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

Thu Dec 14 12:56:03 EST 2006

I think the issue with motion sickness has to do with several things -- the speed in which your character is moving (40mph sometimes...) and the fact that you are not moving along with the character. When I worked in VR, motion sickness was very, very much an issue and then later on Halo. So your character is moving at a really fast pace and all the sudden the POV flips upside down but you physically did not -- it causes a disconnect. So VR games like those at DisneyQuest in Orlando have movement associated with them (yaw, pitch, etc) so that can help lessen motion sickness for many.

I know that there are a TON of studies on motion sickness in VR and in simulators that we could sort through.

Michelle

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:07:01 -0800
>From: "Reid Kimball" <reid at rbkdesign.com>  
>Subject: Re: [games_access] Exploring the borders of game accessibility...  
>To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List" <games_access at igda.org>
>
>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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