Infinity Ward Marginalize Another Group of Gamers
The survey cites some staggering statistics that 8.0% or all males and 0.5% or all females are color blind. With that large a number, color blind options should be standard in any game. Please sign the petition and let’s hope Infinity Ward will implement this feature in a future patch.
The petition reads:
To: Infinity Ward
We, the undersigned, do hereby create this petition to try and get Infinity Ward to add a patch to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to enable colour-blind people to play the online modes without being at a disadvantage.
Statistics say that approximately 8% of males are colour-blind, and 0.5% of females, yet there is no option in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to cater for this.
At present, people that are red / green colour blind cannot tell friend from foe in the online matches, as their names appear in these colours, and the radar uses the colours too. This is causing frustration and putting them at a distinct disadvantage unless playing in Free-For-All matches.
This makes the grand majority of the online multi-player mode unplayable for red / green colour-blind people. They need to take that extra bit of time to determine whether people are on their team, which more often than not results in their death; or otherwise accidentally shoot at their team-mates, giving away their position on the radar.
Call of Duty: World at War had an option to change the colours from red / green to orange / blue, and the Ghost Recon games have also had a similar feature. With this being such a huge release, this option should come as standard, especially when almost 10% of people are affected by colour-blindness in some form.
We would like to get this option and ensure that everyone has a fair chance in the online modes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
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Well done. Activision/IW - you've done it again.
After potentially alienating the previous 18-20% of "general" disabled users (or at least that figure represents us in the UK), you've amazed me by rudely doing it again. It's all adding up to quite a percentage that can't play this, sadly.
A couple of things I have to say on the matter. I've been recently involved with some of the problems involving the travesty of Forza 3, and it's many bugs. I will reiterate here what I told many other UK players: if you can't play it, take it back!
I can't comment about US law, but under the Sale of Goods Act (UK) if a product is not "satisfactory" (and not suitable for the purpose which you bought it), you can take it back to where you bought it for a full refund. I encourage people to do so; it's not like there's not a ton of other, different FPSs to play...
One other point which may be worth mentioning. One thing that astonishes me is the alarming attitude of some developers, when they shun your requests completely. Protest! I'm sure there are many high-profile awards events in the US where Activision and indeed Call of Duty will be up. Get together and protest if they won't listen.
I'm quite sure that if a group got together outside the BAFTA awards in the UK we'd see a different response.
This really surprises me. As a student of human-centered design, one of the very first things we learned in my "intro to visual communication" class was how to properly design documents and interfaces to address the needs of the colorblind; particularly, that of the red/green-impaired majority of said demographic.
Now, I don't really want to condemn the entirety of IW for this, because frankly, it may well have been something that just fell through the cracks. That said, I do think it's fair to call out Modern Warfare 2's UI design team. This is simply too obvious of an issue for them to overlook, especially considering that their entire purpose is to design interfaces keyed to the needs of all potential audiences. I mean really...it's interface design 101.
I would too, have been tempted to put it down to "falling through the cracks", if it wasn't for one or two similar actions from Activision of late, particularly the shameful article regarding NOM4D, and the fact that IW went some way to promoting NOM4D's "setting", but then removed it!
So, no, I can't accept that at all. It's clearly not an oversight, and whatever the reason, it has to stop - NOW!
You would of thought they would try to make an effort to add features such as custom button mapping for the console platforms and settings for the colorblind. The problems is they do not realize just how many disabled gamers play their games. They just do not think about it, they are thinking about how many copies they can sell. I believe they should take into consideration that there are people with disabilities that are fans of the COD series. They need to do something about it for their current game and also future games of the series. So I say to IW add these features to make things right for the disabled gaming community so they can enjoy your games.
"It's clearly not an oversight, and whatever the reason, it has to stop - NOW!"
Do you really think so? I understand that many people out there who are directly affected by this sort of thing are getting very upset and frustrated, but it's important to look at this stuff rationally. If one makes the claim that this happening is not an oversight, then they are essentially claiming that the developer is *actively* making these decisions in order to minimize accessibility. Personally, I have trouble with that. It simply makes no sense.
In the first case (N0M4D's) I'll say that it was a stupid, stupid maneuver. Without question. Those who actively marketed the game on the feature's inclusion clearly weren't bright enough to make sure it was going to be included. Even this, though, I'm inclined to classify as an oversight (albeit an inexcusable one). There's just no way whatsoever that a company would do it on purpose.
Doing these things maliciously makes no sense whatsoever. IW may need big, but they aren't invulnerable. There's no way they would intentionally do something that will inevitably lead to so much negative publicity. It would be business suicide.
In general, I don't think online petitions are that effective. I think commenting directly to the company's customer service reps is a better way to give that feedback. It's really sad that when we are seeing so many companies and developers go the extra mile to include accessibility features, that Infinity Ward seems unwilling to do so. Ultimately, they will be the ones to lose as the disabled gaming community will stop buying their titles.
Oh, I agree that online petitions are really little more than ways to make "________" feel better, and if you want to make real change, DON'T BUT THE GAME, or better yet if you DID buy the game and we have not been able to review it yet TAKE IT BACK and make a big deal about your not able to play it because of accessibility issues.
Frankly, as soon as you buy the game the company could care less, they got the sale.
I quite agree with CariWOW and ioo's statements that petitions (in this sort of situation) are rarely effective. Further echoing ioo's comments, the most effective way is to hit them in the pocket by taking the game back. This is precisely what I advised others to do with the multitude of problems some have had with Forza 3.
Just to hark back to what I said "this is clearly not an oversight, but whatever the reason, this has to stop- NOW".
Well, why not? It's very easy to sit there and say "I understand people are getting frustrated by this" is a little blase. If you had the empathy to imagine someone who, through whatever disability, buys the game, then find out they CANNOT play it (added to the fact that gaming may be one of the very few pastimes they can do), you wouldn't be so dismissive.
Why I said it's got to stop now is for two reasons.
(1) The shameful mismanagement of the NOM4D issue (I never called it malicious) shows how little their regard is for disabled people in their grand scheme of things.
(2) The features we're talking about here and incredibly easy to implement - they are not coding nightmares in any way.
If IW/Activision were being malicious they may well have singled out non-inclusion of disabled-friendly features, but of course, they have managed to crap on far more players than that, as we well know.
I would have thought that at least some of the development team/testers would have colourblindness and have mentioned to the other team members that this was a problem.
The fact that there are other ways to differentiate friend from foe (cross-checking map, uniform, delay in name appearing) mean that this will probably never get changed.
