Re: Opinions on what makes an audio game engaging
I'm afraid sightless combat, that playing a mainstream game with sighted assistance wouldn't convey the sort of mechanics I'm talking about.
Lets take a simple example because the sort of thing I mean is not something that can be explained, but something that needs to be seen and experienced.
to take a simple example, in original mega man from 1986, the boss cutman would react to your movements. If you were close to cutman, he'd jump away, if you were a distance away he'd throw his rolling cutters. The rolling cutters fly in an arc like a boomerang, thus meaning if your too far away they'll arc up and hit you.
So what you need to do is constantly adjust your position to cutman's. When he comes towards you you move back, when he throws his cutters you need to judge their angle relative to you and jump them. Also bare in mind Mega man's jumping mechanics are as complex as marrio's, that being that you don't just get a fixed hight jump, you need to hold the jump button and the left or right buttons.
Now, theoretically you could have a sighted person saying "hay he's in front of you, jump back. Now shoot! now run backwards" or the like, but you would always be working on that person's reactions, you would not have the experience of tracking the position of cutman, and mega man and cutman's rolling cutters, and the potential firing range of mega man's megabuster.
This is what I mean by "mainstream" mechanics, and playing with a sighted person just won't cover it since you need that instant capacity for judgement, to actually experience all that spacial data going to your brain, which is just not something you'd be able to experience if someone else were describing.
The other problem with mainstream games, as a yardstick for audiogame development is of course the resource problem. Most people say "mainstream games" and mean something huge and complex, and bemoan the lack of hugeness and complexity in audiogames.
In all the time I've been here though, what strikes me is that audiogames need to get the simple things right first, and the basic design down, after that we can worry about not having millions to spend on development .
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