Geek Guide: Able to play?

There’s a lot more that gaming titles and console manufactures need to do to accommodate players with special needs.

In gaming, as in other fields of life, the need to accommodate disability is often overlooked. In the context of accessibility, the gaming can be looked at in two parts — the technology of the gaming hardware used and the less tangible technology of game design using that hardware.

There is no denying just how complex games consoles have become. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 controllers both have two analogue sticks, a digital directional pad, six face buttons and four trigger buttons. There are degrees of physical dexterity required for manoeuvring them and the pads are used with both hands working in tandem.

The problems this would present to players with motor control problems are obvious. Even playing games that do not require twitch reactions, the precision needed to use a controller with so many inputs can be impossible to achieve.

While it seems straightforward that substituting an alternative controller may help, an additional problem comes from compatibility — the One Switch organisation in a report in 2006 documented that many games simply locked-out non-standard controllers.

It is rare for the console manufacturers themselves to ever produce devices to help — a rare example was Nintendo during the late 1980s, which sold the Hand’s Free device for the NES aimed at quadriplegic gamers.

However, numerous small companies make custom controllers for disabled gamers, often by deconstructing or generally incorporating the default controllers. This is the method used by hardware modders such as Benjamin Heckendorn, better known online as “Ben Heck”, who has completed projects such as rebuilding all the functions of a 360 controller into a device designed for a gamer missing a limb. Heckendorn has gone on to develop a one-handed controller than can also be used by PlayStation and PC gamers as well.

As the technology changes, there are new possibilities introduced, such as the motion controls of the Wii or Kinect, or voice recognition software allowing alternative input. Other more experimental methods are also available– headsets responding to the brainwaves are beginning to enter the market, as are devices to detect retinal responses. In December 2011, Venture Beat reported on a device manufactured by biotechnology company Advancer Technologies that allowed gaming input via muscle response. This innovative method of input was ironically demonstrated by playing Super Mario Brothers 3 on the NES — a game released 23 years ago and normally played with simple controllers — which perhaps reinforces how complicated controller input has become since.

However, there are also potential obstacles faced by gamers with disabilities on the other side of things — the design of games themselves.

There are a number of factors which can make games more accessible. Simple features such as being able to adjust the buttons layout can help players more easily perform useful functions; while providing subtitles or other visual cues can assist players with hearing problems. However, even though some titles may include options like these to adjust accessibility, they are by no means universal, and when included often seem to provide the benefit to disabled gamers unintentionally. Websites, such as the one run by the AbleGamers Foundation, review titles and give advice on how they can improve accessibility.

However, some titles also make deliberate concessions. One major example was the huge hit Call of Duty: Black Ops, released by Activision in 2010, which had a specific option to assist colour blind players. This allowed changing the red and green names which distinguish the sides in multi-player games to higher contrast orange and light blue. In an interview with the BBC in April 2011, David Vonderhaar, the lead programmer at the game’s developer Treyarch, explained that their lead tester was himself colour blind, giving a greater insight into helping players with the problem. After this the next game in the series, Modern Warfare 3 developed by Infinity Ward and released late last year, also carried a colour blind setting.

There are a great many steps that the games industry can take to assist gamers with disabilities, some only involving small adjustments to current practices. However the games industry, like society as a whole, perhaps first needs to stop making the assumption of good health.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2012.