GDC Blind Gamers Experiences



What blind gamers want the

video game industry to know...

Compiled by Richard van Tol & Sander Huiberts

for the 2006 Game Developers Convention.

Writings are copyright their respective authors.







Thank you for taking the time to read this document.

What you will find here is a compilation of writings by gamers with a visual handicap about their personal gaming experiences from the past and present. Their stories have been collected through the Game Accessibility project (made possible by a financial contribution by NSGK (Nederlandse Stichting voor het Gehandicapte Kind) and the forum in order to give the video game industry a better understanding of what computer gaming means for a blind gamer.

There are many people in the professional game industry who unfortunately have never given thought to blind people playing computer games. Many seem to think that "blind people can't play games, because they are blind" (to quote a developer at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo).

Hopefully these gamers’ words will help you imagine what it is like to play a game while not being able to see and inspire you to make a change.

Richard van Tol

Sander Huiberts

Started losing my sight around 15/16 years old, had nothing useful by about 18/19.

I've played games since before I can even remember, starting on the Spectrum. The earliest system I have major memories of was the Atari ST, and my old loves on there were Silent Service 2 (submarine game) and the old classic Carrier Command. I played games for as long as I was able, and loved games that make you think on your feet. I adored the X-Com games, up to Interceptor which I did like but less so, enjoying their depth. I also loved Master of Orion 2, Lords of the Realm 2 and Alpha Centauri, as well as the much older Ascendancy. For action I liked Freespace 1 & 2, enjoyed Tachyon: The Fringe, and also enjoyed Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. I also had a soft spot for Diablo 2, and still own both Warcraft 2 with the Beyond the Dark Portal add on and all Command and Conquer RTS games up to Red Alert 2. I was also a big fan of Mechwarrior 2, although I didn't buy MW3 because I was having graphics card issues under 3d acceleration. I did buy MW4, but by then my sight was such that I wasn't able to play it effectively.

Whilst I enjoy the accessible Lone Wolf submarine game, I miss the feel of sub games like Silent Service 2 and Seawolf. The interface in Lone Wolf makes excellent use of 3d sound, and I believe the developer did a great job with it, I just find it too easy to remain hidden compared to SS2 or Seawolf where you're constantly on edge not knowing quite if you'll be detected. This is a type of game I’d very much like to play the "mainstream" incarnations of.

I understand that many games would be difficult to make "accessible", in some cases nigh on impossible, but I’d like to see some imagination put in to try and find games which can be made accessible rather than simply not realising how easy or hard a given game would be. From my sighted experiences I believe it would have been possible to make Starfleet Command 3 accessible, quite possibly the original Homeworld, and FPS games could include features as proven by Audio Quake. I know FPS levels would often be too complicated for blind players with areas to jump and other obstacles, but if audio playability is included at some level and a map editor is available then I’m sure people will design maps and possibly even whole campaigns specifically designed to allow blind players to enjoy the game independently.

I’d also like to add that making a game accessible won't just convince blind players to buy it, many of us have friends who play games and would love the chance to play against them in multiplayer modes.

Compared to the effort already put in for the various components of the games being created these days I don't think it would be too hard to include speech in the game using the SAPI SDK available from Microsoft, no recording is necessary just use the SAPI TTS (text to speech) system to say anything you deem relevant.

As someone who never really thought about people who were blind before my own sight loss I understand it can be awkward to see how these things could be achieved. I feel the best approach is to assume it can be achieved and to try and think in terms of solutions rather than problems, only declaring it impossible if you simply can't come up with a solution for a major issue.

I have great respect for the mainstream developers, having sampled the work of many of them over the years, and hope to be able to do so again some day.

Craig (22), United Kingdom

My name is Aaron, I am 13, I live in England. I have been blind for as long as I can remember, however, not since birth, however about 2 weeks later.

I think the first ever game I played was Tekken for the Playstation. Then it was the amusement arcades, the pinball machines, the fighting games there, and then the side scrollers. and then more consol games. And I still do play consol games (mostly things like Soul Caliber, and the shooters where you just aim and fire -- normally the monsters come right at you) and now I also play audio games, and Top Speed 2, etc.

I would really wanna play the 3D games out there, especially Beatdown: Fists of Vengence which is a "3D" version of an old school fighting-type side-scrolling game. This might sound confusing.

The gaming industry is very large and of course has a lot of companies. However these companies are making too many 3D games, I’d rather they'd make games more like Final Fight, with an option in the "options" menu to turn off the blind mode, so the sighted can play it in 3D. and in the menu’s and things, they could either use sapi, or voice actors. They could record sapi with the recording equipment they use and use it in the game. The "real" voice samples will also be the same. I dont really know what else to say, so to wrap this up, I really, really, really love games, no matter what they are! Kind regards,

Aaron (13), England

Hello, my name is John. I would love to play video games with more accessibility. I want to do this so that I can participate with sighted friends, because that's most of the friends I have. thanks a lot for letting us talk to you guys about gaming! with video games, I’m honestly pretty good for a totally blind person. when it comes to audio games, then I can play, but I’m always left alone! once again, thanks guys!

John

I’m Parham Doostdar and am from Iran . I’m 17 years old and i've been blind since when I can remember (not since birth though, I became blind 8 months afterwards.). The first sentence of my introduction might sound like Aaron's, but actually it changes from this part. My brothers liked Playstations or Atari (or however it's spelled) at my time. They bought games and I tryed to play it. Games like, EA sport's Fifa game, Konami's soccer games, Mortal Combat, Crash, Thumb rider (or maybe something else, since I can't remember it exactly). In PC games, i've tryed Prince of Persia "the Sands of Time", Fifa again, Konami again, Need for Speed Most Wanted and no need to mention that I couldn't do anything in playing "Call of Duty 2". I've liked to play like sighted people, play with sighted people, and be like, "my score was this"! I mean I have something to say, you know? but I never got this chance... but I’m hopeful I will. but in these games, I became successful in playing Mortal Combat and Tekken4. I know a friend who could play prince of persia, but I can't and couldn't.

Parham Doostdar (17), Iran

hello. my name is shaf. I am I blind 13 year old kid from the u.k. I am totally blind a play all the games like top spead 2 and monty, but we need more games accessible!

Shaf (13), United Kingdom

Hey there!

My name is Thomas Géczy. I was born in Hungary, and have been blind for my 14 years on earth. I've been into computers since age 5. At this time, my mom and dad had an old computer. Once I got older, age 8, my mother used to download games from the internet for my syster. These were pc games, like aldo, mario, lionking, boulder. and turoid.

These games were fun. I particulary liked turoid, a game in which your trying to catch a ball with the mouse. The ball made different toned sounds, high, low, and the cool thing was, if you clicked the left mouse button, a song would play. So my syster loved to play it under windows 3.1. I tried it out, but couldn't see where the ball was going, so lost the game. Was fun.

I haven't heard about audio games until age 11, after my first visit to the new world, America. After age 11, my mother, who stayed in the country, used to download games from jim kitchen, gmagames, and other fun developers. I used the demo of the games and was very happy. I particulary enjoyed sod, where 3d sound was used somewhat. I’m fond of 3d, its like being in a virtual world. I think there should be more 3d games.

The one thing that is very anoying to me is the size of games. I’m on a dial-up connection, and have been on one for my life. Never used DSL except in bookstores and my friends house. I've noticed that if we use some sort of technique in the server, the downloader of the game would be able to resume downloads. This resuming is very popular today. Unfortunetly, not many audio game sites allow this, and the one fustrating experience is when you have to redownload the 99 mb file.

Hopefully someone will get something out of this ; I’m not mad at anyone ; its just my opinions here. thanks for reading!

Thomas Géczy (14), Hungary/USA

Hello, my name is Chaman and I am 14 years old I was blind since birth and when I began using the computers it was really anoying because my brother use to play games such as grand theft auto white city and al those and I just wished and kept on asking myself why can I not play games. and then when someone introduce me to audio games I was very happy and then I thought the audio games comunity and the amount of games it offers is just tiny.

I would just like to see more 3D games devoloped so a blind and a parshally sited with a sited person can play and a blind person doesn't have to always look for someone blind to play with. I hope the gaming industry grows bigger as the sited world of games.

Thank you

Chaman (14)

Hello. I am Luke Hewitt, resident in England and I’m 23 (and about to start a PhD in philosophy). I was born registered blind, and use Braille, but have an extremely limited amount of vision, and have always played computer games.

While I was growing up, we owned first an Atari 2600, then an Amstrad Cpc 464 tape drive computer, and finally a Commodore Amiga and a Snes.

Though there were several games on each machine which I was unable to play, due to graphical complexities or too much text, I found many games that I could play and enjoy extremely.

For me, playing computer games is more than a simple test of reaction speed or quick thinking, even with the most simplistic games on the Atari. I have always felt that playing a game is tantamount to exploring another world with it’s own rules and history.

Though I have always longed to play rpg or strategy games, my site has made this not possible, so I’ve had to content myself with 2D platform games and scrolling, or one on one 2D fighting games.

While I was growing up, such games were common and I had many favourites such as the Turrican series on the Amiga, Golden Axe and final fight, Super Metroid, Castlevania 4 and the two Mega man X games on the Snes.

However, with the release of the Sony playstation in 1995, I found the amount of games I could play rapidly reduced. Since games that involve full 3D motion are too complex for me, I found myself rapidly left behind. Though I could still play one on one fighting games, every other game type I’d enjoyed previously was now deemed out of date.

Though the release of the Gameboy Advanced (and more specifically the Gameboy player), has made a few more 2D games more recently available, the majority of games produced today are, for me, unplayable. Furthermore, some 2D games feature text interface so complex, that even with the help of scripts or walkthroughs downloaded from the internet and read using speech, they still cannot be played by me.

I have now obtained (and in many cases finished), all the 2D games it’s possible for me to play for the Snes or Mega Drive consoles. My favourite game series such as Metroid, Mega Man and Castlevania have all evolved beyond the point where I can now play them.

Therefore when I discovered audio games last year, I thought it would be the perfect answer to my problem. No more text difficulties, and I could play 3D games as well as the next person. Furthermore, my long time ambition of playing Rpg’s might finally be realized.

However, I’m very sad to say that with only a couple of exceptions, I find audio game development to be years, (in terms of complexity) behind main stream games. This is by no means due to slackness on the part of the developers, I’ve found the Audio game developing community to be an extremely dedicated and hard working group. It is simply the huge difference in resources, time and people, between the main stream industry and the audio games industry. I’d love to see major companies like Capcom, Square or Nintendo doing something to help Audio game development. the audio Quake project proves that at least some forms of games, are adaptable to audio format, and since most games these days use huge amounts of voice acting to tell their stories, I see no reason why a company shouldn't take the time to make the few modifications it would take to create an audio game.

Most of all, I’d love to see an Audio rpg, even if it was only as simple as the first Rpg's produced on the Nes. the rpg market has grown absolutely huge, leading to massive online realms with hundreds of quests to explore such as World of warcraft or Ultima online, all of this totally inaccessible to visually impaired gamers. Though there are many text only rpg's on the internet, I have found the majority to involve a minimal amount of story and exploration, and to revolve only around raising a character’s stats in order to kill other players. for this reason, I think an Audio rpg should definitely be the next step in Audio game development.

Given my love of exploration, I’d also love to see some more games along the lines of Shades of doom, and since I've never been able to play any strategy game, any audio versions of this would be welcome to me.

In general, I’d say that audio games need to evolve, and one way of doing this may be with help from main stream companies.

Luke Hewitt (23), United Kingdom

Hi, I’m Mark, aged 29 from England. I've been blind since birth but have never been a big fan of shoot-me-up games. I've always liked sports management games and strategic/puzzle games. On the PC with sighted assistance I've played EA Sports total club manager for Soccer and International cricket captain. I also like Risk 2, Airport Tycoon and other similr games.

Mark (29), England)

Hello. I’d like to start off by saying that the games i've played have been very interesting and fun to listen to. But there are some games that I’d like to try, but can't play because they aren't accessible. Games like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. The Punisher and Max Payne are some others as well as gun and animal crossing for the nintendo gamecube. Why don't you guys try and put some sound layers in to the games. Things like a voice prompt that says "ammo" over and over until you get close enough to pick it up. Or maybe more verbal reading of text in a game's tutorial instead of reading it on the screen. Some other things you might consider are adding a talking invintory menue for your games. It's not really all that hard. You would simply use your directional pad to scrole through your choices and press the button to make your selection and a voice would say each item as you land on it. You could also give the player an option to find out how much health they have by pressing a button and to find out how much amunition they have in a particular weapon. and just as an afterthought, why don't you guys try listening to someone other than the sighted world. We're here too, and we'd like to play some of these games as well.

One more thing before I sign off. You could have a beeping sound that plays when you get close to a door and if the door is locked, a voice could say locked and tell you where you can find a key or a siccurity chip, which ever the case might be.

Anonymous

Hello. I am Jürgen Dengo from Estonia. I was born with no vision. It's a genetic problam, many of my relatives have it as well. I have played games since I know myself. Sometimes even so hard, that I nearly blew up a TV set with my Nintendo system. When I first got a computer. I started to play computer games. I haven't bought any games, because cracking is nearly allowed in our country. Nobody is going to check up my system.

But everything changed 2 years ago, I started making music with my friend Aleksei and since have I played less and less, but now I've started playing some games hard. I remember, that once I walked with my father through the yard of our Tallinn's Technical University and father told that he learned here once, but had to stop, because our family needed to be fed. I promised to complete his mission, but he said to me, that I have to keep my way, it's the right way for me. OK! Who cares, I’m going to do this anyway.

I’d like to play some more games, where you have to guide a civilisation to the top of the world and also some games, where you must fight your enemies one by one. So! More strategical and fighting games please.

and one thing more. Why is the gaming industry gone mad for money?

Can anyone tell me that?

Jürgen Dengo, Estonia

Hello, my name is André and I am from Brazil. I am blind since I was born, and play games since I had contact with Atari. The first accessible game I played was River Raid. Although not 100% accessible, I could tell when it was time to turn because of the shooting sound getting faster and faster. Then I played Street Fighter, another accessible game, for Megadrive and Super Nintendo. I found it accessible because of the sounds of the punches, kicks and fireballs being distinguishable even when they failed! Fighting games like Punchout for Nintendo were also accessible, since you knew, by timing, when the opponent would deliver his next punch. The games I loved to watch people play but could never think of playing personally were Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy, not because of being 3d, but because there was no indication of where the enemies were coming from and no voice options. Other games I would like to have accessible are Yu-Gi-Oh style games, because they are strategy games and make you have to think before playing a wrong card! I know that putting voice on games take a lot of memory that could be used to enhance graphics, but I also know that even for the industries, making accessible games will be awesome! Like it was mensioned here in the forum, blind people just cannot see, but can think perfectly if well stimulated, like any other human being. Other games I found inaccessible and that could have associated sounds for each color are Tetris, Dr. Mario, and such puzzle games! I also think that 2d games like Mario could have, just as in SuperLiam from L-works, an indication of how close you are from falling into the ground! Well that's all I can think of right now. Thanks for the opportunity!

André L. Baldo, Brazil

My name is Tyler and I am from the U.S. I have been interested in audio games ever since I tried outGMA Tank Commander. Now, I am hooked!

My favorite audio game is Lone Wolf. I also like the PCS games seletions. My idea for the industry is to include a voicing option in games’ Options-screen which would allow changing the sounds to distinguish them.

Tyler, USA

Hi. My name is Luke Yelavich, and I am 23, from Sydney, Australia. I am partially sighted, but can't really explain how much sight I actually have.

My first introduction to video games was when I was only 8 or so years old, at a friend's place. They had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) with a couple of games, Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. I wasn't really a fan of Zelda, and have never really been a fan of RPG games in general, but Super Mario Bros got me hooked into the platform/side scrolling games for life.

I then desired a Nintendo for my next birthday, but after some shopping around, my parents decided that a Sega Master System might be better, due to having better graphics. I have been a Sega person ever since. I would have to say that my two most favourite game genres are 1 on 1 fighting games, such as the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series, and 2D platform/side scrolling games such as the Sonic series on Master System and Megadrive consoles. I also enjoy the odd racing game here and there, such as a couple of the Need for Speed games.

I found out about audio games approximately 4 years ago, and have tried various games that have come out over that time. I am sorry to say, that for me at least, the gameplay compared to mainstream visual games doesn't even come close. This is no reflection on the developers of the games, as they put in many hours of work to make the games what they are. I think that it has something to do with how I have been able to enjoy the ritchness and beauty of well designed game levels and backgrounds in many a visual game, and am still expecting to hear something more detailed when I play any audio game. While such depth of level scenery may not entirely be possible with audio, I do feel that more could be done to enritch the game experience, and gameplay of audio ames. Such things as making controls react the same audibly as their visual counterparts.

My personal wish is for a fighting game, like Street Fighter, with online multi-player capability, with such modes as tournaments, an all out every man for himself arena mode, etc. It would be nice for other totally blind people to enjoy a genre of gaming that has been so popular for many years amongst their sighted peers, and would personally like to experience a fighting game in an audio only manner. Till then, I will happily enjoy the various fighting games I have for my Megadrive, Mega 32X, and Mega CD which I obtained second hand, and still play to this day.

Luke Yelavich (23), Australia

My name is Mark, and I am a visually impaired 22 year old living in Canada. for the longest time, I had always wanted to be able to play video games, and in fact, whenever there was a game that I could even play in a limited capacity, I would do it. As a young child, I would play the first levels of the mario brothers game on nintendo, while sitting extremely close to the screen. and I would consider it a major accomplishment if I could even come close to completing the second level. but obviously, these experiences were extremely limiting, and while enjoyable as a younger child, they did not remain satisfying as I grew older. I also experimented with street fighting games, as I could respond to the games moves with my own upon being prompted by a friend. again, however, this wasn't as satisfying, as I was dependent on other people's input in order to play successfully, and it quickly got tedious. My first experience with a truly accessible video game…

Mark (22), Canada

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