Rachel Myro from KQED interviewed me about gaming and accessibility during the week of GDC. Major thanks to the Lighthouse here in SF for setting me up with the opportunity! We talked about how I went blind, what life was like when I had vision, and the lack of immersive gaming for blind people. There is just no blind equivalent to Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Wipeout, Payday, Borderlands, Portal, Half-Life, Call of Duty, and all the other gaming series I was really into prior to losing my sight. We have audio games relegated to basic casino and dice games, card games, Monopoly, Uno, and even Cards Against Humanity. I have dice games on my iPhone, a suite of BLindfold games which are developed specifically for the visually impaired, but the closest thing to any of the games I used to play is The Nightjar.
A game with a simple UI where you move your character forwards by tapping your thumbs in an alternating fashion to emulate steps. YOu turn a quarter turn with a swipe to the left or right on the screen. You are trapped on a space station being sucked towards the event horizon of a black hole and have been abandoned by your crew, and the station is getting attacked by aliens at the same time. You have to avoid the aliens and make your way past audio obstacles to safety, all the while being guided by the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch who is in a vessel outside observing your progress. Pop on some high-quality headphones and off you go into the world of Unity 3D positional audio.
I’m happy that more developers are beginning to consider new ways of approaching games apart from just keeping them primarily visual. The nintendo Switch is the only console right now with a game almost fully playable by blind and sighted gamers alike. 1-2-Switch contains a series of hilarious minigames that are primarily tactile and audio based. Figuring out how many marbles are in a box via the insanely intricate vibration technology built into the Switch controllers, listening for different kinds of pitches and swinging at the right time for baseball, being the first to draw and shoot your opponent in a quickdraw game, flailing away at the air with ping pong while listening to the ball and timing your swings appropriately, all the way to banging your chest like a gorilla to attract a mate calling out beat patterns for you to copy. The actual gaming UI on-screen is minimalist and isn’t important at all with the exception of a few specific visual games, such as pretending to be a model and holding certain poses, or unwrapping the chain off of a treasure chest before your opponent. Being able to experience all of this with my friends with whom I used to play all those visual games beforehand has been absolutely amazing. I could participate again while remaining independent with the game controls.
I haven’t tried Madden as I’m not a football fan, but through the information coming from EA, I may give NHL a try again! Enjoy the article and feel free to share it far and wide!
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13827545