Out with the old

Just popping by to wish you all a happy 2008. I know I said I'd resume posting this week but the post-holiday madness is still going strong so I'll have to postpone until next week. I hope you're enjoying this time, and I shall see you all at some point next week!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

From whatever walk of life you happen to find yourself, I wish you all the very happiest of holidays!

Regular updates return next week!

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!

Welcome to Accessing Games!

Welcome one and all to Accessing Games. Let me take a moment to explain what this blog is all about and what you can expect from it.

I am currently a student, taking a major in Computer Science and a minor in Communication Disorders (specializing in American Sign Language). I hope to marry these two degrees to create programs to aid disabled people, something that's always interested me. I have also, for a good majority of my life, been an avid gamer, all the way back to playing games on my old disk loaded Apple II. I have played countless games over the years, and a good majority of them I have enjoyed (though there have been some stinkers, believe me). However an aspect of games has always fascinated me, wondering how accessible games are for disabled people and people different from myself. Whether deaf people can play the games I play, how text heavy games effect people with dyslexia, how certain cultures view aspects of a game differently then I. I felt that I should give these musings a place, and thus I have created this blog.

So again welcome to Accessing Games. I hope that if nothing else you gain a different perspective on games then you previously had. So often the little things in games can change the experience entirely for different people, and I hope to explore that more fully here. I will be (hopefully) putting up one article a week, so stay tuned!