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Revolution Offers Hope For Disabled Gamers?
Via Joystiq, an article on Mercury News discussing the possible benefits to disabled gamers via use of Nintendo's unique Revolution control scheme. From the article: "Like many people with spinal-cord injuries that affect all four limbs, Taft retains some use of his arms and hands. But it's not enough for effectively operating the typical two-hand game device. He's confident his relatively strong right hand will be able to manipulate the new controller, which is part of the Revolution game system that's still under development by Nintendo."
Teaching/TA'ing/Subbing in a few Middle school programs, I had a chance to work with a lot of disabled kids. Bright kids who enjoyed the same activities as their classmates. Some of them tried ridiculously hard to play video games, even though the conventional controller designs were prohibitive. If any game company were to embrace adaptive technology, I certain feel like Nintendo would. And I would applaud it.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
And they should be. There are a lot of us, ranging from car accident victims to war veterans to crazy old men with perceptual disorders like me. If a game company stepped up to the plate and spent the small amount they would need to make a game accessible (integrate it with MS's text-to-speech and other accessibility features; permit simplified game control layouts, even if they allow less of the game to be fully explored, as long as it's finishable with the reduced control set; there's a million ways), I'm certain disabled gamers would respond. I'm not talking about targetting games solely at that section of the market, just removing the artificial and unnecessary barriers that exists as it is, adding features to normal game releases.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
...when it comes to modern video game systems - at least, emotionally. That's the problem Nintendo strives to correct. Most people, outside of a core group of gamers, won't even pick up a controller. And who can blame them? A DualShock 2 has 17 buttons! Seventeen! The Revolution controller is much more akin to a computer mouse, or even a simple pointer, offering direct manipulation of the game.
Non-gamers love direct manipulation... it's the reason my girlfriend plays her Nintendo DS so much. She won't touch my PlayStation 2. With the DS, in many games you don't use the controller to tell a representative character what to do, you just do it.
The fact that it allows adaptation for physically handicapped individuals is gravy, and a very tasty gravy indeed. Country gravy, even. Imagine that... so much is possible when a company innovates.
If Nintendo can make a solid platformer that's controlled with bongo drums, they can certainly make plenty of great games for the one-handed and nunchaku Revolution controllers.
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