Text Chat Communication, deaf friendly?

[deafgamer64]

Instead of using mics, does this game offer text communications that a team of deaf players can use?

[Zammstein]

Hi deafgamer64, the game does not support in-game text communication. We reccomend using Steam's chat system.

[deafgamer64]

Ok thank you.

[deafgamer64]

Guess that game is out. Games that is not deaf friendly, we tend to avoid them. Leaving the game to use a 3rd party chat system sucks.

[Zammstein]

I agree it's not an optimal experience using a 3rd party chat system. A one-way voice communication is the core gameplay of this game and very hard to make deaf-friendly. Being in the same physical room with the person you are playing with is also an option.

[jetuser]

Originally posted by Zammstein:

I agree it's not an optimal experience using a 3rd party chat system. A one-way voice communication is the core gameplay of this game and very hard to make deaf-friendly. Being in the same physical room with the person you are playing with is also an option.

not that hard, first idea i had (I am deaf) is "entangled" whiteboards.. a shared text chat that only one can type on at a time

[taggedjc]

It's hard when there's timed events that require you to look at various things and relay that information quickly to someone who is also doing something that requires them to look at something else. I'm not sure how well that would work out for people who are deaf, since then they would have to be looking at multiple places at once, and also trying to type or draw and move themselves in the game world at the same time.

Sure, the game *could* have been designed around that idea instead, not having timed puzzles (or having timed puzzles designed around the balance between looking at the tablet and looking at the world around the character) but that would be a pretty different game, and not one that feels the same for the people who aren't deaf.

So while it is unfortunate that deaf people wouldn't be able to easily enjoy this kind of game, it's also not up to the developers to make sure the game is accessible to every single person - plenty of people simply don't enjoy this kind of game to begin with, and those people aren't people the developers are making the game for, anyway. This is a little different from something like designing with colourblindness in mind, since that's usually a very easy fix (just ensuring the colours chosen work even for colourblind people, especially if you just use things like different textures or symbols rather than colours without changing any other core gameplay component as a result). Asking a developer to keep colourblind folks in mind is perfectly acceptable, but asking a game like this - a game based around the idea of asymmetrical puzzle solving via one-way voice communication via Walkie Talkie - to accomodate people that can't hear would be like asking for video games to be designed for blind people.

Sorry for the rant :) Just because "it's not that hard" to come up with an idea for an entirely different game that works for deaf people doesn't mean it isn't very hard to make this game's core gameplay deaf-friendly.

[bliss]

Originally posted by taggedjc:

It's hard when there's timed events

Good points. I can't think of a way to make this deaf friendly without compromising the puzzles. Maybe if people are crazy fast typists or in the same room, but I'm still picturing a lot of dying, retrying, patience.

A whiteboard would take much of the fun out of it, because a great deal of the game involves describing symbols. Simply drawing them circumvents it.

[deafgamer64]

Unless streaming videochat between deaf users was employed into video games. Be a lot faster to sign than it would be to type a text message. Then again, the drawback would probably be the required processing power to stream videos between deaf users. Might cause games to crash.

Not all PCs are equal.

Such as life, there's pros and cons in everything and the sad part is, we can't always have everything in life. :(

The visuals of this game is amazing, too bad there's a drawback for deaf players. It gets frustrating sometimes. Thankfully, there's still plenty of game choices out there to choose from. Just wish this game was one of them. *Shrugs* Oh well.

[jetuser]

Originally posted by taggedjc:

So while it is unfortunate that deaf people wouldn't be able to easily enjoy this kind of game, it's also not up to the developers to make sure the game is accessible to every single person - plenty of people simply don't enjoy this kind of game to begin with, and those people aren't people the developers are making the game for, anyway. This is a little different from something like designing with colourblindness in mind, since that's usually a very easy fix (just ensuring the colours chosen work even for colourblind people, especially if you just use things like different textures or symbols rather than colours without changing any other core gameplay component as a result). Asking a developer to keep colourblind folks in mind is perfectly acceptable, but asking a game like this - a game based around the idea of asymmetrical puzzle solving via one-way voice communication via Walkie Talkie - to accomodate people that can't hear would be like asking for video games to be designed for blind people.

Sorry for the rant :) Just because "it's not that hard" to come up with an idea for an entirely different game that works for deaf people doesn't mean it isn't very hard to make this game's core gameplay deaf-friendly.

I'm a software engineer with degrees in game dev/design so I am very aware of "its not that hard" comments when I'm talking about an engineering problem.

The problem with your statement here is that you're assuming that communication MUST be verbal, which is never true ESPECIALLY for games. I consider this issue up there with ease of implementation alongside with colorblindness (e.g. add text chat is as easy as adding symbols or color mapping for colorblindness).

If you want to use timing challenges as a counterpoint to justify not adding support for some other visual medium then you really should read up on some of the Deaf Destiny Raid completion stories, they've managed to do what amounts to a one way communication in a variety of time sensitive challenges and win. Just because you can't think of a way to make it work doesn't mean there isn't a way. If the developer wants to constrain communication access to "one way" then there's ways to make the game still accessibile with timing challenges and make it non-verbal.

There's a vareity of talks and presentations out there (I myself gave one) on how to approach this type of problem and how to solve it.

[jetuser]

Funnily enough, this came out today and is very relevant here: https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/d3w887/celeste-difficulty-assist-mode?utm_source=wptwitterus

[bliss]

Originally posted by deafgamer64:

Unless streaming videochat between deaf users was employed into video games. Be a lot faster to sign than it would be to type a text message.

It sure would be cool if Steam could provide video chat with a persistent overlay.