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Video Games For The Visually Impaired

Brice Mellen

I have never thought about this before – those who are visually challenged are being left out of the video game world. I suppose that most other video game developers have not been thinking about this fact either. That is, until the Singapore-M.I.T. Gambit Game Lab brought the idea into the forefront. Gambit, by the way, stands for gamers, aesthetics, mechanics, business, innovation, and technology.

What the people at the Game Lab are doing is simple – they are creating video games for the global market, games which do not need any translation no matter which continent you may be located. According to Eitan Glinert, “People with disabilities were being left out of progress in the gaming market.” Their aim now is to create video games which could be played by those with disabilities together with those who can see normally.

And guess what kind of game they have in mind? Something with music! I told you that music is becoming an integral theme for video games, didn’t I?

Anyway, they have something up and working at the moment called AudiOdyssey. The New York Times ran a story on the game, stating:

The game stars a D.J. named Vinyl Scorcher whose objective is to get the people in his nightclub on the dance floor, by playing great music. “Choosing music as our central game theme works perfectly since both sighted and nonsighted users are equally familiar with music,” Mr. Glinert says. But it wasn’t enough to make the game playable by both groups; both groups had to have the same experience.

“You listen for clapping beats while the song is playing,” he says. “Your task is to match these clapping beats.”

If you hear a clap to your right, swing the remote to the right in time with the music, or hit the right arrow key. With a “beat” matched, the player adds more tracks, and more clubbers dance. “The more complex the song gets, the more crowded the floor gets,” he says. One obstacle: overexcited clubbers might bump into his table. And onward to advanced levels of play.

I have not seen this game in the market but I have no doubt that we will be seeing these kinds of games pretty soon. And by the way, I just beat Joe Perry on GH: Aerosmith last night.