[games_access] GDC deadline in less than 8 hours and help isneeded!

Mon Oct 1 19:01:58 EDT 2007

Hi,

I just submitted the AudiOdyssey Post Mortem. I made a bunch of changes so 
it shouldn't overlap that much with what everyone else is submitting 
(hopefully). I've attached it below in case anyone is interested.

Michelle and Eelke, thanks so much for all your help and feedback. 
Everyone, please let me know if there's anything I can do to help your 
submissions before the deadline.

Eitan

----------
Title:
AudiOdyssey Post Mortem - How to Make a Wiimote Controlled Accessible PC Game

Track, Format, Theme, Audience Level:
Game Design - 1st, Vision - 2nd
60 Minute Lecture
Experimental
Open to all experience levels

Session Overview (50 words):
AudiOdyssey is a downloadable prototype rhythm game which is usable by both 
sighted and non-sighted audiences. This session covers what went right and 
wrong in AudiOdyssey's development, why industry should care about disabled 
gamers, and tips for rapidly prototyping similar games.

Concise Presentation Description (100 words):
This past year, a small team at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab created 
AudiOdyssey, a prototype accessible video game designed for the visually 
impaired. A PC game, it opens up new, expressive interfaces to the blind by 
allowing for multiple control schemes, including the Wiimote. This session 
details the research behind the project, the production and design 
challenges the team faced, pitfalls and how they were (or weren’t) 
overcome, and provides advice for others looking to create similar games. 
The talk includes a live demonstration.

Intended Audience and Prereqs (40 words):
This talk is focused on design and intended for game designers, producers, 
academics, and people interested in experimental game design. No experience 
is required.

Session Takeaway (40 words):
- It is possible to make games that are both accessible and still enjoyable 
to mainstream gamers
- Rapidly prototyping innovative game design ideas with a “less is more” 
philosophy ultimately leads to better, and more original, video games

Extended abstract (500 words):

Until recently non-casual gaming has been dominated by young men, with 
other groups comprising a relatively small portion of the market. Over the 
past few years, though, there has been an industry wide push to bring 
traditionally non-gaming demographics into the fold, with concerted 
commercial efforts to make and market games for women, the elderly, and the 
very young. However, the disabled have consistently been left out of such 
growth, and today there are few accessible games. This is curious, as a 
huge percentage of people suffer from disabilities - according to the 2000 
US Census, 18.6% of citizens aged 16 to 64 suffer from some form of 
disability (granted, many of these individuals are in the higher segment of 
the age range).

This is bizarre – how can the industry ignore such a large potential market 
share? Many game developers rationalize this trend by arguing that 
accessible games tend to perform poorly in mainstream audiences, as the 
games are generally inferior to non-accessible productions. The MIT GAMBIT 
games lab doesn’t buy into that reasoning. Believing there is a huge demand 
for accessible games, the lab created AudiOdyssey, a prototype game that is 
accessible to BOTH the visually impaired and the sighted mainstream.

AudiOdyssey's development had four research goals, namely:

- Implementing a game design that allows visually impaired and sighted 
users to play the game in the same way, with the same level of challenge, 
and share a common gaming experience.
- Designing online multiplayer that allows for identity masking, at least 
in the sense that users in remote locations should not be aware of the 
visual status of their gaming counterpart.
- Designing alternative control schemes for improved accessibility to the 
visually impaired.
- Creating a fun, engaging game that relies on audio more than visuals to 
simulate an exciting experience.

Over a rapid, summer-long development cycle, a small team of eight 
undergraduates and graduates took AudiOdyssey from research idea to 
implemented prototype. Overall, development was very successful – Wiimote 
controls were added to allow for a more expressive interface, spatial sound 
output was used to give cues to the user, and visually impaired users were 
consulted to make sure the final product was usable by everyone, regardless 
of their level of sight. Unfortunately, parts of development proved 
problematic, and the team was forced to drop multiplayer, made poor choices 
about sound formats, and failed to add adjustable difficulty prior to release.

Given by AudiOdyssey’s project lead, the GDC presentation will be a lively 
discussion covering how the research goals for the project were picked, the 
experimental game development process, and motivation for why similar games 
should be created. Attention will be paid to which parts of the process 
worked, which didn't, and why they didn't. Pitfalls in accessible game 
development will be explored thoroughly. The talk will also cover formal 
testing results (taking place in late October), and conclude with a live 
demo of the game and a Q + A session.

Presentation Materials (400 CHARS):
QuickTime, Powerpoint & Projector
Live Demonstration of AudiOdyssey (we will provide laptop and wiimote, we 
only need AV cables)

Past Speaking Engagements (800 CHARS):
"Immune Attack: Teaching Biology in a Video Game", at Games for Health, May 
9th, 2006
"Immune Attack: Teaching Biology in a Video Game", at Games for Health, 
Sept. 29th, 2006
Contact for Games for Health Talks:
Ben Sawyer, bsawyer at dmill.com, Co-Founder of Digital Mill, organizer for 
Serious Games Summits

"Immune Attack: An Educational Video Game", at the National Science 
Foundation, May 31st, 2006
No Contact Info Available

Accepted Talks:
"AudiOdyssey: An Accessible Game for Both Sighted and Non-Sighted Gamers", 
at FuturePlay, Nov 2007
Contact: Dr. Bill Kapralos and Jim Parker, Bill.Kapralos at uoit.ca and 
jparker at ucalgary.ca

Recent CNN article on AudiOdyssey and GAMBIT: 
http://www.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/09/02/video.blind/

At 06:01 PM 10/1/2007, Thomas Westin wrote:
>OK I've made some minor edits, most notably I changed, in the
>extended abstract, "discuss" to "show examples" since I think that is
>more what we are going to do, and running examples tend to attract
>developers more than just discussion
>
>apart from that I think the text answers to all of the questions asked.
>
>/Thomas
>
>1 okt 2007 kl. 23.46 skrev Thomas Westin:
>
>>Hi Michelle
>>
>>I'm not certain exactly what you refer to with flesh out, but I can
>>read through the Jedi thing once more and see if I can improve some
>>things.
>>
>>Kind regards
>>Thomas
>>
>>1 okt 2007 kl. 23.26 skrev d. michelle hinn:
>>
>>>So we have a lot left to tune up and flesh out before we can turn
>>>in most of the proposals. Is anyone out there able to help? I know
>>>Reid's on the case too.
>>>
>>>I've already been informed that the curriculum panel that already
>>>went into the system will be automatically rejected because the
>>>education people aren't associating at all with GDC...So we're
>>>already down one and we've got 9 more to push through in the hopes
>>>that we'll get some accepted so that we actually get those GDC
>>>pass thingees that let us in. Remember...an expo pass for a booth
>>>only lets us into the expo. And a lot of our institutions won't
>>>pay for us to go to GDC and not give a talk. So if your name is
>>>attached to any of the proposals help make sure it gets wrapped up
>>>or it won't make it in. The server is SLOW on top of it so it's
>>>taking me about 30 minutes to turn in each proposal...
>>>
>>>Michelle
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>games_access mailing list
>>>games_access at igda.org
>>>http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>games_access mailing list
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>
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