[games_access] We must get data sooner than later

[Reid Kimball]

Kotaku posted the Quest video on their site
http://kotaku.com/gaming/games-for-all/clip-making-games-more-accessible-256981.php

One comment from a poster:
"The problem is that it's not cost effective to tweak and add special
options and controls for disabled gamers. The amount of time, effort,
and money it takes to add all that doesn't produce a financial reward
in the end for the company who makes the game because disabled gamers
aren't exactly a sizeable demographic."

I see this point made over and over again and no one knows the truth.
We really need to find out the truth. I'm hopeful the facts will
reveal that in fact it will be very cost effective for developers.

Dimitris, do you have any data on how much it cost you to add all the
accessible for Terrestrial Invaders vs. how much the game would have
cost if you left them out?

Does anyone have any good research skills? I've tried before to find a
recent statistic on how many disabled people there are in the US,
Europe, Asia, and so on. Ideally we'd have the following stats,

in each territory US, UK, Europe, Asia, etc
# of disabled blind
# of disabled deaf/hard of hearing
# of people with any mobility issues, from arthritis to quadriplegia
# of cognitive disabled

# of male populations that play games
# of female populations that play games

Age groups of people that play games

Any more categories? I'm hoping with all the data we can piece things
together and say something equivalent to, "we know that 30% of the
male population between the ages of 16 and 33 in the US, which is
25,000,000 mil, of those 10% are blind, 25% have some type of hearing
disability and shockingly 35% have mobility impairments. Then we can
break it down into actual estimated numbers. We really need some way
to combat these assumptions that there isn't a market and it's not
cost productive.

I spent zero money developing Doom3[CC]. It only took time on nights
and weekends while I worked a full time job. It has been downloaded
over 19,000 times since release. If I had charged $5 dollars for it I
could have profited $95,000 dollars. That's a one year salary for a
talented programmer in some parts of the US, who could make huge
impacts at a company.

-Reid