[Concept] Play as a blind man

Kobusvdwalt9

Hi all,
I thought of this before I stumbled across MGSA so I was wondering what you guys think about :
A story driven game about the life of a blind man.The game would also have no visuals and all of the story details would be delivered through sound clips.
Sort of a auto-biography of a blind man.
Not quite sure what gameplay would be like but hey Dear Esther made it happen. (Although they had pretty graphics...)

Thoughts ?

Tuism

There was a game called Deep Sea, and it was a completely auditory game :)

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/12/deep-sea-the-scariest-game-ever/

Guess the point is... Work out what it is the game is trying to convey, or what is the thing that's gonna make it engaging. Sure there's sound, there's a million ways to do sound. Different moods, different effects, etc.

Why is it different from listening to some good music? What's the controls? What do you do?

Kobusvdwalt9

Ok so I am not working on this (if some audio guy or writer wants to, ill do the programming) but I just wanted some thoughts what I thought about is gameplay would be either like :

puzzle based // say you here a baby crying and you walk around a bit and here a rabbit/squirl/tedy bear and you press E, some thought dialogue plays and you go over to the baby and press E again and give him this item to shut him up silence him.

or

The exploration of his/her feelings from teen years to adult and you just walk along in a 3d world with a black screen while the story is being told to you.

I like the latter more.

Fengol

If you want to try a game that has no visuals (that doesn't require DIY like Deep Seas) I can recommend SoundRTS. It really makes you think about navigation and play in a different way.

Kobusvdwalt9

Another problem would be screenshots...

Tuism

I feel a large part of the blind experience is the tactile one - feeling - walking into things, hands out, touching things. Maybe the screen can represent a world of touch synaesthetically rather than a visual one. And not talking about a sonar version of a 3D world, but something completely foreign and strange to a seeing person.

Hmmmm :)

Kobusvdwalt9

@Tuism Sounds interesting. It would be an interesting challenge to try and reproduce touch on screen.

Tuism

Not reproduce touch but... What touching looks like to the mind of the blind person. It'll be a really strange experience and completely counter intuitive... But learnable. Hmmmm. Maybe literally on a touch device - iPad.

mattbenic

Tuism said:

I feel a large part of the blind experience is the tactile one - feeling - walking into things, hands out, touching things. Maybe the screen can represent a world of touch synaesthetically rather than a visual one. And not talking about a sonar version of a 3D world, but something completely foreign and strange to a seeing person.

Hmmmm :)

I do quite like this idea, but it has a pretty ironic downside-blind people wouldn't be able to play your game. If the experience is purely auditory then it could actually be enjoyed by blind players as well.

Perhaps designing the game for devices that have some kind of tactile feedback (gamepads with rumble, phones with vibrate) would be a better option.

Kobusvdwalt9

@Tuism
Thats what I meant. Like say that feeling of having to learn something new. For instance when you walk into a wall the screen shows a blue 5 symbol. When you pick up something it shows a yellow A symbol. Something completely new.

@mattbenic
So if I understand this right a example would be : when you walk into a wall the phone vibrates. ? It would be interesting to train gameplay based of off haptic feedback as well. But the haptic (touch) device should be able to produce a variety of different vibrations otherwiser this wont work. In my mind at least.

Kobusvdwalt9

@Fengol I downloaded SoundRTS its a cool experiment but it is something entirely different than what I was thinking of.

Fengol

Sure, I wasn't suggesting you emulate it. I'm offering it as a perspective on how 1 game conveys spatial and other information and a gameplay experience through sound alone.

duncanbellsa

Brendon Chung from Blendo games made quite a cool game as a 7DFPS entry called Guru

One team are assasins, who have a large axe.
The other team is the Guru, who is blind.


The above picture is what the Assassin team sees. Assassins are armed with big scary axes.



The above picture depicts what the Guru sees. It’s a black screen. The Guru is blind and also has a big scary axe.

http://blendogames.com/news/?p=848

dammit

I think that the first thing you need to do is play around with being blind for a bit. It might seem silly, but wearing a blindfold for a couple days might give you a better idea of what is important and what you might want to represent...and also, where the fun in the whole thing might be.

You might also want to have a narrator, to drive any game play and also guide players who have no idea what to do and are used to visual cues.

mattbenic

There's an interesting new article on Gama about a game that ended up being retrofitted for blind players:
http://feedly.com/k/19NBjZ3

Will every game we make be blind-accessible? No. Some concepts are genuinely good, and just as genuinely not suitable for an audio-only experience. But we'll be thinking about accessibility with every game we make. Looking for ways to open it up, invite more people in. Maybe not blind players every time, but what about color-blind? The very young, the elderly? If we plan for accessibility from the start, surely we can accommodate a few more players. At the very least, we never want another group of players to have to come to us and say "You were SO CLOSE. Why did you leave us out?"

Kobusvdwalt9

This is what I meant. Looks like something I would buy if its done well. http://incusgames.com/announcing-three-monkeys/