2017-08-24 17:27:59 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-24 17:52:46)

I'm curious to what EA games everyone has tried, and if any were even minimally accessible to you.

Here's an exhaustive list of games, if that helps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E … Arts_games

Thanks,

- Karen Stevens

2017-08-24 17:54:46

As a fully blind individual, I honestly never really considered it. I do have a PS4 however, do you have any games you'd want someone to try?

2017-08-24 18:26:49 (edited by burak 2017-08-24 18:27:23)

Well let me count:
Need for speed: underground2
Need for speed: most wanted
Need for speed: carbon
Need for speed: undercover
Need for speed: hot pursuit
Need for speed: most wanted is the best one I can play. I can survive upto the point where cops start chasing me with helicopters. That happens on wide roads and with Walxwagen. The worst  I can play is Need for speed: undercover because I couldn't understand most of the menus.

I post sounds I record to freesound. Click here to visit my freesound page
I usually post game recordings to anyaudio. Click here to visit my anyaudio page

2017-08-24 18:41:46 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-24 18:42:23)

At the moment, there's nothing specific for anyone to try. I'm attempting to identify if any other games are in a situation like madden - almost playable and some people are fighting through the accessibility barriers. Doesn't mean that those games would be the next to receive an update, but it's good info to have. Sounds like Need for Speed already made that list.

- Karen Stevens

2017-08-24 18:47:45 (edited by CAE_Jones 2017-08-27 05:22:30)

I played the original Starwars: Battlefronts for PS2, with family. I couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on, but I apparently shot Bulba Fet, according to people who I wouldn't expect to get the joke.
I also played the PS1 Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. At that time, I had some vision, and the high contrast and bright colors made it much more playable than most 3d games, not that I was very good. The most impressive thing I did unaided was the "catch the toad" minigame in Diagon Alley. I could see well enough to defeat the first stage of the Devil's Snare, but not the second. And Never made it to class on time. I also really liked the large font, distinct icons, and how the savepoints had proximity audio effects.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
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    George... Don't do that.

2017-08-24 19:38:19

I honestly never know if these posts are just for spoof effect.

I apologise Karen if I am sounding like a grumpy old man but when E.A. has a primarily texted based game in Football Manager and its totally in accessible I find it hard to take these posts seriously.

I would love to play Tiger Woods golf, Madden NFL and Fifa in all its incarnations, but unless the menus are not spoken or its screen reader compatible its just a non starter.

I know there are blind folks that plod along playing these games anyway which baffles me beyond belief, but speaking from my viewpoint,  a person who was sighted until adulthood its just not practical.

The fact of the matter is,  to much work for little profit,  and that was the response I got from another major game developer when I broached the subject.

2017-08-24 20:58:02 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-24 21:44:34)

I understand your skepticism, and I hope I'm eventually able to convince you of my sincerity.  I'd like to know which games can be meaningfully played in some way by the blind, to help create an argument for further support. I can promise nothing, other than I will try.

2017-08-24 22:11:50

@shrike: I truly believe this is serious. Have you tried out something like Narrator on xbox one? Well let's just say that's a small step. I'm just glad that companies are now asking us. Here's the thing. Why would a company come to the audiogames forum if they don't want to do anthing? This website is so specific, there wouldn't be much point in coming here unless you were on some sort of small mission to get accessibility going, and with the way things have been going this is looking really promising.

2017-08-24 22:13:38

That's more than most people do to be certain and we are all incredibly grateful, but I would tend to agree with Shrike. I could see well enough to play and beat games such as Mass Effect 2 and Need for Speed Carbon, but the practicality of playing titles like that is sorely mitigated by how purely visual games are, and for good reason; that's the niche people have been innovating upon for decades now. The blind community is really only just now starting to see big steps being taken that allow us to play games nearly in depth as pokemon with titles like Manamon. Having played crystal on my Gameboy color obsessively, I found that Manamon does a good job of delivering the exact experience. I think it would be particularly easy to add audio concepts into mainstream console titles; someone just needs to take the time to start at the beginning. Developers create far more work for themselves when they try to tac on accessibility as an after thought because they then have to go through each line of code to add in whatever needs to be added in instead of just implementing it in the first place.

2017-08-24 22:18:59

Hi,
I am now going to go back on topic. I have tried the following:
Harry Potter Phelospher's stone on ps1, I could beat the troll with some trial and error and no sighted help. I just had to learn to mvoe back wards and I liked the autojump feature.
Lord of the Rings Return of The King, needs more audio cueues for exploration but I enjoyed what I could play, but got stuck a few times.
New Star Wars Battlefront, this is going to need quite a bit of accessibility work I think, but I like how the game is in stereo sound and I think this would be a dream come true if a game like this was playable.

2017-08-24 22:53:02 (edited by seb 2017-08-24 22:55:08)

@ea_accessible
I've been playing NHL games for a while, they are already pretty accessible. Here's why I stopped playing them. There was no way for me to edit lines and navigate in menus without sighted help. This is easily fixable though by implementing "Narrator" with the game (available only on Xbox". Other than that everything was already accessible ingame, you just have to know hockey in general and know which player you're controlling. But again the reason why I'm not buying them anymore is because there's no spoken menus. Let's say I wanted to start a season and a player gets injured, I want to know what the injury is, for how long he's out, I want to be able to recall a player from the minors and edit lines. Impossible to do without sighted help. The day you're going to implement Narrator with an NHL game is the day I'm going to buy it, that's for sure.

2017-08-25 01:34:35 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-25 01:39:49)

@seb2314 - can you please copy your post into an e-mail and send it to [email protected]? I know the producer and the franchise is still active. No promises, as always, but I think he'd be interested in listening.

2017-08-25 01:35:52 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-25 01:40:01)

@aaron @CAE_Jones - I don't know the current status of Star Wars Battlefront future development, but I would be interested in what you were able / not able to do in battlefront. Can you also email [email protected] ?

2017-08-25 01:39:36 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-25 01:44:49)

@burak - I know you've already sent a detailed email about this game, which has been sent to the team already. Thank you for your level of detail.

2017-08-25 01:42:24

As for older games like harry potter, it's good to know what makes a variety of games playable, and I'm not ignoring your input. The odds of retrofitting any discontinued games is extremely low, though.

2017-08-25 03:29:16 (edited by hadi.gsf 2017-08-25 04:19:43)

Hello Karen,
Love what you're doing here. You're one of this community's gems. People might not realize this but having a community manager who can get in touch with game developers is a very big deal and the right step towards more accessibility in video games.

I've played Fifa games before. So here's a good thing about EA's fifa games:
http://www.fifplay.com/fifa-17-manual-controls/
So if you study that page, you see that fifa made it possible for a player to have automated passes/crosses/shoots. Even auto switch is supported. So you don't have to Hold the exact direction and pass, or cross, or even shoot!
In assisted shoot mode, The game even will aim for the goal for you.

But here's a big question: If you don't see, how are you going to navigate in   such a big field? How do you know what's your position in relative to the oponent's goal? The football's field is very big and you really need to know where you are to be able to play effectively.
We can discuss this over over mail if you're interested; I thought that maybe developers could add a hidden accessible mode that when activated, a low-volume beeping would continuessly play when the player with  ball moved around.
So this beep would change in pitch and tone depending on you or your oponent's position on the field. That way, you easily could figure out where you are!


edit: second idea, There can be also another quiet level audio tone that would actually amit from the ball itself, So you  could hear where the ball is, even when you pass it or  do a cross and such!
I think it's worth to attempt a contact with developers regarding this. The game already automates a lot of the moves. The stats screen, the league tables and all that are inaccessible of course, but gameplay would come first I guess?

Thanks
Cheers

twitter: @hadirezae3
discord: Hadi

2017-08-25 05:18:49 (edited by ea_accessible 2017-08-25 05:20:43)

@hadi.gsf please e-mail me your ideas to [email protected] and I'll make sure it goes to the team.

I may act a lot like a community manager, but I'm actually a software developer. Most Madden accessibility features I wrote myself. I've gotten more people on board with helping Madden accessibility this year, which is good as I'm nearly deaf - subtitles and audio tones would be very difficult for me to do myself. I know what it's like to be left out and want everyone to be included, so I do what I can to push accessibility forward. I might not always be successful, but odds are much better than not trying at all.

Gameplay really needs to come before there's much hope for narration, as one conceptual argument impeding progress is that there is no point in narrating menus or add supporting features for a game that can't be played. Squish that argument and things become easier to push through. Which is why an upcoming patch for madden has added features in longshot story mode - I proved that the core game could be played by the blind with the patch, so can I add support for this too? The first thing I was asked by every single person is can this even be played if we make this change? Since the answer was yes, it was much easier to push through.

One step at a time. The steps may be longer than any of us would like, but each step is worth it.

- Karen Stevens

2017-08-25 06:55:13

The first is from when I could see. The second list is after I went blind.

007: Agent Under Fire

007: Nightfire

Burnout 3: Takedown

Deer Hunt Challenge

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

High Caliber Hunting

Hot Wheels Turbo Racing

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead 2

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Madden NFL 2004

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

The Simpsons: Road Rage

Star Wars Battlefront

Star Wars Battlefront II


After I went blind.

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead 2

2017-08-25 07:13:06

Hi.
I haven't got time to read through the whole list of games you have made yet, but I'll do that this weekend, and mention what games I have tried.
The games I remember are: Burnout: This game was not accessible at all, but I had fun by blowing up random things.
Deadspace: I haven't tried those games, but a few members of the forum have lots of experience with those games. I'll ask them to leave some feedback.
Lort of the rings: The return of the king: This game is fantastic. Not fully accessible, but a lot of the game is playable. The sounds are so great so it's possible to navigate while listening for the sounds around you. It's not possible to play through the whole game though.
Lord of the rings: Tactics for psp: I don't know how many hours I have spent on this game, but it's long long time ago. This game is very much playable because you move around in a grid, and you can, because of the sounds tell how big the grid is. The game is turn based, and if you have some patience, you can, because of this, figure out where your enemies are. This game would have been fully playable if speech was added to read out the skills, read the mission objective and just some audio indicating what kind of creature the cursor was over when moving through the grid.
Fifa: I haven't had much luck with those games, but that's because I don't know how to play. I'm not a sport fan, not yet, so I don't know much about the European football, simply because it don't have my interest. But if it becomes accessible then I'll be interested. The reason for I mention those games here is because: A few days ago, I spoke to a friend of mine, who don't speak much english. He is a big football fan, and he have spent endless of hours learning how to play the game as a blind gamer, and he know an other blind guy who are doing the same. He says that navigating the menus are very difficult and he get sighted help to set it all up, but he says he have full control when playing the matches and he fully know what he is doing. If no one else is able to describe all that in english, I'll plan to meet him, ask him to explain to me how he are doing all that and then I will be happy to pass all his experience.
Well, more feedback is coming when I've read through the list of games you have made.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2017-08-25 07:14:50

Wow. Are the Left 4 dead games really playable?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2017-08-25 08:27:04

@SLJ - I'm happy to get his feedback in any language. EA is world-wide, so odds are I'll find someone who can translate.

2017-08-25 10:48:54

Hi Karen,
As you know (if you've received my email), I've been playing Titanfall 2 recently and whilst the map geometry is a rather big hurdle (and there are other issues too of course), the game is pretty doable as far as getting enjoyment out of it goes.

Titanfall 2's campaign is actually playable (like most games) with CoPilot, so having sighted assistance has been the only way to enjoy the single player side of this title.  Given that I'm fortunate to have enough controllers though, it's actually quite good to be able to use this feature.

I did try to get into Battlefield 4 using a previously created account, however given that the method of rectifying a security question-related issue seemed to use chat support that never seemed to be available outside the U.S, I haven't actually tested the game out yet.  If I could get that sorted then I'd be happy to test it.

As for Battlefront, I'd be very interested in playing the newer games (i.e. Battlefront and the yet to be released as of this post Battlefront II).  These games could definitely be made relatively playable I'd say.

Actually I did play UFC a while ago (the oroginal that is).  The second one was also pretty good, but the tutorial didn't describe any of the required actions meaning that you had to either guess or have sighted assistance.

I apologise if that feedback isn't that helpful, but given that most of the issues can be put down to the same points (e.g. lack of narrated menus and in-game UI, lack of prompts for when to press X, lack of detailed audio design to indicate enemies in multiplayer in team scenarios, etc etc), I thought I'd post here to contribute to the wider discussion where I can.

Regards,
Sightless Kombat.
***If you wish to refer to me in @replies, use Sightless***

2017-08-25 11:10:37

Hey Karen.
So I just recently got EA All Access and have been trying pretty much every game. I've stuckmainly to sports as that's one of my favorite genre's of games. Played Madden17, NHL17, Fifa17 mainly. I found I had some luck with Madden17, but the game seemed to ramp difficulty up on me. It also does this weird control mirroring thing where forward isn't always forward. this caused me to lose a Superbowl game in overtime on a safety. Whoopsy.
NHL17 if I could get it configured propperly would be a lot more playable. If I could slow down the computer a bit, I migh thave a chance. The problem is that options screens are hard to read with OCR since there's so many options it's impossible to know what you're adjusting.
Fifa17 was not a good time at all. there's very little I can say about it other than it has a really cool story mode that I want to watch a play through of on Youtube. Soccer doesn't translate well to audio, but the story mode had me hooked by the end of the opening cut scene.

Hope that helps.
Liam

Much less active on this forum than in the past.

Check out my live streams: http://lerven.me
follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/liamerven

2017-08-25 15:35:41

Hello. having just started plaing mainstream games a maybe 2 years ago the Only one i've tried, I'm sad to say was lord of the rings tactics. I bought the ame after buying a used psp. I'm a huge lord of the rings fan and would love to try the others. I would also love to try the star wars battle front games but right now  finances are  not allowing the purchase of new games. I've basically given up on most audio games due to their lack of upkeep and their order history not to mension they're repetitive nature.
I would love to see more roleplaying games such as games similar to skyrim, elder scrolls diablo three and i apologize that i am unable to find a game of  your creation but i only skimmed the list as it's large. maybe aliens versus predator? I thank you for your interest on this forum regarding the interest of what we as blind people havve played. Deadspce I've played on pc btw but it was really difficult and i needed sighted help.

2017-08-25 15:42:41

Karen,
As an adendum I use an Xbox 1. I was watching sniptis of battlefield and metal of honor those also look like interesting games to try.  I hope this feedback while ddiverse and spread out helps some. there are a lot of blind people that lay mainstream games no matter how frustrating inacessibility is.