'Star Citizen' Is Getting Sign Language Emotes
With accessibility in gaming becoming more and more of a priority, developers across the world are [...]
With accessibility in gaming becoming more and more of a priority, developers across the world are working to make their games more enjoyable for all and Star Citizenjust revealed how they are looking to help deaf players enjoy the expansive open universe outside of simple subtitles.
In the video above, Video Animation Director Steven Bender mentions at the 13.30 mark, "We have a lot of community members who are hard of hearing or maybe deaf and they don't interact with the game in the same way that someone who hears voice would do so."
He added, "I'm really happy for the community to have this opportunity to be able to roleplay and to express themselves in the way that they see fit."
American Sign Language in gaming is huge and something that more and more developers could implement early on in the development stages of a game. From gamers with hearing disabilities, to those with colorblindness, developers everywhere are implementing a few ways that players can make the gaming experience more suited to their individual needs.
We recently sat down with BioWare's Mike Gamble to talk about accessibility in games for another big online game coming up: Anthem. Though it led more into the direction of seizures and developmental design, he did touch on how colorblind accessibility has become way more common in recent years because of player feedback:
"We don't have any features that really prevent [seizures], that's a good point though, we didn't really think about that," Gamble mentioned when I shared a story about having a seizure due to the hacking feature in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Team Death Match. He then asked what about games have triggered that reaction in me personally to which we talked about the flashing and the color schemes that are common triggers. "That's a relatively new thing that we would have to look into. There's always more and more we could do and people like yourself bring up and that helps."
It's nice to see so many developers paying attention to these small mechanical tweaks that can be made to make games more accessible. Though there is still more work to be done, the inclusion of options like this means the world to a large portion of the gaming community.
Star Citizen has been in development since 2011 and continues to expand upon the title as Cloud Imperium works towards a full release on PC.
Thanks, PC Gamer!
You can contact the author of this story over on Twitter @DirtyEffinHippy.
