[games_access] Russell Williams, CEO and Co-founder of Flying Labs Sits with AbleGamers.com

[Robert Florio]

That was such an interesting insight into the game world and what developers
are thinking toward game accessibility.  My favorite question and answer is
below that the person said.

"AG: If I took yours keyboard and mouse away, besides tavern trash-talk, how
would you play this game? Could you? 

Russell Williams, Pirates of the burning Sea said, " RW: Actually, I was
just on a demo trip where I wasn't able to use Zoom (mouse wheel) for the
first demo, and I fell apart on that. It turns out I have an unhealthy love
of zooming in on the game! But I'm assuming you're talking about replacing
the keyboard and mouse with other input devices, as they're the only two
inputs on my PC. And to answer that, I don't know, because I don't have a
breadth of knowledge about the various alternatives available."

He says he doesn't "have a breadth of knowledge about the various
alternatives available" and then later on in the interview at the end
Russell Williams says " In that, accessibility issues don't get as much
attention as we like. But as we move beyond the basic process of launching
the game, we have less and less "on fire!" issues, and more discretionary
ones to address. That's when we have the overhead to really get traction on
accessibility issues."

So to me this is still an indicator that we have a lot of work to do because
I think it's safe to say across-the-board the industry does not consider
accessibility at all as one of those "on fire!"  Issues.  Of course he's
probably talking about the programming code, getting the characters
animated, all of the other stuff.  I know it's disappointing to hear it's
not one of the fire issues, so let's encourage each other this next year
coming up hopefully to do something like get our own web site out there
where we can have interviews and like Russell Williams said at the end "he
really pays attention to the paying customers" if they are saying things for
example that more people want it to be accessible than we've got to show
them.

The article
http://ablegamers.com/index.php/Pirates-of-the-Burning-Sea/Pirates-of-the-Bu
rning-Sea-Comes-to-AbleGamer-s-Shore.html 

Thanks Reid for that article.

Work for the next year.

Robert
www.RobertFlorio.com   


-----Original Message-----
From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Ioo
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 10:24 PM
To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
Subject: [games_access] Russell Williams,CEO and Co-founder of Flying Labs
Sits with AbleGamers.com

Hey All,

Wanted to share with the group that I just posted an interview with 
Russell Williams, CEO and Co-founder of Flying Labs and maker of the 
upcoming MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Seas. It is a good interview and 
I wanted to share it with you all.

http://ablegamers.com/content/view/182/640/

He is very about accessibility issues and so on. Please feel free to 
read it and share it with others.

I want to wish you all a merry everything... blessed be! Happy Yule!

Mark "Ioo" Barlet
AbleGamers.com
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