Welcome Steven! Allowing both blind and sighted players to seamlessly work and play together has always been a goal for us. Around half of our playerbase is blind, and we've had blind and sighted people playing side by side since the late 1990's. It's hardly new.
I think the key to getting the blind and sighted to play together is to simply not surface the information. A blind-hating troll who can't tell if someone is blind or not will have a lot more difficulty finding targets. Frankly, the opposite problem exists too - I've seen close knit groups of blind players that intentionally excluded sighted players simply on the basis of being sighted. Again, not being able to tell if someone is sighted limits this quite a bit. That said, this only works well if the game is pretty close to equally accessible to both the sighted and blind. If both types of player aren't on a level playing field, there will always be those who claim one group is better or worse and try to make a big deal out of it. Dennis Towne Alter Aeon MUD http://www.alteraeon.com On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 6:08 PM, Steven Strait <crimsonr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey there everyone, I'm Hatred, a friend of Aprone. I've been reading > through the posts about his latest game, Castaways, and I've noticed a small > topic about Bridging the Gap between Sighted and Blind gamers. Figured I'd > toss in my thoughts on the topic since I have a different perspective than > most of you do. > > First up, I think that having Blind and Sighted gamers playing together, > either competitively or cooperatively, would be amazing and I fully support > the idea. However, as a Sighted gamer, I've seen a lot of the bad things > that can come from it so I have to warn you that if it's done incorrectly, > you could end up having a lot more problems than you'd want. From what I've > seen while browsing through the emails here and the forums at > Audiogames.net, the Blind gaming community is full of awesome people that > truly want to play new and inventive games. You guys seem eager to explore > together, to build together, and to wage war together. That's awesome, and > as a gamer I love that. Heck, that's one of the reasons I've been pushing > Aprone to do more multiplayer games! I want to play with you guys too! > Unfortunately, there are many Sighted gamers that don't feel the same. > > The majority of Sighted gamers are, in essence, similar to Blind gamers. > They want to relax and enjoy the games they love with cool people. However, > there are many that feel that they have the right to ruin the fun for > everyone. Hackers, Spammers, Trolls, and just regular old Idiots run rampant > on many multiplayer games, set on causing havoc for the sake of their own > twisted fun. Aprone and I actually first met in a small game called Babo > Violent 2, a multiplayer shooter game. We played together, and eventually > became good friends. The game was fast, fun, and easy to pick up and play. > However, it had little to no hack protection. I'll admit, I was one of the > Hackers that found a lot of the security holes and had some fun seeing what > I could do with the game. However, I wasn't malicious about it. I simply did > it on my own, away from other players so as not to ruin their fun. > Unfortunately, a large number of players thought differently. They ran > rampant, making themselves invincible, cheating in the game, harassing other > players, and even crashing the servers if they were bored. At one time > players couldn't even get into a game because the servers were down > constantly. It's sad but true, some people truly enjoy causing other people > grief. > > Now, I'm not saying that you all should avoid having sighted players play > with you. By all means, I think that goal is great and you should pursue it > full force. However, be aware that with it comes some pretty hefty problems. > It will require developers to rethink how they code their games. They'll > have to take into consideration some form of anti-cheat programming, or even > have a way for admins to remove cheaters from the game. It's definitely > doable but will require a lot more work to make it happen. > > Anyways, my long rant is over. Lol! Keep gaming my friends! > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
