[games_access] Robert Florio's movie. New copy?

Wed May 21 11:26:02 EDT 2008

Attention anyone who bought a copy of my documentary.  Play at all or you
were not able to finish watching the movie because of technical problems
reading the desk please let me know send me a message off line of this list
and I'll send you a new copy.  I had copies made professionally from an
outsourced company.  Should have no problem watching them now.  Thanks.

Robert

arthit73 at cablespeed.com 

  _____  

From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Barrie Ellis
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 5:52 AM
To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [games_access] Games for Health 2008 and Game
AccessibilityWorkshop

Thanks Michelle - great post. I've blogged a little of these simultaneous
two events on-line:

http://gameaccessibility.blogspot.com/2008/05/games-for-health-2008-game.htm
l

We had a fascinating few of hours at the Game Accessibility Workshop. Got a
chance to speak to the lead figures in the development of the quiz-game Buzz
(which has been a huge success in the UK) as well as a guy developing GPS
based games to get people gaming outdoors.

A short video that Robert Florio has posted previously opened proceedings -
followed by a lot of discussion with people from a wide range of
backgrounds.

An accessible game play area was put on - including audio games (including
those played on a handheld Nintendo) - my old favourite - Star Trigon (Namco
Jamma coin-op game) and Shenmue Darts with an Ultimarc iPac - to show how
easy it can be to create tailor made controls. I also demonstrated what you
can do with Space Invaders on MAME. I used 4Noah to reduce left and right
down to a single button. I used an adapted controller and JoyToKey to
connect a large single button. I used MAME cheats to turn on Auto-fire, and
also to turn off the Space Invaders firing back. I then kicked in CPU Killer
to slow the game down further. Sensing that I was possibly baffling some of
the audience with the complexity needed - I also showed off "Aurikon" which
is a one-button game from the off with excellent speed and difficulty
options - and featuring a one-button scan and select menu...

Tried to get across to the Buzz team that it would have made all the
difference for some gamers to be able to use their own controllers (i.e.
include JoyPad compatibility) - and also to the option to switch off the
timer.

Buzz does have some great accessibility features already though - relatively
simple controls - quick start options - frequent instructions that can be
skipped. The school version of Buzz also had removed the berating the
last-placed player received - with the hope that this would reduce any
bullying. I did mention that I thought this was a great idea. Everybody's
Golf gets a bit annoying when you putt the ball over par and your character
falls to the ground in dispair and the crowd boo you. Would be nice to turn
that off - as to putt the ball at all for some gamers is a great
achievement...

Anyway - very enjoyable day - which I can thank Graham McAllister and Hilary
Smith at the University of Sussex for.

Barrie

www.OneSwitch.org.uk

----- Original Message ----- 

From: d. michelle hinn <mailto:hinn at uiuc.edu>  

To: IGDA Games <mailto:games_access at igda.org>  Accessibility SIG Mailing
List 

Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 1:43 PM

Subject: Re: [games_access] Games for Health 2008 and Game Accessibility
Workshop

Hi Barrie and everyone on the GA list!

Yes, a few of us were at the Games for Health conference and are submitting
our slides online so that they can be linked to the video that Ben
generously recorded of our whole day's event. So now we have a nice
collection of videos that we'll be able to put on YouTube or whatnot for
free so we can point game devs, government agencies, funders, etc to these
resources to show a little bit of what we do! How cool is that? :)

The conference was great, although I sprained my ankle toward the end
(believe it or not it happen when I was walking barefoot in the rain and NOT
when I was wearing my infamous way too high heeled shoes. Lol. I'm ok --
just have a splint -- no breaks. I think it's a bit funny, actually, so if
you feel like laughing...please do! I am! :D

So we had an all day workshop where we had talks by old and new friends!
Lots of very interesting and diverse talks and it was well received. I'm
writing an article for AbleGamers right now that can be co-linked from our
blog and anyone else's. I thought that it would be good to get an official
report up in as many venues as possible and with AbleGamers we now can reach
so many more consumers than we ever have as a SIG. So I'd like to thank Mark
and Stephanie from there for helping us grow this side of things that we
haven't been able to get to because we're more industry focused most of the
time. AbleGamers is not a "SIG" site but both Mark and Steph are memberss of
the SIG. They have stepped up to the plate to help at GDC when I was not
feeling well and then Mark delivered an excellent talk as well. So I just
want to plug them again because as SIG members they have done a lot and the
community that they run is top notch. I encourage everyone who is not
already a member of AbleGamers (ablegamers.com) to check it out if you
haven't had the chance to yet and to join the community.

Ah back to Games for Health -- In addition to Mark and myself from the SIG,
we had Lynn talking about accessible gaming in the classroom, Eleanor from
7-128 talking about the ALERT project, Giannis talking about "Game Over,"
Kevin Bierre talking on research in the field of GA and how to include
accessibility into the university gaming curriculum, Mark talking about
AbleGamers and the gamers with disabilities community, Eric Walker talking
about Strange Attractors 1 and 2, and Robert demo-ing the QuadController and
his documentary. We also heard from some folks at AT for kids and Ben Heck
(the infamous hardware hacker who had some cool stuff (and he and Ben Sawyer
cooked up a great surprise for the next day -- one handed guitar hero (check
out ablegamers for more on this -- Mark's already posted about this). And,
of course, we had Ben Sawyer talking about how we fit into the games for
health field. I hope that I haven't forgotten anyone! There were so many
great talks and a LOT of diversity of attitudes (in a healthy way) about
game accessibility. This will be in my article and I'll post the link when
it's up on AbleGamers!

Anyway, I think we had a great first showing for a full day workshop and I
know that we are all brimming with ideas about how to make our participation
bigger and better next year! :)

Michelle

How did the Games for Health conference go - I remember we were speaking at
the same times.

Robert, you'll be pleased to know that a short video clip of yours opened
proceedings at the Game Accessibility Workshop in Sussex, Essex - which was
very well received all round. I'll post a bit more later. Meanwhile - how
did your talk go?

Barrie

 <http://www.OneSwitch.org.uk> www.OneSwitch.org.uk

_______________________________________________
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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist7.pair.net/pipermail/games_access/attachments/20080521/087a462e/attachment.htm>