accessible games

When I started working in this field, 14 months ago, I thought that the main problem about the develop of this accessible games was only an economic one. Although this problem exists, it is not exclusive to this kind of games. In some of the cases it is easier to find support for this ones. I was wondering whether I could find the answer to this problem. Since then, I have been looking for the key to understand this problem.

After months of studying the accessible games that have been developed, in my opinion, there is another problem that could explain the lack of work in this field.

Actually, there are two types of accessible games for blind, audiogames and adapted videogames. In most cases, audiogames (audiogames.net) are boring and difficult to play and adapted videogames are expensive to develop. 

On one hand, people who have extensive knowledge of visual impairment have been developing this audiogames, which are games without image and only based on sound. This makes it unattractive to no blind people. All this games are based on action-reaction, that is, you hear a sound and do something. This game system is not a challenge for the player. So, in my opinion, this people haven´t got a great knowledge about game developing.

On the other hand, we have the adapted videogames for blind that have been developed by gaming companies. The knowledge that gaming companies have about videogames have been made them attractive to play, but these games were not designed thinking about blind people. It makes this adaptation an enormous and expensive work. For this reason, in many cases, the only option is to use the action-reaction system to adapt it. Due to this, it becomes unattractive to them, so, blind people are not going to buy these games, and that makes the investment made does not have benefits.

But, it is possible to design games for both, blind and no blind people? I believe that this is possible if you make things in a different way.

Take the case of the game I´m developing, called Metaltauro. This videogame consists in crossing a labyrinth and defeat the monster. The main difficulty of this game is orient yourself in the labyrinth. Also you have to fight against some enemies that you´ll find in the labyrinth´s corridors.

I could have designed an audiogame, using sounds and an action-reaction game play, or I could have designed a videogame for no blind people, and after that, adapt it for blind people. In this case, using an extra game mode that could be activated by pressing a button. But this will increase the development time and also its cost.

I propose a different way to develop the game which is, designing it first for blind  and after that adapt it to the others.

At first, you have to take into account how a blind person orients himself in the real life, that is, using the white cane for walking and hearing the environment sounds to get himself located.

So, this is the start point to design the game. The main character will have a white cane and I will use environment sounds to give to blind players some information about the objects position and the environment in which they are.

After that, I will adapt it for not blinded players, to make this game attractive for both.

As the main character uses a lance to attack and defend himself, I'll use the white cane for the blind as this weapon moreover is necessary to know how to use it.

The use of this weapon as a white cane requires very precise handling, so, it is necessary to use a suitable system. Currently there are some controls on the market that can fulfill this mission.

The Nintendo Wii Remote Plus controller is a very good option because of the precision and its intuitive way of handling. You´ll have to use this controller as the handle of the white cane or the lance.

These ones could be some of the keys to develop accessible games. As a result of using this way of designing you could get an audio visual adapted game (ava game) without using an extra mode to adapt it and that is attractive to play. In fact, without create an extra mode, the price of development will not be increased.

According to this, the design of attractive games without an extra cost in which blind and no blind people can play, is not an impossible work.

But, these kind of games will have more sales? I´m convinced, because a new target is added.

Let´s analyze this new target to see if it is a good one. Actually in the world, there are about 45 million blind people and 135 million with serious problems of view. Supposing that only around 10% of them could be potential clients and only the 10% of them will buy this game, the sales would be increased in more than 2 million units, which is not bad at all.

I disagree with those who say that blind people do not buy videogames, and due to this, that it will never be a good business. Most of us used to think that people over 50 years old would never play videogames, and if they would, it wouldn´t play with their sons or grandsons.

And then arrived titles like “Brain Training” for Nintendo DS, aimed particularly to this audience, and became into a world record of sales. After that, Nintendo created the Wii console with a revolutionary control system with an easier and more intuitive handling. And all the family started to play videogames together. The console sold more units than PS3 and Xbox together.

In conclusion, I think that we can develop better accessible games if we make a good design from the beginning, taking into account all the keys that we need to get it. Also there are new technologies that can be used to this end, such as new controller systems.

Probably, in the not too distant future, these game´s development won´t be a way to help and it will become into a very profitable business.