Actual (not hypothetical) games
January 5, 2009
It seems I’m not the only person thinking about accessible video games. Awesome (since I’m not in a position to do anything but think about them). Some people are out there making games.
New York Times reports on a music-mixing game called AudiOdyssey that is designed to be playable by sighted and blind users. This one has been around for a while.
You can download AudiOdyssey here.
AudiOdyssey was created as part of a student thesis at MIT. Read Eitan Glinert’s thesis here.
Eitan has created a game company called Firehose Games to create more accessible games. I wish them luck, and I’ll be checking in on their progress as I get further in my career of combining recreational therapy with speech and language.
In addition to that, XBox Live has a game called In The Pit that is an audio-only, single-player action game. It sounds a lot like Be the Wumpus.
January 6, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Glad to see you care about gaming accessibility! There’s actually a group of people dedicated to making accessible games, the IGDA accessibility special interest group, http://www.igda.org/wiki/Game_Accessibility_SIG. There’s also a bunch of websites like ablegamers.com, and some really noteworthy accessible games like Terraformers and Game Over!
Best,
Eitan
January 6, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Thanks, Eitan. Good luck with Firehose. If I get home to New England, I’d love to schedule a visit.
If you want to blatantly rip off my In The Pit multiplayer FPS idea, feel free. (I’m just a speech therapist who thinks he’s a recreational therapist, what am I going to do with a video game idea?)