[games_access] What can consoles support?

[Lynsey Graham]

Hi Sandra (warning: wall of text incoming!),


I think that, *in theory*, console manufacturers could establish a up variable speed option which could be set by the user in a preferences menu.  I'm not sure how it'd impact on hardware, but from a gameplay point of view the following would have to be taken into consideration:


1) Would it also adjust the speed of menus/front end?  If it was a console based speed adjustment feature, it would probably work just by 'time stretching' the entire game, including the menus.  Obviously if you start having different speeds for menus and gameplay, it becomes more complex than that.


2) Online gaming - a lot of thought would have to be given to how this is handled.  For example, if you had a racing game with a player playing at the default speed, and another player playing at a slower speed, they obviously wouldn't be able to race against each other. So the online lobby system would have to detect what speed the player's console is set to, and make sure that people are only matched up with others of the same speed setting.


3) Similar to above, any online leaderboards would probably have to be segregated into different speed categories.  This would be because if you had two people playing the same difficulty level, one at default speed and one at a slower speed, people might argue that on certain types of game playing at the 'slower' speed would make the game easier.  It's the same justification that Blizzard used for banning certain World of Warcraft addons - they don't think of the players that *need* those addons in order to be able to play the game, they think of the players that *might* abuse those addons for personal gain.


As for user defined controls, I think that would definitely have to be handled on a game by game basis, as even very similar games can vary massively in their controls.  It's a shame, because if I recall correctly (I could be wrong, I wasn't in the industry at the time so have heard this 2nd hand!) one of Sony's TRCs on the Playstation and Playstation 2 was that all games had to have multiple different control layouts, or one default layout and one customisable one.  I think most developers went for the second option.  I certainly remember spending quite a bit of time configuring my controls to my own personal preferences on a lot of games (Micro Machines V8, Timesplitters 2 for example).  However, it's not the case for the current generation of consoles - some games feature multiple control types (quite a few shooters) and some games feature customisable controls (such as Street Fighter), but it's no longer the norm.


Relating to your later email, subtitles are an odd issue - they're vitally important for people with hearing impairments and also for games that aren't localised audio-wise, yet are often an afterthought - not in any malicious way, just genuine oversights.  Ideally, subtitling systems need to be planned out at the very start of games development, both from an art point of view and in conjunction with the sound system.  Why?


>From an art point of view - how often have you seen games where the subtitles don't quite fit in with the UI?  Sometimes people go ahead, make their game, then realise when it's time to put subtitles in that they've got to move their UI around to fit them in, or just try to squeeze it in at the bottom.


You have your main character muttering witty one liners as they make their way through the level, looking for 10 gold coins.  NPCs in the background are chatting away.  When your character collects 10 gold coins, you're approached by another NPC who starts talking.  Mid-way through the conversation, there's the sound of a distant (unseen) door unlocking.


So, given that the one liners and NPC chatter are triggered at random, and we don't know when the player will collect the 10th gold coin and trigger the story event, that means that there's the potential for at least two lots of dialogue to be happening at the same time (the one liners and NPC chatter), with a third kicking at any point.  Normally from an audio perspective there's a priority list, in this case it would be:


Storyline/gameplay information (highest priority)
Incidental chatter (next on the list)
One-liners (lowest)


To deal with it elegantly, rather than cutting the incidental chatter off straight away, you could expect to have it dip in volume once the storyline dialogue kicks in.  However, sometimes companies don't extend the priority system to the subtitles (because they've left it to the last minute), which means you can have several subtitles trying to display at the same time.  So a lot of the time, developers limit the subtitles to the 'essential' dialogue - the stuff that conveys the storyline and important gameplay information, but not the stuff that's there to add 'atmosphere' - because it's less complicated, and takes less time (and can also cut down on localisation costs).  And sometimes the subtitles don't match the audio because the subtitle is taken from a spreadsheet that's not been adjusted since before the dialogue was recorded, and doesn't take into account any rewording/adlibbing that the actors may have done.


Ideally what we need is for people to start lobbying both the publishers and developers for better subtitling (and more options for controls).  As I've mentioned a lot of the developers add it in to a bare minimum standard because it's just not seen as a day-one priority - unless you've got somebody on the team that actively cares about the issue, or have the publisher saying, "This is a requirement", it's often left until later in development.  If you can get publishers to push for it, then there will be an improvement, and even more so if you can get it as a TRC/TCR in the submission process by the console manufacturers.  
  


-----Original Message-----
From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Sandra Uhling
Sent: 28 September 2010 12:23
To: 'IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List'
Subject: [games_access] What can consoles support?

Hi,

Gamespeed:
Is it possible that the consoles can reduce the gamespeed of every game?
Is it possible that consoles have a feature that support this?
I read that for PC there are tools called "CPU killer" or something like
that.
When it is possible are there negative effects, e.g. on hardware?


User defined control:
Is it possible that the console has a menu for redefining the control?
I am wondering how this can be made? Do you access a special console
Menu in the game? What will happen when you leave the game? Maybe
there are more question behind it than we thought? Do we have already
detailed information how this could be done?

Is it the job of the console or of the games?


Are there other things that consoles maybe can support?

Best regards,
Sandra

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