Hi Dark, Very true. Unfortunately, a lot of mainstream games that could be accessible aren't simply because the developer didn't take accessibility into consideration before hand, and by the time they are approached with accessibility considerations its a case of start over from scratch which is not an acceptable state of affairs for the game dev in question.
As to the issue of big mainstream corporations verses independent developers go's you are right. There is a lot of discontent with the major game companies because at some point they have gotten too big, too commercialized, and less creative and just remakes of their older releases. The point about Tomb Raider is a good one. I've seen a lot of adds for the newest Tomb Raider game, but the game reviews all pretty much say the game sucks. The acting, cinematics, sound effects, and music are all great, but the storyline, game play, and so forth really come up short. It is a clear case of a company that has gone to the well one too many times, and just over used, over commercialized, and under developed their product. I think because of that places like the retro remakes developers are going to get more business from mainstream developers. At least there the games tend to be classics, and they have a following of people who grew up with those games. commercial game developers just don't make games like that any more, and a lot of the new releases are mostly forgettable affairs where something like Pac-Man or Centipede are still being played today. Doesn't that tell you something is wrong with the business model of the big mainstream companies today? Anyway, truth is independent developers is where the PC market is definitely going. A lot of it is due to the fact the games are simpler, fun, replayable, and don't suffer from being over commercialized. There is a game my wife plays, I want to call it Bejeweled, where she just runs around the screen gathering up gems and so forth. its nothing fancy but she finds it fun and addictive. Better yet it was only like $10 or something like that so it was very affordable. Point being there are all kinds of small independent developers cropping up with quick and easy games that have mass appeal where corporations only ride their own success and grow stagnant. Cheers! On 3/30/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > I agree completely, indeed this is part of the job I do for audiogames.net, > > though one severe problem on both windows and mac is a technical one, since > > there are many games, such as some stratogy games which would be as easily > accessible as smugglers, but which use graphical, rather than textual text > to represent their information, thus meaning it's not just a case of > labeling the immages and fixing navigation, but of entirely rewriting the > game. It's actually a real shame since if it weren't for this, something > like starcraft could potentially be very accessible simply through it's > text. > > It's a shame that there isnt' some sort of easy ocr tool which overlays > screen reader readable text onto graphical text and lets the user move > around it and click on it with normal screen reader functions, since that > would make lots of games accessible. > > I also agree about big companies being a waste of time as far as access > goes, but failing some sort of major economic change whereby companies were > > required! to include access in their games (which wouldn't be possible > without a major altering in the structure of the world), I don't see > anything happening there. A company may produce something like sound voyager > > occasionally as an experiment, but I don't see them as being more > commonplace than that. > > On the plus side however, Indi games are very much the way to go, and I've > also noticed indi developers tend to be a much nicer bunch to work with > anyway, as well as there being more indi developers all the time. indeed, my > > brother was saying yesterday that most serious gamers these days are rather > > losing faith in sony, capcom etc since there games are becoming less > creative and more and more derivative as time goes onn, he even stated that > > in tomb raider, resident evil, soul calibur and in fact street fighter > recent entries had been panned by fans for offering very little that was new > > or interesting to play while upping the synamatic appeal and generic plots, > > (apparently the recent time delay sequences in tomb raider have pissed off > lots of people). apparently these days, older games and indi games are > getting far more seriously played as compared to what the major companies > are offering. > > So, maybe all those scumbags will go out of business :D. > > #Seriously, this again however is a good thing, since if more gamers turn to > > the independent devs, and more indi devs include access, access gets > promoted. > > Beware the Grue! > > dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. 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