gamedevs: different colors are essential? add color blind option!

[BdR]

The iPhone is a great platform for colorfull puzzle and reflex games. Here is just a little advice to anyone developing such a game right now.

★★★ If distinguishing different colors is essential to the gameplay, also think of people who are color blind! ★★★

I'm not colorblind myself, but a while ago a colleague mentioned that one of my older games was unplayable for him, because he is color blind. Ever since then, I've been noticing that actually many games simply do not take this into account. Color blindness affects about 1 out of 20 men (5%), so this is a significant part of your potentional gaming audience. So I'd say it's worth the effort of tailoring your app also for people who are color blind, especially because usually it's very little effort at all.

Simply distinguish the tiles or enemies (or whatever) by optionally adding numbers or letters or symbols, in addition to the colors. Or have them filled with different patterns, like stripes or dots or waves etc.

See for example this image from the article Color-blind gamers: common. Developer awareness? Minimal

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo as seen by someone with normal eyes and by someone with Deuteranopia (a red-green color deficit)

I've been noticing a lot of new games here that are not accessible for color blind gamers. Instead of posting in each one of these (and possibly future) threads, I'd though I start a separate thread about it.

[Joe-Kinglake]

This is interesting, only today was i looking into colour-blindness and how it could affect the users of one of our upcoming games. Its definitely a point that should be considered and as you have already said could open your game up to another 5% of people, not only giving you extra downloads but perhaps some good-press. I would be more inclined to leave a more positive feedback/reviews if i downloaded an app that took things like that into account.

[BdR]

Exactly, and it's so easy to do if you realise this already at the beginning of a new game project.

And come to think of it, if possible I think it's best to just have the colorblind-friendly graphics as default, instead of hidden away somewhere in the options. Because people who are able to see colors will also benefit from it anyway. I mean look at the game "Bejeweled" for example, the gems all have different colors but also different shapes.

[BdR]

Just saw this MW3 announcement today.. Can you believe that even a ginormous hit game like Modern Warfare 2 doesn't support a color blind mode..? In the game you distinguish friend or foe only by the colors of the radar blips and player name colors.

[Joe-Kinglake]

Originally Posted by BdR

Just saw this MW3 announcement today.. Can you believe that even a ginormous hit game like Modern Warfare 2 doesn't support a color blind mode..? In the game you distinguish friend or foe only by the colors of the radar blips and player name colors.

A simple change in the shape of radar blips would make all the difference!

[Nifty]

Originally Posted by Joe-Kinglake

A simple change in the shape of radar blips would make all the difference!

This thread's got me thinking.
Accessibility is an oft-discussed issue by web-content developers - and color-blindness is one of those issues. (Affects more men than women, so if your game targets the male player, it becomes even more important.)

Another thought:
Different audio-clips can be used for feedback, in addition to the colors.

I believe Apple might come up with something that enables accessibility in iPad/iPhone games, or they might at least add some guidelines in their HI Guidelines document.

They do have an accessibility policy for their various devices (I found it here:Apple - Accessibility) but I agree that the game designers should be sensitive to it.