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Should Developers ignore deaf people when designing games?
Rydeson
Member UncommonPosts: 3,852
I ask this question because of a post I read on the World of Warcraft forums. A gamer who wanted to get into raiding was repeatively turned away by guilds because of his disability. Reason was because they require voice/audio participation while raiding. As much as this makes raiding easier, was it the right thing to do? Would you refuse to play ball with a deaf person because of increased communication issues? I wouldn't, but then that's me..
Where I'm going here is that back before there was the mass ability of raid chat, more raids were done with the use of text only.. I remember my days back in EQ and we only had text chat. Since those days audio chat has become common and widespread.. With this and the addition of automated addons, raiding has become easier and easier.. In my opinion, since audio chat made raids twice as easy to finish, the devs turned about and made the boss encounters twice as hard.. The problem here is that Devs are now designing and tailoring boss encounters with the use of audio chat. Is this the right thing to do?
In my opinion, all encounters in a game should be designed without the influence of 3rd party programs, such as vent, teamspeak, etc or even addons.. I also believe that it's completely irresponsible for devs to ignore the needs of the deaf, or other physical issues. Lets have some compassion and not ignore gamers that are deaf because people thought it was the easier road to take.. If the use of Ventrilo makes a boss fight easier.. so be it.. lets not make boss fights so hard that it's almost impossible to beat without the use of audion chat.. Shame on you devs
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I've actually played with a few deaf folks, in raiding and EVE pvp. In both cases, it wasn't exactly a detriment, and often someone who was an extremely fast typer, or maybe had a low priority job, would type out pertinent orders in the appropriate channel.
As such, I feel that this is a community issue, and most games are, at a basic level, extremely deaf friendly. Quest and missions are given in text, although there might be some flavor voice added. From a developer perspective, there is really very little more that can be done to increase the abilities of the hearing impaired to participate fully. There are many raiding guilds/pvp guilds that don't require voice communication, and those that do (unless they're extreme dickheads) can generally find a way to accomodate the needs of essentially anyone.
Of course, there is the possibility that guilds think a player just hate VOIP and is faking a disability.
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Honestly, the "Vent Only" crap is bullshit regardless of if they're discriminating between a deaf person or someone who just doesn't want to use their stupid vent. People did without that crap just fine for considerably harder encounters in the past. The most blatant example of this elitist shit was in the WAR beta where I had an entire raid get gutted because the leader was replaced mid raid and some toolbag decided it was going to be "Vent only now" and booted half the raid.
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I feel sorry for the deaf guy and at the same time I have to say that it's just a part of life. Audio chat is a big part of mmos now and while that may seem to be a disadvantage to deaf people, it's pretty much always been a disadvantage say to the blind or to people who don't know how to read. Do we change games so that it caters to them? I weigh about 350 pounds and everytime I go to an amusement park I ask them when they are going to make the seats bigger. I get laughs at that because we know that they aren't going to redesign seats just to fit people like me unless it's going to make them some money.
I do wish people would not be discriminative, but what are we to do. I hope that guy found a good raiding guild after being turned down by those jerks.
Most game developers are too worried about why their game is tanking, I can't see them finding time to write games around disabilities.
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I don't see any problems with having a deaf person in my group. I just wouldn't want to be the one typing in commands as I am not the fastest typer in the world. With the way things are now in most raid examples after the first time through everyone generally knows their roles they need to do so a whole lot of chat isn't generally needed. Also in WoW they have addons that make some things easier such as deadly boss mods.
I don't see this as a developers ignoring deaf people matter. I see it as more of a player community matter. The last thing I personally want is for devs to stop pushing the boundaries on the difficulty of encounters. Many people argue that games are indeed going the opposite way today as it is.
No, I think it's more on that individual of which you spoke to go find a guild that accepts them as they are and will raid with them. Their are entire gaming communities based of people with similiar challenges that play just as hardcore and raid just as hardcore as people that don't have them, for that matter. Sure it may have been insulting that that guild didn't let that person go along. I'm not arguing that. But you can't let such things turn into broad sweeping changes which affect a ton of people, most of which would see such changes as a negative, who weren't involved in that situation.
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What you're asking for makes absolutely no sense.
You can gimp yourself by using only text chat to make all the people who don't want to use Vent (or are deaf) happy, or you can tell them to piss off and get the next person in line who actually wants to win. It's the same principle as gear score, achievements, and all that other stuff.
This is the price of accessibility - in games where the group sizes aren't fixed and/or you almost always group with the same people every day, you don't see these kinds of issues nearly as much.
It's a player run guild. If they feel a deaf person would hold them back then so be it. There are plenty of guilds that would accept this deaf person into their guild.
This nails it.
Community issue, not gameplay. Everything (except cutscenes?) has text- only some things have audio (text is cheaper/faster to produce on a budget than is audio). The 2 hearing-impaired guys I've played with worked around their 'disability' just fine.
Endnote: one clan I was a part of despised Vent/TS and kept with 'the old ways' that you mention. This organization, mind you, was chasing server firsts in the process... audio isn't necessary, and never was.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
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Behold, the prime example of "Vent only" elitism.
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The point I was trying to make is there's no reason not to be an elitist. By being a raging dickhead you get through the content faster and with less hassles, and since there's no community to speak of you never face any negative consequences of such an attitude.
Keep in mind it's not just your raid leader, he just happens the be the one with enough balls to be a raging dickhead to your face - those other 23 guys in the who raid who do nothing tacitly support him.
Posted by Rydeson on 3/28/10 at 6:58:28 PM
I ask this question because of a post I read on the World of Warcraft forums. A gamer who wanted to get into raiding was repeatively turned away by guilds because of his disability. Reason was because they require voice/audio participation while raiding. As much as this makes raiding easier, was it the right thing to do? Would you refuse to play ball with a deaf person because of increased communication issues? I wouldn't, but then that's me..
Where I'm going here is that back before there was the mass ability of raid chat, more raids were done with the use of text only.. I remember my days back in EQ and we only had text chat. Since those days audio chat has become common and widespread.. With this and the addition of automated addons, raiding has become easier and easier.. In my opinion, since audio chat made raids twice as easy to finish, the devs turned about and made the boss encounters twice as hard.. The problem here is that Devs are now designing and tailoring boss encounters with the use of audio chat. Is this the right thing to do?
In my opinion, all encounters in a game should be designed without the influence of 3rd party programs, such as vent, teamspeak, etc or even addons.. I also believe that it's completely irresponsible for devs to ignore the needs of the deaf, or other physical issues. Lets have some compassion and not ignore gamers that are deaf because people thought it was the easier road to take.. If the use of Ventrilo makes a boss fight easier.. so be it.. lets not make boss fights so hard that it's almost impossible to beat without the use of audion chat.. Shame on you devs
Im all for making MMOs more diverse and allowing people with disabilities chances to compete, but as long as developers are designing raids around people using voice chat theres not a whole lot we can do about it besides not support their games. Im not saying its impossible to raid but being able to adapt to changing environments and move in unison when the s**t hits the fan is what could really mean the difference between success and failure.
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First of all, I think any raid can be accomplished with a person who is hearing impared. The guild may not want to try to accomodate, but it can be done.
Second, while your cause is noble, how far does one take it? Are you asking Developers to create MMO's (and raids) for the blind, for those with only one arm, for those who type with a pencil between their toes? I'm being extreme but where would it end if they did try to accomodate everyone.
Now, if they incorporated voice only responses from npc's and not included text that would be a bit irresponsible and exclusionary, but as it stands now i think the balance is pretty good.
I've got slow reflexes, a handicap in itself, should all raids be designed to accomodate me? Probably not.
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You sir just single handedly made your self look like a arse. Not to mention anyone who is a raging dickhead over the internet usually doesn't have enough balls to do that in real life.
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The issue brought up is definitely a community one.
Although as someone who went to school with an AP deaf guy, I actually want to see more games do full closed-captioning for their sound effects if there are any key sounds the game is communicating which communicate unique events. In MMORPGs this almost never occurs though.
Really it's about time someone did a realtime speech-to-text system, so that even ventrilo can automatically be translated into text for those players. It seems like that sort of tech should already exist, or be really damn close. Just a matter of someone turning it into a usable program.
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The problem isn't the game. Almost every guild uses Ventrillo, a program outside the game, to communicate. The problem is the guilds themselves. But that is the best way for them to communicate. Maybe the guilds should support text. The game has text chat, the quests have text, the npcs have all their dialog in text.
I have played with three deaf people in different MMOs and never once did any of them cause any problems in raids. Being deaf has no impact whatsoever with how well you play the game. Anyone who discriminates in this way is just a complete turd. Anyone who approves of the discrimination is just as big a turd.
We had one girl who was deaf log in to vent for about three weeks simply because she feared that if she didn't she would get kicked from the guild. When it came out she had nothing to worry about there were tears and she was so surprised because of the bad experiences she had in the past. No one knew she was deaf so no one was making special considerations for her and she still did everything right and was a great addition to the raid. I honestly don't understand why people are such bastards sometimes.
There is tech out there that allows voice to text. Im not sure how far its gotten,but maybe the developers can integrate it in and help people who are deaf. Im not sure of the cost. Maybe vent can add this in also. Just a thought.
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WOW has voice chat, just that most people use a 3rd party program for other reasons. So the devs are NOT basing the design on a 3rd party thing.
Voice is a NATURAL form of human interaction. I am sure it is sad for the deaf people but we are not going to give up telephone, voice chat, and other forms of voice communication, in a game, or other kind of situations just because a small percentage of people who cannot deal with it.
This is like saying is it responsible to develop VIDEO games .. or MOVIES, or TV SHOWS when there are blind people. Developers are free to cater to ANY customer groups.
This is political correctness went crazy.
The online community can be a pretty harsh environment. It makes me cringe to think of the insensitive behaviour deaf gamers must experience from time to time.
However, as others have said this is really a community issue more than anything else. I actually dislike voice chat anyway and I know I am not alone because the last guild I joined WoW felt the same. So i'd like to think there are still guilds where deaf MMO players can find a home, though for sure the choice is not as wide.
Didn´t read through the whole thread so sorry if this is a repeat of what anybody else already said.
I would let that person into the guild but require from him to read up alot more on the raid so he/she knows abit more of what´s needed/ expected of his/her class in that particular raid. If things work fine all is good if not talk to them and let them know what they did wrong or didn´t do if that´s the case.
If timers are required the player himself must be in charge of getting things right. Is this a tough job? Yes but you cannot expekt 20 people to change their ways for 1 person.
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No they shouldnt. why waist money trying to please such a small player base. Although I could care less what the player has as a problem. If he can tank or heal, mez or dps by reading I could care less as long as he does it right or well. Although I think AC2 had something in it that looked like 1960s batman animations fom the show that would show big punches like BANG and BIFF. Is that what you want added for them?
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I read it as a game design/development question brought about by the community, not a community question. The community uses VOIP. It generally makes the content easier for those that do. Therefore, the designers/developers begin designing/developing around those that use VOIP. The question could have been asked without regard to those that are deaf.
Should developers ignore those that do not use VOIP when designing games?
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Not to burst your bubble, but they do develop movies and tv shows for the deaf and blind.
They also have telephone devices for the deaf (TTY) and Ventrilo supports it.
To be honest, this is more of a community issue. It's also the responsibility of the deaf user to prepare their computers correctly as well. It isn't that difficult to set up a voice to text interpreter to listen in on a voice audio channel and convert it to text in a note pad on the side of the screen.
I do find it ironic though that some of the same people that are Vent only are the same ones who bitch about how MMOs are not as immersive as they want them to be.