[games_access] Game Accessibility not taken seriously enough?

[Barrie Ellis]

Ditto, John. I think whilst it's important to try to make mainstream 
developers aware of game accessibility - because on occasion it really works 
(thinking of Valve's Half-Life 2 closed-captions, WARP's pure audiogame Real 
Sound: The Wind's Regret, Namco's PC version of Star Trigon with proper 
one-switch mode, Peggle with colour-blind mode, etc.) - the people making a 
real, lasting difference right now are the indies. You're much, much more 
likely to see positive change in games by approaching indie developers in my 
experience. Most are willing to try to add extra features - and some go 
above and beyond (such as Ovine by Design's Whack-a-Monty-Mole, PugFugly's 
The Pyramid, Thomas Westin's Terraformers, and I can go on and on and on). 
The mainstream still seem to think adding a way to reconfigure your controls 
as you want them an unnecessary luxury. And how many people are left-handed 
in the world?! Long way to go...

Barrie


--------------------------------------------------
From: "John Bannick" <jbannick at 7128.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 8:49 PM
To: <games_access at igda.org>
Subject: [games_access] Game Accessibility not taken seriously enough?

> Blaze Eagle,
>
> Your post made me think.
> Maybe it isn't just that "It all boils down to money"
>
> Most people make video games because they like making video games.
> It's like acting. If you want to get rich, don't become an actor.
>
> Non-independent companies, however, have huge expenses and have to be 
> bottom-line driven, as a company.
> Indies, on the other hand, may have some wiggle room.
>
> A good example is Niels Bauer games.
> Niels is adapting his games to be blind-accessible.
> This will cost him, by my estimate, about 20% more in time and money.
> Which he will not recoup in sales.
> I don't know his financial structure; but I suspect that he has no 
> investors bugging him.
> I do know he started doing this at Dark's instigation.
>
> Our little company, 7-128 Software, is totally independent.
> We totally self-fund.
> No VC. No stockholders.
> Hence, we can do what we jolly well please.
> And it pleases us to build games that not only are fun (well, we think so) 
> but are for the most part accessible to gamers with special challenges.
>
> Where this ramble goes is that the SIG, and Web sites like Mark's, 
> Brian's, Barrie's, Carl's, etc. all have an influence on us insofar as 
> they highlight the need for accessibility, encourage it, offer support for 
> it, and are a good source of related ideas.
>
> So I'd say that for indie developers, it's not just $$.
> If we keep pinging indies especially, then we can make happen more 
> accessible games.
>
> End of rant.
>
> John
>
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