The Blind Fragging the Blind

David Cohn Email 03.14.05

Michael Feir is an avid gamer. He spent so much time playing games in college he created his own online gaming magazine. But Feir doesn't play the best-selling games and has never seen World of Warcraft -- he's blind.

It doesn't matter. A growing library of computer games has been built specially for blind gamers, using sound instead of visuals to let players know what's going on around them.

"My dad had taken me as a young person to arcades and he would tell me what to do, and what was going on," said Feir, founder of Audyssey Gaming Magazine, an online quarterly for blind gamers. "I always thought that I could play myself if they were sound-based games."

Now the games exist -- lots of them. Audio games represent almost every gaming genre, from multiplayer role-playing games to action-adventure titles, driving games, science fiction thrillers and puzzle games.

Amateur re-creations of '80s arcade shooters (in 2-D sound) exist in audio format. Elaborate war simulators like Tank Commander from GMA Games requires audio players to complete missions, shoot tanks and dodge missiles -- from all sides.


Listen to BSC Games sound trailers:
Blast Chamber
Troopanum 2.0

The popular first-person-shooter Quake was even turned into a purely audio experience by All in Play, a company that produces games for both blind and sighted players.

"It was basically a technology prototype to show that even in more graphically inclined games, anything is possible," said Jeremie Spitzer, co-founder of All in Play.

The demand is such that the niche has grown from text-based games coded by hobbyists to between 30 and 50 professional audio-game developers who sell 3,000 games a year, experts estimate.

Most of these games run on ordinary PCs and are often joystick- or keyboard-controlled. The player dons a pair of headphones, and elements of the game are delivered in stereo to help players shoot aliens on the left or avoid a tank on the right.

Arcade-style audio games like Galaxica use the game's familiar beeps and bleeps to help players shoot aliens, while newer action games include opening scores, voice characters and elaborate sound effects.

Audio games are limited in visuals, so programmers must find creative ways to use sound to signify everything from attacking helicopters to the kind of surface upon which a character is walking.

In Drive, for example, the music speeds up along with the car the gamer is driving.

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