Speed sonic across the span: building a platform audio game

ABSTRACT

We describe the design process and initial user study of an audio game created for the visually impaired. Until the advent of 3D graphics games, platform games where the player jumps from platform to platform, such as Mario and Sonic, [1] were wildly popular. Although many audio games have been developed over the past decade, the platform genre has been all but ignored. To fill this gap and to add to the limited choices visually impaired gamers have, we developed a platform game that can be also be played via audio-only interface and compared it to a traditional audio-visual version.

REFERENCES

• 1: Platform Games, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_game.
• 2: Super Mario Bros., Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.
• 3: McCrindle, R.J., Symons, D. Audio Space Invaders. In Proc. Intl Conf. Disability, Virtual Reality, & Assoc. Technology, University of Reading, UK (2000), 59--65.
• 4: Shades of Doom. http://www.gmagames.com/sod.html.
• 5: Gärdenfors, Dan. Designing Sound-Based Computer Games. In Cybersonica Symposium (2002), 1--7.
• 6: William W. Gaver , Donald A. Norman, Everyday listening and auditory icons, University of California, San Diego, 1988
• 7: Super Liam, AudioGames.net. http://www.audiogames.net/db.php?action=view&id=superliam.
• 8: GamePad, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad
• 9: BATS, University North Carolina. http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/assist/bats/features.shtml

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.5 Sound and Music Computing
          Subjects: Methodologies and techniques

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Auditory (non-speech) feedback

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
accessibility, audio games, platform games, sonification, user study