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@smashclay
Here's an interview with me and Ariel Gross about what The Audio Mentoring Project is all about and what motivates everyone on the Volunteer Council. It has been great to hear mentees say they got the advice and confidence they needed from their mentors to make the next steps in their careers!
Very happy with the insight and positivity Gordon McGladdery shared with me about running A Shell in the Pit. Happy new year!
What can sound designers learn from User Interface design? Find out tomorrow at 10:35am in the Emerald room during my GameSoundCon talk!
Samuel Justice takes you behind the scenes on the sound for this striking new indie game:
I spoke to Samuel Justice from Sweet Justice Sound about the '30s animation sound design in the charming yet soul-crushing game Cuphead by Studio MDHR. He shares how Sweet Justice got involved with the project, where they got the inspiration for their Foley techniques, and how they balanced the mix so players can stay focused and delighted while dying over and over again.
Video game composers who are speaking at GameSoundCon
In less than a month, I’ll be giving my talk “Game Audio: Beyond Aesthetics” at GameSoundCon. In my presentation, you’ll learn how to increase your game’s usability and accessibility through audio, and you’ll hear plenty of excellent examples from AAA and indie games.
Are your games missing a huge market opportunity?
The voice talent site, Voices.com, interviewed me about the role of audio in game accessibility and why we now have the resources to create more blind-accessible games. It's great they're helping spread the word!
Read the interview here: https://www.voices.com/blog/why-now-is-the-time-to-create-accessible-video-games/
VR is making a lot of game developers reconsider immersion and usability—two crucial elements of accessibility and game audio (that are some times at odds with each other). Since my focus is to create more accessible games with intuitive, gameplay-focused audio, I wanted to know: what can I learn from VR? Let’s start with the brain.
In her presentation for VRDC '16, Kimberly Voll talks about the challenges that VR presents and the roles that attention, presence, engagement, and suspension of disbelief (fidelity contract) play in creating immersive, user-friendly games. With nausea and mental health at the forefront of devs’ minds (especially with marketing), Kim is asked questions that are quite familiar in accessibility like: “Can we put a label on our game to warn people who are motion sensitive?” (answer: it’s a spectrum), as well as other playtesting inquiries about physical variables and letting people play how they want.
It's a very interesting talk, and it goes to show that game development is an ecosystem where we can all learn from each other.
Watch her talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-owQfn-iYQw&feature=youtu.be
(Also, check out the slides here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023165/This-is-Your-Brain-on)
We’ve all been there: You travel to a new place (e.g. Yellowstone Nat’l Park) to capture its open atmospheres and unique animals (prairie dogs and buffalo), but every time you press record you are interrupted by human activity (motorcycles!). Whether recording new places across the world or just few hours away, we’re often reminded we aren’t the only ones on the planet ...
Image alt text: A cow walks along the beach with an overlaid title that says, “The Anti-Antisocial Field Recording Method. Expect the unexpected! A cow on the beach? Better than a tiger in the woods! There are often very good reasons why no one else visits certain places!”
Tuukka Ojala is a software developer at Vincit. He understands some people may not even know where to begin to understand his workflow—he forgoes a mouse and screen and instead prefers a Braille display, the NVDA screen reader, and a blind-accessible editor to write and edit his code.
In his blog post, he shares his finely tuned workflow and answers questions like "How do you use a computer?" and "How can you code?" But don’t be fooled—with ultra fast text-to-speech recognition and the visual layout of his Braille display, his workflow goes well beyond the basic nature of these questions and shows that 'accessible' doesn’t mean 'less effective'.
Read his story here: https://www.vincit.fi/en/blog/software-development-450-words-per-minute/
(Also, if you’re interested in how text-to-speech recognition engages the visual cortex, check out this article by Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind-people-process/)
VR accessibility is a tricky field. It has even more considerations than traditional game development—including simulation sickness, arm and head mobility, wearable peripherals, a whole new approach to interacting with 3D audio and subtitles, etc., etc., etc.
Luckily, there are people who have been looking into accessible solutions from the beginning, and this article by Ian Hamilton accumulates these insights. Ian talks about the best practices for simulation sickness, motor impairment, hearing loss, photosensitive epilepsy, and vision impairment, and he includes personal stories and extensive further resources that will take more than one sitting to absorb. It may have been written last November, but it’s still one of the most extensive pieces you will find.
Read Ian's article here: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20161031/284491/VR__accessibility.php?platform=hootsuite
Alt text: A man plays a horror VR game using the HTC Vive headset and controllers at GDC.
Now that PAX West is done, it’s time to see what audio highlights you may have missed. If you couldn’t get to the panel about the sound of Guild Wars 2, you’re in luck! ...
Alt text: Three men stand on a stage behind a table full of foley items and audio equipment.
Interview with the Alex James Ryan, AbleGamers Fellow
Last year, AJ Ryan was chosen as the winner of the first AbleGamers Fellowship Award, a program that empowers developers with disabilities who are entering the games industry (which was made possible by a huge donation from Trion Worlds, paid internships from Motiga, and support from the International Game Developers Association).
As an NKU grad, AJ has worked on games as a designer, programmer, and researcher, focusing on accessible design. He has written about the powerful role of community in game accessibility, as well as accessibility for VR, NES Classic, and Sega Saturn games and Pokémon Go. He has also created mods for Sega classics on Steam to allow people to play with less barriers, and he spoke at GAConf about developing accessible games as an indie studio.
So without giving too much away, learn about AJ Ryan’s personal and industry aspirations and why he is well-deserving of the Fellowship Award: http://www.ablegamers.org/interview-with-the-alex-james-ryan-ablegamers-fellow/
(Also, check out his: - “Chill Edition” Steam mods: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=728481243 - Paper about community and game accessibility: http://onlyusemefeet.com/assets/Game%20Accessibility%20through%20Game%20Design.pdf - Panel from GAConf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTcSJBWpWww - And website: http://onlyusemefeet.com)
Alt text: AJ Ryan sits in his wheelchair alongside other candidates and smiles.
Interview with the Alex James Ryan, AbleGamers Fellow
Last year, AJ Ryan was chosen as the winner of the first AbleGamers Fellowship Award, a program that empowers developers with disabilities who are entering the games industry (which was made possible by a huge donation by Trion Worlds, paid internships by Motiga, and support from the International Game Developers Association).
As an NKU grad, AJ has worked on games as a designer, programmer, and researcher, focusing on accessible design. He has written about the powerful role of community in game accessibility, as well as accessibility for VR, NES Classic, and Sega Saturn games and ‘Pokémon Go’. He has also created mods for Sega classics on Steam to allow people to play with less barriers, and he spoke at GAConf about developing accessible games in an indie studio.
So without giving away too much, learn about AJ Ryan’s personal and industry aspirations and why he is well-deserving of the Fellowship Award: http://www.ablegamers.org/interview-with-the-alex-james-ryan-ablegamers-fellow/
(Also, check out his:
- “Chill Edition” Steam mods: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=728481243
- Paper about community and game accessibility: http://onlyusemefeet.com/assets/Game%20Accessibility%20through%20Game%20Design.pdf
- Panel from GAConf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTcSJBWpWww
- And website: http://onlyusemefeet.com)
Alt text: AJ Ryan sits in his wheelchair alongside other candidates and smiles.
Encouraging communication between gamers with disabilities and developers (and removing the barriers so they are one and the same) is why I scour the internet to find others who want make a change. And I’m happy to say I’ve found a new blog by gamer & musician Crystal Dennis who shares her thoughts on blind-accessible games, as well as her love for anime and Kirby <3.
In this post, she shares her perspective on “games for the blind” and what they mean to her. She makes a lot of great points, including:
- Blind-accessible games don’t have to be audio-only: “There are people who have full sight out of one eye, have light perception, tunnel vision, peripheral vision …“
- Blind accessibility can mean a number of things: “For some, being able to magnify things is enough, while for others, the text to speech menu options are all they’d need. Others would just need inverted color schemes, while others may prefer a fully audio, fully tactile game.”
- Gamers with disabilities want to play mainstream games, too: "What I prefer in a game, is just to have the entire experience, like any normal game. … I’d overall just like to see more access to games that are more mainstream."
It’s a great read, and I look forward to reading more of her posts!
You may be old enough to remember 8-track tapes, but do you remember 8-track audio game consoles? I definitely do not, but I found two interesting reports on these devices:
First, Michelle Ehrhardt from Kill Screen shares a quick overview of the Mego 2-XL smart toy and the Omni Entertainment System and their role in the history of blind-accessible games (though, not to be picky, they are not completely accessible): https://killscreen.com/articles/a-closer-look-at-the-audio-game-console-from-1980/
Also, in a surprisingly in-depth video for such a rare device, Mat from Techmoan gives us an inside look (literally) at the Omni. Since I grew up with records and cassettes instead of 8-tracks, I thought the gameplay might be similar to a Teddy Ruxpin or VHS games, but with careful timing and the limited interactivity of 8-tracks, the gameplay speed is pretty remarkable! Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyOKgLtUxto