It’s interesting this tech is for disabled people when Nintendo just assumed their players were disabled to begin with. They always played their games with their left hand to simulate it.
Software developers are pretty terrible in applying this kind of empathy in our UX.
Assume your app is unusable and the user doesn’t know how to read or have hands. Hah.
I think games are fundamentally different from other software in many ways. For example, games tend to revel in selectively sharing information (Tunic for example) in a way that regular software doesn't. It's hard to apply lessons from one to the other.
I can't recall which standup comedian it was, but he had a bit about games where they're the only form of entertainment that tests you. A song doesn't make you dance along to continue. A book doesn't quiz you on its themes and slam shut if you're wrong. For some games, being hard to play is their point. That's why accessibility is great to make games where that isn't their point more, uh, accessible. And maybe even those hard games should have accessibility, I haven't given that front enough thought yet.
That isn't what they said, and it's probably not what they meant.
What they probably meant was that Nintendo testers use their non-dominant hands to simulate someone who has no prior experience with video game controls. (Though I'm not sure exactly what that would mean. Maybe OP meant they use "backwards" controllers with all the buttons swapped?)
It could be a reminder to developers that they should not assume that they should develop for one kind of player.
I remember watching an episode of MKBHD where he played a racing game, and the hands on the wheel were white male hands (he is black). He just looked at the camera and said nothing, but sighed. I thought it was well done.
personally I hate PC games that assume WASD, or don't let you remap keys, or make other asumptions that are pretty easy to figure out you shouldn't do.
It depends how far they go. There are games where they insist I must play as a big titted whore even though I don’t identify as a woman and even if I was a woman, I’d opt for more subtle whoreness not the full whoreness some of these games insist I must role play.
I've never seen this game before, but looking into it, they don't seem to insist on you playing as a "big titted whore", and to be honest, I wouldn't really care to play as a voluptuous woman ahah, I hope you don't call women whores just because of that.
I mean, they desensitized it to
me too. I play the girl class if there’s no option. The arc of justice doesn’t bend toward truth, it bends toward revenge. It’s zero sum.
I guess the bitches were tired of playing bulky men that they don’t identify with and now force the men to play whores we don’t identify with.
I’m just saying
But if I had to get really meta:
I personally don’t believe there are enough women to force that macro change in gaming. It’s self flagellation of hyper aware males.
If I had to get double meta:
It’s self flagellation by guys that don’t even get laid.
I'm pretty sure the girls in skimpy outfits thing in BDO is because that's how Korea and Japan rolls with their character designs, and men want to play skimpy dressed lady characters. I don't think it's a DEI thing for women that want to play big tiddy women lol.
should not assume that they should develop for one kind of player.
Or even better, if they accommodate the lowest common denominator, you actually can end up with better experiences for even experienced players.
I’m looking at this tech in reverse. Sure it’s going to help the disabled, but it’s also going to enable entire new things in games. I fly around a helicopter a lot in Arma, and I’d love some simple solutions for head and eye tracking just with my web cam and it looks like most of this r&d is happening in the accessibility space, not in the game design space.
Software developers are pretty terrible in applying this kind of empathy in our UX.
Assume your app is unusable and the user doesn’t know how to read or have hands. Hah.