From the New Yorker

BlSide: A Game for Players Who Can't See : The New Yorker
  A Video Game That You Cant Even See
  Posted by Laura Parker
  Earlier this year, a minor injury to my right eye left me 
temporarily blind.  I could do little but sit in bed and listen 
to audio books, until someone told me about the video game 
BlSide, which doesn't, in fact, contain any video.  It is a 
meticulously designed, audio-driven thriller that is entirely 
devoid of graphics.
  Built to entertain blind players as well as those who can see, 
the audio-only games accommodation of disabled gamers is a 
pleasant anomaly in the gaming industry, even though the number 
of gamers with disabilities is significant.  The latest Americans 
with Disabilities report, which draws on 2010 census data, 
estimates that nearly fifty-seven million Americans, or roughly 
nineteen per cent of the population, have a disability, with over 
thirty-eight million suffering from what the report considers to 
be a severe disability of a physical, mental, or communicative 
nature.  While nearly twenty million Americans had difficulty 
with physical tasks relating to upper body function, more than 
eight million over the age of fifteen have difficulty seeing and 
seven and a half million reported difficulty hearing.  There is 
certainly overlap with the fifty-eight per cent of Americans who, 
according to the Electronic Software Association, play video 
games; the Able Gamers Foundation, a charity organization for 
disabled gamers, estimates that there are thirty-three million 
gamers with some kind of disability.
  In the nineteen-eighties, gamers like John Dutton, a 
quadriplegic who learned to use the Atari 2600 joystick with his 
mouth and chin, drew attention to the need for hardware that 
disabled gamers could use.  In 1988, Nintendo released the NES 
Hands Free, a video-game controller designed explicitly for 
disabled gamers, which was worn like a vest.  It had a chin stick 
for movement and a tube that players breathed in and out of to 
control the A and B buttons.  In the nineties, attention shifted 
to making in-game control schemes more accessible, leading to 
releases like Shades of Doom, a first-person shooter for visually 
impaired gamers.  More recently, the Call of Duty franchise, 
inspired by the quadriplegic professional gamer Randy Fitzgerald, 
introduced a special button layout for disabled gamers which 
makes it easier to aim, while the Able Gamers Foundation has 
published a guide that shows developers how to design more 
accessible products.
  Its still uncertain how much better Sony's PlayStation 4 or 
Microsoft's Xbox One consoles will be for disabled gamers than 
their predecessors.  The consensus so far is that the Xbox One 
has a slight edge on accessibility over the PSBLED, given its 
extensive array of voice controls, but it will ultimately be up 
to individual game developers to utilize the consoles processing 
power to introduce features like color-blind modes and in-game 
text-size adjustment for visually impaired players.  Microsofts 
updated Kinect accessibility guidelines for the Xbox One, for 
instance, reveal that the new system will not support sign 
language, and reiterates that Kinects ability to work with seated 
players is largely dependent on the actual game itself.
  Though disabled gamers may still be cut off from traditional 
gaming systems to some degree, a growing number of developers are 
using the built-in accessibility features of mobile devices like 
the iPhone and iPadvoiceover, assistive touch, and guided 
accessto create games for physically disabled and visually 
impaired players that don't require the specialized hardware that 
living-room gaming consoles often do.
  BlSide is one of those games.  Its a survival horror setup, 
about an assistant professor named Case who wakes up next to his 
girlfriend, Dawn, in their apartment, after what initially 
appears to be a power outage.  But Case, Dawn, and everyone else 
have actually inexplicably become blind.  At the same time, 
scary-sounding monsters roam the city.  Because Case is new to 
the feeling of being blind, one of the objectives of the game is 
to teach players to navigate the environment using audio cues, 
both from Case, who yells when he bumps into things-The door is 
to my left, the kitchen is to my right-and subtler hints, like 
the way sound travels in a particular environment.  For example, 
if you're facing an open window, you hear traffic noise in both 
speakers, but if you turn to the right, you only hear the noises 
in the left speaker.  Other sounds-a dripping faucet or a noisy 
TV-also help you get around.
  The game can be played on a Mac or PC using the arrow keys, or 
on an iPhone or iPad, where it uses the devices motion sensors to 
track which direction you're facing in the real word to replicate 
in the game.  Playing with the iPhone made it much easier to draw 
a mental map of the in-game environment, although I did bump into 
real furniture every now and then, trying to find my way around 
obstacles.
  The game was the result of a high-school chemistry-class 
accident.  Aaron Rasmussen, half of the development team behind 
BlSide, was blinded after an explosion involving red phosphorous 
and potassium chlorate.  "I woke up from the emergency-room drugs 
and everything was black," Rasmussen said.  His corneas, which 
were damaged, eventually grew back, restoring his sight.  The 
whole experience made me value my sight more, in a way that makes 
me treat it with more care.
  In May, 2011, Rasmussen met with a former Boston University 
colleague, Michael T.  Astolfi, who was completing a masters 
degree in the design and psychology of video games at N.Y.U.  
Rasmussen told Astolfi that he was working on a script for a 
video game based on his experience of being sightless.  Later 
that night, Astolfi realized that Rasmussens script could be 
turned into an audio game with a sense of physical space.  
Twenty-four hours later, I sent Aaron a prototype of BlSides 
basic gameplay, Astolfi told me.
  The pair raised over fourteen thousand dollars on Kickstarter 
in December, 2011, and worked from their respective 
cities-Rasmussen in Los Angeles, Astolfi in New York-to build the 
game over the course of twelve months.  Rasmussen, who has 
dabbled in everything from software to robotics, wanted the game 
to feel like a rough simulation of being blind while remaining 
fun, and hit upon the idea of an exhilarating horror game.
  First, Rasmussen and Astolfi modelled real-world locations in 
3-D.  They then reproduced the sounds that one might hear in each 
environment; there are over a thousand sound effects in BlSide.  
The biggest challenge was determining the right ratio of 
authenticity and playability, Astolfi said.  There is an immense 
amount of subtlety in audio, especially in the difference between 
an audio source playing behind you and one in front of you.  We 
found that most people didn't notice the difference on stereo 
headphones when it was realistic, so we had to exaggerate the 
effect of your head blocking high-frequency sounds behind you, so 
that it was more useful to the player.
  Since its release, last year, BlSide has been downloaded 
thousands of times on iOS and PC.  In June, it won an innovation 
award at the Games for Change Festival, which recognizes 
humanitarian and educational games with a social impact.
  Others have sought to build on the game.  Rasmussen and Astolfi 
helped the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute create an 
assistive app using the technology that powers the game, and a 
blind woman in her twenties asked about an accessible programming 
language that could allow her to create her own audio games.  
(Unsurprisingly, blind players typically finish the game faster 
than players who can see.)
  While there are no plans for a BlSide sequel, Astolfi and 
Rasmussen are hopeful that it will inspire other developers to 
create similarly accessible games.  The audio-only iOS horror 
game Papa Sangre, for example, has already led the studio 
Somethin Else to create two more audio-only titles for iPhone: 
The Nightjar, featuring the voice of the British actor Benedict 
Cumberbatch, and Papa Sangre II.
  There are gamers out there who are anxious for more accessible 
content, and very little, if any, of it is coming from 
established publishers, Astolfi said.
  People with disabilities are a group that has, in general, not 
been targeted by major video-game releases.  But as the indie 
game movement continues to grow, I think well see more games 
designed specifically for this audience.
  Yet a large part of BlSides success seems tied to the fact that 
it doesn't feel like a game that's been designed for disabled 
players.  A game with no visual stimulus can be just as 
engrossing for players who can see as for those who cannot, it 
seems.  Our favorite feedback on the game was actually a negative 
comment, Astolfi said.  It was a three-star review from a sighted 
player who said he found the game too scary.


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