Oliver Hitchen

Oliver Hitchen 2nd Year Games Art Student

Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Contextual Studies - Accessibility in Games and what game made me feel aware of my body whilst playing?

Even though this was already an example in one of the articles, so I'll only talk about it briefly, was the Xbox kinect. Games like Fruit Ninja and Kinect Adventure are both very physical games where your body is the controller so you need to be fully aware of whats going on, if you can't control you're body then its going to be very hard to play the game. Another example which is very similar to the Kinect was the Wii, Wii Sports, Mariokart and Just dance were all examples of games that game me a similar experience. In a physical sense, these games made me aware of myself and what my body could do to control the character in game.
In a different sense of the question 'what game made me feel aware of my body whilst playing?' The Evil Within is a horror game (that I've only played briefly) that made me feel so much more aware of myself. *spoilers* Throughout the time I played it, I could feel my heart pounding a lot more than usual, it felt like it was beating into my chest and was much more faster paced than it should be. Whilst exploring the house you see a grim looking man holding a chainsaw in a hospital like section who is very sensitive to sound and sight, if he catches one glimpse of you or hears you scuffle behind the beds you hear the whirring of the chainsaw suddenly turn on and you know you've been seen, even though this was all in game the first time I heard the chainsaw the muscles in my legs tensed so I could run even though I was lying down and knew the sound was coming from the game and not in real life my body still reacted to it. All the jump scares and sound cues made my heart race and my body start to react to the game in real life even though what I did in real life had no effect in the game (unlike the Kinect and the Wii). As a conclusion there a multiple ways in which your body can react and make you feel more aware of yourself whilst playing.







http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/8/6/5886035/disabled-gamers-accessibility

https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/06/07/game-design-and-digital-dualist-ableism/

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