No Barriers to Fun!

We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More
A Window to the World

Shepherd University invited the AbleGamers Foundation to come on campus and do one of our Accessibility Arcades for the students and local disabled community. The event was a roaring success with hundreds of children and adults coming out to see the technology and in some cases experience gaming the first time. Read More

About the AbleGamers Foundation

Since 2004, the AbleGamers Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, has served more than 56 million members of the disabled community by advocating greater access in video games. Today, AbleGamers is a leader in the development of equipment, programs and services to those living with disabilities, hardships, and quality-of-life issues that are a result of chronic illness or trauma. It is our goal to ensure that all people, regardless of their disability, can use gaming as a tool to have enriched social experiences with friends, family, and the world at large.

My God! It's Full of Stars

Written by Steve Spohn

Published on 26 June 2008

No, the new splash page on www.blizzard.com is not revealing the obelisk from 2001 a space Odyssey, but there are definitely stars to be seen in the black. That is of course if the image is supposed to be seen un-manipulated, once again when inverting the colors we can see a red colored ground falling in to the center of the earth... who knows what lies beneath?

Blizzard is known for being silver-tongued devils and this year at the question-and-answer center of the Game Developers Conference that was held in Paris, France, the clues revealed yesterday by Blizzard Vice President Rob Pardo were more of the same the slippery tactics. The following quote from gameindustry shows us just how slick a Blizzard representative can be: "So you want me to announce the game before our announcement?" he said. "No offense, but I think there's like 300 people here, and I'll be ripped apart by 8000 people there [at the Invitational] if I pre-announce it - but it's going to be really exciting. I think everybody here will be really excited about the announcement."

So there you have it, they have actually admitted that... there will be an announcement. You have to love when somebody says a lot of words to say nothing at all. So what are the theories going around the Internet you might ask. I'm glad you asked!

First, you have the rational explanations; Diablo III is an obvious choice because typically blizzard has only teased when a new game is announced. Additionally, last month Blizzard purchased www.Diablo3.com, and then you have the rune words in the splash images, as well as the inverted photo looking like a gateway to hell. However, there are arguments for the ice being a reference to the new WoW expansion, also Starcraft II has not announced its fourth race as of yet.

The biggest mystery is hidden within the splash page source code in which links to a strange puzzle piece can be found. Over the last four days, the puzzle has slowly been being put together by Internet sleuths to reveal a purple creature that has never been seen before. Could this be the headline creature of the new game?

Finally, you have the insane people who are grasping at straws. I found this image while searching the IGN for news on the purple monster:

This image is of the day 4 ice splash page with the original Diablo two box set superimposed over top of it, they claim that it is a" perfect fit." Okay, you can officially call me a skeptic, if I crop the picture of my head and fit it into that black space in the image it does not mean that Blizzard is going to make a game about me. Sometimes you can truly make anything into what you want to see.

The truth of the issue is that we have no idea what Blizzard is going to announce on Saturday, no one is going to know for sure until they want us to know. Having said that, it is a lot of fun to make guesses and try to figure out what exactly will be announced before it is announced. There is always a chance that the announcement will be something completely unrelated to anything that is currently on the market.