G4H: game accessibility research @ University of Nevada, Reno

Games 4 Health Conference, Boston Game Accessibility Workshop June 10th 2009 Game Accessibility Research @ Eelke Folmer

Overview 1.Introduction 2.Motivation for Research 3.Research Projects: 1 TextSL 4.Lessons Learned 5.Q&A

Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor (2006) Player-Game-Interaction Lab 2 MS. / 3 Ph.D / 1 PostDoc Research Interests: Dead Space  Human Computer Interaction  Software Engineering  Games / Virtual Worlds  http://www.eelke.com Wii-Fit  “You are what you play”: BioShock

Motivations

Games are pervasive Education Advertising Politics Military Simulations Health ...

Diverse audience More & more people are interested in playing games Varying amounts of experience & abilities Individuals with disabilities often face significant barriers to or are excluded from playing games What are these barriers? Illustrate with a Game Interaction Model

How do we play games? game output 3 different modalities input player

Detailed Steps 1.Game provides feedback {enemies/ gunfire/ sound} 2.Player decides what in-game response to provide: 1.(a) Do nothing. 2.(b) Move or reorient his/her character. 3.(c) Fire his/her gun. 4.(d) Change the weapon. 5.(e) Change the camera viewpoint. 6.(f) Reload, pause, or save the game. 3.The player must physically issue the chosen action(s) through a physical device. 4.The internal state of the game may change and new feedback may be provided

Synthesis 1. feedback 1. feedback 1. feedback 2. up/down 2. left/right/gas 2. left/right/shoot 3. button 3. wheel 3. button / mouse

Game Interaction model

Disability

Game Accessibility Stats ★Disability may affect ability to play to different extents ★Based on Census 2006 data & game interaction model we found that in the US: ★6.2 Million disabled are unable to play games at all ★25.9 Million disabled suffer from reduced game experience ★Elderly overly represented in our estimates. ★Nevertheless this will be a big problem in the future

Our research ★Understand exactly what barriers individuals with disabilities face. ★Research alternative ways to play: ★Feedback from alternative modalities ★Reduced amounts of input. ★while retaining game experience ★Focus on game genres that are NOT accessible ★More complex interaction models ★Provide examples & guidelines to the game industry.

Guitar Hero > 21M copies sold Dominate sales charts Not playable by

Viable strategies ? VI accessible games Guitar Hero • Speech • Interference with music • Earcons • Sonification • Too many stimuli • Audio Cues

Haptic output 5 Different “notes” ! Varying note lengths Lookahead <3 notes simultaneously ! ? ? Glove Pager engines (# ? ) “Haptic Cues”? Position?

Tradeoffs ! remove lookahead ! ★“whack a mole” gameplay Remove ★retain “guitar playing” feeling 1 button ★Easy to learn ★Fun!

Play testing

User Study Participants 8 sighted + 4 visually impaired age 20 - 41 (SD=4.5) Groups 1 sighted Blind Hero first time players 2 blind Blind Hero first time players 3 sighted Blind Hero experts on Guitar Hero 4 sighted Guitar Hero first time players Play 2 songs repeatedly (to measure increase) for 4 times

Results guitar Hero - novice expert VI novice Haptic is a viable strategy for Music based games Performance lower but could increase over time Most important: participants enjoyed the game

one switch games

Problem switch controller mouth controller eye tracker one handed joystick  rely upon adapted controllers Constrained (type/ amount) Suitable for arcade/puzzle games Not suitable for popular game genres (FPS, RTS, etc)

Research objective less ? Find smallest amount of input. Preserve gameplay. Find the “core” of the game. What strategies can be used? more

Experiences less ✔ ✔ ✔  Support all types of input  Find minimum (may not be binary 1 switch)  Identified the following mechanisms:  automation  reduction more  scanning  How do these change the gameplay?

Gordon’s Trigger Finger Be able to respond fast Scanning/automating/removing Idea: player on top of a bot? Evaluate alternatives Scanning too slow moving user automated Multiplayer only aiming user automated fire user user Railshooter switch weapons user random Balanced/ Fair open doors user automated FUN jump/crawl user removed

One Switch Interfaces Music Puzzle Games virtual world Sports Games first person shooter

TextSL

Virtual Worlds Second Life / There / Active / Home Higher degree of interaction. Visually attractive Entirely driven by user generated content Virtual Economy Social Interaction most important Estimated: in 4 years 80% of internet users will have a VW account

Accessibility Problem ? ? ? Unlike Web, VW lack textual representation Not Accessible with screen reader / tactile display VW increasingly used as virtual classrooms / distance learning (Section 508) Communities for Disabled in SL (Virtual ability) Research how VW can be made accessible  develop prototype interface

Analyze differences virtual worlds video games  VW lack Combat/Storyline/Score  No need for quick responses as you cannot die  Everything is user generated (large amount of content you cannot change)  Viewer offers large number of functions including creating objects. Many operations on objects. Objects define their own functionality through scripts.  VW viewers is more like a browser.

Output Strategies  VI games (TerraFormers, AudioQuake, Shades of Doom) with similar interaction mechanisms as VW.  All use audio  Levels have minimum number of objects  Most strategies focus on being able to locate “enemies”  Earcons & Audio Cues (too many objects in VW & you cannot augment objects )  Sound Radar (not applicable)  Speech (applicable, but requires augmentation)

Controls  Controls the same as the original games (arrow keys)  Player has to do the pathfinding which is useful for mental mapping (dungeons)  Generic “use” command to interact with objects  Design of levels accommodates limited interaction & manual pathfinding  CS difficult to implement in Virtual worlds as  Large amount of objects & avatars  Large number of functions to support.  Mental mapping impossible in VW  Manual Pathfinding is very hard

Different approach  Command based interface (TextSL):  Inspired by multi user dungeon games (MUD)  “chat interface” to support social interaction  Iteratively extract texts that can be read with a screen reader  Command based interaction supports interaction with large amounts of objects & Avatars (“give my flower to jane”, “sit on chair”)

TextSL features  Commands in 3 categories:  Exploration (move / fly / teleport / follow / describe /where)  Communication (say / whisper / mute,.....)  Interaction (sit, touch.....)  Notable features:  Natural language (go / travel / walk all map to “move” ) increasing learnability. Interpreter allows for prepositions and adjectives “give my chair to...”  Collision free navigation. e.g. “Move forward 100”  Summarizer aims to minimize the amount of feedback provided to avoid overwhelming the user with feedback.

User Studies  Compare TextSL with SL  8 Sighted & 8 Screen reader users  Tasks in 3 categories + tutorial  Measure success rate & performance times  TextSL has same succesrate as SL viewer for performing tasks (accessibility)  Exploration & Interaction significantly slower (usability)  Communication the same.  Command based interface is a feasible approach

Lessons Learned  Research contributions:  Haptic feedback is a viable strategy for making music based games accessible to VI.  Popular game genres can be made switch accessible by automating, reducing or making it switch accessible but it involves significant tradeoffs with regard to the gameplay. For a number of popular game genres we now understand these tradeoffs.  Virtual worlds are different from Video games and require a different strategy to make them accessible to VI. A command-based interface is a feasible approach.  lack of meta data for objects in SL

Questions? A description of all research projects & media (video/ downloads) can be found on http://www.eelke.com

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G4H: game accessibility research @ University of Nevada, Reno

by eelke folmer on Jun 15, 2009

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G4H: game accessibility research @ University of Nevada, Reno — Presentation Transcript