Colour Blind Play

Posted on Able Gamers, active member ‘Sagan’ submitted a small program which enables you to change colour settings on PC based versions of games like MW2 and Bioshock 2 by modifying Direct X to enable you to change green to black, thus making it easier to see those pesky colours that make it increasingly difficult to succeed, not through lack of skill, but through the lack of ability to ‘see’ the trigger colour element to progress, score, time an action or frag an opponent.

The post can be seen here > click on me < and the file can be downloaded directly via here > download me link <  A BIG thank you goes to Sagan for spending time in creating this application/plugin/vital ingredient. We hope that your skills are picked up by an understanding development company who understands the importance of including such an important feature as this one in mainstream games. After all, how much is spent on visual plugins (foliage, textures, sound etc)? Which in reality all they do is add to the background visual ambience, when the really important function is the ability to respond to the absolute action.

Sledgehammer Games has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will include a colour blind option.

On the company’s ‘Question of the week’ blog, Sledgehammer vice president Michael Condrey addressed the need for a colour blind option.

“Research suggests that as much as 6% of the general population suffers from Colour Blindness, or more accurately Colour Vision Deficiency,” said Condrey.

“Those numbers vary depending on which source you quote, but we estimate that nearly a million gamers are playing Call of Duty every day with this issue. I am happy to report that we are working on a Colour Blind Assist option for Modern Warfare 3.”

The most common form of colour blindness is red-green colour blindness. Games like Modern Warfare 3 have typically used the colours green and red to indicate the locations of teammates and enemies on maps, making the games difficult to play if colour blind.

Its great so see developers taking the issues seriously, especially for the such big brands as MW. We urge you to check out the full article over at digitalspy.co.uk which includes comments and reactions to this news as well as a preview of MW3.

[...]

Roses are red, violets are blue but according to the latest understanding these colours are really an illusion. One that you create yourself.

Horizon reveals a surprising truth about how we all see the world. You may think a rose is red, the sky is blue and the grass is green, but it now seems that the colours you see may not always be the same as the colours I see. Your age, sex and even mood can affect how you experience colours.

Scientists have unlocked the hidden power that colours can have over your life – how red can make you a winner, how blue makes time speed up, and more.

To view the documentary via iPlayer go here:

While making a Portal 2 map last month, Robert Yang asked:

Was choosing “red” a bad idea / horribly insensitive to colorblind people? Like, will they be able to distinguish the non-portalable metal plating from the stone walls? I don’t want a BioShock 2 debacle on my hands.

Special thanks go over to @adurdin who sent over a link to this article on backslashn.com which discusses colour mapping in the Valve SDK. The full article can be read here.

Today we are being visited by Richard Wilson, CEO of Tiga and we will start to discuss what the games industry can do to help colour blind players more.

We aim to have a detailed conversation raising the issues colour blind players have when playing games as well as begin to identify any issues the games industry have in including colour blind settings in to games. We aim to investigate if there’s a platform for communicating to games developers the inclusion of settings to help players or at least be mindful when developing games of particular uses of colour, especially relating to team based games.

Colour blind Fans of MMO’s will be delighted to learn that Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch with a setting to help people with colour deficiencies to switch to colour blind mode.

Although full details are yet to be documented as to what the setting will actually do, the official SWTOR blog is continually releasing more information about the game as it moves closer to release and hopefully go into more detail at some point on the mode.

The colour blind setting is mentioned under ‘User Interface’ section of the blog with the following snippet of info;

‘Some settings seen while at PAX: Enable Color Blind Mode, Map fade while moving, map flashes red when attacked’.

So, although only brief in detail, it certainly looks like there will be support for colour blind players, which is a good sign that developers such as BioWare are sensitive in supporting colour blind players.

As and when any further information is released we will keep you informed.

Addressing color blindness in game design « Josh Talks Flash.

Ishihara – English version from Yoav Brill on Vimeo.

We stumbled on this amazing short film by the talented Yoav Brill for his graduation at Bezalel, the Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.

The film animation tells a very personal story of colour blindess and touches on many of the subtle issues we face when trying to blend in.

This thread focuses on identifying games which colour blind players could benefit from having colour blind settings.

This thread focuses on identifying video games which have colour blind settings embedded within them.

Please list only games which have this setting available.