Tag: EA

Participation in the “Gaming Blind” Documentary by Accessible Media Inc.

I had the opportunity to participate in Accessible Media Inc.’s documentary Gaming Blind, a documentary that explores blind and partially sighted accessibility in the video game industry.

“After losing her sight, Shelby Travers thought video games were a part of her past. Join her as she discovers how accessible gaming is to the blind and partially sighted community today, picking up a controller for the first time in 10 years.”

You can see a trailer for the documentary here:

but you can also watch the entire documentary, including the interview with me,  right here: Gaming Blind

I had the pleasure of talking with Shelby and we discussed the changing demographics of the video game industry, as well as how developers are attempting to reach a more inclusive audience.  The documentary does a great job of evaluating issues that blind and partially sighted gamers face, and speaks with prominent industry professionals about how these issues may be faced.

Thanks to Shelby Travers and everyone at AMI-CA for developing this great documentary and for allowing me to be a part of it.

Follow me on Twitter @Socialvideogame

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NPR’s “All Things Considered” piece on Gaming Diversity

NPR’s “All Things Considered” piece on Gaming Diversity and Video Game Violence

NPR’s “All Things Considered” has a new piece on video game diversity that reflects on their experience at this years E3. For those who don’t listen to ATC, it’s a segment show on NPR in which the correspondents go out and explore different things. This week Arun Rath reflects on his experience at E3. Spoiler alert: He didn’t spend his entire time there playing the new Battlefield.

Listen to the piece on their website or read the transcipt, it’s less than 7 minutes and an interesting insight from someone who clearly is a foreigner to the gaming community. He raises some issues we already know about, but are important nonetheless. His major focus in the lack of diversity presented in E3 among presenters and protagonist, which is true and fair. However, using E3 as a temperature for the community as a whole isn’t pragmatic. Despite this, he does an interesting enough job of bringing the issue to his listeners, a populace of people who probably don’t know much In addition, he brings up is  the amount of violent video games revealed/shown at this E3 and the amount of sequels at the show. These are fair reflections, but they may not necessarily reflect the entirety of E3. He glances over a lot of the new and unique things coming from specific developers and instead focuses on how the Oculus Rift is the next “revolution” in gaming. EH….I don’t want to comment on what I think about the OR, but I think it’s fair to say that  Rath didn’t get the full scope of E3 in the article.

It is fair to say that E3 has become dominated by violent video games. This graph, created by user timetokill on Neogaf, shows the breakdown of reveals of games that focus on shooting:

GAMERS JUST WANNA SHOOT

This generations focus on shooters is interesting, but that’s a subject for another day. E3 has always been about appealing to the console gaming masses, and this year’s was no different. With the gaming demographic expanding, hopefully in future years we’ll see the console population diversify as well. Until then, big shows like E3 are still going to be directed at their main audience: males who love shooters.

At least Nintendo is doing something….not shooting?