|
|
Accessing games through sound, motion and emotion
By Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab |
Computer games have been used in the past few years in ways that most developers probably wouldn't imagine. They might expect to see the odd PlayStation donated to a children's ward in a hospital, but they probably wouldn't expect to find a researcher sitting next to it monitoring games for their therapeutic benefits. They might not expect to find a large number of disabled people playing multiplayer online games either, where they have the freedom of physical movements denied to them in their real environments.
In fact, it is probably because people with motor and visual impairments have found so many innovative ways to get around the normal barriers games present them that the commercial games industry continues to ignore their needs. Only a few organisations are independently developing games and devices that actively aim to make games accessible to all, and they're spearheading some true gaming and computing innovations.
SoundSupport, based at the University of Utrecht, for instance, produces games which feature advanced audio functionality. These games draw on the principle of providing the visually impaired with games environments that remain creative and imaginative, without restricting them to the text-based environments familiar to anyone who has played a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) game.
MUDs, of course, can be played with a screen reader that can translate typed text into audio speech and have in the past proved popular with some blind games players. SoundSupport seeks to move beyond games that rely entirely on the textual mode, and has recently produced a racing car game, called Drive!, which is controlled in a clever aural landscape utilising stereo sound, or '3D sound'.
AudioGames, which supports the development of many sound-based games, argues that games that are based in aural rather than visual environments are not intended only for blind people. They are intended for enjoyment by all. Starting from the challenges that motivate players to play games, AudioGames aims to provide sound-based entertainment that is hard and fun and not just an alternative, accessible version of the visual games medium.
As well as sound-based games, some interesting hybrids are also emerging. One of the most innovative of these advanced audio games produced recently is Terraformers, a strong narrative puzzle game which begins with the player's character surviving a crash-landing on a planet that humans have begun to terraform to make it inhabitable. The game is set primarily in a deserted terraforming facility and it is the player's task to find out where all the colonists have disappeared.
Terraformers can be played with its visual 3D graphics layer turned on, or turned off, and is intended to support players at all degrees of visual ability or impairment with a sophisticated layer of sound, something that recently won it an innovation award at the Independent Games Festival in San José 2003.
In a recent article on making games that are accessible, Dan Gärdenfors suggests that the visually impaired are perfectly able to master musical instruments with tactile interfaces, such as piano, strings and wind instruments, but that the problem with most modern virtual instruments is that they do not support this tactile relationship with sound.
He points out, therefore, that since western culture is founded on primarily visual iconographies, the playability of sound-based games requires learning new, aural iconographies that stretch beyond text and can signify abstract principles and objects - much as Braille signifies writing through its tactility. There are multiple accessibility and playability issues here.
Making games accessible is not only to do with providing different modes for players to 'see' and 'hear' with. Many of the input and control devices required for playing modern games on modern consoles and PCs are also difficult to manage.
The popularity of Sony's Eye Toy and similar devices may begin to stimulate some interesting approaches to game control. QuiQui's Giant Bounce, a game produced by masters students at the University of Helsinki's Medialab, uses a web camera and a microphone to 'see and hear' the player.
QuiQui is a young, lovable, green dragon, who the player must help to fly. Flying is accomplished by flapping your arms, which, recorded by the web cam, translates in real-time into QuiQui flapping his wings. This may sound simple, but there are obstacles to avoid, targets to reach, and strong winds to blow you off course. Flying QuiQui is a bit like rowing uphill on a strong current. You do have the benefit of a weapon though: QuiQui can blow fire, and he does this when you yelp out loud.
The initial QuiQui prototype indicates some of the possible directions that developers might follow in creating games to promote accessibility. Though aimed at young children, there is nothing about QuiQui to suggest that these physical and simple vocal inputs shouldn't work with older markets too.
To date, Sony's Eye Toy has been marketed towards girl-gamers, bundled together with dancing games, which again might be seen as one way of further enhancing games' accessibility.
The use of subtler physical signals is also being exploited in providing access to game-like environments and experiences. At MediaLab Europe, in Dublin, the MindGames group is experimenting with using fingertip sensors that measure players' metabolic rates to monitor their calm or agitation as ways of controlling game action. Relax to Win is a dragon racing game, but it's stimulated not by player adrenalin - winning depends on their state of relaxation - and is based on research into the use of games for therapeutic purposes.
The breadth of interactions it is possible for humans to make with computers is growing to allow people without sight or with motor impairments to have increasingly rich experiences with interactive programs. While games have led the way for many years in stretching the graphical and aural limits of computer technology, to date the visual aspect has remained dominant, with innovations in sound considered little more than 'neat touches'.
Games players with visual or motor impairments want only to be able to compete equally with their sighted peers, not to be segregated from them. The uses of sound and motion may well become core functions of the most innovative games of future years - not just for accessible games but for all games. The signs are beginning to look, sound, and even to feel, good.
Links
Affective Computing, an initiative of MIT, develops computers that can understand human user emotions: affect.media.mit.edu
AudioGames provides a substantial list of publications on sound-based games: www.audiogames.net
Audyssey is webzine for audio gaming and blind gamers: www.angelfire.com/music4/duffstuff/aud39.txt
Dan Gärdenfors' article on developing sound-based games: cybersonica.org/archive/pdfs/gardenfors.pdf
Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) is an online community of audio engineers and musicians working in games: www.audiogang.org/index.php
JSC consulting works on e-government and e-health accessibility issues: www.jsc.co.uk/contact.htm
Media Lab Europe is working on palpable machines: www.medialabeurope.org/news/archive.html
Mind Games, at MediaLab Europe, develops experimental programs which respond to human emotions and impulses: mindgames.mle.ie
QuiQui's Giant Bounce is a game controlled through a webcam and microphone: www.cs.uta.fi/kukakumma/htmls_en/index.php
Sile O'Modhrain from MediaLab Europe has written an article on accessible games for the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/closeup/gaming.shtml
SoundSupport, based at the University of Utrecht, develops sound-based games: www.soundsupport.net
Terraformers is an award-winning game equally accessible to fully-sighted, partially-sighted, and blind people: www.pininteractive.com/terraformers/us/index.htm
December 2003
|
|
