AbleGamers, a site for gamers with physical disabilities, has an interview with Rusty Williams, CEO of Flying Labs; developers of Pirates of the Burning Sea, on how that game takes disabled players into account.
For motor skills, Pirates of the Burning Sea is friendlier than the typical twitch-style reflex game. Our ships move more deliberately, and there’s a lot more opportunity to think about what tactical move your are going to make next. That is very different than, say, an RTS, where mad clicking skill is more generally more important than tactics and strategy. However, PotBS is still fundamentally a game of skill that progresses in real time, and a person with disabilities, dependant on the severity and type, might find that combat is more challenging than other aspects of our game.
The second challenge revolves around the area of perception, most commonly any visual disability that would impair your ability to decipher the UI. As you can imagine, it is a significant design challenge to assure our UI can be managed by folks with a wide range of disabilities.
More... |