[games_access] Feedback needed on poster for GDC 2008

[Reid Kimball]

You're right, I momentarily forgot one of my tenets, to make the sound
atmosphere accessible to all, so in that sense, conveying loudness is
valuable to express the artistic vision of the sound designers even
though it's less important for gameplay. That is, until a game makes
the loudness of sound important to gameplay of course. It's just not
common practice as far as I know.

-Reid

On Jan 4, 2008 11:09 AM, AudioGames.net <richard at audiogames.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> *quote*
> I'm curious if you or anyone has other opinions? Not many people are using
> captions in this way and no standards have been established.
> *quote end*
>
> Concerning alternatives to Closed Captions, I'm really interested in
> Animated Sound Balloons (a personal concept of mine that as far as I know
> has not really been done yet - see
> http://www.accessibility.nl/games/index.php?pagefile=soundalternative ). I
> agree with you (Reid) that "(whether or not) one sound is loud or soft
> doesn't usually communicate important gameplay information". However, even
> though not related to important gameplay information, I guess I would like
> to know whether or not a sound is loud or soft, or how it behaves. For
> example, if a faucet dripping water is going "drip-drip-drip-drip-drip" or
> "drip-pause-drip-pause-drip". This is stuff that is designed by people in my
> field which I think is important to also try and make accessible for those
> players who want it.
>
> But I agree with you that there should always (!) be the option "to fall
> back to plain non-stylized captions", if only for those who want to adapt
> audio to text, for instance for deaf-blind gamers who use a braille display.
> But I also think we should consider more creative alternatives to simply
> text.
>
> Greets,
>
> Richard
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Reid Kimball" <reid at rbkdesign.com>
> To: "IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List" <games_access at igda.org>
>
> Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 7:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [games_access] Feedback needed on poster for GDC 2008
>
>
> > Of the games that use closed captioning they usually don't communicate
> > gameplay or other info such as distance and loudness. That is more a
> > style choice in my opinion, whether to change the alpha of the caption
> > based on how loud the sound is. My personal opinion is to err on the
> > side of readability and not use alpha to communicate loudness or
> > distance, etc. The distance can be represented in the visual sound
> > radar if the game/player wants to use that feature. Usually, how loud
> > a sound is doesn't matter, because one sound is loud or soft doesn't
> > usually communicate important gameplay information.
> >
> > I can see developers wanting to get creative with the captions, making
> > them shake and look distorted to represent an earthquake, that's fine,
> > but I think players should have the option to turn these text
> > animations off and fall back to plain non-stylized captions. They may
> > have poor vision or a low quality TV that makes them prefer the plain
> > text.
> >
> > I'm curious if you or anyone has other opinions? Not many people are
> > using captions in this way and no standards have been established.
> >
> > -Reid
> >
> > On Jan 4, 2008 9:53 AM, Matthias Troup <foreversublime at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>  Reid,
> >>
> >>  A little off topic - Does [dcc] have any features relating to gameplay
> >> and
> >> difficulty?  Hard-to-hear sounds could be missed by anyone regardless of
> >> their hearing ability.  If the text were harder to see that would reflect
> >> the chance you might miss what the text identified.  For instance, if the
> >> text were displayed with an alpha channel correlating to how far
> >> away/loud
> >> the sound was and/or if the text were visible on-screen for a time that
> >> correlated to the distance/volume of the sound.
> >>
> >>  -Matt
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 22:10:25 -0800
> >> > From: reid at rbkdesign.com
> >> > To: games_access at igda.org
> >>
> >> > Subject: [games_access] Feedback needed on poster for GDC 2008
> >> >
> >>
> >> > Hi everyone,
> >> >
> >> > I'm working on a poster for my Dynamic Closed Captioning poster
> >> > session at GDC this coming Feb 2008. I'd like feedback on the poster
> >> > regarding the actual content I have on it. I wanted to keep the
> >> > content minimal, I want people talking with me rather than reading
> >> > posters. I also want the poster to prompt them to ask questions, so
> >> > not everything is explained clearly on purpose.
> >> >
> >> > NOTE: I know that one screenshot is labeled as Half-Life 2 but instead
> >> > shows Doom3[CC], this is temp and I'll change it to HL2 later.
> >> >
> >> > Take a look at the word 2007 version or the pdf version linked below:
> >> >
> >> > http://gamescc.rbkdesign.com/GDC2008_poster02.docx
> >> > http://gamescc.rbkdesign.com/GDC2008_poster02.pdf
> >> >
> >> > Thanks everyone,
> >> >
> >> > -Reid
> >> > _______________________________________________
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> >> > games_access at igda.org
> >> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >>
> >>
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