[games_access] GDC 2008: VERY Bad News

[Thomas Westin]

sorry Reid, didn't intend to offend you or anyone in the industry;  
I'm sure many are behind the cause.

what I meant was where to put our efforts - if few people attend a  
session I've travelled half-way around the globe to present, and paid  
for it from my own pocket (flight and hotel) and spend 7 days+ doing  
so, all for free, it is disappointing with just a handful of attendees..

we just get lost in translation at GDC S.F, while at smaller  
conferences we are seen and listened to. I'd rather go to a small  
conference where people listen than to GDC S.F where very few listen.  
But of course, we shouldn't skip S.F altogether, but until attendance  
change I can't motivate to spend 1500 USD out of my own pocket and 7  
days+ of my time going there.

/Thomas



1 dec 2007 kl. 08.26 skrev Reid Kimball:

> Please, can we stop with the negative talk about GDC and the game
> industry? I work in the game industry for LucasArts. Just last week I
> talked to a highly respected programmer and he's 100% behind us and
> wants to talk about what we can do to improve accessibility in our
> games after our current milestone is finished. There are dozens of
> people at LucasArts that support game accessibility. Nintendo totally
> gets it, EA Games totally gets it with their Family Play modes in
> their sports games. Peter Molyneux gets it, Will Wright... the list
> goes on and on.
>
> It's offensive to me when people of this SIG accuse developers of not
> caring because WE DO CARE. The last thing you want to do is insult the
> people you have to work with. It's the quickest way to turn them away
> from our cause.
>
> So, instead of complaining, lets do something about it! First,
> everyone here needs to understand what it's like for developers and
> why it's so hard for them to adopt accessibility features.
>
> 1. Limited financial resources - Games are very expensive to make and
> any new features adds to the cost. Before you can add accessibility
> features you must have a game and that's where most of the money is
> spent first.
>
> 2. Limited time - Game development is incredibly complex and hard to
> tame. No matter how much extra time gets budgeted into the production
> schedule, it always runs out well before all tasks are complete. When
> this happens, features get cut in order to save the core of the game
> and again, without a game, there can't be any accessibility features.
> Because this usually happens so late, there isn't enough time to work
> on accessibility features before the game has to ship.
>
> 3. Limited information - Even if a developer was pro-active and
> scheduled the development of accessibility features into the games'
> development schedule, there's still a major lack of knowledge and
> tools that enable them to do their job. The SIG has been thinking
> about accessibility features for years and we have all the solutions,
> but developers don't yet. We need to make ourselves known and readily
> available to help them.
>
> What can we do to solve these issues? We need to develop our
> relationships with developers and offer our assistance. Our attempts
> to work with GarageGames is a good start. When a new game is announced
> we should contact them and offer our expertise.
>
> We have GOT to get a website up so that we can communicate our
> abilities and expertise to our target audiences (game developers).
>
> But there are technical issues and many of us are volunteers and so
> things move very slowly.
>
> Several of us are writing guidelines for implementing certain features
> but again, this is a slow process. Others are doing research. Going to
> conferences is awesome. Writing articles to Gamasutra is great as
> well.
>
> Eitan is right, we have to "sell" our expertise. It's not that
> developers don't care, they don't know that they SHOULD care.
>
> -Reid
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