[games_access] MMOG Topics for Terra Nova?

[d. michelle hinn]

Hi everyone,

Anyone out there have any thoughts pertaining specifically to the 
accessibility of MMOGs like World of Warcraft and Second Life? I'm 
getting a lot of flack on Terra Nova at the moment and running out of 
things to say to help the readership understand that accessibility is 
an issue that should concern them (especially as they are used in 
schools) and, of course, the "return on investment" issue we're more 
than familiar with (I replied to one poster about why it's always 
JUST up to us to provide that info when we don't know what the 
industry average cost for adding in accessibility features are -- I 
have Reid's estimate of how much he could have made for every $5 
download of his Doom3 [cc] mod that I think will help that I'll write 
about over the weekend. But the Terra Nova crowd is ONLY interested 
in MMOGs (I know...I'm frustrated to no end) and I'm running out of 
ideas.

The website again is http://terranova.blogs.com

I have LOTS of ideas for posts but I don't think that they will be 
received well by the Terra Nova crowd -- if anyone can help me think 
through how to post about a particular topic, even if it's only very 
narrowly related, I'd appreciate it! For instance I want to post 
about one-switch, Robert's efforts, Eelke's paper, Dimitris' papers, 
Reid's work and more but I'm getting frustrated and I need your ideas 
and help.

I don't want to simply not finish out the month as I think that there 
are silent members who might be getting ideas and running with them 
to create accessible mods, etc (and I'm also a bit surprised that my 
fellow social scientists aren't taking the bait on debating how we 
view accessibility in our FIRST lives while our SECOND lives lag FAR 
behind...I think it would be interesting fodder for discussion but 
maybe that's because it's related to my dissertation topic!). But I'm 
mostly getting response from the companies and not academics and it's 
basically the same "no go" that we hear with other games...only it 
seems a bit worse, at least to me.

Eelke? Dimitris? I'd be especially interested in your ideas, as 
you've both written on design issues for games even if they aren't 
MMOGs (although, Eelke, I know you just had something about Dungeon 
Siege in your recent Gamasutra paper so I'll point to that). But 
anyone else...pipe up now so I can write about it (I'll cite you, of 
course!) before my blog month is up.

Thanks!
Michelle
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