First we watched a video involving John Cage's silent piece known as 4'33 which was actually presented in a theatre to a paying audience. Personally I found this pretentious as no sound can work in drama, but for me a musical piece is meant to be heard. Granted it allows people to hear things they otherwise wouldn't and contemplate, but the same could be said and done with meditation.
We were then asked to find and play a number of audio based games which would be developed for and played by the visually impaired.
Proving to be a very difficult task I decided to think outside the 'box' and not just about video games. Therefore thinking about the games I play in my own spare time I thought that 'Dungeons and Dragons' could perhaps be played by the visually impaired since it requires just the use of the player's imagination. However, if the person playing is completely blind and hasn't had much experience with places and things then this game may not be possible for them to play as they don't have anything to draw from in order to visualise thing in their heads. Also, unless they have indented/braille dice and sheets it is hard to think about how the visually impaired would roll the dice and then compare their roll to their skills unless the Dungeon Master did it for them. Also the game could use audio in order to describe the environment for the player and have them say what they wanted to do e.g. like a text adventure game only audio based then perhaps my idea isn't far off. In fact, some of my favorite games have a lot of talking in them, therefore perhaps the visually unpaired would enjoy an interactive novel in which the story is told to them before they can decide how to react at certain points with a number of choices given to them.
Perhaps if I was ever given the task to develop a game for the visually impaired then I would maybe do this method as it would allow me to further explore my interest in voice acting and create a script for a game which I enjoy doing in my spare time.
Luckily the lecturer then came to the rescue with a website listing a number of games which the visually impaired could play. The site known as 'audiogames.net' featured the following games which I was able to play unlike other games that I couldn't download.
3D Snake:
The classic game of snake that told the user to use the up and down arrow keys in order to select an option they would say aloud such as "Start New Game", "Speaker Test" and "Exit". Therefore for someone new to playing a game for the visually impaired I decided to close my eyes whilst playing. Unfortunately my play test of this game was unsuccessful as I couldn't tell when I was approaching something to eat or when I was nearing a wall since the sounds were not distinct enough. Thus I got very confused and kept losing as I understand others did to.
Star Trek - Final Conflict:
Having written above my thoughts for a game in which it described the environment to the blind player I ended up finding this game that had the player using the directional keys and the Enter key in order to select the area of the Enterprise (spaceship) to go to and then what you wanted to do there. It was cool as it played sounds I would associate with the show and the inside the ship itself. However it didn't explain what I was meant to be doing and used a female voice that was meant to sound machine like, thus it was hard to tell what she was saying most of the time. Therefore once I got too confused I decided to activate the self destruct just for the heck of it. This gave me a good laugh as I wasn't expecting it to blow up the whole ship, even if it was short lived since it gave me a new one almost instantly.
Entombed:
I was almost about to give up finding a game that would be playable for me until a friend of mine recommended Entombed on the company's website Driftwood. I was glad I took his advice as the moment you start the game you are told a story about a long lost city full of riches from a very cool sounding narrator whilst fantasy music plays in the background. This got my interest especially since it sounded very atmospheric and used some foley to add to the effectiveness of the game. I was also very pleased and surprised to see that you could choose your race, pick your class and even your character's name which the game would speak out to you. Sadly however, the game replaced its awesome initial narrator with a Microsoft announcer voice in order to speak the player's name. Thus whenever it spoke I could hardly make out what it was saying.
Overall though I feel that this was the best game I had played since it sounded epic at the start and included turn based combat as seen in other games such as 'Final Fantasy' in which I could attack, defend, use items and other such things. Therefore, if another game such as this was made and still included the cool voice together with clearer dialogue I recon it would make for an even greater experience.
Harvard Referencing:
- Driftwood Audio Entertainment. (2010) 'Entombed' Game. Available at: http://www.blind-games.com/blind.games.download.aspx (Accessed: 9/6/2013).
- Unknown. (Unknown) AudioGames.net. Available at: http://audiogames.net/listgames.php (Accessed: 9/6/2013).
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