I watched the video of the Blind Driver Assists for Forza Motorsport posted by Xbox and it made my eyes sweat, just a little. As an able-bodied gamer I don’t often think about how other people experience games. I just experience them, and, as I’m sure most of you can attest to, when you really experience a game there’s an overwhelming feeling of excitement, a rush of blood races through you and you can’t help but feel the adrenaline pulse through your finger tips. It’s why we keep gaming.
Watching the video and listening to Brandon Cole, an accessibility consultant that assist game developers in creating assists in their games, talk about his experience working with the Forza Motorsport developers and eventually experiencing this ultimate gaming experience just gave me the gooseys. I honestly can’t wait for more and more people to have the opportunity to race in a car of their choosing, on a racetrack they have probably heard so much about and completely on their own, just with the help of Forza Motorsports audio cues.
“Blind Driving Assists work by providing a set of supplemental audio cues designed to help Low/No Vision players navigate the tracks of Forza Motorsport.” – Neha Chintala, Gameplay & Accessibility Producer, Turn 10 Studios.
The team at Turn 10 have been working on these assists for around 2 years with the help of Brandon Cole and other visually impaired gamers. The Blind Driver Assists include things such as shifting the car’s engine sounds from left to right depending on which direction you need to turn and audible beeps that will notify the driver when they are near the edge of the track to assist them in staying on-track. Of course, being at the edge of the track is where you need to be a lot of the time in a race so I’m sure this had to be very specifically fine tuned.
All the Blind Driver Assists can also be customized to each drivers needs; each cue can be enabled or disabled and have it’s volume and pitch adjusted to suit the drivers needs.
A host of other assists are also being added to the game and the full list can be found here.
Turn 10 says they will be releasing more information closer to launch.