Today's Video Games Are Still Too Visual

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Video games are more appreciated visually than with any other sense. There’s so much information that needs to be processed by our eyes, and most games use colors both to create spectacular visual effects and differentiate between important visual elements during gameplay. Some games, for instance, involve matching colored blocks.

However, Tim McDaniel, a color blind reader of the Ars Technica blog, brought up some pretty intriguing matters. For one, he is a big fan of Battlefield 2142. He enjoys the realistic action and fast gameplay. However, he also finds the game frustrating because of his inability to distinguish between red, green, yellow and brown flags well enough. In a game that depends on capturing the enemy flag, this proves to be a huge disadvantage.

Game designers should realize that a good portion of the gaming population is color blind, and their game design can draw the line whether a color-blind gamer will buy their game or not. Alternative options such as changing certain colors, hues or contrasts might be a good idea for starters. An option for on-screen callouts for certain objects/players on the field will also be helpful.

McDaniel and millions of other color-blind gamers will appreciate it if gaming companies started to consider such issues in their game designs.

Link:  Color-blind gamers: common. Developer awareness? Minimal

Comments

[Chelle]

I'm in the unique position of having become colorblind only a few years ago. I was recently diagnosed with a degenerative disorder of the retina that has left me red/green colorblind. Therefore, I do know what colors things should be but I don't always get that message. I know what red and green look like but a lot of the times, I only see brown.

It's been a big wake up call (in a lot of ways!) in the video game world as well as the information presentation aspect of the web itself. There is certainly plenty of frustration to be had when simply wanting to enjoy a game of (your video game goes here...with the exception of Peggle!), but it's also maddening to try to read a weather map showing where the precipitation is ("Um, it's where that one color of brown is moving in over that other color of brown...") or a map presenting statistics of some kind...bar graphs, anything where the distinction is being made by color alone is all but useless to those of us with this condition.

It would be phenomenal if software developers (oh and by the way, I am one) would keep this population of users in mind when putting together requirements for the next app being developed that will heavily incorporate color. With the prevlance of the internet in everyday life, this is quickly reaching the point where this could become an ADA-like issue akin to ramps on sidewalks and braille signage in elevators, etc.