Joseph Bein is the president & creative lead of Out of Sight Games, developer of the audio game A Hero’s Call. The studio’s first game, A Hero’s Call was designed to be accessible by visually impaired gamers, including half of Out of Sight Games, who built their own game engine to ensure the game’s accessibility.
In this interview, Bein talks about what kinds of games tend to be more accessible to blind gamers; what developers can do to improve their games’ accessibility; whether or not the development tools themselves are accessible; talks he’s attended at the Game Accessibility Conference and GDC; why a future version of A Hero’s Call will have a visual component; and why he turned to Kickstarter for the game’s final push.
Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spoke, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- A Hero’s Call by Out of Sight Games
- Papa Sangre & The Nightjar (iOS) by Somethin’ Else
- AudioGames — your resource for audiogames, games for the blind, games for the visually impaired
- Game Accessibility Conference, part of the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG
- An interview with Out of Sight Games sound designer Drew Becker, by Adriane Kuzminski
- Adriane Kuzminski on Twitter
- Smash Clay Audio
- “Breaking the Sound Barrier: How Game Audio Can Improve Accessibility” GAConf 2017 talk
Podcast: Download (Duration: 44:10 — 21.1MB) | Embed
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