And let's face it folks, not everybody's willing to accept the possibility
of more future games being accessible. They'll want all the old titles made
accessible as well, not just the new ones. That'll put a damper on the
accessibility movement right there. Mainstream devs might, with the proper
effort, be persuaded to build accessibility into some if not all their
future titles but no way can we expect them to go back and make all their
old titles accessible. The only way that might happen is if the games were
released as part of an anniversary collection and probably not even then.
Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of pizza?
Vender: No pizza. Only Khlav Kalash.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Visually impaired gamer sues Sony Online.
Hi Chrissy,
Well, I don't know that adding accessibility would necessarily double game
pricing, but it would cost the game companies something to add all the
same. Certainly it wouldn't come free, of course, and it would take some
extra time and effort to add. Never-the-less it isn't as expensive as you
might think.
The main thing to keep in mind here is that most of the major game
companies use a game engine to save time and energy on game development.
They can create several games using basically the same code since all of
the primary features of the game is already built into the engine itself.
If they would add accessibility to some of their game engines, or had done
so from the beginning it wouldn't cost them much to create several
accessible games using the same technology. This is one of the things the
Agrip project tried to prove with their Audio Quake project.
When the Agrip project started out they took an off the shelf game engine,
Quake, modified it, added some accessibility, and wanted to use that as a
spring board to show game companies, new game developers, etc ways in
which a fully modern game engine and game could be made accessible. I know
several games such as Elite Force I and Elite Force II that use the Unreal
engine as the code base. If that engine could be upgraded with
accessibility then every game developer who uses that engine could easily
include accessibility to every title.
Likewise in 2007 Core Design released a new game engine called the Legend
Engine. It has been used to create a number of games including Tomb Raider
Legend, Tomb Raider Underworld, and Tomb Raider Anniversary. Now, if they
had spent the time and money developing accessibility into the Legend
Engine in the first place every game they created afterwards would include
the same degree of accessibility features, and the cost of adding
accessibility would be paid for many times over after several successful
titles. However, that only works if they add accessibility from the
outset.
The problem, of course, is all of these companies have not done that. If
this person were to win in court it could open up a landslide of
eexpensive court cases against game companies suing for this or that game
to be made accessible. That could be very costly because instead of adding
accessibility once during the development of their game engine they now
have to upgrade each and every game that can be made accessible which is a
feature these companies see no financial reason to do. Adding access to
new games is easy enough, but going back and upgrading hundreds of
previously released titles is asking too much. The simple fact is once a
game company releases a game title it sells x number of copies, and then
public interest in the game fades. No one in the sighted world is going to
rush out and buyan upgrade for said game if the only new feature is
increased accessibility, and of course companies like Sony know this all
too well.
ChB wrote:
While I, like everyone else, would love the idea of having every single
game
accessible in the future, it will not happen.
Think about how costly this would be, development would raise the price
of a
game to probably double what it is now.
And to an extent I could understand that the sighted gamers will hit the
roof when they are forced to pay outrageous prices for content they would
never need or use.
Again, I would love to see this happen, nut chances are very very slim
that
this is happening. We are too few in numbers really to be a target
customer
for those games. The only thing I can see happening is maybe them adding
reading out loud in all menus and stuff so that it is easier to navigate.
This should be easy to do and would not really cost more, I assume.
They already have subtitles for hearing impaired gamers but the
adjustments
for that group are so much easier anyway, because you do not have to
change
the game itself at all.
chrissy
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