Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : ianhamilton_ via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

assault_freak wrote:Interesting article and one that sums up things pretty well. My only beef is that you asume that its easy to get in touch with game developers or engine developers. While this approach work for indie developers such as those of skullgirls, one will have a much harder time talking to big corporations like Namko and Capcom who so often use their own engines as development bases. The PC market is different... because screen readers exist on those interfaces, but to side with the companies who make games primarily for consoles, this would be a far stretch... since thered be no practical way to develop and implement accessibility for an engine designed around console games since there is no screen reader for consoles and likely never will be. lol PC indie developers are the place t start, and hopefully this will lead to something. But talking to the developers of major gaming engine platforms, often large co
 mpanies, is difficult. NRS and Injustice was a great start, but Ill be curious to see which big gaming company next responds to a similar request. Advocacy is difficult without attending gaming conventions and events, and your average blind gamer doesnt have the funds, or necessarily even the interest, in mainstream video games to attend such things.its easier to speak to people than you think, you just have to be sure to speak to individual people and not try to talk to corporations. There are lots who are happy to chat on Twitter. Yes, absolutely agree, a face to face chat is better, but often if you go to an event like PAX or E3 the people from the big studios who are actually on the show floor are just junior marketing folk, the people with any kind of decision making power are locked up in a back room doing scheduled press meetings.The popular engines do go a long way - e.g. Injustice, Bioshock Infinite and Devil May Cry are Un
 real. And although consoles dont have screenreaders, if for example Unreal supported PC screenreaders the PC version of Injustice could have had an accessible interface as well as accessible gameplay.But thats a technicality really... Unreal isnt really a good one to aim for. Something worth bearing in mind is where the most games are that could be made accessible with very little extra developer workload if the tech was in place, which more often translates to games made in Unity, Cocos etc.Unity are a bit difficult, you cant really get anything done through the official channels as they are worked very hard and have a huge to do list of critical things as it is. So I think if it was to happen it would be a lone sympathetic person at Unity taking it on outside of the usual processes.Thats what happened with colour blindness in Unreal. Theres no way that a colour blindness simulator would have made it up the backlog, but one o
 f their developers decided it was important and knocked a simulator out in one afternoon in his 10% time. Its now included as part of the main UE4 interface.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199360#p199360




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : ianhamilton_ via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Its easier to speak to people than you think, you just have to be sure to speak to individual people and not try to talk to corporations. There are lots who are happy to chat on Twitter. Yes, absolutely agree, a face to face chat is better, but often if you go to an event like PAX or E3 the people from the big studios who are actually on the show floor are just junior marketing folk, the people with any kind of decision making power are locked up in a back room doing scheduled press meetings.The popular engines do go a long way - e.g. Injustice, Bioshock Infinite and Devil May Cry are Unreal. And although consoles dont have screenreaders, if for example Unreal supported PC screenreaders the PC version of Injustice could have had an accessible interface as well as accessible gameplay.But thats a technicality really... Unreal isnt really a good one to aim for. Something worth bearing in mind is where the most games are that could be made accessi
 ble with very little extra developer workload if the tech was in place, which more often translates to games made in Unity, Cocos etc.Unity are a bit difficult, you cant really get anything done through the official channels as they are worked very hard and have a huge to do list of critical things as it is. So I think if it was to happen it would be a lone sympathetic person at Unity taking it on outside of the usual processes.Thats what happened with colour blindness in Unreal. Theres no way that a colour blindness simulator would have made it up the backlog, but one of their developers decided it was important and knocked a simulator out in one afternoon in his 10% time. Its now included as part of the main UE4 interface.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199360#p199360




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : ianhamilton_ via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Yeah but to use that Unreal example again, the person who developed the colourblind simulator wasnt a AAA producer with tens of thousands of followers, hes an environment artist with 406 followers.There are often one of two ways that people at that level are able to have an impact - some places have 10% time, i.e. youre allowed half a day per week to work on whatever your want, and some run regular internal hack days, i.e. a stretch of a few days for teams to form and work on their own ideas.So its possible for people at any level to influence product direction, it doesnt have to come from the top.I really do think though that there are much better things to aim for than AAA console devs. Easier lower hanging fruit to help accessibility in mainstream gaming become more commonplace, and that in turn leading to more developers again considering it.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199363#p199363




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : ianhamilton_ via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Yeah but to use that Unreal example again, the person who developed the colourblind simulator wasnt a AAA producer with tens of thousands of followers, hes an environment artist with 406 followers.There are often one of two ways that people at that level are able to have an impact - some places have 10% time, i.e. youre allowed half a day per week to work on whatever your want, and some run regular internal hack days, i.e. a stretch of a few days for teams to form and work on their own ideas.So its possible for people at any level to influence product direction, it doesnt have to come from the top.I really do think though that there are much better things to aim for than AAA console devs. Easier lower hanging fruit to help accessibility in mainstream gaming before more commonplace, and that in turn leading to more people again considering it.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199363#p199363




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : assault_freak via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Interesting stuff. As for chatting on twitter, there are problems with that too... people like Katsuhiro Harada, for example, the producer of a lot of games at Namko, gets probably thousands of tweets every day... as do similar folks from capcom and Sony, whatever other companies we could probably name. But I do agree, its definitely easier to speak to individual people than to the corporation as a whole... the problem is just that if you want to be heard by said individual without seeing them face to face, especially about blindness and accessibility youre going to have to cut through a lot of read tape for it. One or even ten tweets to a producer or any other exec would be lost among the thousands of other tweets with questions much more easily answered. lol

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199361#p199361




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : assault_freak via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Agreed again. Hence why I said indie developers would be a better place to start. True that anyone in a company can have possible influence, but of course the higher ups arent quite as guaranteed to listen to them. Skullgirls is a great example of something that works when a developer is receptive, and thats one heck of a stepping stone.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199364#p199364




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : ianhamilton_ via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Indie developers often dont have the tools, but they can push engine developers about the lack of tools. If every developer who had been frustrated with, for example, Unitys lack of support had actually complained about it / made a feature request, it would have been far more likely to have happened By now.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199368#p199368




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : johnabreu via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Ive always run with the assumption that engine developers are the people we need to talk to, and who we need to convince that game accessibility is wanted and also viable. Most game devs are right, they just kind of throw their game on top of an engine. I know a guy who wants to make his game accessible, just because hes a friend of mine, but hes indy, and cant afford to start from scratch. Hes developing in Unreal 4, so issues abound re: accessibility.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199340#p199340




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : assault_freak via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Interesting article and one that sums up things pretty well. My only beef is that you asume that its easy to get in touch with game developers or engine developers. While this approach work for indie developers such as those of skullgirls, one will have a much harder time talking to big corporations like Namko and Capcom who so often use their own engines as development bases. The PC market is different... because screen readers exist on those interfaces, but to side with the companies who make games primarily for consoles, this would be a far stretch... since thered be no practical way to develop and implement accessibility for an engine designed around console games since there is no screen reader for consoles and likely never will be. lol PC indie developers are the place t start, and hopefully this will lead to something. But talking to the developers of major gaming engine platforms, often large companies, is difficult. NRS and Injustice was a great start, but I

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : johnabreu via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

from what Ive heard about NRS, is that they kind of act like a small studio. They might be owned by Warner, but they seem to work that way. Also, freak, good points. A lot of dev do use custom engines although in many cases theyre heavily modified versions of Unreal. Yeah, as for pc gaming vs consoles, you are entirely correct.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199350#p199350




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : assault_freak via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Like I said, I cant comment on any developments regarding engines since I know nothing about that. True about indie developers being able to push engine developers... personally, I think they have much more clout than we do. lol

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199380#p199380




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector

Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

[AudioGames . net Forum — General Game Discussion : assault_freak via Audiogames-reflector]

  


Re: Screenreaders, engines and advocacy

Well, NRS used to be Midway which was a good sized gaming corporation that developed everything from Mortal Kombat to Gauntlet to Unreal Championship. But the only reaso nthey implemented accessibility was because of a fighting game player who was blind who went to Evo, one of the biggest fighting game tournaments in the world... and again, your average blind gamer just wouldnt have the interest or ability to go to things like that. But I think youre right in that they act like a smaller company. That may explain why aside from Mortal Kombat and Injustice, there havent been any other games filed under the NRS name.

URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=199358#p199358




___
Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com
https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector