For disabled, video games can be a lifesaver

Kristin Kalning Games editor • E-mail

Nissa Ludwig used to be musician and a dancer and a performer. But ever since a progressive metabolic disorder made it difficult to walk, “Rock Band” is as close as she gets to the stage.

“It’s a place where you don’t lose your social skills,” says Ludwig, a top-ranked bass player in “Rock Band.” “I have the opportunity to be a human being and not be judged by what I look like.”

And, she says, it gives her a chance to play music — virtual though it may be — with other people again. “Nobody plays an instrument because they want to play alone. It’s social,” says Ludwig.

For most of us, playing “Rock Band,” or any other video game, is pure fun — a leisure activity. For disabled gamers, playing games can be more than just play. It’s a community. It’s a connection. It’s a life line.

But for the most part, the folks who make these games have been slow to make their products accessible, citing schedule pressures, financial pressures, and just plain old ignorance.

Do you think about how the disabled play games?
Mark C. Barlet got a first-hand look at how little the industry considers disabled gamers when he attended the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks back. He is founder and editor-in-chief of AbleGamers.com, which offers assistance to disabled gamers and lobbies companies on their behalf. Tired of trying to get the game-making community to take them seriously, Barlet tried a more “guerilla” approach: ambush video.

He and compatriot Michelle Hinn, a columnist for the site, asked 81 developers whether or not they’d ever thought about how disabled people play video games. Lots of them said yes, but lots said no.

Just how big is the disabled gaming community? There’s no hard data on that. But the most recent U.S. Census data reports that 41.3 million Americans have some level of disability. That’s roughly 14 percent of the population.

How big is the market?
“Of that amount, a big percentage of (disabled people) are my grandmother, and my grandmother isn’t playing video games,” says Barlet. “Developers don’t see it as a big enough market.”

Perhaps they should. Not everyone who has a disability was born with it — or is your grandma’s age. Ludwig, who’s now 40, was always a gamer — even before she was diagnosed with her muscle-wasting disease in her late 20s. Her dad worked at IBM, so she’d hang out with him in the office, playing “Zork” and “Adventure.” She played early, text-based massively multiplayer games like “Dragon Realms,” and later, as her disease progressed, “Star Wars Galaxies” and “City of Villains.”

Initially, she says, MMOs gave her a societal connection. “With technology where it is today, disabled gamers have the ability now to have a community that they build and have meaningful relationships with other people outside their home,” Ludwig says. “And they continue working on social skills, and they don’t lose the ability to find joy in other people, which I watched my grandparents do as they were shut in.”

But as her disease progressed, and Ludwig spent more and more time in her wheelchair, gaming let her do things virtually —virtually, that is — that she used to be able to do in the real world.

“There’s a joy in being able to take an avatar and have her run barefoot through the grass because I can’t, but they can,” she says. “I can’t do it, but I can do it. It’s not me, but from the societal view of the game-playing community there, they don’t know I’m sitting in the chair. My avatar is as able as yours.”

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