[games_access] Disability Stats and TBI was: games_access Digest, Vol 49, Issue 19
lynnvm at carolina.rr.com
lynnvm at carolina.rr.com
Thu Jun 12 09:21:32 EDT 2008
Hi.
I'm about to attend the first of three two-day institutes about the neuropsychological assessment and intervention of traumatic brain injuries. I'm sure I'll get up-to-date statistics about TBI and I'll share them with the group.
I'm hoping to get some good ideas related to game accessibility for people with TBI, and also some ideas for therapeutic games that support cognitive rehabilitation.
The institute I'll be attending is primarily for people who work with school-age popluations, PK-age 22. Apparently there a many young people who have TBI that do not get appropriate assessment or intervention services.
Add the number of young people coming back from Iraq with TBI, and it isn't difficult to see that this is an area that needs attention.
I don't post very often - for those of you who don't know me, I am a school psychologist who has taken some game courses as well as courses in HCI, Ubicomp, etc.
My main blog is http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com, and you can find me on facebook.
Lynn Marentette
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Game Accessibility; the numbers (Robert Florio)
> 2. Re: Project Icecube: One Button Game A Potential Winnerin
> Game Design Competition! (Reid Kimball)
> 3. Re: Game Accessibility; the numbers (Eitan Glinert)
> 4. Survey: Casual gamers disproportionately disabled
> (Corey 'Dis' Krull - DGAMER)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:58:50 -0400
> From: "Robert Florio" <arthit73 at cablespeed.com>
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
> To: "'IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List'"
> <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID: <005701c8cc1f$188067e0$6601a8c0 at Inspiron>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Does anyone know currently how a game company goes about the statistics for
> sales of target market that they plan for now? If they have a way that we
> collect data for their target market or do they just go by the most obvious
> sales of the hottest genre and copy and paste ideas when they think of what
> kind of idea will sell in games? If that's how they do it I am saddened.
> It seems really sad that the industry just won't risk innovation which is
> what I think I know about how the industry avoids too much risky innovation
> and then just taking the safest route for game companies. Is that true?
> Talking about all the cloned type genre games now.LOL.
>
> Is there any way to look at perhaps some of the top-selling accessible
> featured products out there and see if game genres on games in general would
> fit that same selling target people? Maybe that's a way to say a statistic
> for sales profit if games could target that group? What groups?
>
>
>
> Robert
> www.RobertFlorio.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org]
> On Behalf Of Reid Kimball
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 7:50 PM
> To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
>
> > ...we identified
> > that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> > sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> > on profit per sold copy.
>
> This is exactly what publishers need. Please make this data available
> if not already. If it is, please point me to where it is. It's
> absolutely critical that publishers and developers get this info. When
> I was at LucasArts (no longer there now) I made the case for
> accessibility and the financial guys said they hadn't thought of how
> much accessibility would increase sales and assumed it would not be
> enough to justify the cost of development. Since I had no sales
> data... end of discussion.
>
> -Reid
>
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi Matthias,
> >
> > Thanks for your feedback
> >
> > Sorry for the lack of context, it's just one excerpt of our paper that
> > I put online, a goal for this study is provided in a previous section
> > that I did not include.
> >
> > To summarize the goal: I'm trying to find a ballpark figure of the
> > total number of people that are affected. In a later part of the paper
> > we connect it to data we collected on implementing a number of
> > accessible solutions (such as closed captioning or one switch access
> > mechanism). Using this data game developers can make an informed
> > decision whether it pays off to make their games accessible. For a
> > number of disabilities (auditory/cognitive/physical) we identified
> > that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> > sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> > on profit per sold copy.
> >
> > There are plenty of more important reasons why game companies should
> > make their game accessible (ethical /legal). But sadly most game
> > companies are struggling in an ever competitive market, so providing
> > them with hard data on the potential payoff of making games accessible
> > is one viable strategy towards convincing them.
> >
> > Cheers Eelke
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 11/06/2008, Matthias Troup <foreversublime at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Eelke,
> >>
> >> I didn't see an intended goal or purpose of the study. Is there one?
> As
> >> far as motivating developers to take accessible approaches I fear taking
> a
> >> broad stroke would scare developers away from taking on the problem as
> the
> >> numbers are so large and context specific (Dyslexia: Text heavy
> >> Adventure/RPGs and Scrabble) it may be too hard or irrelevant to
> calculate
> >> (disabled people that can't play games vs. disabled people that can't
> >> collect stamps), though I admire the amount of effort you put into data
> >> collecting.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:06:21 -0700
> >> > From: eelke.folmer at gmail.com
> >> > To: games_access at igda.org
> >> > Subject: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
> >>
> >> >
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > A remember a discussion a while ago (I guess it was before E for All
> >> > or GDC) when we were making flyers that we couldn't specify how many
> >> > people are unable to play games because of a disability. Anyway i'm
> >> > hoping to shed some more light on these numbers.
> >> >
> >> > For an upcoming survey paper on Game Accessibility I sat down and
> >> > analyzed several statistics to come up with a more precise estimate
> >> > for the total number of people in the USA who's game playing abilities
> >> > are affected by a disability. I based these estimates primarily on
> >> > data from the American Community Survey (2002) which provides a
> >> > breakdown of each disability category into more specific categories
> >> > allowing us to more precisely identify whether that particular
> >> > disability affects someone's ability to play games. Unable to walk
> >> > does not have the same effect on being able to play games as arthritis
> >> > while both are considered a physical disability. Another problem with
> >> > trying to define estimates is that elderly are overly represented in
> >> > the total number of people with disabilities while at the same time it
> >> > is known that elderly don't play games as much as the younger
> >> > generations. The number of people in the baby boom generation is also
> >> > very large. I tried to pull this data apart based on estimates based
> >> > on some data I found on average number of people that play games and
> >> > console ownership broken down into different age categories.
> >> > Inevitably some extrapolations were made, I wish more accurate data
> >> > was available. I corresponded with the US census office briefly and
> >> > for future community surveys they told me they are considering
> >> > including ability to use computer in their questionnaires. This data
> >> > is currently not available in the 2002 survey.
> >> >
> >> > The statistics can be found here:
> >> http://www.eelke.com/files/ga_stats.pdf
> >> >
> >> > Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, any feedback is
> >> > appreciated.
> >> >
> >> > Cheers Eelke
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> >
> >>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> > Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
> >> > Department of CS&E/171
> >> > University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
> >> > Game interaction design www.eelke.com
> >> >
> >>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > games_access mailing list
> >> > games_access at igda.org
> >> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> Now you can invite friends from Facebook and other groups to join you on
> >> Windows LiveT Messenger. Add them now!
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> games_access mailing list
> >> games_access at igda.org
> >> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
> > Department of CS&E/171
> > University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
> > Game interaction design www.eelke.com
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
> _______________________________________________
> games_access mailing list
> games_access at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:45:22 -0700
> From: "Reid Kimball" <reid at rbkdesign.com>
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Project Icecube: One Button Game A
> Potential Winnerin Game Design Competition!
> To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List"
> <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID:
> <a6673b8d0806111745p3ef6f7efi441f2bbdd76bc706 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I really like it a lot. Seems like a great game for kids. The art
> style is awesome, it reminds me of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The only
> frustrating part is I have no way to turn around and head in the
> opposite direction if I want to. I feel like players could have more
> actions available with creative use of the one-button, such as double
> pressing it quickly to change direction.
>
> Taking this further, how would combat be implemented into a different
> one-button platformer? Morse code is a one-button coded language.
> That's really impressive isn't it? Why use a similar approach with a
> one-button game? A combo attack can be a combination of short and long
> one-button presses.
>
> -Reid
>
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 3:54 PM, AudioGames.net <richard at audiogames.net> wrote:
> > Ps:
> >
> > Here's the control scheme:
> >
> > jump: press and/or hold space and let go (jump = on let go)
> > climb ladder: press space and let go (when over/under a ladder)
> > change direction on ladder: press space and let go (when on a ladder)
> > go through door: hold space when next to door
> > water seeds: hold space when next to seeds
> >
> > greets,
> >
> > Richard
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "AudioGames.net" <richard at audiogames.net>
> > To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List" <games_access at igda.org>
> > Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:49 AM
> > Subject: [games_access] Project Icecube: One Button Game A Potential
> > Winnerin Game Design Competition!
> >
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> A short message concerning a cool one-button platform game by Michiel
> >> Krol:
> >>
> >> You may remember Michiel Krol's name from his work on the Audio Game Maker
> >> and project Game Accessibility at the Bartimeus Accessibility foundation.
> >> You may also remember his name from the game Submarine
> >> (http://www.spele.nl/game/submarine.html - currently unavailable at time of
> >> this post), which was nominated for the NLGD Game Design Rally 2006 and
> >> which featured an alternative, one-button control scheme. Michiel is
> >> currently finishing his Masters degree in Game Design.
> >>
> >> I'm happy to announce that for this years NLGD Game Rally, Michiel is once
> >> more nominated for a new game: Project Icecube! This free online Flash-game
> >> is specifically designed for children in the age of 8 to 12 who have to live
> >> with a chronical disease or a handicap. What makes Project Icecube special
> >> is that this is a one-button platform game. The game control automation is
> >> slightly inspired by that of a prototype for a one-button platform game that
> >> I once made. Check out Project Icecube here:
> >>
> >> http://www.uqudos.com/nl/portfolio/gameplayNLGD_3.html
> >>
> >> Currently the game only works with the spacebar (it was designed like this
> >> for the competition) but it is a very small effort to reprogram it so it
> >> works with every key or button or switch device. The game is only in Dutch
> >> for now. In the game, you are an icecube and you have to explore 4 worlds,
> >> finding fellow icecubes and water the seeds found in the world to progress.
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >>
> >> Next week's the winner is selected, on thursday the 18th. Although the
> >> winner is selected via a child jury, you can let Michiel know what you think
> >> of the game by rating the game on the website.
> >>
> >> Greets,
> >>
> >> Richard
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> games_access mailing list
> >> games_access at igda.org
> >> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:02:26 -0400
> From: "Eitan Glinert" <glinert at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
> To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List"
> <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID:
> <3dd2060e0806112002g5fb872f3w9d3f8a9e2a43a8f6 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> As someone who is neck deep in starting up his own company I can say
> that it is not that simple. Generally when predicting how sales will
> fare you do several things:
> 1. Look at closest competitors in the game space, and check their numbers
> 2. Look at the most similar business models and check their numbers
> 3. Examine trends in the marketplace for the demographic(s) you are
> going after (i.e. how quickly is the market expanding)
> 4. State how you feel your innovation(s) will affect sales.
>
> Generally accessibility in games deals with points 3 and 4. The real
> trick to accessibility, in my opinion, is that making a game more
> accessible to one population makes it more usable to many, which in
> turn results in a better gaming experience for more people (and
> therefore will likely result in more copies sold).
>
> Eitan
>
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 7:58 PM, Robert Florio <arthit73 at cablespeed.com> wrote:
> > Does anyone know currently how a game company goes about the statistics for
> > sales of target market that they plan for now? If they have a way that we
> > collect data for their target market or do they just go by the most obvious
> > sales of the hottest genre and copy and paste ideas when they think of what
> > kind of idea will sell in games? If that's how they do it I am saddened.
> > It seems really sad that the industry just won't risk innovation which is
> > what I think I know about how the industry avoids too much risky innovation
> > and then just taking the safest route for game companies. Is that true?
> > Talking about all the cloned type genre games now.LOL.
> >
> > Is there any way to look at perhaps some of the top-selling accessible
> > featured products out there and see if game genres on games in general would
> > fit that same selling target people? Maybe that's a way to say a statistic
> > for sales profit if games could target that group? What groups?
> >
> >
> >
> > Robert
> > www.RobertFlorio.com
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org]
> > On Behalf Of Reid Kimball
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 7:50 PM
> > To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
> >
> >> ...we identified
> >> that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> >> sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> >> on profit per sold copy.
> >
> > This is exactly what publishers need. Please make this data available
> > if not already. If it is, please point me to where it is. It's
> > absolutely critical that publishers and developers get this info. When
> > I was at LucasArts (no longer there now) I made the case for
> > accessibility and the financial guys said they hadn't thought of how
> > much accessibility would increase sales and assumed it would not be
> > enough to justify the cost of development. Since I had no sales
> > data... end of discussion.
> >
> > -Reid
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Hi Matthias,
> >>
> >> Thanks for your feedback
> >>
> >> Sorry for the lack of context, it's just one excerpt of our paper that
> >> I put online, a goal for this study is provided in a previous section
> >> that I did not include.
> >>
> >> To summarize the goal: I'm trying to find a ballpark figure of the
> >> total number of people that are affected. In a later part of the paper
> >> we connect it to data we collected on implementing a number of
> >> accessible solutions (such as closed captioning or one switch access
> >> mechanism). Using this data game developers can make an informed
> >> decision whether it pays off to make their games accessible. For a
> >> number of disabilities (auditory/cognitive/physical) we identified
> >> that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> >> sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> >> on profit per sold copy.
> >>
> >> There are plenty of more important reasons why game companies should
> >> make their game accessible (ethical /legal). But sadly most game
> >> companies are struggling in an ever competitive market, so providing
> >> them with hard data on the potential payoff of making games accessible
> >> is one viable strategy towards convincing them.
> >>
> >> Cheers Eelke
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 11/06/2008, Matthias Troup <foreversublime at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi Eelke,
> >>>
> >>> I didn't see an intended goal or purpose of the study. Is there one?
> > As
> >>> far as motivating developers to take accessible approaches I fear taking
> > a
> >>> broad stroke would scare developers away from taking on the problem as
> > the
> >>> numbers are so large and context specific (Dyslexia: Text heavy
> >>> Adventure/RPGs and Scrabble) it may be too hard or irrelevant to
> > calculate
> >>> (disabled people that can't play games vs. disabled people that can't
> >>> collect stamps), though I admire the amount of effort you put into data
> >>> collecting.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> > Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:06:21 -0700
> >>> > From: eelke.folmer at gmail.com
> >>> > To: games_access at igda.org
> >>> > Subject: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
> >>>
> >>> >
> >>> > Hi,
> >>> >
> >>> > A remember a discussion a while ago (I guess it was before E for All
> >>> > or GDC) when we were making flyers that we couldn't specify how many
> >>> > people are unable to play games because of a disability. Anyway i'm
> >>> > hoping to shed some more light on these numbers.
> >>> >
> >>> > For an upcoming survey paper on Game Accessibility I sat down and
> >>> > analyzed several statistics to come up with a more precise estimate
> >>> > for the total number of people in the USA who's game playing abilities
> >>> > are affected by a disability. I based these estimates primarily on
> >>> > data from the American Community Survey (2002) which provides a
> >>> > breakdown of each disability category into more specific categories
> >>> > allowing us to more precisely identify whether that particular
> >>> > disability affects someone's ability to play games. Unable to walk
> >>> > does not have the same effect on being able to play games as arthritis
> >>> > while both are considered a physical disability. Another problem with
> >>> > trying to define estimates is that elderly are overly represented in
> >>> > the total number of people with disabilities while at the same time it
> >>> > is known that elderly don't play games as much as the younger
> >>> > generations. The number of people in the baby boom generation is also
> >>> > very large. I tried to pull this data apart based on estimates based
> >>> > on some data I found on average number of people that play games and
> >>> > console ownership broken down into different age categories.
> >>> > Inevitably some extrapolations were made, I wish more accurate data
> >>> > was available. I corresponded with the US census office briefly and
> >>> > for future community surveys they told me they are considering
> >>> > including ability to use computer in their questionnaires. This data
> >>> > is currently not available in the 2002 survey.
> >>> >
> >>> > The statistics can be found here:
> >>> http://www.eelke.com/files/ga_stats.pdf
> >>> >
> >>> > Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, any feedback is
> >>> > appreciated.
> >>> >
> >>> > Cheers Eelke
> >>> >
> >>> > --
> >>> >
> >>>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> > Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
> >>> > Department of CS&E/171
> >>> > University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
> >>> > Game interaction design www.eelke.com
> >>> >
> >>>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> > _______________________________________________
> >>> > games_access mailing list
> >>> > games_access at igda.org
> >>> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ________________________________
> >>> Now you can invite friends from Facebook and other groups to join you on
> >>> Windows LiveT Messenger. Add them now!
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> games_access mailing list
> >>> games_access at igda.org
> >>> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
> >> Department of CS&E/171
> >> University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
> >> Game interaction design www.eelke.com
> >>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> games_access mailing list
> >> games_access at igda.org
> >> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:12:15 -0700
> From: "Corey 'Dis' Krull - DGAMER" <dis at d-gamer.com>
> Subject: [games_access] Survey: Casual gamers disproportionately
> disabled
> To: <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID: <20080612051217.07BFDAE36 at mailwash7.pair.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
>
>
> Did any of you read this article at GameSpot about a survey that PoPCap
> Games did? Here is the link:
> http://www.gamespot.com/news/6192402.html?tag=latestnews;title;2 .
>
>
>
> Corey "Dis" Krull
>
> DGAMER <http://d-gamer.com/>
>
> DGAMER Blog <http://dgamerblog.wordpress.com/>
>
>
>
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