[games_access] Re: Top 10 accessibility features in mainstream games

[Tim Chase]

> *Top 10 accessibility features in mainstream games (?) *
> 
> /by Richard van Tol (and others…join in!) /

Good stuff so far.  I'd add "remappable controls" or 
"keyboard access".  Some games do it well, some bomb at it. 
  Bad experiences:

-I simply gave up playing Max Payne because it wouldn't 
allow me to remap controls.  It relied on the mouse...when 
playing on a laptop with a touchpad, it's just not quite the 
same.  I didn't have enough desktop space for a mouse, and 
was too lazy anyways to drag the mouse off an older computer 
just for a little gaming on my laptop.  Full keyboard 
accessibility would have made the game much less grating.

-it took me forever when playing one of the Tomb Raider 
games to figure out how to "action" an item.  Turns out I 
had remapped the "action" key to the un-re-mappable "jump" 
key, and every time I tried to "action", Ms. Croft jumped 
out of the way of precisely where I wanted to be.  (no, I'm 
not still bitter about that)  I finally had to contort my 
preferences so they didn't interfere with their unremappables.

-have you ever tried to play MS's stock games with just the 
keyboard?  Solitaire?  Hearts?  Minesweeper?  Just can't be 
done easily.

Good experiences:
-Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Return to Castle 
Wolfenstein...pretty much anything by Id (they're usually 
quite good about it).  Played through the each of these 
games with just the keyboard...mapped to my prefferred 
keybindings.  I'm sure there are plenty of others who 
haven't been so bigoted towards their preferred keybindings.

-the BSD games package on BSD/Linux...you can play cribbage, 
solitaire, etc all with just the keyboard.  Granted, playing 
them with just the mouse is all the more difficult.  A happy 
medium of doing both kbd and mouse accessibility would be 
even better.


Just some fodder...

-tim