Interesting question.

Most people on this forum are blind, and (somewhat contrary to popular opinion), most blind people interact with pc's, phones, tablets etc  with conventional input methods like touch screen and keyboard (most blind people touch type). Of course most blind people use screen reading software where the computer/phone whatever speaks, however the input is still usually via typing, swiping on screen etc.

That being said, obviously the advantage to speaking games  that if the game itself is speaking to the player, there is absolutely no problem with the interface, which makes the game completely accessible.

So, I personally don't tend to use voice input for Pc, and confine my use of voice on the Phone to simply ordering siri to do generic things like send texts, however I do own an Amazon Echo and have played a great many games with that, particularly in cooperation with my wife who is a big fan of word and trivia games.

the irritations with Alexa usually come with either misunderstandings or cases where the game simply fails to recognize a given phrase, indeed flexible parzer seems to be a must for voice activated games, even for multiple choice efforts.
For example, in the hunt the wumpus varient caves under thorn hill, in most cases you can just say the number of the cave you need to move to, however if you say "five" or "nine" Alexa interprets it as "by" and closes the game, so I've had to get used to saying "move to cave 5" instead.

Likewise, a lot of basic audio design ideas in terms of interups, menus etc could be helpful, for example, instead of having to say "help" then listen through a long help tutorial, be able to just say "settings" to set given values.

Myself, I particularly like voice activated games that require the player to use their voice in a unique way and have outputs to match. Vortex was I think one of the best things I've seen using voice input with the dynamic way the robots you saw understood you.

I have heard good things about starlanes and six swords, but haven't got far with either, indeed in the case of six swords I find lack of direction in the game a miner problem, and often wish I could do many of the things found in conventional rpgs, EG examine given monsters or my team, or have more conventional map objectives.

Hope some of this makes sense, and I'll be interested to here what your thinking in design terms.

Hi BaldSavant.
Welcome to the forum.
I've never had that much experience with voice input, but i use seerie quite alot.
I've noticed that it gets quite a lot of words wrong while using dictation, for example the word advertisements will be replaced with the word advertise mints.
For reference, i'm from South Africa and i'm a native english speaker. I don't consider my accent hard to understand as many people will automatically assume that i'm from the UK.
They'll ask me questions like "Which part of the UK are you from?"
While others will ask "Are you from the UK or South Africa?"
This mistake isn't limited to my fellow South Africans either.
Anyway, that's just my thaughts.
O-T end war? Was this a game about controlling a fighter plane with your voice?
I seem to recall a game like this which my grandmother had baught me for my eighth birthday. We could never get it to actually work and accept my voice commands as it would always say no weapon when trying to instruct the plane.
Where would I find the game?
Is it accessible?

@BaldSavant, the reason I don't use voice input for pc, is firstly setup and secondly ease of use.

To take a simple example, if I am reading this forum, with my screen reading program H and shift H will jump me forward and back between the different headings for people's posts, whilst hitting down arrow will simply go down a few lines.
So to read replies since my last post, I just go to the bottom of the page, hit shift h until I get to my name last, down  past all the "post time, location" etc and read, then repeat this for the next few posts. I am also at a point now where this sort of navigation takes me less time than it would to speak, indeed in general my typing speed is pretty fast.

I doubt with voice input I could skip around the page half that quickly, even assuming voice input had efficient web reading commands the way my screen reader does.
Plus of course, most voice input systems require you to read off the screen to setup anyway, which obviously could not be done with a screen reader, I am also not entirely sure how you'd navigate around a complex interface such as a webpage with many headings and buttons and links etc and be able to know which was which.

So, that I think is why most blind people type or use a touch screen as standard input method.

What I have used voice for as I said, was specifically designed environments such as Alexa, though even there there are a few issues. Misunderstanding is one, whilst not being able to quickly skip between information is another, EG if I were playing a conventional text rpg I could get information about my party's equipment by clicking or by typing "examine sword" or the like, where  in six swords you need to get your full party stats at the end of  turn by saying "more information."

Another example is the game space express from Volley FM, which is a rather fun if simple collect and map game, however, the game reports all of your stats and what your holding everytime you land on a planet, meaning that you have to constantly interupt to fly in a different location, and if you just want to know if you have a certain item in your cargo hold, you need to wait past the voice saying "you are currently on planet so and so, there is a such and such and a such and such here", whereas it'd be nice to just be able to say "cargo" and know what you're carrying.
To go with this problem, I also find it mildly irritating that Alexa's voice is entirely impossible to customise in terms of speed. My screen reading program I have at a pretty high speed allowing me to receive and process information quickly, whereas Alexa often feels slow and somewhat cumbersome.

The reason I particularly enjoyed Vortex, is that vortex used the voice in a very unique way, with the different alexa voices used to portray robot characters you were stuck on the ship with, and the commands you gave couched in a way as to make it feel as if you were giving commands to sentient robots, EG "Alpha, search the storage lockers," which made the game feel much more immersive.
I also liked the fact that even though practically speaking vortex was essentially a "go x to get y so you can unlock z" type of game, you always had a lot of choice about what areas you went to and what you would do, even as far as giving you four different robots to play with.

Indeed, at the moment I haven't really seen many fully immersive and complex games on Alexa by voice control.  Most seem to default to either moderately liniar gamebooks with a basic cyoa interface or basic question and answer games.
There's nothing wrong with this, indeed my lady and I play geopardy and the volley games every day as a matter of course, which are great fun to do with two people, however it'd be interesting to see a voice control game which gave you much more choice about what you interacted with and what paths you took.
Six swords was a really good go at this, but I always found objectives in that game a bit too unclear to work completely, since your just dumped off in a map and essentially just run around whacking monsters with little description or major choice about what your party does, or at least, that was how it was when I last played, which I admit is a while ago.

Hi BaldSavant.
Welcome to the forum. Interesting questions.
In most cases, blind people does not use voice commands to interact with technoligy if there are other options available. Why? Because of the same reason for you with normal sight. On the pc: Would you use the build in voice recognition in Windows 10 to interact with your computer, when the mouse and keyboard is right in front of you? Are you using Siri or Google Assistance on your phone and are you dictating text messages instead of typing?
Regarding using voice commands in gaming:
I have some experience with games on Alexa, Google Assistance and a few mainstream games on consoles. I would never play a game with my voice if I'm traveling by train or buss. I would only play such game when I'm alone. I prefer to interact with games in other ways simply to make sure the game understand my command. English is not my main language, and because of that, the game sometimes misunderstand my commands, because you in some cases doesn't have to confirm the command.
You mention a few mainstream console commands which also offers voice commands. I have looked at End war. This game is not accessible to blind people at all. You need to see what happens on the screen, and react with voice commands based on what's going on. There is not enough audio or spoken feedback on what's going on for blind people to be able to play the game. So, said in an other way: Offering voice commands in a game does not make it accessible to blind people, if the gameplay itself isn't accessible.
I have also played a very old game for pf2 called Lifeline. This game is very interesting because it can only be played by voice commands. This game is playable if you are following a walkthrough. It is not accessible, because you, as a blind gamer, does not always get enough information by audio to know what's going on. Especially in battles. In the battles, if you don't know what kind of enemy you are phasing and you don't know what parts of the body the enemy have and what those parts are named, then you won't be able to defeat the enemy.

@dark, no need to fiddle about in the settings, just say speak faster or slower.

To quickly go back to the normal rate, just say, speak at normal rate or speak at default rate.

I have the Alexa app on my phone so some of the features aren't available to me, but this one definitely is.

Oh and if a developer gets all huffy when you're giving them feedback, then I'm sorry, maybe they're just not cut out for that line of work.

If you can't handle the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.

Of course constructive feedback goes a long way, but if you're already being constructive and they're reacting like that, you did your part.

A little bit off topic, but the other day I had this convo with google: me, "hey google, cancel my alarm." Google: "you can do that in the app." *opens the clock app.* Me, "You useless piece of technology! If I wanted to do it myself, I would have done so!"

Point is, sometimes, commands that you think are there just aren't.

Okay so first of all this Skype call style seems like a really neat idea, it reminds me of a voice version of those "Lifeline" mobile games where your linked to a person in some way and you advise them.
They try to make it like a realistic chat messaging experience in some titles (such as "A normal lost phone") and that's what this reminds me of.

I am a bit confused as to weather you will be using the system voice or a recorded voice actor to read lines to the player.  If it's the latter, than no, most people wouldn't want to speed that up unless it was particularly slow because it messes with the natural flow of things, (though I know some people who like speeding up audio books).
In that case, it may also be worth doing an "audio description" type setup for visual moments, such as we have for movies and TV shows, something that you may even be able to use the system voice to achieve.
here's an example of what I mean, though you don't have to be quite as verbose as long as your still getting the important points across, and you don't need to repeat already known information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT5AsjzgIC4

But if it's the former than yes, customization options are important.
It's a bit hard to explain this, but essentially, think of the difference between skim reading a textbook VS listening to a professor.  If you are able to take in the info, than logically both would be equal, but for many, listening to someone explain it is allot more engaging.
The reason allot of us have our speech rate high is because it blends into our own internal thoughts.  Much as a proficient reader can let their eyes drift across each line and comprehend the words so quickly that the story flows naturally in their mind's eye and the individual characters tend to fade away, we do the same with electronic speech.
This is why most of us also prefer more computerized rather than human voices (though that is changing as of late do to improvements in human like speech) because we are so used to it and it is so generic that there is no personality, tone, or accent to color the input.
I my self often slow down my computer speech when reading something I want to fully comprehend, such as a complex idea in a textbook or a fiction novel so that I have time to really think about each statement I'm hearing, but I have it up to twice as fast for normal stuff like navigating my computer and the internet, writing, sound editing, playing games that are light on dialogue ETC.
I know of people that don't do this, or have their normal speech rate twice that of mine even, but I can't do so personally, which is why options are great.

When how ever, someone is talking naturally, or reading a story in a dramatic way, we tend to just listen to it as you would enjoy a play or poem, because that's what we want in that type of medium.