Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
men (and reward players) who are violent, greedy, wanton, and monomaniacal. To
condemn games for girls on the basis that they're stereotypical is to establish an
unfair double standard.
Although it took them a while to get around to it, Microsoft now leads the world in
making their operating system and office products available to people with disabili-
ties of various kinds. The game industry, regrettably, remains far behind. Its origins
in arcade and twitch gaming have produced an unquestioned assumption that
games are only for people with excellent eyesight and good hand-eye coordination.
But many people who don't possess these abilities also would like to play games,
and you should consider ways to make your game more accessible to them.
Physical impairments fall into three general categories: visual, auditory, and mobility.
Vision-Impaired Players
Vision impairments fall into several subcategories that require slightly different
adjustments. In any case, you should provide audio cues to go with visual cues.
Ver y few events in a video game should be silent ones. When a player selects a unit,
have the unit acknowledge its selection with a sound. When the player gives an
order, presses a button, or chooses a menu item, be sure to indicate it with an audi-
ble cue. These cues can be quite subtle; there's no need to ring loud bells, but make
sure the player hears something, even if only a little
tick
sound.
PLAYERS WITH LOW VISION
You can help some players with cataracts and similar conditions by giving them
brighter, more high-contrast images. Most likely, these players will already have
turned up the brightness and contrast on their monitors, but your game can fur-
ther augment this by letting players adjust the contrast in your game, assuming
that you have a display engine powerful enough to support this feature. Also, make
the textures in your game available for modification. Vision-impaired players can
then edit your textures to meet their own needs.
Be sure to include enough contrast in your user interface elements as well as your
game world. Don't try to be cool by using black-on-black or gray-on-gray menus or
indicators.
Increasing brightness or contrast alone is not enough to help people with certain
low vision conditions such as macular degeneration. If you really want to make a
game that vision-impaired players can see well, you will need to do further research.
Institutions such as The LightHouse and the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins
University (both in the USA) may be able to direct you to additional resources.
