[games_access] Thinking about GDC 08's competition

[AudioGames.net]

Hi,

*quote*
> And without careful moderation, a company could say that their 
> accessibility features are "well the other users will help out" but in 
> real life maybe the game players would not provide this help.
*quote end*

I'd like to add that I can imagine that at some point, *IN CERTAIN GAMES*, 
it is very likely that assisting gamers will eventually get fed up with 
assisting, because they might prefer to use the freedom of the game to its 
full advantage, instead of "constantly having to help out someone else with 
someone elses game". However, I do think game designers could take this into 
consideration when designing co-op games, and design the game in such a way 
that the assisting gamer is still experiencing the game to the same extend 
as he/she were if not assisting. And what about some special co-op game 
accessibility design patterns, that may not neccesarily bother the assisting 
gamer, something like "Trail", which allows a character to automatically 
move after another character?

Another thought for your thesis, Michelle, also concerning this subject:

There recently was an excellent documentory on Chinese 'Cyberkoelies' - 
chinese professional gamers that are paid by western gamers to play games 
like WoW and improve the character stats and gold reserves of the western 
gamers. It's mostly in Chinese with Dutch subtitles, but I'd recommend 
everyone (not just Eelke and Sander) to have a look (because of the good 
visuals in the documentory): 
http://www.vpro.nl/programma/hollanddoc/afleveringen/31239940/ . Well, I 
guess you are all familiar with this phenomenon. So what about a business of 
professional Guide Gamers?

/R