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

Thu Dec 14 11:07:01 EST 2006

Rich,

Excellent ideas, I had never thought of this before. I believe that
this specific area can be incorporated into our goals of making games
more accessible. It makes sense to me and I can't see them as being
separate and requiring a different group to tackle. It's also a entry
way, a bridge for us to get the attention of developers and the gaming
world at large because more of them know someone with FPS motion
sickness or even experience it themselves. It's something they can
relate to on a greater scale than deafness or paralysis. They will
probably be less likely to say things such as, "If you get motion
sickness, then maybe you shouldn't play FPS games. They weren't made
for YOU! LOLZ."

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 I hear most often when people talk about
motion sickness. Is it because it's widely popular or is there
something about that engine that causes more people to get sick?
Someone I worked with once mentioned that with HL2 the weapon and view
do not bob up and down as the player moves through the world. There is
no sense of actually walking, but more like gliding or flying through
the world. This same person who couldn't stand playing HL2 for more
than a few minutes before feeling like throwing up is a long time
Quake player and has no problems with those FPSs from id Software.
Those games do have view and weapon bobbing up and down as one moves
through the worlds.

I would really like to see someone investigate this further. It might
turn out that a standard feature to make FPS's more accessible is to
simulate the bobbing motion of the player's view and weapon/items
held.

-Reid

On 12/13/06, Barrie Ellis <barrie.ellis at oneswitch.org.uk> wrote:
>
>
> I sympathise completely - I can't touch most FPS as they'll make me feel
> very ill in about 30 seconds. This is what killed off Virtual Reality
> (Virtuality etc.) in the late 80's early 90's. Most people hated the motion
> sickness.
>
> But the cure for me tends to be - perfect frame rate and not having brick
> walls zoom around you inches from your sight. I've almost never been made to
> feel sick by an Arcade game - which is a bit strange. Maybe they research
> this better?
>
> Barrie
> www.oneswitch.org.uk
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: AudioGames.net
> To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List
> Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 12:25 AM
> Subject: [games_access] Exploring the borders of game accessibility...
>
>
> 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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