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

[Reid Kimball]

I agree with Robert and Mark. My goal for 2008 is to contact
developers earlier in their development process to make them aware of
issues early. It won't be easy, because when I've done this before,
developers tend to think they can put it off into the polish phase
(final months) and this unfortunately is not the right mind set. It
was clear to me when working on Doom3[CC] that the UI design wasn't
going to work as it was. To add closed captioning, we had to modify
the UI. If closed captioning was thought of from the beginning, the UI
could have been designed to incorporate it. Adding CC at the end is
not easy or cost effective to do in the final months of development.

-Reid

PS: Yes Mark is the one that did the interview, not me!

On Dec 22, 2007 11:11 AM, Ioo <ioo at ablegamers.com> wrote:
> Hey why does Reid get thanked for the story?   :(
>
> No seriously, I think you are right on Robert that accessibility is not
> an "On Fire" issue. I can not say I blame him for saying that, the fact
> is they are tiring to get a game out the door and make money... I can
> fault no one for that. What this does show me (and I hope you as well)
> is that we need to have some guidlines out there so that the developers
> can write accessibility into games from the start. I am only one man,
> and I get interviews for the site because I have end users who want to
> play these games, by the time I get to them the project is far off the
> ground, and if it was not built in from the start then it will always
> become an afterthought.
>
> To be fully accessible means that you have to know what that means going
> into the project.. not a year later...
>
> Anyway, I am glad you enjoyed the interview. I have one from a hardware
> CEO coming up, so look for that.
>
> Mark - AbleGamers.com
>
> Here is the link (I am messing with them right now)
> http://ablegamers.com/index.php/Disabled-Gamers-News/pobs-second.html
>
>
>
> Robert Florio wrote:
> > 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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> >
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