Hi Darren.
I'm not sure. For a game like shades, just as with what I've heard of
papasanga, the very lack of visuals is what is appealing to sighted players
because of the atmosphere
and challenge it represents.
It is true that even in these cases some sort of graphical logo or title is
needed just to show the person the game is running, but actually a lot of
audio games already have this, all draconis, troopanum etc (if you listened
to justin's podcast he talks about getting his brother to do the picture for
troop one).
Games like entombed could get away with text only and essentially be
markited as glorified gamebooks, or text games ---- much as Sryth is.
funnily enough, the audio games that would be hardest to markit would be
those with simple graphics like sound rts, castaways etc.
funnily enough, I think the hardest audio games to sell would be those with
a rudimentary graphical interface like sound rts, time of conflict or even
castaways. graphics are so much a part of games for sited players it's
actually quite hard to explain how weerd it is when first trying audio games
not! to have graphics.
I found it so myself, and I had synaesthesia and far more experience relying
on my hearing to compensate for my limited vision to help me get used to it
than a normal sighted player would.
%70 of the concern of sighted players is! graphics, ---- look at how new
consoles are markited, and even though many indi pc games have very retro
graphics, it's stil graphics that is the concern.
For instance, there is a new remake of my favourite graphical Turrican
platformer being developed.
What is the first thing that the developer says? ---- it'll support more
graphics in the background of levels than previous remakes.
Even though turrican and it's remakes stil look at best like very good Snes
games, this is what the developer saw as an important thing in his remake,
and that's for a game who's gameplay isn't heavily graphically motivated.
While there are some people who play games like angband with it's simple
graphic tyles or ascii, or dwarf fortress which have very stil graphics and
no animations at all, they are very much a specialized group.
btw, and Animation would be hell! to do for an audio game and would probably
take almost as long as making the game itself, sinse it's one of the major
things in a graphical game to be considered.
I can't quite explain it completely without this message getting very long,
but animation vs stil pictures is rather like the difference betwene hereing
the sound of a gunshot then hereing the sound of someone dying, and hereing
a fully dramatized shooting scene with ambience, positional sound, footsteps
etc.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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