[games_access] Exploring the borders of game accessibility...

[AudioGames.net]

Hi,

I just read a post on another list concerning 3D games and motion sickness. Here's a quote:

"I wonder if any 3D tech folks will ever stop worrying about polygon counts and dynamic texture loading long enough to investigate the motion sickness issue somehow. I have met literally dozens of people who have this problem. Many of them say they would love to play more 3D games, but simply can't stand the activity for longer than a few minutes. Nausea is not really the kind of sensation which encourages repeat plays."

I personally have encountered this effect too (the correct term I believe is Simulator Sickness), often with new FPS games (for instance, I really had problems when starting to play Halflife). Anyhow, it made me wonder:

I guess that games can have quite a few negative effects on the human body during gameplay: motion sickness (due to simulation of motion without actually moving), RSI (caused by a controller, or simply playing too long), epileptic response due to fast flickering images, etc.. This is just from the top of my head but I guess there are more.

When you look at these 'side effects of gaming' from an accessibility point of view, one could claim that there are games out there which have 'accessibility problems' related to the physical abilities of players, even when these players do not even have a (legal) disability. "Avoid flickering images" is a typical web accessibility guideline. When you think of it, this is actually quite funny. It is not that the guideline was developed so that people can finally access a website, is a guideline to avoid making people that visit your website sick (ok, and in that way disabling their ability to stay on your website). Things like motion sickness might very well fall into the field of game accessibility. It's a bit like turning things around: instead of saying "some people can't use a regular controller due to RSI", you *could* also approach it like "you will lose players due to RSI if your game uses repetitive controls of small movements (blahblahblah) for a long time".

Or in other words: If there are issues with games that (eventually) affect a gamer in such a way that he/she cannot play the game anymore, are those Game Accessibility issues?

I guess this is a seperate field which has not really been established yet, although there is already a lot of practice out there: The Field of Game Safety or The Field of Player Protection (or something) ;) But I guess these kinds of issues will touch/overlap some parts of the Field of Game Accessibility. Has anyone here already thought about this sometime? Is there something in here which is useful for our GA-SIG? 

Here's THE interesting reading:

http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.2/feat/index.php (simulator sickness in games)
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/06/02/0337257.shtml (simulator sickness in games)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3231783.stm (BBC article on physical perils of gaming)
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/513134 (guidelines to help avoid rare cases of seizures triggered by flickering lights from TV and video games)
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/11/the-most-painful-looking-wii-injury-to-date/ (errr... read the link!!!)
http://www.bivingsreport.com/2006/wii-injury-report/ (Wii injury report)
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3155292 (k... getting more funny now ;)
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2005/05/09/Video-sores050509.html (quote: "in at least one case the makers of Nintendo were successfully sued by a 17-year-old who developed carpal tunnel syndrome")

Oh yeah, this is all physical. I'm not going into the mental effects of gaming, which is already a seriously big field.

Greets,

Richard

http://www.audiogamemaker.com 
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