[games_access] Polygon article & gamescom

[Barrie Ellis]

Quite a few other game access bits and bobs here:
http://switchgaming.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/game-accessibility-lucky-dip-and-mini.html
-
plus grumpiness.

I feel that at the minute, in the field of commercial games, there's a few
new successes with colour-blind modes, a few reduced control modes (FIFA
for example), a few with decent reconfigurable controls, some subtitles
done reasonably well..... I wonder why the simplest of fixes for off-line
gaming: making game parameters available to users to tweak, is almost never
seen.

In a car game, I want to be able to tweak the top speed of my car to what
ever I want from 1mph (constant) to top speed with all the variations
inbetween. I'd like to be able to do that for my choice of rivals too. This
may be happening in F1 2014. We'll see....

In a sports game (and many others), I want to be able to tweak how
passive-aggressive my opposing team/enemy is. I want to be able to make it
easier to score/succeed. FIFA again has the ability to practice against a
team and you can reduce the number of players on both teams. I'd like to be
able to do that in the main game if it suits my abilities.

In a FPS, I'd like to be able to adjust my stamina/health from low to
infinite.

These are the easiest things in the world to make available to a user. I'd
love to know what good reason game developers have for choosing not to
implement these, once they realise the potential benefits. For many, these
are not cheats. They're just a way to play. I doubt it's even that tough to
make free for all on-line areas where users can tweak games as they wish,
but play within the confines of a group of friends they know and trust,
perhaps of similar/matched abilities.


It's cool that with the likes of the Titan One/Cronus adapters, we've
quickly got amazing physical access possibilities now with modern game
consoles (see this redux section:
http://switchgaming.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Gaming%20Redux) although
this adds a lot of expense and hassle. This is despite/because of Sony and
Microsoft putting blocks on their machines for using alternative
controllers. It's pretty shitty though that there's still so little
flexibility in most commercial games. It's still poor that there's no easy
way of finding out what games have accessibility features that may suit.
I'm not sure where the answers are going to come from.

Barrie






On 9 August 2014 14:31, Ian Hamilton <i_h at hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Nice Polygon article, loads of accessibility people in it:
>
> www.polygon.com/features/2014/8/6/5886035/disabled-gamers-accessibility
>
> Some good responses on twitter - "this matters so much" "such an important
> topic" "probably the best polygon article I've ever read" "I'll design my
> next game accessibly darn it" etc.
>
> Also is anyone going to be at GDCE/Gamescom? I'll be there from Monday
> night to Thursday afternoon if anyone's going to be there and fancies a
> chat?
>
> Ian
>
> _______________________________________________
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> The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
>
>
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