Hi Bryan,
That's just it though. A small time developer hasn't a chance of
competing with a multi million dollar mainstream game company for a
number of reasons. For one reason the major game platforms like the Play
Station is closed to everyone except a select few major players in the
game industry.
Believe me I should know. I once looked into developing games for my
Play Station II, contacted Sony about how to go about it, and found out
more than I wanted to know. First of all it costs several thousand
dollars to license, obtain, and use the Play Station platform
development kits. Then, Sony has a certain specification all games must
follow in order to qualify for development on the platform. If they
don't meet those specifications and qualifications Sony will not allow
you to release said game for their platform. So they call all of the
shots in terms of what games can and can not even be released for the
Play Station. Then, there are legal documents, special non-disclosure
agreements, etc up the butt to waid through and sign. in short, after
several thousand dollars, several months of development, lots of
paperwork and legal wrangling, Sony may review your game and decide it
doesn't meet specifications, and will not qualify for official release
until Sony decides to approve the title.
Basically, my point is that the Sony Play Station has never been
designed for the casual or small time game developer. You have to be a
major player, big game developer, to even afford the licenses and obtain
the development tools necessary to create a game for the Play Station in
the first place. Even then you have little say in the matter as Sony has
to approve your title, approve any changes that doesn't meet with
current specifications, etc. So if you want to add this or that which
might make the game more accessible but happens to violate their
specifications the game will not be accepted until that feature is
removed. sucks doesn't it?
So in my own way I sympathize with this lawsuit. Sony has created an
impossible standard for a small time developer like myself, have shut us
out completely from developing on there platform, and adopted standards
and specifications that take absolutely no consideration for
accessibility features. Unless Sony decides to adopt accessibility the
Play Station and their games will remain as they currently are. Which
either by accident or design happens to be about the most accessible
game console out there right now if you want to work at it. Talk about
irony.
Bryan Peterson wrote:
Let's face it people, mainstream accessibility is probably never going
to happen even though the technology is and probably has been there
for a lot of years. Or if it does it's going to take a small time
developer developing an accessible game so groundbreaking that the
mainstream devs can't help but take notice. And even should that
happen, let's face it. The dev or devs might still not be convinced.
Or they'd try and find some way to get the dev responsible for this
groundbreaking title to cease any future development, be it hush money
or something else just so they didn't have any competition. Not
necessarily very realistic I'll admit but who really knows what a big
corporation will do these days if they feel threatened? Even if the
developer was not in violation of any copyrights they might still take
issue. And anyway they'd have to develop said title for one of the
major gaming platforms.
---
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