Today in class, we talked about Fullerton’s Chapter on fun and Accessibility. We brainstormed on why we enjoyed games and why we thought they were fun. Some people had contradictory statements, like some games are fun because they’re relaxing to play like Minecraft and other games are really competitive, like League of Legends. Some games are difficult to master, like Dark Souls, but other games are easy to pick up, like The Sims. I think that depending on the mood that you’re in, there’s always going to be a game that works better than another. If you want to get a few friends together to play a relaxing party game, something like Mario Party or Overcooked would fit that bill. If you want to be super competitive with a team, games like Overwatch or Valorant can work well with that. If you want a lot of creative freedom and explore a fun story, Dungeons and Dragons is a good answer to that.

We also talked about accessibility in games. The example we used in class was Jackbox Party Pack. This game is accessible because only one person needs to own the product for everyone in the party to play. The game also works with a web browser, so if you have a laptop, phone, or tablet and an internet connection, you can play the game. Another way that games are accessible is by changing keybinds for their games. This allows people who are disabled to make keybinds that work for them. There was a professional Fortnite streamer named Ewok who was deaf. She relied solely on the “visualize audio cues” feature, which lets Ewok see footsteps, gunfire, and more. I think this is a great example of accessibility in video games.

Sources:

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.