Audio game

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An audio game is an electronic game played on a device such as a personal computer. It is similar to a video game save that there is audible and tactile feedback but not visual.

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Audio games originally started out as 'blind accessible'-games and were developed mostly by amateurs and blind programmers. [1] But more and more people are showing interest in audio games, ranging from sound artists, game accessibility researchers, mobile game developers and mainstream video gamers. Most audio games run on a personal computer platform, although there are a few audio games for handhelds and video game consoles. Audio games feature the same variety of genres as video games, such as adventure games, racing games, etc. [2]

Audio game history

The term "electronic game" is commonly understood as a synonym for the narrower concept of the "video game." This is understandable as both electronic games and video games have developed in parallel and the game market has always had a strong bias toward the visual. The first electronic game, in fact, is often cited to be Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device (1947) a decidedly visual game. Despite the difficulties in creating a visual component to early electronic games imposed by crude graphics, small view-screens, and power consumption, video games remained the primary focus of the early electronic game market.

Arcade and one-off handheld audio games the early years

The 1978 handheld version of Atari's Touch Me - one of the earliest audio games Touch Me - 320752252 - axeldeviaje.jpg
The 1978 handheld version of Atari's Touch Me  one of the earliest audio games

Atari released the first audio game, Touch Me , in 1974. Housed in an arcade cabinet, Touch Me featured a series of lights which would flash with an accompanying tone. The player would reproduce the sequence by pressing a corresponding sequence of buttons and then the game would add another light/sound to the end of the growing sequence to continually test the player's eidetic memory in a Pelmanism-style format. Although the game featured both a visual and an auditory component, the disconnect between the two enabled both the seeing and the visually impaired to equally enjoy the game.

Based on the popularity of Touch Me, in 1978 Milton Bradley Company released a handheld audio game entitled Simon at Studio 54 in New York City. Whereas Touch Me had been in competition with other visual-centric video games and consequently remained only a minor success, the allure of a personal electronic game allowed Simon to capture a much greater share of the market. Simon became an immediate success eventually becoming a pop culture symbol of the 1980s.

In the decades following the release of Simon, numerous clones and variations were produced including Merlin among others. Beginning in 1996, Milton Bradley and a number of other producers released the handheld Bop It which featured a similar concept of a growing series of commands designed to test eidetic memory. [3] Other related games soon followed including Bop It Extreme (1998), [4] Bop It-Extreme 2 (2002–2003), Zing-It, Top-It, and Loopz (2010) [5]

TTS software and the PC the second wave

Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), the earliest of a library initially spanning 8 years of TTS-enabled video games, was first made widely available as an audio game through MacInTalk in 1984. ADVENT -- Will Crowther's original version.png
Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), the earliest of a library initially spanning 8 years of TTS-enabled video games, was first made widely available as an audio game through MacInTalk in 1984.

Before graphical operating systems like Windows, most home computers used text-based operating systems such as DOS. Being text-based meant that they were relatively accessible to visually impaired users, requiring only the additional use of text-to-speech (TTS) software. For the same reason, following the development of TTS software, text-based games such as early text-only works of interactive fiction were also equally accessible to users with or without a visual impairment. [6] Since the availability of such software was not commonly accessible until the inclusion of the MacInTalk program on Apple Computers in 1984, the library of games which became accessible to the vision impaired spanned everything from the earliest text adventure, Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), to the comparatively advanced works of interactive fiction which had developed in the subsequent 8 years. Although the popularity of this genre has waned in the general market as video-centric games became the dominant form of electronic game, this library is still growing with the freeware development by devoted enthusiasts of new interactive fiction titles each year. [6]

Accessibility for the visually impaired began to change, some time prior to the advent of graphical operating systems as computers became powerful enough to support more video-centric games. This created a gap between electronic games for the seeing and games for the blind — a gap that has by now grown substantially. Due to a strong market bias in favor of the seeing, electronic games were primarily developed for this demographic. While seeing gamers could venture into 3D gaming worlds in such video game titles as Myst , Final Fantasy and Doom , blind gamers were relegated to playing more mundane games such as Blackjack , or Battleship .

As video games flourished and became increasingly common, however, amateur game designers began to adapt video games for the blind via sound. In time audio game programmers began to develop audio-only games, based to a smaller and smaller degree on existing video game ideas and instead focusing on the possibilities of game immersion and feedback with sound. Specifically, three-dimensional positional audio (binaural recording) has been developed since 2000 and now figures prominently in, for example, such audio games as BBBeat. To effect this, a sound is played in the left, center, or right channel to indicate an object's position in a virtual gaming environment. Generally, this involves stereo panning of various sound effects, many of which are looped to serve as indicators of hazards or objects with which the user can interact. Volume also plays a major role in 3D audio games primarily to indicate an object's proximity with reference to the user. The pitch of a sound is often varied to convey other information about the object it symbolizes. Voice talent is used to indicate menu items rather than text. These parameters have allowed for the creation of, among other genres, side scrollers, 3D action adventures, shooters, and arcade style games.

The website Audiogames.net provides a list of audio games and a forum for the community of audio game developers and gamers. Many of the listed games contain some primitive graphics as to make audio games not only accessible to blind and visually impaired people but also to gamers with vision, who may be unexperienced with TTS, auditory menus and typical keyboard mappings. Examples include Shades of Doom and the CURAT Sonification game.

Console audio games and the modern era

Most audio games are now developed by several small companies (consisting of only a team of one to four people). The main audience remains primarily visually impaired users, however the game market at large is gradually taking more notice of audio games as well due to the issue of game accessibility. Commercial interest in audio games has steadily grown and as a result artists and students have created a number of experimental freeware PC audio games to explore the possibilities and limitations of this gaming form.

Despite the increase in interest in audio games, however, many modern games still lack sufficient audio cues to be considered fully accessible for the visually impaired. Furthermore, the industry still lacks a clear set of accessibility guidelines for their development. [7] Tools such as the once popular Blastbay Game Toolkit engine that aided in the development of audio games are now obsolete, but current game engines like Unity and Unreal that can support audio game development are not specifically designed for doing so, creating an additional hurdle for audio game developers. [8]

In the field of console-gaming, there has been very little in the way of audio-games. One notable exception has been the innovative incorporation of strong audio elements in several of the games produced by the Japanese video game company, Warp. Warp was founded by musician Kenji Eno and consisted of a five-man team including first-time designer Fumito Ueda. [9] In 1997, Warp developed a game called Real Sound for the Sega Saturn which was later ported to Dreamcast in 1999 and renamed Real Sound: Kaze no Regret ("Real Sound: Regrets in the Wind"). [10] This game featured no visuals at all and was entirely dependent upon sound.

Discussing Real Sound's production, Eno has stated that

I got tired of [CG graphics]. I didn't want people to think that they could predict what Warp would do next. Also, I had a chance to visit people who are visually disabled, and I learned that there are blind people who play action games. Of course, they're not able to have the full experience, and they're kind of trying to force themselves to be able to play, but they're making the effort. So I thought that if you turn off the monitor, both of you are just hearing the game. So after you finish the game, you can have an equal conversation about it with a blind person. That's an inspiration behind this game as well. So Sega was asking for exclusive rights to the game, and I said, 'OK, if you'll donate a thousand Saturns to blind people, then I'll donate a thousand [copies of the Real Sound] game along with the Saturns.' And my condition was that if Sega would go for this idea, I would make that game Sega exclusive. So, that's how this happened. [11]

Following the release of Real Sound, Warp again made use of a novel employment of audio elements in the Saturn game Enemy Zero (1997), in which the enemies are invisible and can only be detected through auditory clues. [10] Audio-specific elements used in gameplay have been recognized in Warp's D2 (2000). [12]

Nintendo, as part of its shift to alternative gameplay forms, has shown recent interest in audio games through its own development teams. [13] In July 2006, Nintendo released a collection of audio games called Soundvoyager as the newest member of its spare Digiluxe series. The Digiluxe series for Game Boy Advance consists of 7 games (in 2 series) that are characterized by simple yet compelling gameplay, [14] minimal graphics, and the emphasis, in such titles as Soundvoyager and Dotstream , on music. Soundvoyager contains 7 audio games (Sound Slalom, Sound Picker, Sound Drive, Sound Cock , Sound Chase, Sound Catcher, and Sound Cannon). [15] The Digiluxe series has been available in Japan since July 2006. [16]

In 2008, MIT students collaborated with the government of Singapore and a professor at the National University of Singapore to create AudiOdyssey , a game which allows both blind and sighted gamers to play together. [17]

Apple's iPhone platform has become home to a number of audio games, including Papa Sangre . [18] Other examples include Audiogame.it's Flarestar (a space-themed exploration game that features combat against training drones and other spacecraft) [7] and Sonic Tennis (a game which simulates a tennis match and features a multiplayer mode). [19]

Android devices also feature a myriad of audio games. For example, the studio Blind Faith Games has developed various games for Android with the goal of accessibility for the visually impaired community. [20] Examples include Golf Accessible (a simulation of golfing) and Zarodnik (a strategy game where the user faces a monster in the depths of the ocean), which utilize screen vibrations and audio cues for the gameplay experience. [20] [7] Another unique example of an audio game for Android is a game currently in development by researchers at Tsinghua University titled Wander, which is intended to be used as the player falls asleep to improve the quality of their rest. A guide provides the instructions to users verbally, and they use their breath to explore a forest filled with relaxing environmental noises. [21]

With the rise in popularity of voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa came a new set of audio games. As of June 2021, 10,000 audio games were available as Alexa Skills for use with Amazon Alexa. [22] Among them are games like Rain Labs' Animal Sounds, which asks users to correctly identify the noises made by various animals. [23]

TTS-enabling video games

The rise of text-to-speech (TTS) software and steady improvements in the field have allowed full audio-conversion of traditionally video-based games. Such games were intended for use by and marketed to the seeing, however they do not actually rest primarily on the visual aspects of the game and so members of the audio game community have been able to convert them to audio games by using them in conjunction with TTS software. While this was originally only available for strictly text-based games like text adventures and MUDs, advances in TTS software have led to increased functionality with a diverse array of software types beyond text-only media allowing other works of interactive fiction as well as various simulator games to be enjoyed in a strictly audio environment.

Examples of such games include:

Another example is The Last of Us Part II , which was released by Naughty Dog in the summer of 2020 for the PlayStation 4. The game contains over 60 accessibility features, including a text-to-speech feature. [28] Other features that make the game completely playable without sight include the use of voice actors, haptic feedback, and audio cues that act as hints to the player. [28] In addition, the game provides the common audio game feature of a sound glossary menu. On this menu, the user can scroll through a variety of audio cues and hear what they sound like and what they are used for during gameplay. For this game in particular, examples include signals to the user that they can crouch, jump, or interact with the nearby environment. [28]

See also

Related Research Articles

Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as writing, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media, such as printed material or audio recordings, which feature little to no interaction between users. Popular examples of multimedia include video podcasts, audio slideshows, and animated videos. Multimedia also contains the principles and application of effective interactive communication, such as the building blocks of software, hardware, and other technologies. The five main building blocks of multimedia are text, image, audio, video, and animation.

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. The reverse process is speech recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer accessibility</span> Ability of a computer system to be used by all people

Computer accessibility refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability type or severity of impairment. The term accessibility is most often used in reference to specialized hardware or software, or a combination of both, designed to enable the use of a computer by a person with a disability or impairment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Screen reader</span> Assistive technology that converts text or images to speech or Braille

A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or have a learning disability. Screen readers are software applications that attempt to convey what people with normal eyesight see on a display to their users via non-visual means, like text-to-speech, sound icons, or a braille device. They do this by applying a wide variety of techniques that include, for example, interacting with dedicated accessibility APIs, using various operating system features, and employing hooking techniques.

Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it. Video game gameplay is distinct from graphics and audio elements. In card games, the equivalent term is play.

Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdisciplines are world design, level design, system design, content design, and user interface design. Within the video game industry, video game design is usually just referred to as "game design", which is a more general term elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music video game</span> Video game genre

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WIMP (computing)</span> Style of human-computer interaction

In human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for "windows, icons, menus, pointer", denoting a style of interaction using these elements of the user interface. Other expansions are sometimes used, such as substituting "mouse" and "mice" for menus, or "pull-down menu" and "pointing" for pointer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic game</span> Game that employs electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play

An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common forms of electronic game including handheld electronic games, standalone systems, and exclusively non-visual products.

A voice-user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface.

Tactile graphics, including tactile pictures, tactile diagrams, tactile maps, and tactile graphs, are images that use raised surfaces so that a visually impaired person can feel them. They are used to convey non-textual information such as maps, paintings, graphs and diagrams.

<i>Vegas Stakes</i> 1993 video game

Vegas Stakes, known as Las Vegas Dream in Japan, is a gambling video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in April 1993 and for the Game Boy in December 1995. The Super NES version supports the Super NES Mouse, while the Game Boy version is compatible with the Super Game Boy, and features borders which use artwork from the SNES version. It is the sequel to the NES game Vegas Dream.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPS for the visually impaired</span>

Since the Global Positioning System (GPS) was introduced in the late 1980s there have been many attempts to integrate it into a navigation-assistance system for blind and visually impaired people.

Within the field of human–computer interaction, accessibility of video games is considered a sub-field of computer accessibility, which studies how software and computers can be made accessible to users with various types of impairments. It can also include tabletop RPGs, board games, and related products.

NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open-source, portable screen reader for Microsoft Windows. The project was started by Michael Curran in 2006.

<i>Real Sound: Kaze no Regret</i> 1997 adventure game designed for visually impaired players

Real Sound: Kaze no Regret, literally "Real Sound: Regret of Wind", is an adventure audio game developed and published by Warp. The game was first released for the Saturn in July 1997, and later for the Dreamcast in March 1999. Real Sound was intended to provide equal access to sighted and blind players. The subtitle Kaze no Regret means "regret of wind" or "wind's regret".

An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres. Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified by Rick Adams as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Syberia, and Myst.

Text to speech in digital television refers to digital television products that use speech synthesis to enable access to blind or partially sighted people. By combining a digital television with a speech synthesis engine, blind and partially sighted people are able to access information that is normally displayed visually in order to operate the menus and electronic program guides of the receiver.

Alternative formats include audio, braille, electronic or large print versions of standard print such as educational material, textbooks, information leaflets, and even people's personal bills and letters. Alternative formats are created to help people who are blind or visually impaired to gain access to information either by sight, by hearing (audio) or by touch (braille).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cutscene</span> Sequence in a video game that is not interactive, breaking up the gameplay.

A cutscene or event scene is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward the player, introduce newer models and gameplay elements, show the effects of a player's actions, create emotional connections, improve pacing or foreshadow future events.

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