Dragon Pass, Solara or Codename signas, , it's just that as! such games are independently produced, they tend to have a smaller audience and your actual chances of meeting anyone who may have tried such games outside their online communities is not as h igh, though it is not none existant by any stretch of the imagination, a good friend of mine with fully working eyeballs is very interested in choice based interactive stories and is even involved in something similar for her doctorate. We've frequently discussed interactive fiction and more recently choiceofgames, indeed I gave her Choice of the Starcaptain via iphone gifting for christmas.
I'll also add that there is a major difference which is only increasing in the mainstream community between people's different levels of interest in gaming, and especially with specialised areas.
These days a large percentage of the sighted population will have played either A, the latest or B, the most easily available advertised games, heck my dad has a ds on which he exclusively plays marrio games.
Among my rp friends, well they will play whatever rpg or stratogy has latest come out, be that skyrim, a new entry in the command and conquer series etc, to them it
's no different from going to the cinema to see the latest film, yet none of them would actively seak out and play a game like Core exiles, puppet nightmares and Sryth.
Even my brother who is pretty hard core in gaming terms tends to restrict his interest to latest beatemups or rpgs in series he has a personal steak in, though he will also pickup things like latest pokemon games just for interests' sake.
Such people do not generally have the impetus to go and find out independent games, since there are so many games around to take their interest and they might as well just grab whatever is convenient and gets good reviews, or follow a specific genre as ratle around looking for independent titles.
Generally Indi games of the sort that are accessible have small, dedicated followings and specific communities, and even the sorts of people who stumble onto those sort of games will generally not be average jo fps or sally casual puzzler.
On the plus si de however, the fact that now there are far more! indi games and far more abilities for access means it's far more likely for a visually impared gamer to discover a mutual interest. For example, the one game which I have! been able to discuss with equal footing with my tabletop gaming group casual rpg friends is King of Dragon pass, and I suspect that situation will increase in the future, ---- still more if predictions about companies like Capcom following hollywood into debt come true.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=149940#p149940
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