Interesting story today on Gamespot. It covers a little-known gaming culture - videogames made by and for the blind.
Several years ago, I wrote a story about Shades of Doom - a variation of the popular first person shooter made by a blind gamer named David Greenwood. Greenwood coded what are essentially text-based games (in the vein of the classic Colossal Cave Adventure) but with audio cues. His first game, Lone Wolf, was a submarine simulation. To play, gamers typed out commands on their keyboards as they listend to a sub race through missions. Instead of looking through a periscope, say, a player would press the letter P on the keyboard and hear an audio-reading of what he saw outside.
Lone Wolf sold a few hundred copies, and Greenwood later worked with an online community of blind gamers, Audyssey, to co-develop a Doom-look shooter, using a similar methodology as Lone Wolf. You can still find a copy of the game here.
David Kushner is the author of many books, including Masters of Doom, Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids, Levittown, The Bones of Marianna, and Alligator Candy. A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, he has written for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine.
