[games_access] Accessibility 2.0
Eelke Folmer
eelke.folmer at gmail.com
Wed Mar 14 19:55:25 EDT 2007
Hi All,
I didn't get the response I hoped for but at least we are talking,
which in my opinion is an improvement already.
We can always improve, the biggest room is the room for improvement
right? Even if we had a 100 visitors (which sadly we don't) we should
still go for 200. We can always improve and we should be open for
suggestions for improvement.
First, let me get a misunderstanding out of the way. I deeply value
people's individual efforts because they are all part of the learning
process of making this SIG successful, however I also think this SIG
needs to be more open to receive constructive criticism in order to
learn in the first place. The benefits of having someone provide
constructive feedback on working towards getting making games more
accessible should by far outweigh any inconveniences caused by
crushed egos or hurt feelings when someone interprets that as
criticism on their individual performance. I don't even understand
why people take this criticism personally as in my opinion this SIG
is not a one man show but is the combined effort of a number of
individuals where everybody has an equal share in the success or
failure of this SIG regardless what some people feel. The success or
failure of this SIG affects us all and the SIG should provide an
environment where every member feels the liberty to voice their
concerns/ or suggestions for improvement without feating to be
blatantly ignored or scolded upon. This is a democracy right?
That said I think now is the time for reflection by looking back upon
what we have achieved so far. Running this SIG is not different from
developing a game and despite how much effort is being put in a game
if no one buys your game your are doing the wrong thing. We can
define success in many ways to make our SIG appear successful, we can
look at other SIG's that are not popular but that is no reason for us
not to be successful. Popular games like Gears of Wars are still not
accessible by the majority of players with disabilities. Sadly the
game industry is still at the same level as it was four years ago.
How many commercial games have we been able to influence and made
more accessible ever since this SIG started?(excluding CC) I don't
want to focus to much on the number of attendees at our events but as
SIG members that is the only way to directly measure our performance
and is the only means to directly influence game developers. Fact
remains those numbers are low.
The way I see it now we are still not a bleep on the game developers
radar despite our efforts. As a SIG member with some interesting
research projects going on I feel I have nothing to lose and only to
gain by voicing my concerns and suggesting some ideas (cause our
visibility in the game developers field is 0) I am unhappy with our
current lack of success and I want create a win win situation for
everybody where everybody can contribute to this SIG and our joined
efforts can contribute to making games more accessible, because that
is what we want right?
Now without further a due, I give you my five step plan:
1. How can we "sell" Accessibility?
One thing that can be concluded so far is that accessibility does not
sell... and that's a bad thing because the games industry is all
about money, especially now with the increase in development costs of
3rd generation console games. Let me just make some observations. I
went to this talk called: "making games for the other 90%" which was
presented by David Amor of relentless software. The room was packed
(>200?). David presented a talk on the game Buzz: the music quiz
which uses a one button controller and discussed many accessibility
issues and explained why this game was very successful particularly
among the elderly, as it used a very simple interface and tied into
something they already knew (Tv shows). I went to a talk called
"challenging everyone: dynamic difficulty deconstructed" by Aaron
Cole. They discussed the dynamic difficulty they implemented in the
enemy's AI of the game Sin, which allowed for a wider variety of
people to play the game, even older people performed better with this
game. Again the room was pretty much packed (albeit smaller). The
miyamoto talk clearly illustrated how easier to use controllers such
as the wii mote contributed to his wife playing more games. Nintendo
has proven there is definitely a market outside of the hardcore
gamer. Game developers are definitely interested in expanding their
markets, as more copies need to be sold to make up for the increase
in development costs.
These new markets include, kids, elderly, education, families, people
who have never played games before. Many accessibility issues play a
role as sadly not everybody fits the "20 year old male gamer" profile
that the game industry seems to target.
I propose we start taking advantage of this current interest in
expanding markets, the time is right for accessibility the question
is why do we still fail? My impression of the way we sell
accessibility now is that we give the impression that developers have
to put in a lot of effort to design for the exclusive "few" without
being able to recoup their costs. One button games or audio games are
nice but they will never be Gears of War killers. In an industry
where only an estimated 1 in 7 games makes a profit, you cannot
expect game developers to make their games accessible out of pity, it
just doesn't work like that. The game industry is all about $$$, if
you don't have anything useful to say at GDC to someone who pays
$1500 that can help him or her to sell more games you have no reason
to be there. We need to provide them with a clear financial
advantages, and we need more studies to provide us with data to back
up our claims. And this might sound like business talk but I am 100%
convinced we can sell accessibility. Many accessibility solutions are
helpful for elderly/ kids/ inexperienced I am just asking people to
go along with me to broaden our vision and find ways to market
accessibility, and make this marketing a research issue rather than
do the same trick over and over again without success. If we look at
the past I think Reid has been very successful with his closed
captioning mod (I am just picking Reid, i know there are others with
success too). Why not have Reid (only if he wants to) do a talk at
next year GDC called: "bumping the sales of your game with 10 million
units: adding closed captioning support". (assuming there are 10M
people with auditory disabilities in the US). I wonder how many
people will attend that session just because we sell it completely
differently? We need hard data to back up our claims: Add CC to your
game will attract X new gamers. Offering an arcade mode in your game
will attract X elderly, disabled. We also need hard data on the
implementation effort of particular accessibility solutions. If it
only takes 1 day to add CC to your game and you can potentially
increase sales with 10M there is no game developer that objecting
against adding CC. providing assist modes might be a little bit of
more work and will enable another 1M people with disabilities to play
the game, but at least presenting them this tradeoff will allow them
to decide whether or not to go for it. Without providing clear
financial advantages of adopting accessibility solutions developers
will never adopt accessibility and it is time for us to realize that.
A pie chart that exactly shows the market breakdown and the number of
potential new gamers that can be reached with accessibility solutions
provides the best incentive. We need to discuss and think about how
we can sell accessibility solutions rather than continue on selling
accessibility as it is, because by now we know that doesn't work.
There is a trend towards exploring new markets and accessibility is a
big part of that and we should use this trend to our advantage. Maybe
get rid of the word accessibility and coin a new term such as
"expanding markets"/ "the other 90%"/ "include everybody".
2. Focus & professionalize & learn from past experiences
I suggest we start doing less things but do them better: Rather than
organize numerous events that 1) lead to a lot of stress 2) get no
attendance 3) are poorly prepared and lack focus goal and
understanding of the target audience (the two talks on tuesday) I
think it is better to concentrate on a smaller number of events but
do them better than we do them now. It is clearly a choice between
shooting with shrapnel or taking a sniper approach. Now what are we
trying to achieve? we all want more accessible games right? who is in
the position to change this? the general public or game developers? I
think we should clearly understand who we are focusing and what we
are trying to achieve. Next year we can apply for 10 events but is
that really going to make a difference if we continue along this
path? I suggest we invest in quality rather than quantity. We are
doing the people that pay good money to go to GDC a poor service when
we just organize talks and just sit there and say "this is us, and
this is what we do". They demand high quality talks that are focused,
organized and that presents them with specific topics that are
beneficial & relevant to their organization. We need to recognize
that. It is not a bad thing to be ambitious but we got to be
realistic and focus on the things that are succesfull. We also need
to spend our resources wisely. I really enjoy the accessibility
arcade but then again, it is a tremendous amount of organization,
giving a lot of stress with very little return on investment and it
also affects our ability to organize high quality talks at other
events. I love the AA but then again if i was a game developer will i
walk out thinking hey I'm going to develop a one button game? ne
button is just a way of interacting with a game, it is not a reason
for selling a game. Look at the Buzz game, they wanted to create a
game show idea and the PS2 controller just didn't prove to be that
attractive so they decided to go for a one button which proved to be
a blast. Accessibility arcade at Brighton hardly had any visitors,
This year's GDC hardly anyone. I think something like an
accessibility arcade is much more useful at a conference for people
with disabilities.
The one button game concept is very useful for the mobile gamers
because of the device limitations but in order for us to make a
contribution to their community we need to provide them a better
service than sitting there and saying: "this is us and this is what
we do". A roundtable should have a clear focus and goal to create a
"win/ win" situation for as well disabled gamers as mobile gamers.
What one button games do exist on mobile phones and do exist on the
PC? Can we port one button games to mobile devices and vice versa?
how to deal with the plethora of OS on mobile phones? Can you expect
a physically disabled gamer who can only press one button to do some
button mashing like people on cell phones can? No they can't. I don't
think we should organize events at tracks where we have no clue what
issues of those developers are dealing with.
Additionally, this SIG should also serve as an incubator for people
doing research on accessibility. there are still many open research
question, and we can work together on solving them. At our scheduled
meeting on thursday I wanted to talk about research but many were
having lunch and were too busy with the camera team. When I made a
comment, the response was well the other SIG's don't do anything
either at these meetings. We should make a better effort in
connecting with other researchers in the field. Why did no one but
Sander and me talk to this french professor that attended our
accessibility arcade that came all the way from Paris just to show
his cool audio game? We are as strong united as we are divided.
Getting more people involved in this SIG is also a gain and we should
never forget that focus. We also need to update our webpage, several
people are listed that are not involved anymore and new members need
to be added, which hopefully goes faster that the 8 months of
lobbying I needed to get my name on there. That webpage is one of the
first things people find when browsing to our SIG through the IGDA
page, the SIG looks dead on the outside, showing blogs from 2005, how
can we expect people to hook up with us if we don't look
professional. Again I have offered to take care of that but no response.
3. Work from within rather from the outside
I think it is also important for us SIG members to be present at
related events, because we can have a much bigger influence there. I
was at Microsoft's usability testing tutorial on monday and there
were about 120 people there. When I asked whether accessibility
testing could be incorporated in their playtest process the feedback
was very positive and some discussion started on someone who had a
test person who was colorblind. Thomas told me he was at the OpenAL
talk and at the QA he asked whether their sound component supports
closed captioning. Asking such questions in front of +200 engineers
has a much bigger impact than all the events that we have organized
at this GDC. The Education SIG is pretty popular, Games and
accessibility will be a very important topic in the future, we even
talk about it in our presentations, but why is no one of us
represented at that SIG? I think we suffer from tunnel vision by
preaching to much to our own choir without realizing there are so
many other interesting talks and things going on where we can spread
the word of accessibility and have the impact we dreamed of.
Jonathan's blow experimental gameplay session is always very
successful ( +500 or more people), why didn't we put the donation
coder challenge in there? Experimental game play -- one button games?
surely he must be interested if we keep it short and focused. why
don't we start a new challenge right now?? one way to achieve this
is setting up task forces, every SIG member should think about which
particular topic of their interest that they like to be active in. We
need to quit working from the outside organizing our little events
that no one attends and start working on infiltrating relevant
events/ sigs and spread the word from within, without being obtrusive
that is. This will also allow us to get a better understanding of
accessibility issues related to that topic and contribute to those
events and SIG's as well. Small little things work best; why don't we
get a list with 100 game developers and send them 10 small flyers to
be distributed among their interaction designers? We can print
mousepads with a small list of accessibility guidelines, & hand them
out at GDC. Game developers love gadgets. Small things work best in
my opinion.
4. Call to arms!
Surely the low attendance of our events is proof that game developers
don't listen or want to listen to our talks, well why don't we try
something radical? Why don't we stand outside for five days between
Moscone North and West at GDC with some disabled gamers holding big
signs saying: "We demand Accessible games!!!" At the same time we can
hand out small flyers with 10 accessibility problems & solutions, and
promoting the one talk that we organize. Cost: small, Impact : huge.
I gladly donate next year's GDC pass (if I get any) to a gamer with
disabilities so he or she can walk or ride around at GDC and help us
protest.
5. Management
The success of this SIG depends on a strong organization &
management. In my opinion a good chair is:
- Accessible: welcomes individual feedback and a serve as catalyst
for communication between its members, rather than being stressed out
all the time. It will make members feel valued and being part of a
group rather than monkeys doing their little trick at a circus act. A
chair is a facilitator who can distill a vision from its individual
members into a strong combined vision to the outside world.
- Professional: no matter how stressed you are, and no matter how
much effort you put in the organization, as a chair it is your duty
to be professional. You have to realize that all your efforts are
never in vain. Don't feel offended if things don't work out feel
consolation in the fact that at least you have tried and gained
valuable experiences that are an opportunity to become even better in
doing what you are already good at. Look into your soul and think
about what i means to threaten someone with violence because you
don't like what that person is saying.
- Present a clear vision: where are we going? what do we set out to
achieve? providing clear measurable and reasonable goals and a
unified vision will mitigate the majority of the stress as everybody
will exactly know what this SIG is up to. Running from conference to
conference doing a half job and trying to manage everything by
exception will burn you out and is detrimental to how people perceive
our SIG.
- Baby steps: it is better to try to be successful in one area before
scaling things up. 10 x 0 = 0 but 1x1 = 1
- Control, even if you are stressed out try to express to the
outside world that you are in control, and use the power of being
part of a group to delegate things. i've suggested a couple of times
we should have flyers. Don't do everything yourself because you feel
you have to. Many of us have successfully contributed to organizing
conferences and workshops in the past , use that expertise to divide
work that contribute to giving high quality talks. I have offered
several times to help out organizing events, but I'd feel more
valuable if it is something more than carrying suitcases or putting
up a poster.
- Positive: even if things are bleak; and no one shows up at your
events, keep a positive attitude. Making comments to the audience at
our events that so few showed up does not communicate the right
message and only gives them a free pass to leave without feeling
guilty. Complaining on the circumstances even if they are beyond your
control will only give the impression that things are poorly organized.
- Recognition: We all work hard towards accessible games in our own
ways. Some of us have full time jobs but still manage to make
contributions. A good chair will honor and recognize those
individual efforts how small or big these efforts may be and will try
not place him or herself above the rest by stating anything about the
amount of effort being put in by the chair.
- Rotation: being a chair takes a lot of time and energy, and in
order to prevent people from getting burned out why not have the
chair function rotate yearly among its members like Thomas initially
set it out to be? This will avoid tunnel vision and will guarantee a
"fresh" view on things that can only lead to us being more successful.
Now let there be discussion.
Sincerely Eelke
I should actually add a 6th point and that is to find an alternative
to the mailinglist as it works now since there is just too much
information on it for it to be effective. I'd like to split it up
into a high priority list where each member can only send 1 mail a
week and a low priority list for all the chatting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Eelke Folmer Assistant
Professor
Department of Computer Science & Engineering/171
University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
Game Quality usability|accessibility.eelke.com
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