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).