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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."
The new controller helps disabled gamers AND it helps obese couchpotatoes lose some arm-flab! score!!!
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New controller, can be operated with one hand. Photo
I imagine there's a much larger existing userbase for input devices for the disabled in the PC world. What prevents someone from using one of these devices for gaming? I'm not too familiar with this kind of stuff but I'm sure there's a sort of trackball . keyboard combo that could be used. You might not innately be as quick as you used to be (or as other players), but you'd be surprised...
When I went to college a fellow student at the end of the hall was very big into games. I believe his console of choice was the Saturn and he played it with an arcade-style joystick. What's surprising about him is that he had a pretty serious congenital disorder: he was born without arms, and just small, working hands at the end of his shoulders. I believe he moved the joystick with his mouth. He was a pretty good player too.
Worthy of mention too, is Pin Interactive's Terraforma, which is a game designed both for sighted and unsighted gamers. Even for sighted gamers, the game offers a high-contrast mode. A playable demo is available.
One of the lead developers of Terraforma mentions in this article that there are other games for the disabled - he specifically mentions MUDs as well as some really neat off-the-wall concepts like games that use a "breating interface".
I'm glad that attention is being paid to this. I don't think it will mean increased business for Nintendo in any measurable term, but then everything isn't about revenue.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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This highlights exactly my concern regarding the new controller. If someone with only the use of one hand can effectively use the controller, that means (obviously) that most or all potential for input from the other hand will be ignored. This strikes me as a strange, and possibly deal-breaking decision to make for a video game console.
The trend to date in video games has been towards more, rather than less, complexity. Bucking that trend will be, in my estimation, extraordinarily difficult. Improving games by adding complexity has proven to be comparatively easy - witness the endless parade of sequels, sports franchises, and ever-increasing button counts on controllers. If you can't add complexity, however, you're forced to add to gameplay in another way.
Now, improving gameplay in ways more fundamental than just adding new things is a fantastic thing to do. Innovation is always better than revision. The problem Nintendo will have is that they've foreclosed the option to add complexity, which means all they can do is add innovation...and innovation is hard.
If they can pull it off, and release a non-stop series of games that are innovative, then I'll be a happy camper. But I don't know if they can. It's going to be hard to improve on the GC's Metroid games while providing fewer control inputs. Ditto Zelda, Mario, Smash Bro.'s, and Mario Kart, which means they're potentially hurting themselves when it comes to staple games that, to date, have sold systems.
Possibly even worse, having a radically different controller than the other two consoles will be a disincentive to 3rd-party developers to try and port games to the Revolution. Perhaps the Revo's hardware is going to be far enough behind the others' that this won't matter; they wouldn't have ported anyway. But whatever the reason, that slows uptake of the new console, too.
Now, if anyone can pull it off, it's probably Nintendo. And I really hope they do, since it would be fantastic if there was a dramatic change in what kind of new games got released in favor of innovation vs. revision. But I harbor deep-seated doubts as to whether even the big N can succeed solely on innovative games, and ignoring wheelhouse franchises.
(As a sidebar, I'm also leery of how comfortable I might be using just one hand to play a game. I look at it this way: the NES controller could easily be redesigned to be used one-handed, as a pistol-grip with a thumbstick on top and a button per finger on the underside. Would I want to play any game with that controller as opposed to the original? I really don't think so. It's just easier to do two things at once when you've got one hand per task...and most genres of games require at least executing movement along with at least one-button action simultaneously)
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
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.
Ascii came up with one a while ago for the Playstation called the Ascii Grip (google images has many pictures of it). I got it because it was a cheap "we gotta get rid of this" deal from Electronics Botique. Not great for practical use by your typical gamer due to only being able to press a couple buttons at once, but useful if you want to play your RPG with one hand and eat pizza with the other hand.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
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.
I have lost most of the use in my left hand. I am able to move my fingers, but I cannot obtain a strong grip. I have pretty good use of my thumb, but I am unable to feel anything with the top of my thumb. Therefore, I am able to use a gamepad directional controller, but not effectively. This is why I am so thoroughly happy that the analog stick became the norm in future controllers.
This is also why I purchsed a Nintendo DS. I only buy games that make complete use of the stylus - Trauma Center, Bust-a-Move, and WarioWare, to name a few. This is also why I will buy a Revolution. Where some will look at this controller as a gimmick, I look at it as a boon. I couldn't have been happier to finally see a controller I could use.
I know losing the ability to play alot of video games may not be the end of the world, but it really blows.
...but probably only for certain gamers, in certain games. To add my normal disclaimer, I'm a games programmer working for Sony (not their opinions in here, just mine, etc etc), but I have relatives and friends with various medical conditions which would have hampered playing games (ranging from colour blindness and deafness through to cerebral palsy and other more serious problems), so I've thought a little about this. None of them are (or were) games players. so this is mostly just guesswork and supposition on my part, but hopefully worthwhile. Anyway!
To take the most extreme example, someone without at least partial use of both legs is unlikely to fully enjoy Dance Dance Revolution or similar using a dance mat as an input device. That's not to say someone nimble couldn't manage, though, but generally. Playing bemani with an alternate controller isn't as much fun, for me anyway, but alternate controllers do at least give the option of participation. Which is a good thing - purely from a developer point of view, the more people you can include in your gaming experience, the better. Genres like this, as well as others where the physical interaction isn't the core of the gameplay, are easiest to make inclusive in this way (with subtitles for deaf players, bright or high-contrast graphics and enlarged text for people with impaired vision, etc). These are, of course, the games where the Revolution controller would probably have the least impact, as they're the least directly interactive in the sense of swinging a bat or shooting a gun.
To jump genres, twitch games like shoot em ups or first person action games almost always require a combination of multiple inputs, exercised with speed and precision. These are things which require much more radical efforts to make inclusive - things like auto aiming and reduced enemy reaction time could help, but would these maybe seem condescending to the player? "Here, let's make things easier for you since you can't manage..." I don't really know, it would be worth asking gamers that. The problem is that unless the Nintendo and game developers consider things like this, Revolution's controller could actually make these games worse for disabled players. For example, the addon controllers already shown could easily mean that some games require two hands to play, but with careful design (or possibly different optional addons designed for different disabilities), it could improve things dramatically for disabled gamers.
Of course, it'll all come down to money in the end - is the disabled gaming market big enough to justify the expense of research and development time for these things to be adequately looked at? Sadly, I'm pretty pessimistic.At least the possibility is there, and people can start to ask the questions. If enough of a market can be found, maybe something good will happen!
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"I've never seen so many people let their imaginations spin so wildly out of control about a toy."
You must've missed the build up (and eventual letdown) of everything the PS2 was supposed to do before launch. Anyone remember the Emotion Processor? At one point I'm pretty sure Sony was claiming they'd cure cancer with that one.
...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.