In the beginning...

I suppose for the first actual story I should explain how this blog really came to be. It was about half a year ago, and I was playing Command and Conquer: Generals on my laptop. I had to mute the sound because I was in a meeting (meetings are a time when I do some of my best gaming). However I was playing the story mode and it greatly annoyed me that I couldn’t hear the commands that I was being given, nor could I understand how the story was progressing. I searched and searched for some sort of subtitle option, but alas I could find none.

After a few minutes of frustrated playing I gave up and switched to a decidedly story-less skirmish and continued from there. However a thought had occurred to me, I had become frustrated in these few minutes about not being able to hear a game, how would it be if I couldn’t hear at all? Certainly that would render this particular game unplayable, as well as many others.

I can only assume there are some hard core deaf gamers out there. If there is one thing I’ve learned from my studies in communication disorders it’s that a lot of disabled people find very creative ways of doing pretty much anything. Being deaf won’t stop you from doing most jobs, enjoying a lot of hobbies, or playing games, so it’s frustrating to me that game studios don’t stop and take that into consideration.

I think having a subtitle option is a simple fix that doesn’t take long to implement (though I admit it does take a bit of doing, but I feel the benefits outweigh the cost), and it strikes me as odd that the game studio (EA in this case) didn’t take the time to add subtitles. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had an experience like this, whether you’re a deaf gamer or just a gamer that happens to live in a noisy area (or tends to play games in meetings like I do).

Anyway, that’s how this idea came about, from that point on I began to take a more critical look at how accessible each game I played was. A surprisingly high amount of games become increasingly difficult when you remove the sound alone, let alone make other changes that might render a game unplayable to different types of people. In the future I hope to use this space to bring up a number of other issues, provide feedback on game improvements, and even review games based on how accessible they are (and of course my general experience with them. A very accessible game can still suck hardcore.)

Stay tuned!