Techquickie, a rather popular YouTube channel affiliated with Linus Tech Tips, posted this video today about the evolution of accessibility features in the video game industry. It covers a bit of the early history and rough starts in terms of lacking basic quality of life improvements, such a subtitles, to more modern and innovative game mechanics and user interface customizations such as fully remappable controls, high contrast visibility, screen magnification, glossary of audio cues, labelled subtitles annotating who is speaking, navigation assistance, etc.
Two gaming titles the video called out, particularly notable as designed with blind gamers in mind, where:
- The Last of Us Part 2
- “Naughty Dog promised that blind players could play through the entire game without cited assistance, which many did.”
- The Last of Us 2 – Blind Accessibility Review
- Sightless Gamer Beats The Last of Us 2 Thanks to Accessibility Options
- The Vale: Shadow of the Crown
- “Audio games… A recent popular example is the veil a story about a blind Adventurer where the player has to navigate and even fight and Dodge enemies using only auditory cues”
- Is The Vale the Future of Accessible Gaming?
I’d guess most folks here are already familiar with the topic and titles at hand, but figured I’d post as I found it neat to watch another larger tech news outlet provide coverage on a tech that many in the general public may not be as aware of, which hopefully spurs on more development and investment into accessibility features.
I had not seen a news video report on audio games before. I’m a big fan of audio books, as I have a tough time reading at length, so I’m thinking of getting into audio games as well. Perhaps my ancient laptop will finally be able to play a modern title, as I’d assume the load on the GPU should be minimal 😆. That is, until realtime dialogue and synthesized speech becomes the norm in video games, and I’d yet again need a hefty GPU for running large language models and deep neural networks on my gaming rig 🫠.
The funny thing here is that The Vale actually has visuals; their joke doesn’t land, because of that.
I’d highly recommend it though. It’s kinda short, but certainly fun, especially if you don’t have experience with audio games.