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Gaming Group Seeks Volunteers To Create Accessibility Guidelines For Tabletop Games (meeplelikeus.co.uk)
Meeple Like Us is a group of gaming academics, developers, hobbyists and enthusiasts with a keen interest in board games, tabletop games, video games, and all things in-between, co-founded by long-time Slashdot reader drakkos. Today he reminds us that accessibility "has become an increasingly visible part of video game development."
It's even become something of a selling point for many games, with Naughty Dog's focus on the accessibility of Uncharted 4 gaining it pages and pages of enthusiastic support across the industry. Tabletop games, despite being much older an entertainment format, lag behind video games in many respects.
Meeple Like Us has for the last year been working hard to identify the accessibility issues in tabletop gaming, and is currently recruiting for volunteers for a working group aimed at developing v1.0 of the Tabletop Accessibility Guidellines.
Meeple Like Us has for the last year been working hard to identify the accessibility issues in tabletop gaming, and is currently recruiting for volunteers for a working group aimed at developing v1.0 of the Tabletop Accessibility Guidellines.
Come on, this isn't about being "PC" or "everyone must be able to do everything." It just seems to me that if a game can be made more accessible, why not extend that courtesy? Of course it isn't possible for "everyone to do everything." But extending a helping hand where feasible? What can be wrong with that?
I have some vision issues myself, and in some games, just having the option to make the text larger is really useful and greatly appreciated.
Does EVERYTHING need to have a layer of PC-based "everyone must be able to do everything" applied to it?
Well, I don't think it is about having everything doable by everyone. But I think it can be about making sure that you do not prevent a fraction of the population from playing your game simply because you did not think of a way to make it easier on people.
I give you an example, I am colorblind. Some games can be difficult to play for me: Starcraft (the original) was quite difficult on games with many players because I could not tell the difference in color on the mini map. But that can be solved. For instance, frozen bubble used to be impossible for me to play, until I found there is a colorblind mode.
Magic the gathering also relies on a color scheme, but added an icon which makes telling the different kind of magic easy even if you can not tell colors apart.
Don't think of it as bing politically correct, but rather as enabling the most people to play your game without significantly altering the game mechanics.
Why do some people always start whining about requests to make things slightly better for anyone who isn't them?
How does asking the designer to consider colour blindness hurt you? Why do you get so angry that other people care enough to listen and improve their games?
Maybe it's me, people keep saying I'm some kind of "SJW", but if someone said to me "hay, can we have icons next to the red and green lights because they look the same to me", I wouldn't piss myself with rage in response.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's fine; I believe that 3rd person shooter tabletop games are rare enough that I doubt too many people are going to be concerned about the accessibility issues.
Log in or piss off.
"How do you make Unchartered 4 "accessible"? A blind person is never going to able to play an 3rd person shooter (or any shooter), no matter what you do to it, any more than he could play tennis."
Straw man argument. Really. There is more one accessibility issue and some of them are applicable to games like uncharted.
Simple stuff though. Red / green colorblindness isn't that uncommon. So if your forest setting shooter game has a red targeting reticule over predominantly green background.
Or the red heading berry powerup looks identical to the green berry powerup. .. those are the sorts of things that can make a game unplayable. Or you put red text on green background...
All you'd need to fix is give multiple reticule options, and give the green berries its own model so that the only distinction isn't color, and put the text on black and white...
Same sort of tips to address blue-yellow blindness, or complete color blindness.
I like to play a lot of games on the big screen TV in the living room. There were lots of games that played well enough, via controller or steam controller but which didn't work well due to the text being not quite legible at couch distance on a 52" 1080p set. Some games had bigger text, or allowed you to increase... others not.
Hell, I like to have windows set to 'larger fonts' just to make navigating the desktop at couch distance easier and THAT setting screws up a lot of games. (They usually screw up their own magnification somehow and all you can see is the top left quarter of the game taking up your entire screen.) Simply designing your game to not choke when windows accessibility features like that are turned on would be a plus.
It's not just those who are colourblind who have trouble telling colours apart. If you're playing a boardgame in a dimly lit pub then the colours of the pieces can sometimes be really hard to tell apart. Examples I've seen in games are Black vs Brown vs Dark Purple or Yellow vs Bare Wood. What might be easy to distinguish in an designer's office isn't always the case where you actually sit down to play the game.
Then there's the problem of the clumsy gamer, finding dark dice or meeples on a dark carpet in a pub isn't always so easy. There's a guy in my gaming group who I will lend glow-in-the-dark dice to because he is the most likely to drop things on the floor.
Ingenious is another good example game where there are icons for each colour.
Don't think of it as being politically correct, but rather as enabling the most people to play your game without significantly altering the game mechanics.
Couldn't agree more.
You realize that the subject here is a set of guidelines?
It's literally just some helpful guidance? There's no laws here at all.
And you think others are the psychopaths. How about you argue with this subject instead of your imaginary boogeyman?
Cognitive Accessibility is an important aspect because some people have cognitive disabilities and it's helpful to have games rated toward them if you're buying for somebody with such disabilities. Which may include buying for onerself -- not all cognitive disabilities are the same. I work with a woman who was recently struck with Multiple Sclerosis. Much to her distress, the memory cognitive accessibility aspect would be important to her, while fluid intelligence would not be a problem.
For ages theme parks have included weight, height, and age restrictions, and people didn't generally imagine that these things were ultimately going to lead to theme parks that only have rides that cater equally to the healthy young adult, newborn, and geriatric.
I actually think it's great that it breaks these things down so that people who care (who are mostly people who have to care) can look at the dimension important to them.
I was not familiar with many of the games they rated, but I note for instance that it rated the 2016 version of Blood Bowl very highly, 4.5 stars. And it's accessibility? Shitty in every category. Clearly these accessibility ratings are not actually standing in the way of a good score to those who do not have these disabilities. Interestingly, in the comments they recommend the video game version for people with disabilities.
Why do some people always start whining about requests to make things slightly better for anyone who isn't them?
I could propose several explanations, but I don't really want to be unkind. I think in many ways, people are to be pitied, if their lives are so void of meaning that they object to helping others, even when takes nothing away from themselves. I wonder what they would feel about it, if somebody designed a game that was incredibly cool, but which was designed to specifically work for, say, blind people, so that it would be a distinct disadvantage if you are used to rely on sight?
Maybe it's me, people keep saying I'm some kind of "SJW", ...
You should feel proud if you stand for social justice. It means you have a conscience, that you care - those are the traits that make us human.