[games_access] Looking for constructive feedback and comments(Sandra Uhling)

Thu Apr 5 03:19:31 EDT 2012

I don't see Parallel universes quite like that. Your example sounds like collaborative team play to me. I'd see Parallel universes applied to Mario Kart as where one player races in the same game with considerably more assists (braking and steering for example) with the other player using standard controls. Perhaps that's what you meant.

Re. 1. I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with there. My idea is that you have leagues, as with football, that protects less skilled players from being decimated by more skilled players. There's other ways of doing this - but it's what prevents Southend United (local small football team) being thrashed by the likes of Manchester United (huge premier league team) week in and week out. Doesn't mean that the playing field is completely even of course. Just fairer. And if some of the players used prosthetic limbs but it didn't unfairly advantage them, then who would say they couldn't play?

Barrie

From: Ian Hamilton 
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 11:59 PM
To: games_access at igda.org 
Subject: Re: [games_access] Looking for constructive feedback and comments(Sandra Uhling)

The parallel thing.. interesting. So pretty much like that mario kart from a couple of generations back where one person (ie. younger less able sibling) just chucked shells off the back of the cart while the other handled the more difficult job of the steering. 

1. Disagree with this one. It's impossible to have a totally level playing field, as some kind of technology is required by everyone to take part, and that technology varies from person to person. When my wife occasionally tries to play on the 360 her rights to a level playing field are compromised by the fact that I play more games so am used to the controller and have better hand-eye coordination.

2. Personally I've always argued that for something to be accessible to all demographics it actually needs to be totally separate game mechanics, in which case it's no longer a single game. The main thing is that for something to be considered a game it must include some kind of challenge (else it's just a toy or interactive narrative), but any kind of challenge excludes someone.

However I'm extremely happy to say that I was proved totally wrong by a student at this year's GGJ (thomas kaczmarek) who managed to hit just about everything, despite my trying to persuade him that it wouldnt be possible. It was just a case of abstracting out the mechanic and looking at different means to achieve the same goals. Needs based accessbility, not getting hung up on the usual tech stuff.

Deaf-blind isn't the hardest thing to tackle as haptic is common enough now. To my mind the hardest group is cognitive, low functioning autistic spectrum in paricular, but even so I've been lucky enough to see that it's possible to cater for this audiences without diluting things for anyone else, and create a huge life changing affect in the process.

Having said all that though generally it's impossible. But rather than saying 'barrier free' I'd prefer 'free from unncessary barriers'.

Ian

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