Haha, oh, right, blogging. Oh, and some content too!

Ugh, sorry all you people out there who check this site. All 2-3 of you daily visitors. Except for about a week ago when I got a huge spike for some reason. Checking my blog statistics, it seems everyone was crazy for phocomelia that day. Who knows. Anyway, I’ve been a combination of busy and frustratingly non-busy, so I haven’t blogged. So, here is a quick update.

I started writing for AbleGamers.com, which is an awesome website for gaming resources, especially for disabled gamers. I’m going to be a jerk and totally plug my stuff written over there now, just so you guys can go read it.

Here’s a review I did of Space Invaders Extreme 2.
Review of Scribblenauts.
Review of Rhythm Heaven.
Review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.
My look at Bayonetta.
My look at Dante’s Inferno.
My excitement over GameX.

Speaking of GameX, it was incredibly awesome. For those not in the know, and who didn’t click the link above, it’s a game expo and media conference. And I got to go as a member of the press. It was ridiculously amazing. As I mentioned above, I got to try out same games, talk to some industry folk, and meet some really cool people.

Now that all that is out of the way, I guess I should say a bit more, maybe comment on some news. In fact, let’s talk about this little tidbit right here. By now, it’s old news, but still. It deserved to be mentioned.

Now, as a disabled gamer, adaptation and accommodations are very important to me. But, I feel it’s pretty obvious what this guy’s motivations are. Now, there are plenty of games out there that could easily do accessibility changes. Games that don’t offer the ability to change their controls? They could do that. Games that neglect to include subtitles, alienating deaf gamers? Easily fixed. Games that rely on colors hard for the colorblind to see? PC gaming has fixed that problem a lot of the time with overlays on colored switched, symbols, and buttons. Consoles, not so much.

As I’ve posted about previously, I can’t play the vast majority of Wii titles due to not being able to hold the Wiimote and nunchuk at the same time. Now, could some games benefit from a one-piece controller similar to a Gamecube controller with motion sensitivity? Yes. Definitely. Is this going to happen? Probably not, but it’s a plausible request. Are all games going to do this? No. And in fact, some can’t. Some games rely on the motion sensitivity of both parts of the controller. While there are some that only use one, and still others that are ports of games existing on other consoles (meaning that making it so added-in motion controls can’t be disabled so the game can be played with a normal controller is kind of ridiculous), not all games fall into this category.

Every disabled person is going to run into games they can not play. In fact, every person is regardless of… ableness, or whatever word is appropriate to use here. Maybe for the life of you, you just can’t understand fighting games. Maybe 3D games make your head hurt. Maybe you’re allergic to jiggle physics. Whatever the case may be, you don’t sue a company because their game isn’t specifically tailored to you. Especially because the company in question, Sony, has made adaptations to games to meet needs of disabled gamers.

The most ridiculous part of all this, of course, that part of his claim is since he can’t play the game, he can’t obtain items and sell them for real-life cash. That would be like me suing automakers for not making ramps, lifts, hand controls, and other modifications standard on all models. Not only can I not drive their cars, but I heard there is something called professional racing, where I would be able to drive and make money from it.

The worst thing is that video game companies are slowly but surely making changes. Not as many as we’d all like, and not as quickly either. But they are doing it. It’s a hard task, because every disability is different. In fact, people with the same disability will still have different levels of ability a lot of the time. But these companies are trying. And disabled gamers and interest groups are working with them. And it is people like this who run the risk of setting all this progress back and making companies less likely to help out for fear of getting sued if they don’t do it like we want.

That’s all for this edition.

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