Video: GDC 09 - The One Question Interview
Here was the plan, setup a camera, and ask as many people as we could get to come over one simple question. "Have you ever thought about how disabled people play video games?" and see what we get. We asked 80 people, and 1 douche bag, who laughed as if we were kidding and told us as he walked away to "F*** that".
Anyway, please enjoy... and share with your buddies.
See if you can spot the person who thought we were joking, post a comment. If you know who he is, tell him he is forever known to us, and we hope he does well in his gaming career.
I would like to thank Michelle and Annette for helping to make this thing happen, it was a lot of work guys...
To those deaf gamers, we are working on getting as much video content closed captioned. We are very small, and this is very hard to do, but we are working to do our best.
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SarahG they are disabled. It is classified as a vision issue, and for many of them gaming can be hard. The most common is RED/GREEN and if you think about those 2 colors and gaming, not being able to tell them apart can be a mess!
I dare say, it is one of the ONLY issues that most game devs even kind of care about.
@ioo - There is very little that being colourblind prevents you from doing. Perhaps you can't fly fighter jets, but then, not many people have the necessary reaction times and stomach for that either. So 'disabled' is a very large sledgehammer to be cracking that particular nut with 
Interesting discussion here:
http://www.boagworld.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2003
If that is all a gaming company have to offer as a concession, it is pure tokenism.
@SarahG I agree that it by no means is a catastrophic issue in life, but I also do not think it is in the best interests of this site, or any of us, to be the hashing out what disabilities we should fight for, and ones that are not. The reason why so many people know about CB is because for men, it is a huge deal, about 1 in 7 men are CB, and given that for the longest time men were the primary target for games, the comments found in the video are a reflection of the fact that game dev is still very male dominated.
I also think that when it comes to games, being CB is a big deal. There is a huge difference in a MOB that CONS green vs one that CONS Red... life stopping... NO, Can make playing some games un fun, YES, and that is what we are all about, making game play fun for as many as we can.
I see CB is more of a gateway disability discussion... if they know about the issue with CB, and they know that it is something that needs to be addressed then they are OPEN to other issues, so I do not think it is a token, I think it is something with an easy fix that is easy to understand.
What I have learned in my almost 5 years of running AbleGamers is this..
1. No company has ever said to me "We CHOOSE not to care about the disabled"
2. Companies are more worried about getting the game out the door before the money runs out than caring about ANY group of people.
3. See number 2.
I thought about my son's colorblindness when I first came to an encounter in WoW where there were pink void zones on an orange surface. I was having trouble processing them visually, and I can only imagine what a nightmare it was for someone who is colorblind red. Apparently enough people complained that they changed the color of the void zones to blue. I was happy, because I could see them easily. So, sometimes what developers do to help colorblind people also makes visual processing easier.
@CariWoW, wouldn't you prefer something that effectively cured your son's colourblindness? Because that is what they claim that the ColorView lenses do.
http://www.color-view.com/
Development companies have very limited budgets. Let's encourage them to spend it on problems that can't be solved with assistive technology. What about those games with no Pause button - where victory goes to him with the strongest bladder?
I know it was hard work and the video is really great you guys.
One persons response kinda ticked me off though - and not necessarily the guy that said F that. It was the guy who you would think would be better educated given the fact that he ran a large gaming organization that has a large game accessibility SIG in it. I wont name names - but it was dissapointing to see his response none the less. Maybe things will get better for us now that he is moving onto another job.
@SarahG, my point wasn't about my son as an individual, it was that in helping a group of people that makes up a significant portion of their customer base, they also help those with other disabilities. So it's not a bad thing that they consider colorblindness a disability.
I'm concerned that it will become the fashion to make colourblindness fixes as a sop to the disabled community. Lots of man hours spent on something better fixed with a cool facial accessory. In a couple of years, 'gaming specs' will be the new iPod.
Whereas for more limiting disabilites, the technology lags behind the mainstream market by a couple of decades.
SarahG, I would hope that you would give this site, and the members of this site, more credit than that. We work hard everyday here at AbleGamers to advocate for the ability of ALL gamers to play.
Like it or not, color blind is a very very common disability, so it is the most well known. That said, it is also much easier to address in a game. It is what we call in the software world "Low hanging fruit". AbleGamers is teaching them all the time that there is more fruit on the trees, and that they need to go for it.
We have a plan for that too. We are just not ready to roll it out.. but this video was part one... people were thinking... it stirred the pot up some, and we will keep stirring..
I agree that change is hard, but that does not mean change is impossible, the closer we get in on the ground floor, the easier that change is. Trust me, there is a plan in the works, and when it hits, it is going to be HUGE.
Key mapping should be required by law as well as close captioning. Also all motion sensing game should be required to have a button interface as an alternative. This is really three things that are elementary to add to video games. It honestly is not as hard as some people I have spoken to make it out to be. I think these are very fair things to require. They should move the ADA act to also include video games.that's my two cents :-)
let me rephrase myprevious comment.
There should be a kind of articles similar to that that outlines the basic things that should be more prevalent in a game. Things that are reasonable and to not take much effort. There are three huge things off the top of my head that they could have.
