BioShock 2 hacking minigame could cause issues for colorblind gamers

Your an asshole. Deal with it.

Oh, I guess its easy for you huh?

Does the "buy out" count as a workaround for this situation or does it function differently?

At first I was like, "really????" then, I was like ouch.

the problem for colour blind people is red and green isn't it so can't developers just not use red and green in puzzles or any situation in which you need to differentiate, plenty of other colours around

What really amazes me is the number of people, here and elsewhere, who either think that the manufacturer would be hugely put out to fix a problem like this (the MW2 one mentioned above might be harder) or simply equate it to other physical handicaps like total blindness or severe arthritis, which make games an impossible hobby period. This is something that would've been trivially easy to fix, and that gamers had no way of knowing was present upon purchasing the game (good luck getting Best Buy to take it back!)

I'm legally blind myself, so I'm well aware that not every game can be accessible to everybody--I don't own a Wii because I would have to sit too close to the television to be able to play any sensor bar-using games. But this would have been almost stupidly easy to fix if anyone had thought about it--simply make red solid and green shaded with diagonal stripes, or vice versa. Problem solved, nobody's experience suffers for the change and everything's fine. Comparing it to "PC run amok" is just stupid garbage from idiots who feel the need to whip it to their biological superiority.

I'm color blind enough not to be able to play Puzzle Fighter, but Bust a Move isn't bad, because it has different shapes inside the bubbles. Most game players are male, almost all color blind people are male, there must be a greater percentage of gamers who are color blind than other communities, and colors can be unavoidable in games, like Bioshock 2. It seems like we should be able to get fairly simple solutions to this problem, especially since quite a few games journalists are color blind, the developeers should be hearing about it.

Hey Ben, I have a serious question for you.

I have seen all 3 examples on the Negative Gamer web site, and I have to say, if I were color blind, which I am not, I would NOT have a problem playing BioShock 2 and hacking everything in sight (har har, sorry).

Why? Because while green might not look green to me (if I were color blind) it does have a distinct color. This is the exact same way you know how to read a frigging traffic light. You know the top light is red and the bottom light is green.

Honestly, what say you?

If you make a color-blind friendly mode you have the potential to make more money for literally what could be 10 minutes of code change (if that).

As it stands lets say the hacking portion of this game is as intergral as the colored blocks in Puzzle Fighter and I have 5 colorblind friends, and they ask me if Puzzle Figher is worth getting I would say no, because it's un-playable. That's sales lost, and we all know that sales are what game company's are after ie: the bottom line.

We're not talking about flying a plane here people, we're talking about changing some color shades to accomodate gamers who want to play a game. Why wouldn't you want others to experience Bioshock 2? If the fix is easy enough (which it seems it might be) why not implement it, I've seen other games do it with great success.

Start a petition, I'll sign it.

Dr. Tea bag,

it's easier said than done. when you work with art directors, creative directors, and designers you are working with people who have extremely trained eyes and are very sensitive to color. Sometimes you just can't change something from green to purple without upsetting the color scheme and more importantly, the client.

Changing it to make it functional for that extra 10% might sound good but if that change makes it less appealing for the other 90%...well you can probably guess how a color sensitive art director would react.

a small color change might not sound like a big deal but you'd be surprised at how some color changes affect people's reactions to things. it's all subconscious....a faded green green is very relaxing and tranquil. red is alarming and attention grabbing, changing colors is not as simple as swapping them out. if you change the color of the smallest thing you risk upsetting the entire design.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't try to make it functional. it's just not easy to do, especially when there are different types of color blindness. maybe the solution is to have it as an option in the menu. something that changes the hue of certain colors.

I don't care what happens to this post. I'll sign a petition to have game programmers offer solutions to colorblind gamers when they also make sure to offer text resizing options for SDTV owners *cough* ME2.

I don't expect companies to acknowledge the "minorities", but if we're going to please one group we should try to please others.

Btw if there are others, let's add them to the list of people who apparently aren't cool enough to play mainstream games.

What's interesting about this is that one of the generally accepted rules of good interface design is that important functions should have 2 delineating features, such as color and texture. See the Xbox controller for instance: the green A button is neither only A nor green. This is not just for colorblind people; people in general are able to respond more quickly to prompts with a greater number of visual cues.

Therefore, while I understand Space's point about design directors being picky about color, they are ignoring other aspects of effective interface design. By adding a texture to the colored bars (such as different cross-hatching, etc.), they would not only make it accessible to colorblind people, but it would be a better interface overall.

they should do this for more games...

I'd be surprised if the various disability acts don't already require devs to do this. Web designers have to check for color-blindness issues all the time. It doesn't really take that long.

But I wonder if a system-level palette swap option isn't a better bet. For example my ATI card on my PC has a SmartShaders option that allows me to change the way that things are displayed... I'd imagine it's possible to code some kind of color-blindness shader into Windows/DirectX/WhateverPS3Uses so that a gamer could enable it once on their system, and it'd do it's best to make every game more accessible.

Frankly i'm surprised it doesn't already exist.

Quite a few games (Particluarly indie games) have color-blind options. I know one indie game designer that added it in a patch after people asked for it. It took all of ten minutes work.

PS/ Are the insensitive selfish assholes always like that, or is it only on the internet?

@ Space.

The Left 4 Dead games have closed captioning. It's even very helpful for people with good hearing

*Tank Growls*

As for Bioshock 2, luckily for me the green and red are far enough apart for me to tell the difference. In games, it seems to be green and yellow that I have trouble with (especially in puzzle games).

I found this site that lets yo see how a Colour blind person sees, you select a picture, and then select a condition of colour blindness. Just in case people were curious. http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html

I think it's a little sad that people can't play a game because of how they see. But think of if you ever lost a hand! That'd suck, no more console gaming for you, end of. There are lots of disabilities that gaming hasn't catered for yet, epilepsy is kinda unavoidable, but there are things that can be done to help most others.

Couldn't they add SYMBOLS to the bars? or number them? Like white = 1 Blue = 2 and yellow = 3 so people can work it out in "1s 2s and 3s". Just a thought.

I'm color blind. when I run into a situation like this. I simply hand the controller to my wife. It rarely happens, but when it does, no big deal. Been this way since I was born, not a big thing.

While not fully colorblind, I suffer from partial colorblindness, and even then this was still a bit of a chore for me to play. I mostly relied on Auto Hack darts when I had them and tried to not hack stuff I didn't have to. It made the game a lot more difficult than it should have, however.

I didn't hate the new game, but I did miss the tile game.

"If you want to start a petition to 'fix' the situation...I'd really appreciate it."

What are you going to do for me?

huh? i'm starting to lose how this is relevant? people are born with color blindness. you don't suddenly become color blind.

you know what, perhaps INSTEAD of making a patch. Just put a label on the game that says: people with colorblindness may end up frustrated at this game because it's heavy on the red/green.

nobody is going to say they can't put a disclaimer sticker on the plastic that wraps the game case, right? (because they already put disclaimer stickers on plastic wrappers of games)

I *hate* to agree with emperorzero on this, but I do--at least in part.

Look at it this way: 2k made a business decision to make their hacking minigame entirely dependent on the player's ability to differentiate between colors. Not the decision I would have made, but it wasn't my decision to make. Does this exclude some people from being able to play and enjoy their product? Yes. But 2k essentially made the choice to lose that business when they chose to release a game that is not accessible to color blind people.

/rant

If I may stray a little from the topic, I feel that in general the ADA has strayed too far from its original purpose (FWIW, yes, I actually do have a physical handicap. And no, you may not know what it is ;) ). Every time I go to the mall, I see 10 empty handicapped parking spaces, followed by aisles and aisles of cars. What genius thought it made sense to make sure that every place of business has parking spaces that are never used?

Public facilities, like libraries and courthouses, should still be required to be accessible, since they exist for the public good. But otherwise, if you want to lose the business of your handicapped patrons, you should have that right. Just like the handicapped have the right to boycott you and your inaccessible business.

Where does the gov't get off telling people what they have to do?

/rant

Auto Hack Tool. Problem solved.

So a casual game company can do more for its customers than one of the ones that cater to the more hardcore clientele. That's nice.

Popcap, for most of its puzzle games, includes a colorblind option. Puzzle Quest, from a different manufacturer, used the simple expedient of also adding a symbol inside each color ball. This isn't hard to do, doesn't have to affect the overall aesthetics of the game, and opens up the gamer market to a wider audience. It's possibly worth noting that males are more prone to color blindness, the initial demographic for most games. I'm not colorblind, but my husband is, and I feel a little bad for him every time I have to take over the controller to help him out. Don't mind in the least, but it'd be nice (not worth a revolution over) if it was something more frequently thought about by devs.

I LIKE it when a company is willing to put that option in there, and I'm willing to give them MORE MONEY if they do so. Focus on that MORE MONEY part. A very simple thing, and ... MONEY. Holy crap, it could fall like rain.

I have a partial red-green color blind, but it's usually not enough to affect my gaming. If I was becoming a chemistry major like my uncle, I'd need a special type of glasses that'd help me detect reactions and what not, but luckily I'm not.

Sometimes I have issues telling friend from foe in online shooters based on the color of the reticule or the name above someone's head, but I don't have an issue with puzzle games or mini games such as this. Kind of a dick move to ignore all the people who do though when this is such a simple fix in a lot of cases.

I don't care if devs do include an option for Colorblind assistance. If they do, okay, if they don't so what? Go play something else. What point do you draw the line at for inclusion? Keep in mind that nobody NEEDS to play ANY videogame. Especially when these measures will affect the quality of the experience that was desired by the creators.

As someone who is Red/Green color blind I find that the issue is NOT that they chose to have red and green in the hacking game. The issue is the shades of red and green they chose. If the left red the same but changed the green to a darker shade it would not have been an issue.

I think only 5% of all males are colorblind.

I wonder why there aren't more girl gamers (I mean real gamers). They don't have that excuse (only 0,5 are colorblind) :)

Phew, I'm not affected.

Oh my god.
I'm glad someone pointed this out.
I feel like I can't enjoy a lot of games that have puzzle elements due to being color blind my self!! :(

I understand what you want, and it is indeed understandable, but in this case, shouldn't you be going for the blue all the time?

This inconsiderate and ignorant development wouldn't have happened if the game was a PS3 exclusive.

WAY TO GO XBOX.

I kid...

@JCD

It's erectile dysfunction, isn't it.

YEAAAAAH.

there is another great application out there called vischeck. there is good info on the site about color blindness too. the website is vischeck dot com They also have application plugins for Photoshop and applications to correct images for color blind folks like myself... So as for developer effort it would not be difficult at all esp if there was greater demand for Color blind palette support. The programmer would just run the game thru the color corrector software and its done...
here is a trick for folks with red green color blindness. take the red lens only from a pair of 3D glasses and look at an Ishihara color test... those round dotted images with numbers in them and you will discover you can see all the numbers that normal color vision folks see.. though this does not show you the colors in normal fashion it will make the numbers stand out.
google the test and the first result should take you to a sample of 8 images to try it out...
TomTom GPS include the colorblind option for its maps too so I don't see it as being a big issue to add it to a game. I do like the idea that a couple people posted of having TV's with a built in color corrector for color blind folks.. I am sure the technology is there but the incentive to do it is not... It to an act of congress to require CC decoders built into all TV's back in 1993 and would probably require the same for color correction

One additional comment as a poster said that games were never made with Closed Captions was also wrong.. Valve did it with Half Life II on the PC and it was the first game to carry the CC symbol on the box.. thus it would show text when headcrabs or zombies etc were approaching but not visible so you knew to look for them.. (yeah I am Deaf too) anyway I bought that game for that fact alone and it also turned out to be a great game as well...