Hi Thomas,
this is my own opinion and my own experience here.
I was born blind.
And it is true that I never played mainstream console games.
However I know the basics of games like Tomb Raider or Doom or Quake.
Even if vi developers might not have the money for expensive sounds or
music and maybe less experience than longtime mainstream developers, this
seems not enough to explain why some games are way behind their mainstream
versions.
Even if we might have some "unexperienced" developers in comparison to
mainstream developers, this doesn't explain, why Sound RTS is the only full
real time strathegy game, when such things are much older than our products.
There we had and might still have the Age of Empires game series, of which
many sighted people know even if they haven't played them yet.
Or we have the total lack of really big RPGs.
I mean, everyone probably knows Final Fantasy by name and theese were
originally created before Windows.
Or the Elder Scrolls series.
OK, maybe we couldn't do a clone due to license issues, but that's not
keeping us from inventing something new.
While games like Shades of Doom and some other titles are not bad products,
no one seemed to want to create another of them with a new story.
You said that the problem might be lack of mainstream knowledge, but that
doesn't explain away the fact of less creativity.
We have interactive fiction titles and free gamebooks.
But why not create an audio version of something like out of the game books
(provided it would be allowed)?
Or we had the talk about RPGs. Why don't we have games like Alter Aeon or
Sryth made into a something for offline play and with audio?
Creativity is apparently there. And if our developers might have not enough
knowledge or experience to atempt something like it, why not do it with a
team instead of doing it alone?
I would not say I do know all about games or game styles, but I have
experimented on my own with and without sighted assistance.
I know several blind PC users in Germany who are glad if JAWS or whatever
they use can read a program and its controls. But they are not the ones who
use the advanced tools (e.G. various JAWS tools) to help make unknown
objects accessible.
I at least have tried and in some cases it was enough to use some things
like labeling graphics or such "simple" things to improove my access to a
given program.
I also think that not enough training in using such things as screen readers
is given to thoose who would need it, especially if it is their first
contact with such technology, especially, if we are dealing with people who
became blind or visually impaired after their birth...
But that's far enough in that direction .
But the Things I know are enough to know that I'd like to have more RPGs for
example.
And finally I am interested in the upcoming game.
---
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