Playing Video Games While Blind?

Audio games, big tech, and intractable discrimination

Hear me read this post on the Deep Sy podcast!

If you could watch footage of my day-to-day life around the end of 2014, it would not be uncommon to see me standing alone in a room, looking apprehensive, gripping an iPhone 6 like I was trying to snap it in half, staring at a dark screen, shaking the device violently, and, every now and then, yelling in fright.

Also, if you could watch that footage, where did you get it? Delete it right now.

But since you’re being a creeper, I’ll explain my behavior. I was playing a mobile game that had just come out called Audio Defense: Zombie Arena. It was an audio game, a video game without the video part. I wore headphones and the game created the setting through sound. I stood in the center of a gladiatorial stadium and zombies came at me from every direction. As I tilted the phone left and right, the sounds they made in my headphones shifted. I had to get them dead center, and shoot. If I didn’t dispatch them quickly, they got closer and the sounds got louder. Eventually, when they got close enough, I heard my character’s heart pounding (that’s when the yelling usually happened). It was the game telling me the zombies were in range for hand-to-hand combat and I could shake my phone to hit them with a golf club, or frying pan, or banjo (all real options).

There were fast zombies I could get rid of with a couple shots. There were colossal zombies that moved slowly, but killing them took unloading everything I had. There were zombies that whispered until they were right next to me, and then they started shrieking. There was a freaky laughing clown zombie with a chainsaw that ran back and forth instead of coming straight at me, the truest of nightmares.

The company that made the game was called Somethin’ Else. It was the advent of modern mobile gaming, and they saw an opportunity to carve out a niche in the market. The explosion in smart phones meant well over a billion people had hardware in their pocket that could download and run games. Audio games were much cheaper to make than video games of a similar quality. With 3D soundscapes, Somethin’ Else created novel audio worlds, which for me amounted to virtual reality. They had some encouraging success, got some media attention, and their games’ voice casts included Sean Bean and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Since I grew up with some vision that I lost slowly over time, there was a period of many years where I could play video games relatively well. Obviously games with less action, like Pokémon or Final Fantasy, were easier. But I was reasonably good at the Marios and Zeldas too. I had great hand-eye coordination, just not-so-great eyes. My reflexes, like parents, did the best they could with what they had.

But years before 2014, I lost any ability to play video games. So the possibility of games blind people could play that everyone else might be interested in was exciting. A chance to participate once again in the culture of gaming, albeit one small corner of the culture. I might be able to recapture the comradery of friends around a school cafeteria table talking about a Donkey Kong boss battle (until a nearby girl laughed, reminding us we were losers).

My optimism on this subject was partially due to the moment in history. 2014 was right in the middle of a thrilling time for blind people and tech. We first got access to iPhones in 2009, and enough of us bought them over the next few years that assistive technology developers were going wild creating new apps. Handheld computers with built-in cameras and an internet connection presented endless opportunity. For instance, we could point our phones at a piece of paper and have the words read out loud with reasonable accuracy, a feat that previously required desktop equipment and expensive software. Or we could get remote assistance for all kinds of tasks from hundreds of thousands of sighted volunteers at any time with video calls. The news was easier to read than ever, and the most important online conversations took place on text-centric social media sites like Reddit and Twitter. Third party apps for both of those platforms allowed blind people to consume content and post in fully-accessible, feature-rich environments unimaginable just a few years earlier.

Much of this was thanks to Apple’s commitment to making their devices and software accessible to screen readers (the programs blind people use to interact with computers via synthesized speech or Braille), and encouraging developers to do the same.

Earlier in 2014, at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO Tim Cook made it clear that the company’s work in accessibility was based in principle, not profit. An activist shareholder from a conservative think tank led an unsuccessful revolt among Apple’s owners because, he alleged, the company was sometimes pursuing goals which conflicted with the goal of making as much money as humanly possible. The man was chasing a lifelong dream of physically transforming into a cartoon parody of a conservative person. Cook responded indignantly to Cartoon Man, asserting that Apple has morals and values quite apart from generating revenue, thank you very much. He invoked blind people as an example. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” The blind community cheered (and chose not to speculate why the Alabama-born Cook decided in this moment to feign Britishness).

Given this mood, I thought, why not a big new mainstream category of audio games? Everything else in tech was becoming more inclusive. Maybe sighted people would have fun gaming from someone else’s perspective. Maybe they would even do it because inclusion itself is a worthy goal, like Cook said. Perhaps we were standing upon the precipice of a new era of accessibility. Perchance the world we had always dreamed of was being born, guided by the benevolent midwifery of Silicon Valley. Could it be? Were we facing the dawning of a thousand beautiful, utopian tomorrows?

Ha-ha, no.

Somethin’ Else put out four or five games before ceasing all development at the end of 2015. Sighted gamers just didn’t care that much about audio games. Certainly not enough to pay the salaries of Ned Stark and Dr. Strange.

At the end of the day, sighted people have a hard time interacting with a screen that doesn’t have anything pretty or shiny on it. I can’t say I blame them. It feels wrong. There are videos and podcasts, TV and radio. Screens are for watching and headphones are for listening. Audio games ask us to use a screen but only listen. That’s fine with me. I use everything to listen. There’s no distinction. Podcasts compete with TV shows for my attention. It’s all just an audio track from a phone in my pocket. Sighted people are not used to blurring those lines. Why would they be? It’s nice to look at things. I remember that. I should have foreseen their preference.

I also should have expected the subsequent behavior of big, for-profit tech firms, whose goals are a little closer to Cartoon Man’s than they might have you believe. Twitter and Reddit eviscerated all the third-party apps that blind people loved because they didn’t show the platforms’ ads. And then, of course, along came a conspiracy-theory-spouting space fascist who grew up with all the privilege and comfort apartheid money could buy. He took over Twitter and immediately fired the entire accessibility team to reduce costs. Twitter is a flaming garbage pit now. Not just because Musk flooded it with bots, Nazis, AI slop, and porn, but also because it’s far less useable with screen readers.

Moreover, someone eventually pointed out to me that Apple’s accessibility commitment was something less than pure of heart. In the early 2000’s, third-party software developers stopped making screen readers for Apple. There weren’t enough blind people using Macs at the time to justify the investment. But school systems and governments were increasingly requiring computers they purchased to be accessible. If Apple wanted to remain a bidder for those lucrative contracts, they had to make their own built-in screen reader and commit to non-discrimination.

So it was, after all, about the bloody ROI, innit?

The world of mobile audio games eventually settled into a sustainable pattern of producing low-budget mini-games played almost exclusively by blind people. Nothing remotely intricate or mainstream. Some completely blind gamers also enjoy word puzzle games, or titles in the style of old-fashioned text adventures. Not a whole lot else. For my money, the most interesting progress has been in existing mainstream games that have features making things easier on low-vision players who still have some useable vision.

Ultimately, this is fine with me. I miss gaming. But I would spend far too much of my life on games if I had more access. I once got really into a text adventure called Zombie Exodus (What is it with me and zombies?). Then I got an iOS update that made Siri suggest apps based on what apps I usually used in certain locations. The next morning, a notification popped up: “You’re at work, open Zombie Exodus?” In some alternative universe, there is a sighted Sy at a Games Anonymous meeting talking about surrendering to a higher power.

The hard part here, far from unique to the world of gaming or tech, was my realization that discrimination is so often the default. And its causes are diverse. Sometimes, the innocent and perfectly understandable desire of individual sighted gamers to play video games means the market for creative, high-quality audio games will just never be there. Sometimes it’s the insatiable greed of gargantuan corporate monstrosities. Either way, it’s pretty tough to change, unless you get the chance to regulate government contracts, or something similarly powerful. That’s often the disability experience. The world is what it is. When you get the chance to have some novel fun and blast some virtual-reality zombies to bits, you take it. You enjoy it, while it lasts.

Is this a happy note to end on? Not really. But you don’t deserve a happy ending. I haven’t forgotten how you’ve been surveilling me via video 24/7 for over a decade. Shame on you!