Posts Tagged ‘accessible games’

Good Karma and Good Business

Welcome to the mark of excellence edition…

What, you may ask yourself, do a wheel chair, video games and excellence all have in common? The answer quite simply is when a video game is accessible to everyone and we mean everyone. Two discussions on making games accessible recently drew our attention to the matter. The first is the source of the logo at the top of this article. The link points to an english language section of a site that is not in english. It is, as you can no doubt tell from the logo, a web site about making video games that really are accessible to everyone.

The second discussion was an article in the local paper entitled “Senior Tour”.   This particular senior tour, however, was not sponsored by any professional golf association. No, this senior tour was part of a game that has caught on in some of the local senior communities – Wii Bowling.  In fact you can find an interesting blog entry on a local Wii Bowling tournament here.  We could tell you all about virtual bowling tournaments but Jack Roche, who apparently was part of one of them, can do a much better job of it than we ever could.  Go read the blog entry, we are nuns and we have rulers…that’s an order!

We have discussed much on accessible games of late on our show, but most of it has been in the area that we discussed with Scott Hartsman; games such as those on Facebook made by Zynga.  Beyond Facebook games there are games that are more accessible for a far different set of reasons…they are accessible to gamers with disabilities.  Game publishers always seem to be looking for ways to expand their market and what better way than this?  Beyond the good karma it brings by benefiting disabled gamers (such as some of the players in the virtual bowling tournament) it is just good business. 

This is also a subject that is near and dear to the hearts of the No Prisoners, No Mercy team as Julie was raised by a mother with cerebral palsy and that both Fran and Julie took care of Fran’s disabled mother for five years.

And while we are on the subject of marks of excellence…

Now THATS a GM we like!

We have all had the chance to interact with gms (those staff members behind any game that unstick those who are stuck in the game in some way).  Some are good, some not so good.  We have played mmos where the GMs have taken several days to answer.

Recently Julie had a chance to interact with a GM that stood out head and shoulders above the rest and that is GM Carlin from Fallen Earth and the Icarus Studios.   When a member of her clan (guild for all you WoW players) paged a GM, the answer was swift: it took about 30 seconds to reach GM Carlin.  The GM solved the issue in less than a minute,  and waited until all players got credit for the quest with a slight glitch. 

But here is the part that stands head and shoulders above the rest…

Several days later when Julie Logged on again, she received a message from GM Carlin who wanted to make sure that all of her questions had been answered.  So here is a big salute to Icarus Studio’s GM Carlin:

A big salute to GM Carlin from Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth

 See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy team

Are these the online games in our future?

Tommorow’s article today – my fingers are itching to talk about this one, so here is tommorow’s article today:

EA just announced another round of lay offs, and Mythic  sadly is feeling part of the bite of the axe (we hope it isn’t really true) Sort of Ironic as “Broken Toys” (one of our “must read” sites) pointed out considering they just spent $300 million for a Facebook game developer. The particular pause that this gives me thought for is about accessible games – something we discussed with Scott Hartsman on an earlier No Prisoners, No Mercy show.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of thousands, I will use a game that I used to play as an example: Eve Online. 

Anyone who has ever played Eve Online, or attempted to, knows that it has a steep learning curve. So steep, in fact, that generally it requires a requires a team of Sherpa guides to reach the summit (read “master the game”). Now, in the last year or so the good folks at CCP have made strides in this area.  Still, this is the same game that merited hiring a full fledged economist to study it’s virtual economy.  Without any solid knowledge about subscriber numbers, it is at least easy to say the game is successful. It is either a case of a steady stream of new customers replacing the old ones, or keeping their core market happy. If we consider the learning curve with where EA seems to be putting their dollars these days a key word comes to mind…

“Accessibility”

Accessible games are an issue we discussed with Scott Hartsman on a previous No Prisoners No Mercy show. One such application is Farmville (one of those Facebook applications like Mafia Wars). Recently they hit the 60 million users mark. Obviously this doesn’t all translate into cold hard cash, but the investment needed to create such games is (at least as far as Mr. Hartsman indicated) negligible.  Now obviously we aren’t all interested in pretty ponies, virtual farms, or bunnies dancing around with toilet paper (the last being a Rod Serling quote). Still, it seems that the growth market lays more with the accessible games.

All things considered, it leaves me wondering  about games that are developed with such a steep learning curve, and the gamers that play them (considering I was one of them). Why develop or play a game with such a steep learning curve over something that takes the middle road, such as an Everquest or World of Warcraft?  Is it the thrill of playing a game where you can lose everything in a moment? Is it the virtual equivalent of an adrenalin junky? Perhaps instead it is the idea of putting up with the drudgery of staring at mining lasers for hours on end, staring into space watching the game play itself, so that  you can one day proudly announce yourself to be a “captain of  Eve Online Industry”?

A more important lesson in what seems to be a move toward more accessible games should be that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. MMO gamers seem to have a tendency to complain loud and long about those games and developers who don’t cater to their particular whim.  It may certainly be true that these are those gamers who are, as I have described them, the “un-silent minority”.   Aside from a sincere hope that the news EA “released” today isn’t true, I hope the un-silent minority takes the hint to wake up and smell the coffee, as grandma used to say. If the squeeky wheels that are used to getting the most grease keep it up there may come a day that the only online game we have to play will be “My Pretty Pony”

See you online

Julie Whitefeather