Hi Scot.
As I said, it's about alternatives. I fully agree a completely human
narrated version with audio gameplay clips and high production values would
be pretty dam awesome, however realistically is that possible? especially
with the distribution.
Formatting in print and braille just takes, ---- well formatting the
document with headings and paragraphas, but what your talking here in audio
terms is tantamount to a full on audio production. If anyone wants to do
this and can arrange the cd burning that is fantastic, but I'm going on what
I know to be possible.
As regards organizations and hard copies your likely correct, however
equally bare in mind in the Uk at least there are organizations dedicated to
producing braille material, for example prisons have a brailling service
that you can pay for, and while I do not know the rates for a charity such
as the audiogames.net game accessibility special interest group, it'd be
fairly easy to find out. I'd also suggest people in the Us and other
countries look into any brailling services that exist as well.
After that we can get an idea of production costs and then see what money is
needed and how much people may or may not have to contribute to the project.
All the best,
Dark.
There is always more to know, more to see, more to learn. The world is vast
and wondrous strange and there are more things benieth the stars than even
the archmaesters of the citadel can dream.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Chesworth" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 10:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] braille/large print/other media for audio games (was
info games game engines)
Hi Dark,
As usual, I respectfully disagree about some of that :)
Granted, it would be much much simpler to send electronic content in
to a bunch of organizations and let them handle production. The same
could be said for the print and Braille versions. Tbh, I've got
nothing at all against the idea of trying that first to keep the cost
to a minimum. It might work, and then everyone's a winner. However,
what I suspect you'll find is that unless you've got a personal
connection with someone at each organization or someone there who
already digs audio games, it's fairly likely that the electronic copy
will get filed away somewhere and not distributed to the people they
have contact with beyond an initial run. Before audio paid the bills
here, I worked for a few charities, and saw this happen many times. It
might not turn out to be practical for the community to produce hard
copy, but if there's any way to make it so, I think that hard copy
would stand a higher chance of reaching relevant people, because
reclaiming cupboard space is often a higher priority than keeping the
network drives tidy in many offices nowadays. A cynical view perhaps,
but like I said, I've seen it happen enough to believe it.
Two thoughts spring to mind about a synth narration. Firstly, we're
coming at this as people who use a computer for hours each day. Most
of us probably have a favourite synth that we're comfortable with, and
most of us have probably reached a point where we naturally tune out
the robot voice and just process the words it's churning out. That's
not the mindset of people when they're less familiar with computers.
Having crunched the numbers in previous jobs that had audio versions
of newsletters that were narrated by synths, I can tell you that the
response was pretty low and the dissatisfaction was pretty high. I
used to work next to a chap who had plenty of people on his books that
would prefer to call him every month to find out what was happening
rather than listen to the newsletter, because the synth did nothing
for them. Synths haven't gotten markedly better since, and our target
audience seems likely to be of a similar mindset, so I suspect that
even though it'd be easier, it'd be something of a waste of time to
produce an audio version that wasn't narrated by an actual human.
Secondly, can you imagine the debate surrounding choosing which synth?
*shudders*
Regarding trailers or at least some content specific to audio not
being necessary, that seems akin to saying "well ok, we'll put out a
print version, but we're not doing any formatting specific to that
version, nothing to draw peoples attention to the takeaway points if
they're skim reading". It just doesn't make sense for people not to
hear some actual audio gaming taking place given that they're
absorbing information in the perfect context when they're listening to
a CD. It's like the sound version of that old saying about a picture
being worth a thousand words isn't it. I like your writing style a lot
and am looking forward to seeing what you cook up, but think this is a
situation where hearing some well thought out snippets of game play
with explanations would do more to get newbies excited than reading
about it, no matter how well the content is written.
Scott
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