The Goto of the Underground - Latest Comments in Color blind gamer

Re: Color blind gamer

JBT48 — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 19:50:40 -0000

good advocacy :) I hope in the future all game developers will consider this.

Re: Color blind gamer

Jacob Peck — Tue, 20 May 2014 14:27:48 -0000

As someone who is not colorblind, I just want to say that I've *always* had trouble differentiating the orange and yellow bubbles in Bubble Bobble.

I feel like UX designers and game designers really need to pay more attention to this issue. Thank you for your well-written and thoughtful analysis of the issue. This was a good read on a topic I've always been interested in. :)

Re: Color blind gamer

xardox — Tue, 20 May 2014 12:47:25 -0000

I was visiting Ocean Quigley at Maxis, the lead artist on SimCity (and many other Maxis games), and he gave me a demo of a video filter feature in SimCity that would adjust the colors so you could play the game with various sorts of color blindness.

Not only that, but it also had an "empathy filter" that would adjust the colors so people with normal color vision could see what it looked like to people with various forms of color blindness.

I think that's an excellent accessibility feature, which should be built into the operating system or video driver, so you can apply it to all games and applications.

Not only are the filters to adjust the colors for color blind people useful, but also the empathy filters are useful for developers and designers who want to test their applications and designs to make sure they're usable by color blind people.

http://www.oceanquigley.com/

http://oceanquigley.blogspo...

I'm not color blind myself (but I'm supportive ;), and I don't know much about how it works. So I wonder if for any given kind (or instance) of color blindness, if there is a single (or multiple) color mappings that would make all colors distinguishable (enough), or if it would be better to be able to adjust the color mappings on an application-by-application basis?

For example, you might want to use a different color mapping for Flower than for Doom.

This seems like something Apple should do, since they're so good at accessibility, and they used to have a very colorful logo, but something happened to it over the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Re: Color blind gamer

Loren Pechtel — Tue, 20 May 2014 11:41:54 -0000

Thank you for doing a good job of presenting this problem. I'm only color weak (for example, I have no problem with traffic lights) but even then I find all of your examples to be unplayable because it takes time to tell what I'm looking at.

Every game UI developer should be required to read this article before starting every new game.

Re: Color blind gamer

Carl Evans — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:36:56 -0000

Another colourblind gamer here.

I have played games for years and had these problems the whole time. Its more frustrating when your in a multiplayer fps environment and you end up letting down, or team-killing, your team mates. Not only do you get a torrade of abuse (mostly tounge in cheek) but you also don't feel like your giving all you can.

I've never considered it to be a disability in real-life or gaming but it is definate annoyance.

Its very difficult to explain to 'non-colourblind' people what colours you see or don't see as I have only ever seen colours from my perspective. I can only tell them that sometimes I dont see the cross-hair (which means I tend to use the scope all the time) and in some games I see the name (tags) colour as the same.

As for shading 'in-game' I have no clue what is seen by other people. I may think I am in good cover and I may be in plain sight to others.

As for puzzle games, I tend to avoid them as I know I won't be able to play them, I will give Peggle a go but apart from that its just depressing knowing these games are intended for kids and I can't play them.

Re: Color blind gamer

Silverfish — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:19:34 -0000

I read through the article and it was interesting! I'll make sure to keep color blind people in mind if I ever create a game, and I'll try to make the devs of the indie games I'm following aware of this so everyone can play their games.

Re: Color blind gamer

Oscar Jacobson — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:09:48 -0000

just had to leave a comment hoping maybe some dev's will see it.

I am colorblind and suffered a lot because of it, no point going into detail, but I can assure you it hasnt been pleasant.

I also love gaming, and I play on a competitive level and I perform very well, but color blindness has usualy held me back from truly reaching my potential. (Sounds a bit lame since I'm talking about a game, but I find games fun, especially when taken a bit seriously)

I would like to thank the people who add colorblind mode to games.
Some games are unplayable because im colorblind and I truly appriciate it when devs make them compatible for us with colorblindness.

Noticed Bad Company 2 have added this, I am not sure exactly what they changed, but I want to thank them for doing this.

Over 10% of all guys are colorblind, meaning probably atleast 9% of all gamers are, so it is a big crowd of people affected by something that wont take that much time developing.

Just hire some colorblind beta-testers and they can tell you what is hard to see, and what isn't.

Re: Color blind gamer

egu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:55:56 -0000

Good article.
Got a link from Battlefield Bad Company 2 forum where we are discussing problems with color blindness in the game. I am also color blind and have similar problems in real life and games.
http://forums.electronicart...

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:46:41 -0000

Awesome. I'd love to check it out when you finish.

Re: Color blind gamer

anon — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:44:41 -0000

Thanks for the good write-up, I'll keep it in mind when I get around to finishing my open source game.

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:29:16 -0000

http://frenzic.com/version-...

Version 1.2
Released on July 31st, 2007
* Added custom color settings for colorblind players

Right you are. It looks like it has a setting for various color blind types. That's pretty cool.

Re: Color blind gamer

mrpommer — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:53:05 -0000

Frenzic is another game that has introduced a good "colour blind" mode. I wonder if all the games with this mode makes up 8% of the games out there?

Re: Color blind gamer

colorblind gamer — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:12:08 -0000

I am sending this link to everyone who has ever asked what is it like to be colorblind. This describes my gaming dilemmas perfectly.

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:08:15 -0000

Do give Left 4 Dead a go, then. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks for the heads-up on Pop. I'll have to check that out.

Re: Color blind gamer

Tarlbot — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:05:10 -0000

"Pop" - for the Wii has a color blind mode that I use - the four colors they picked look pretty much the same if I don't use the Color blind (shapes) mode instead of the normal colored bubbles mode.

Not being able to to see Red HUD over black is a giant barrier to many games. Basically I don't even try FPS because I assume I can't play them.

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:55:51 -0000

Right. I don't think I actually said as much in the article, but I didn't intend to show people that have perfect color vision what it's like to see through my eyes. Rather, I was showing to the world (color blind and not) how people with my color vision problems are unable to function because of what is, to you and others that differentiate colors properly, not really a big deal.

I don't doubt that that you are able to make out the high contrast changes better than the low contrast. It's not a perfect solution, however. I probably should have noted that I don't notice the change between the smoker's crosshair from white to pale blue as easily as I notice a change from white to red. Even if I am unable to see the crosshair against the background I certainly do notice that it is no longer there. The white to blue transition doesn't pop out at me nearly as much. The opposite stands for the blue choice for the players' health level. The green (or orange?) to blue transition is much easier for me to notice.

Thanks for asking about that.

Re: Color blind gamer

Justin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:46:11 -0000

Just to make sure, the contrasting photos you're using aren't the kind that are designed to show people without color blindness what it's like to have the condition.

I ask because the silhouettes for left 4 dead are much easier for me to see in color blind mode than regular mode, although I have done perfectly on several color blindness tests. In particular, the silhouette through the wall is almost invisible, as the crosshairs are pretty bad too. I'd probably play in color blind mode if I played the game.

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:08:15 -0000

I've heard it said that it's because we're better at recognizing things by their shape rather than their color. It makes total sense to me.
Unfortunately, many things in the military have arbitrary color assignations. I tried for several months to get in to be a SERE Specialist, but was unable to because of the requirement for them to have good color vision for parachuting duty. Why? Because the go/no-go lights are red and green. Seems like a simple thing to fix...

Re: Color blind gamer

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:55:56 -0000

Totally share your frustration with Puzzle Bobble - although I think perhaps my colour blindness is less severe... It's not all bad being color blind though, on the plus side we make better snipers because we can see through camouflage better :)

Re: Color blind gamer

Harry — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:17:03 -0000

Great article. I'm colorblind (red green like you) and it was great to see instances where a developer had actually made game play less frustrating!

Re: Color blind gamer

RobotCaleb — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:08:21 -0000

antilight, thanks for reading. One of the reasons that I imagine you find L4D and TF2 a bit easier is the fact that they really put a lot of effort into silhouettes. They made sure that each class in TF2 was immediately identifiable by their shape. That's one of the reasons the game went through so many revisions and took so long. With L4D that's the reason that they changed from the old character models to the new ones we now see.

If you really only see grays then the color blind options in L4D may help you for the same reason it helps me. Higher contrast. You should notice things (not the environment, but the character silhouettes and health stuff as I demonstrated) pop out more. Unfortunately, I don't think those options are in all Source games. :(

Re: Color blind gamer

antilight — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:38:10 -0000

Thanks for writing this great article. I'm fully colorblind, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... if you really want to know more) and it can sometimes be a hassle to play certain games. I usually have to just accept that I will lack certain information when playing some games. I wish more developers would take it into consideration, but you are correct, we are an easily dismissible minority.

I never knew about the colorblind mode in the source engine, I'm going to try it out right now. I wish I had know about it a few years ago :) The newer games, TF2 and L4D, both seem a little bit easier in default mode than previous products though.

Re: Color blind gamer

Laurie Cheers — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:31:46 -0000

FYI, Perfect Dark Zero featured colour-blindness options: normally enemies were colour-coded red and friends green, but you could change them to red and blue, or various other combinations.

Re: Color blind gamer

Wasabi — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:12:04 -0000

It may have been more research cost actually.

The development may have been (and I am throwing a large assumption out here) just changing certain color hues to other values. Change 'red' to 'green' and maybe increase saturation or whatever.

But knowing which colors to tweak and the other highlights that they did was probably the larger challenge. How is a non-color blind person supposed to know? Even if it is explained and even if there are test methods it is a challenge for them to get it right. And for the color blind people how are they supposed to know when something is 'missing' or otherwise hidden in the depths of colors unless the non-color blind person tells them that they could be missing something. Catch 22. That is why I would think the additional cost would be in research (and testing) as opposed to development.

Great post. Very interesting read. Having developed applications myself (not games) I have encountered this very issue. I'm not color blind so its a bit hard for me to fully understand what I need to prepare for and testing is another issue because I have to know how to explain what I see in order for my color blind tester to provide feedback on. Reading this post I think helps because I can see some methods I hadn't thought of using before.

Re: Color blind gamer

Cedar — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:22:01 -0000

I wonder how much actual time and effort (read extra development cost) valve actually had to put into adding those setting options, my guess is its negligible especially when compared to the positive attention it gains them.

Thanks for sharing!