I can't say a lot here, because I haven't caught up to the conversation. But I thought I would chime in as someone who basically spends every day of my life going between western and Japanese cultures.. warning. Generalization and personal opinion ahead... but I'm trying to be as objective as I can.

Japan is indeed a more conformist society than we are. Everything that is done that sets the bar higher is for the sake of competition, but that's generally in media and tech, or traditional arts. That's because modern mainstream society is indeed very conformist, and being different is not a good thing, as CAE said. But in media and tech it's good because difference generates revenue, and in arts difference is good because it's an expression of traditions or other things that don't impact how society functions as a whole. If, however, someone was to not go to college instead of trying to work right out of high school, where they would have some chance at scceeding here, over there that would meet with frowns and disapproval because that person is not seen as a contributing member of society, because it's impossible to work without a decent education. Or so says the assumption, anyway.

Some people here have hit it on the head when they say Western culture is much more centered on immediate gratification or returns. In Japan, traditionally, the best things are the ones made over time. A Japanese sword, if manufactured to form and in a traditional way takes upwards of a month to make, even now. In China or the west, swords are mass produced and so can be bought for cheaper so a collector can have six different ones hanging on their wall. Any Japanese sword collector knows that having one genuine Katana for a hefty price can be a far more important posession than six cheaply made decorative pieces. Similarly, Japanese martial arts take years upon years of study to be good at. If you said you'd been doing a martial art for 3 years in the west, people would go wide-eyed and see you as an experienced practicioner. But from a Japanese viewpoint, three years is the equivalent to being a baby with much more ways to go. You can see this in clubs for japanese martial arts like karate that have been westernized where you can get a blackbelt in a year, where as the traditional club nextdoor will require you to study five before getting the same belt.

Getting back to gaming, this is what separates Japanese from western audio games. Yukio and MM, the main people behind the BK series and shadow line respectively, spent years developing their games because they didn't just want to please the people they were releasing the game to, and they didn't develop games they thought people wanted. They developed the games that they wanted to play themselves, and wanted to share that passion and that vision with the community. Hence why they were willing to take a much longer period to develop their titles, and the end product speaks for itself. Galaxy Laboratory is a team composing of about 3 or 4 development people, not counting voiceactors and the people who made the music for SR. But if you listen to their broadcasts or get a chance to talk to them, they have a passion for making games that evryone can enjoy, because they never had the chance to play these types ofgames themselves. And again, there is a Japanese mentality behind all of that to not half-ass the job, to take however long it takes to make a product the best you can make it, both for your own satisfaction and so others can enjoy it. Thankfully in a more modernized Japan that is starting to lean toward immediate gratification, that is one o the attitudes in the workplace and in general daily activities that hasn't lost its traditional Japanese spirit. And that's the biggest difference, if you ask me. The desire to churn out as many games as possible in as quick a time as possible for the gratification of completing one project to move onto the next one right away, vs the willingness to slave away at one project and get the gratification from seeing it polished and to be able to see the reflection of how much work went into it and so others can enjoy the fruits of your effort.

Having said all that, I don't think noone in this community at all has this attitude. But people are curious to know what the difference is between the western attitude and Japanese, and there you have it... the observations who spends half his life with Japanese people and the other half among everyone else. And this applies to the mainstream too. Look at the two big fighting games of all time, Mortal Kombat and Soul Calibur. Mortal kombat has a game every two to three years that comes out and relies on flashy gimics and tons upon tons of characters and while it's fun, people lose interest in it because it's shallow. Soul Calibur games are released every 4 to 6 years, which doubles the hype when one is anounced and when t's released, with a few exceptions in the series, they're long lasting and enjoyable because you can clearly see how much passion has gone into every detail from character design to different weapons to the music. And the various people who have worked on the game have even said that they make the game in a way that they would find fun to play, but that would also apeal to the masses.

Ramble over for now. Again, there was a lot of personal opinion and broad statements in that post, but I hope someone at least found it a bit educational...

Magurp244, I've always understood that to be the case.  I'd say you're right on the money.

i've said it before and i'll say it again. the problem with audio games by this community is that they are developed (mostly) for the blind community without thinking about doing stuff to bring in the sighted community. the closest game that actually does approach this is swamp i think. it allows you to play the game visually as well. the blind community in itself is not enough to maintain a profitable business. pun intended it's shortsighted to simply develop g\games that only have a black screen. you couldn't market the game beyond a given group of people. if people actually thought a bit more outside of the blindness box and actually included the sighted community in their games then they may get a bit more return for their effort.

Assault, that was a great post, even if it was constructed of personal biases and opinions. Like you say I don't think western devs are conscientiously trying to put out a product that only serves the purpose of adding one more to the pile for increased productivity. But I do think the cultural difference probably does affect work ethic and style, not so much with game development but in a general attitude about life and dedication and things. If you dont live in the Japanese culture you won't produce things the same way they do, unless you find dramatic incentive and inspiration to do so.

The problem, though, is that when developers market their games to a sighted audience, they don't get much more than a few scattered reviews, some good, some bad. Sighted people aren't at all accustomed to audio games. I heard that when Papa Sangre and Audiodefense and those games came out, they were mostly received by blind audiences because a lot of sighted players thought the game was broken because they didn't know how to play it. Maybe this was something Somethinelse could've done better, or maybe sighted players just aren't used to how audio games are meant to be played (use decent stereo headphones for best sound localization, and the game will explain the rest). Granted, I didn't actually check these reviews because I was cautioned that the reviews were very uninformed and showed a complete ignorance of how to play the game. And I know I keep coming back to Somethinelse, but it's one of the few companies I can think of which tried to market to sighted audiences, and received a very small amount of mixed attention. Maybe someone else has done better or will soon do so. In any case, until audio games get more positive attention from sighted audiences, we're probably not going anywhere. I still know people who would be amazed at the fact that we can play a simple text-based game or a side-scroller like Super Liam. Super Liam came out in 2004 iirc, but in the mainstream world those kinds of games have been around since the 80s. And yet, in 2019 the mainstream world, either out of lack of interest, or more likely, poor networking, will likely have no idea of this game's existence. I don't think it's anyone's fault, it's just that the world of audio and mainstream games have a rift between them which in some areas is very wide, both physically and intellectually. I guess you can't blame the two for finding it difficult to meet. When we started making audio games, I think the community was largely centered on experimenting, finding the best things that worked, making some money on the side if the games turned out to be worth charging for. and we're mostly still in that phase, the reasons for which I think are a conundrum as I said in my last post and as many people seem to be illustrating in this thread. This is great discussion, though! And on the bright side, we are slowly getting more exposure, as more sighted people do seem to be trying their hand at developing experimental accessible games, or improving accessibility for existing games.

Fair enough. I remember Daniel Zingaro, in the history of Troopanum series, saying he asked his brother to make a background picture. I just went and listened to it and he said he felt pretty strongly that he wanted people to see that you were playing a game, and not pressing keys like a lunatic in front of a black screen. It's a good point, and one that's been overlooked lately. That said, it's just a simple background picture that doesn't reflect what's happening in the game, so it probably wouldn't do for sighted gamers.

This puts us in a vicious cycle. Most of our devs are blind themselves so graphics aren't any more enjoyable for them than they would be for a lot of us. I guess the only way to rectify that would be for someone experienced in audio games to team up with someone who can see and also shares the vision of the game and would be able to make graphics. and then you get to how to code the graphics in such a way to respond properly to what's going on in the game. The sighted person/people would have to be soly responsible for that. And how involved would the graphics have to be? I bet there are a lot of sighted players who judge a game by graphics alone so I imagine they'd have to be decent at least. Though, if what you say is true, then the graphics aren't as important so long as there's something to look at? I dunno, I guess it's as subjective as everything else really.

Hard, yes. but as SR and Swamp have both demonstrated, very manageable. The developers of SR are totally blind or low vision, and managed to churn out acceptable graphics... there are sighted people who judge on graphics alone, yes. But there are millions f indie gamers who are happy with average graphics so long as the game is good. If a developer takes the time to implement graphics or finds someone willing to help, with the amount of indie sites out there, it's a situation with no losing scenario.

I meant hard as in hard to implement. For instance, you can create an input box (in python) (that apparently doesn't show the prompt, maybe I'm rendering it faster than my card supports) with something like (from an old game engine I have):

import pygame, pygame.freetype
from pygame.locals import *
def input(text):
    pygame.event.clear()
    entry = ""
    if vars.graphics==1:
        font = pygame.freetype.Font(None, 50)
    pos=0
    tts.say(text, 1)
    while vars.breaking==0:
        clock = pygame.time.Clock()
        for evt in pygame.event.get():
            if evt.type == KEYDOWN:
                if evt.unicode.isprintable():
                    tts.say(evt.unicode, 1)
                    entry += evt.unicode
                    pos=len(entry)
                elif evt.key == K_BACKSPACE and len(entry)>0:
                    tts.say(entry[-1], 1)
                    entry = entry[:-1]
                    pos=len(entry)
                elif evt.key == K_RETURN:
                    pygame.event.clear()
                    if len(entry)<1:
                        tts.say("You must enter something!", 1)
                        if vars.graphics==1:
                            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgmtrect)
                            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgcrect)
                        return ""
                    else:
                        if vars.graphics==1:
                            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgmtrect)
                            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgcrect)
                        return entry
                elif evt.key==K_ESCAPE:
                    pygame.event.clear()
                    if vars.graphics==1:
                        vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgmtrect)
                        vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgcrect)
                    return ""
                elif evt.key==K_LEFT and pos>0 and not len(entry)==0:
                    pos-=1
                    tts.say(entry[pos], 1)
                elif evt.key==K_RIGHT and pos<len(entry) and pos>=0 and not len(entry)==0:
                    pos+=1
                    tts.say(entry[pos], 1)
                elif (evt.key==K_UP and not len(entry)==0) or (evt.key==K_DOWN and not len(entry)==0):
                    tts.say(entry, 1)
                elif evt.key==K_HOME and not len(entry)==0:
                    pos=0
                    tts.say(entry[pos], 1)
                elif evt.key==K_END and not len(entry)==0:
                    pos=len(entry)
                    tts.say(entry[pos], 1)
            elif evt.type == QUIT:
                return
        if vars.graphics==1:
            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgmtrect)
            vars.screen.fill((0, 0, 0), rect=vars.msgcrect)
            promptfont = pygame.freetype.SysFont(None, 50)
            surface = promptfont.render(text, fgcolor=pygame.color.Color(255, 165, 0, 255), bgcolor=pygame.color.Color(255, 255, 255, 255))
            vars.msgmtrect = surface[0].get_rect()
            vars.msgmtrect.midtop = vars.screen.get_rect().midtop
            vars.screen.blit(surface[0], vars.msgmtrect)
            block = font.render(entry, fgcolor=pygame.color.Color(255, 255, 255, 255), bgcolor=pygame.color.Color(0, 0, 0, 255))
            vars.msgcrect = block[0].get_rect()
            vars.msgcrect.center = vars.screen.get_rect().center
            vars.screen.blit(block[0], vars.msgcrect)
            pygame.display.flip()
        clock.tick(100)

This renders at 100 FPS, which is probably faster than my card supports. I tried removing the engine-specific bits but its very hard to do. Still, this is a lot of code just for some kind of input dialog. For a fully-drawn menu, with buttons and such, you'd need a lot more, and what makes this process especially difficult is that most of the tutorials I found while researching how to do this were for frameworks, packages and such that no longer existed.

@141, the code I posted is old, s I had never factored that into considerations at the time; I was just attempting to get it work.

@126, re groups, I have one question.  How do the mainstream companies do it?  I do not believe that they only have one or two coders programming games for them.  I suspect that number is probably in the triple digits.  And I bet that they all have different styles of coding.  And yet somehow they manage to put out good-quality games in a lot of cases.  So are the group issues that you speak of specific to the blind community, or were you talking groups in general?  And okay, even if your assertion that ten people working together is too much, fine.  I believe my number was 5 or 6.  That's a smaller group.  So let's take six.  And if I'm understanding post 129 correctly, the difference in style amongst coders doesn't matter so much as long as datatypes and functions can be imported.
As for graphics, I'm not sure how a blind person would code them without having a sighted person to test things to make sure they worked correctly.
And CAE, your point is a valid one, that they need so many coders for mainstream companies because the projects are so big, but doesn't that carry over to us as well?  Wouldn't this community be able to take on larger projects if we worked in groups with more hands on deck?

JLove, when in a large scale business setting their programmers will likely be trained to all work in the same way.  Because of this, even if they have their own styles when at home, while at work they will have been trained to think and solve the problems in a way that lets them all fit together nicer.  There are indeed very large groups, and quite a bit more than 2 programmers, but there are diminishing returns.  If you have enough funds, hiring 5 more programmers is totally worth it, even if it only means the project will get done 10% sooner.  In small audio game projects, adding extra people for a tiny overall improvement doesn't make as much sense.

I thought of a funny comparison that isn't quite accurate, but it's something I think we can all relate to.  You buy something and it will arrive in 4 days with free shipping.  For $5 it will take 3 days, for $35 it will take 2 days, and if you want it tomorrow it'll cost $180.  Each small improvement to how fast it arrives takes quite a bit more money.  If it was $5 to shave off a day, we'd hope that means that $10 would take off 2 days, and $15 would take off 3.  In the same way shipping prices don't scale linearly, adding more developers doesn't either.  Going from 1 developer to 2 might actually help enough to be totally worth it.  Adding the 3rd guy will help a whole lot less than the second one did, then a forth might be so little it's hard to tell, and so on.  If your project is so large that it'll take 6 years to make, even a tiny difference could shave months off the project and therefore save you the money of paying everyone that month, but on smaller projects it's not quite the same.

@Aprone
Hm, I'd figured it was more for things like efficiency when pushing updates in larger repo's/code maintence, obfustication, to cut down on compile time, or a sloppy over use of OOP design. Course that doesn't mean any of thats mutually exclusive, heh. Funny the things you know that don't quite sink in sometimes.

I'd like to point out here that making these kinds of team's from unpaid independants isn't necessarily impossible, mod teams and indie projects pull it off. Its just that the steps and circumstances involved can be complex. Its the kind of thing that we don't necessarily want to fling ourselves into all willy nilly like, or for some people at all, which is why I think getting in on or organizing our own regular gamejams and practicing solo or with small teams to start with might not be a bad idea.

On the subject of graphics, I think part of this falls back to the points of tool and resource development, which is something i'm focused on. A few years ago there weren't many options for accessible graphics or asset tools around other than hardcoding them, and what was available were largely prototypes or not really well suited for asset development. On that front I've been keeping kind of quiet about it, but i'm working on some improvements on Brushtone that i'd like to say will be done "soon-ish", but we know how timetables can be. I'd also like to take some time to focus on pixel art guides and some simple graphics programming examples afterwards to get the ball rolling, although these aren't exclusively for sighted access, there's plenty of reasons developers could use them in audio games too, for example sonified environments.