Sound Based Games
Soundscapes and accessibility has been much on my mind lately and I wanted to drop here some words about it. Graphics are emphasized so much in computer games nowadays, that many other aspects of games are neglected. Sound for example. What would be if developers had concentrated in sound instead of graphics? How would a game for blind people be designed?
Actually, there are such games. And they are not only interesting for sight impaired people. Games based only on sound have the potential to become an own genre. It’s reasonable to give attention to sound based games since progress in sound rendering of game environments can have significant influence on mainstream titles. You can find a selection of sound based games here: www.audiogames.net
There is a particularly impressive Article about a young blind man, Terry Garrett, who completed Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus (noticed through RockPaperShotgun). He succeeded because most events in the game are accompanied by distinctive sound effects. Terry was able to make himself a picture of the game environment by listening to the acoustic clues. You can read the whole Article about Terry at Oddworld Inhabitants.
In: games, music · Tagged with: Abe's Exodus, Sound Based Games, Terry Garrett
on 2011-10-28 at 1.08 pm
Permalink
[...] choice of this topic for my master thesis originated from my earlier interest for sound based games. I was fascinated by the idea of creating a game whith no graphics at all. But in my opinion [...]