Eyes on the game

I will not be buying Nintendo's forthcoming 3DS console.

It uses a technique called autostereoscopy to present a 3D image without the need for special glasses, which sounds brilliant for most of the population, but not for me, and the perhaps 5% of the population who suffer from amblyopia. Apparently even mild amblyopia (commonly known as "lazy eye"), can negate the effects of autostereoscopy. So I might as well be playing a regular 2D-display game anyway.

It's not the first time my eyesight has caused me trouble. I played Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 for a little while, but I had to give up on the otherwise great WW2 shooter because my colour-blindness (~7% of the male population) made it difficult for me to tell the difference between Russian green and Nazi grey uniforms, leading to situations where I frequently killed my teammates. My long-sightedness (~30% of the population, but correctable with glasses) exacerbated Mass Effect 2's tiny text problem.

Mass Effect 2's text was difficult to read on standard definition screens, and more difficult for those of us with hyperopia.

When we talk of accessibility in games, we often think of making games available to the disabled. And that is certainly a laudable goal into which game developers really should put more effort. But I am not disabled, and even I struggle with some games. It appears we still have a long way to go.

Explaining games

Leigh Alexander has written a good post about the difficulty of explaining games to non-gamers. Either we fail to adequately explain what's special about them, or we come off sounding pretentious and silly. If you ask me, that's all the justification we need to claim that games can be art. If anyone still cares about that argument.

Possibly coincidentally, but on the same theme, Tom Bissell has a new book out called Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. I've ordered myself a copy, but the 25 page preview on Random House's website looks promising.