[games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers

[Reid Kimball]

> ...we identified
> that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> on profit per sold copy.

This is exactly what publishers need. Please make this data available
if not already. If it is, please point me to where it is. It's
absolutely critical that publishers and developers get this info. When
I was at LucasArts (no longer there now) I made the case for
accessibility and the financial guys said they hadn't thought of how
much accessibility would increase sales and assumed it would not be
enough to justify the cost of development. Since I had no sales
data... end of discussion.

-Reid

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matthias,
>
> Thanks for your feedback
>
> Sorry for the lack of context, it's just one excerpt of our paper that
> I put online, a goal for this study is provided in a previous section
> that I did not include.
>
> To summarize the goal: I'm trying to find a ballpark figure of the
> total number of people that are affected. In a later part of the paper
> we connect it to data we collected on implementing a number of
> accessible solutions (such as closed captioning or one switch access
> mechanism). Using this data game developers can make an informed
> decision whether it pays off to make their games accessible. For a
> number of disabilities (auditory/cognitive/physical) we identified
> that it does pay off to make your game accessible, because you can
> sell more games than it costs you to make it accessible. We have data
> on profit per sold copy.
>
> There are plenty of more important reasons why game companies should
> make their game accessible (ethical /legal). But sadly most game
> companies are struggling in an ever competitive market, so providing
> them with hard data on the potential payoff of making games accessible
> is one viable strategy towards convincing them.
>
> Cheers Eelke
>
>
>
>
> On 11/06/2008, Matthias Troup <foreversublime at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Hi Eelke,
>>
>>  I didn't see an intended goal or purpose of the study.  Is there one?  As
>> far as motivating developers to take accessible approaches I fear taking a
>> broad stroke would scare developers away from taking on the problem as the
>> numbers are so large and context specific (Dyslexia: Text heavy
>> Adventure/RPGs and Scrabble) it may be too hard or irrelevant to calculate
>> (disabled people that can't play games vs. disabled people that can't
>> collect stamps), though I admire the amount of effort you put into data
>> collecting.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:06:21 -0700
>> > From: eelke.folmer at gmail.com
>> > To: games_access at igda.org
>> > Subject: [games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers
>>
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > A remember a discussion a while ago (I guess it was before E for All
>> > or GDC) when we were making flyers that we couldn't specify how many
>> > people are unable to play games because of a disability. Anyway i'm
>> > hoping to shed some more light on these numbers.
>> >
>> > For an upcoming survey paper on Game Accessibility I sat down and
>> > analyzed several statistics to come up with a more precise estimate
>> > for the total number of people in the USA who's game playing abilities
>> > are affected by a disability. I based these estimates primarily on
>> > data from the American Community Survey (2002) which provides a
>> > breakdown of each disability category into more specific categories
>> > allowing us to more precisely identify whether that particular
>> > disability affects someone's ability to play games. Unable to walk
>> > does not have the same effect on being able to play games as arthritis
>> > while both are considered a physical disability. Another problem with
>> > trying to define estimates is that elderly are overly represented in
>> > the total number of people with disabilities while at the same time it
>> > is known that elderly don't play games as much as the younger
>> > generations. The number of people in the baby boom generation is also
>> > very large. I tried to pull this data apart based on estimates based
>> > on some data I found on average number of people that play games and
>> > console ownership broken down into different age categories.
>> > Inevitably some extrapolations were made, I wish more accurate data
>> > was available. I corresponded with the US census office briefly and
>> > for future community surveys they told me they are considering
>> > including ability to use computer in their questionnaires. This data
>> > is currently not available in the 2002 survey.
>> >
>> > The statistics can be found here:
>> http://www.eelke.com/files/ga_stats.pdf
>> >
>> > Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, any feedback is
>> > appreciated.
>> >
>> > Cheers Eelke
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
>> > Department of CS&E/171
>> > University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
>> > Game interaction design www.eelke.com
>> >
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>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
> Department of CS&E/171
> University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
> Game interaction design        www.eelke.com
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