Re: minecraft for the blind?
Well I can certainly appreciate the thing about exploration and creation, indeed that's very much my personal focus on games. I don't think however it'd be necessary to do this in 3D, not when players couldn't experience the physical manipulation of blocks, 2D or even a more restricted movement system such as a tile based map would be more than enough for an audio game provided that the atmosphere, the activities which involved acqusition of materials and the game's aesthetics and sound design were engagin enouggh.
I'm not exactly sure whether acquisition of materials would be enough! for an explorer, or whether say quests and combat would need adding instead.
Also,I don't particularly think it'd be necessary to simulat the spacial manipulation of blocks, not when you could say mine for a couple of ores, combine them with an armor recipe and thus form mineral armor.
The problem I've seen with those systems used in muds or in browser games is that the mining and crafting activities themselves are not that interesting, often just involving putting a couple of things together and waiting for a timer. This actually is another point to considder sinse activities are a lot more interesting, especially repetitive ones like mining if the player is constantly engaged. I was reading a while ago about puzzle pirates and one of the things that struck me about that game was how so many basic activities like mining, smithing, pumping water out of ships required the play7er's constant engagement and mental skills through having to complete puzzles in order to make those activities happen.
In the 3D minecraft game the player obviously has the spacial manipulation of blocks and their placement in a 3D environment. I don't believe that is necessary for an accessible game to maintain the same appeal, but if it is removed then something needs adding to take it's place sinse otherwise yo u wind up with a game like the reborn where the player spends most of their time just sitting and watching timers.
As an alternative, sinse Aprone started on castaways I've really wanted to see a full scale sim game in audio ala dwarf fortress, where you must not only manage and build the materials and see your world grow, but also protect your people and make sure they rpogress as a society. Dwarf fortress is particularly engaging sinse not only is the creation system ridiculously complex, going up to and including various mechanical parts, as well as just about every sort of everyday object a society of dwarves might need. But also the dwarves themselves aren't robots and have sets of likes and dislikes, for example if you set one mining constantly they might become board and go and kill other dwarves, or do something even more random, ---- my friend ones had a game where his black smith took up carving as a hobby and would arve magic sybols into things. This was o
kay until he randomly decided to carve up one of his fellows and transform his skeleton into a magic bone hammer! .
It is this aspect I find interesting in a constant building game, not merely acquiring the materials through a repetitive process and then putting them together in a project which pretty much completes itself over time, but managing the steady construction and growth of that project irrispective of outside influences or random factors. After all which is more interesting, an rpg where you just equip your character and hit "fight" and your character fights automatically, or an rpg where you must take into account what your enemy does in each battle and act accordingly.
I suspect part of minecraft's appeal is this continual management and judging adjustment of factors, just like the puzzles needed to progress in puzzle pirates.
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