[games_access] my research

[Eelke Folmer]

Sorry if people receive this twice I think i only send it to the book
discussion list.

Hi,

I have been silent in many of the ongoing discussions mainly because I
was too busy with teaching / organizing our new game engineering
curriculum. I teach computer graphics this semester which is a lot of
work but so much fun, for their final projects almost every group is
creating a game and I asked them to consider creating a one switch
interface to their game, I'm curious if something cool rolls out. I
only teach one course in my second semester so I finally hope to do
some research.

Just a quick update of what I'm working on:

- Interaction design patterns: I've updated my site on interaction
design patterns for accessibility (or also called accessibility
patterns). I put it in a wiki which was quickly spammed by German
watch sellers (can you believe that?). I'll work on some verification
mechanism to prevent spam. If you know some patterns that should be
listed here or existing adjusted drop me a line. owyeah the address:
http://accessibility.eelke.com

- I started developing a mod (dubbed adaptive-assist-mod for
halflife2) for half life 2 which will turn it into a one button "rail
shooter" so physically disabled gamers or cognitive disabled gamers
can play it e.g. this mod uses a lot of my assist modes pattern which
I initially developed for usability (e.g. auto aim, auto face enemy,
auto reload, auto hide/dodge, and to some extent auto move if i can
get it working with the way points in HL2 maps). Its still very
experimental but for me its a nice experiment to see what would be
required make it one button accessible. If accessibility spans the
spectrum between 1 button and fully controllable I'm sure some new
accessibility/usability solutions might pop up that will benefit any
player.

I hope to finish this mod in the 5 week winter break that will come up
in 3 weeks from now). I'm hoping I can show a demo at the
accessibility arcade at GDC. I am kind of motivated by the success of
Reid's closed captioning mod. Don't tell game designers what to do but
show them how it can be done. Some hard data about implementation
costs will also more easily convince them. Especially in these times
where game sales are the key to survival and developers need to expand
their markets.

- Research proposal:  I was hoping that at the next msn/phone/skype
meeting can we discuss some ideas for a joint NSF research proposal?
I've been talking to some people here that work in web accessibility
and they were very positive about funding possibilities in this area.
IGT (one of the biggest slot machine manufacturers in the world & the
company that pays for my research) are also very positive about
accessibility features on slot machines (some of their slot machines
have up and down buttons for lowering the machine so people in
wheelchairs can gamble to, they're even considering some "magnifying"
options for their tft based slot machines (the majority of gamblers
are people aged 50 and up). I'll leave in the middle whether people
should gamble at all. But I agree that everyone should have equal
access to paying tax on stupidity. ;-)

Anyway I was hoping we could come up with some sort of joint proposal
that allows us to do research in gaming and accessibility. Writing
proposals takes an enormous amount of time and I think with regard to
game accessibility research we have arrived at a point where "the word
is out" and many people have good ideas for making games more
accessible that need to be explored further. For example if I finish
my mod for half life 2 I'd like to develop a mod for other genres of
games e.g. RTS (age of empires 3) which will help develop new patterns
& increase our accessibility/usability solutions knowledge base. I'm
going to hire graduate assistants to help me out.

Getting funding is also important as it "justifies" our research & can
increase the visibility of our research.

I was hoping that we could come up with some proposal between now and
6 months from now. Let me know what you think of this / and if you'd
like to cooperate I'm a newbie with regard to writing NSF proposals
but i'm gonna dive into it very soon.

~Eelke

ps there is no games workshop on CHI 2007 this year (too bad because
last year's workshop was fun). But I saw this workshop which is kind
of related to games and accessibility (I don't know any one of the
organizing committees) http://www.vocal-input.org/

ps2 sorry for the long email (i hate reading long emails myself but 1
long is better than 10 short ones i guess.).

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Eelke Folmer                            Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science & Engineering/171
University of Nevada               Reno, Nevada 89557
Game Quality         usability|accessibility.eelke.com
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eelke Folmer                            Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science & Engineering/171
University of Nevada               Reno, Nevada 89557
Game Quality         usability|accessibility.eelke.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------