Decline CVAA: US government disability regulation on videogames is now in effect

[Bester]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

 

[mindx2]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

Sorry man but it's just a stupid government law. So what if there are games some people can't play? Go play something else. There are literally games I cannot play... so what? I still remember back in the old 80s arcade days trying to play Defender. My goodness that game had like a hundred buttons. Well guess what? I sucked at playing it. Did I go whine to some faceless government bureaucrat screaming "It's not fair!! I should be able to play them all regardless if I've got hands or not!! Wahhhhhh!"? Nope, I went and played other games I could actually play and be good at like Tempest, Ms. Pac-Man, etc. Then I discovered the joys of cRPGs (which has led down the rabbit hole to the Codex after all these years). I learned that pop-a-mole, pew-pew action games (a.k.a. consoles) weren't for me as my "hands" weren't made for it. Now turn-based dungeon crawling, that was my cup-of-tea . The notion that EVERYONE should have a RIGHT to play (or insert whatever other lame cause you may "champion") every type of game/entertainment is asinine. This bastardization of equality where everyone has to have everything (or be exactly like) everyone else is getting out of hand. We're NOT ALL EQUAL! Get over it and find what you are good at instead of burdening the rest of society to cater to your "feelings".

I should DEMAND that the NBA lower it's basketball hoops when I'm on the court because it's UNFAIR I can't reach the rim!! Otherwise it's DISCRIMINATIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

 

[DeepOcean]

Spoiler alert:
1 - Blind people will remain as fucked as they already were.
2 - This will only annoy people that arent blind.

This is typical ignorant politician power trip bs, if you assume all fucking companies are sitting on endless mountains of cash and that they don't provide support for blind people because they are evil, you will end up with this bullshit. Typical government bureaucratic thinking, "Hey, guise, we came up with those new rules even if we fucking know nothing about this medium, you guise will have to actually figure out how to pay for it, see ya, scored our "good guys" points already right in time the next election!"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

tbh if the law flat out excluded games developed under a certain amount of employees I probably wouldn't care

 

[Nifft Batuff]

tbh if the law flat out excluded games developed under a certain amount of employees I probably wouldn't care

But in this way dev companies will be tempted to fire some employees to shrink their numbers... Starting from the deaf ones.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

tbh if the law flat out excluded games developed under a certain amount of employees I probably wouldn't care

But in this way dev companies will be tempted to fire some employees to shrink their numbers... Starting from the deaf ones.

ADA already protects disabled employees from being fired solely due to their disability

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Yes, I was being sarcastic. Usually these attempts to grant some rights to some minorities fuck up some other minorities in other aspects. Nothing good will happen if the economic context is insane.

What follows are some random thoughts.

Many of us are living in first economic countries, whose post-industrial economy is mainly based on entertainment industry. One of the U.S. mayor export products is entertainment (and computer related stuff). This industry, in order to persist, has to "educate" (brainwash) people to be effective entertainment consumers, not excluding impaired people. And this generates a paradox.

The disabled persons are twice the victims. First they are brainwashed to be consumers, then their impairment is exalted in this attempt to be good consumers as everybody else. So laws are made to smooth the consumerism process, while they are seen as granting rights to some minorities. But the latter aspect is just a dressing.

When I was young I have a deaf friend in my school. He played a lot of games with me and with my other friends, and his deafness was never seen as a problem. Now I imagine a deaf kid that is completely isolated, since all his friends are playing fortnite.

 

[Bester]

Sorry man but it's just a stupid government law. So what if there are games some people can't play? Go play something else. There are literally games I cannot play... so what? I still remember back in the old 80s arcade days trying to play Defender. My goodness that game had like a hundred buttons. Well guess what? I sucked at playing it. Did I go whine to some faceless government bureaucrat screaming "It's not fair!! I should be able to play them all regardless if I've got hands or not!! Wahhhhhh!"? Nope, I went and played other games I could actually play and be good at like Tempest, Ms. Pac-Man, etc. Then I discovered the joys of cRPGs (which has led down the rabbit hole to the Codex after all these years). I learned that pop-a-mole, pew-pew action games (a.k.a. consoles) weren't for me as my "hands" weren't made for it. Now turn-based dungeon crawling, that was my cup-of-tea . The notion that EVERYONE should have a RIGHT to play (or insert whatever other lame cause you may "champion") every type of game/entertainment is asinine.

Good for you, but that's not what's asked of gamedevs. Only to make communication accessible, not gameplay.

And I don't even want to discuss your "I'm this great positive disabled guy, and if I don't need something, other disabled people don't need it either, I'll make the decisions for them" psychology.

 

[mindx2]

And I don't even want to discuss your "I'm this great positive disabled guy, and if I don't need something, other disabled people don't need it either, I'll make the decisions for them" psychology.

You mean like EXACTLY what the government is trying to do here?!!!

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Just out of curiosity, what video games do blind people play?

Do people actually make video games for blind people and which ones are they, got any vids?

Real Sound: Kaze no Regret.

The original didn't have any graphics, while the Dreamcast version added some thematic pictures. It even came with a braille manual.


RIP Kenji Eno, you magnificent bastard. o7

 

[Beastro]

Typical government bureaucratic thinking, "Hey, guise, we came up with those new rules even if we fucking know nothing about this medium, you guise will have to actually figure out how to pay for it, see ya, scored our "good guys" points already right in time the next election! Look at what I figured out, guys! WE CAN SO GET A BIGGER BUDGET BECAUSE OF THIS!"

 

[laclongquan]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

Dude~ It's a triple layered sarcastic remark. You caught the 1st layer, congratulation. Then you barely glean at 2nd: why would companies have to work on such a small minority customer segment? Well, 3rd layer: because gubermint people said so.

You are living in the pinnacle of capitalism. You guys should work under the invisible hands of free market, not under the commanding fingers of gubermint peeps.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

If people care so much about disabled folks then why don't then band together and use their purchasing power to force developers to be disabled-friendly?

 

[laclongquan]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

If people care so much about disabled folks then why don't then band together and use their purchasing power to force developers to be disabled-friendly?

Dawg, that was literally CVAA's reason for doing this. "People want to devs to support disabled peeps" they said. "we are representive of people" they said. "Thus why we force down this directive into your collective throats" and they do.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

If people care so much about disabled folks then why don't then band together and use their purchasing power to force developers to be disabled-friendly?

Dawg, that was literally CVAA's reason for doing this. "People want to devs to support disabled peeps" they said. "we are representive of people" they said. "Thus why we force down this directive into your collective throats" and they do.

so why couldn't they accomplish this without the government interfering then if so many people clearly wanted it as you imply?

 

[c2007]

Pinball Wizard don't need this shit.

 

[laclongquan]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

"Why don't disabled people vote with their wallet". Do I have to spell it out for you? Cause they're too small a minority. The ugliness of those statements is too edgy even for the codex.

If people care so much about disabled folks then why don't then band together and use their purchasing power to force developers to be disabled-friendly?

Dawg, that was literally CVAA's reason for doing this. "People want to devs to support disabled peeps" they said. "we are representive of people" they said. "Thus why we force down this directive into your collective throats" and they do.

so why couldn't they accomplish this without the government interfering then if so many people clearly wanted it as you imply?

Either the sarcastic remark flying over your head, or you totally get 100% wrong conclusion from my sarcastic remark.

I dont imply that so many people clearly want it.
I implied that THEY want people to think that people want it, THEY want people to think they represent people, and thus THEY force that directive down people in game dev industry.

 

[thesheeep]

I'm literally the one who's working on a game with chat and will have to spend time on this issue, and you're the ones who sound like complete assholes.

As I said, isn't this a non-issue?
There are so many libraries out there that you can simply feed a string to that will then output audio, this is a 1 day research, 2-3 days implementation, 2-3 fine-tuning issue. At max.
I'm rather positive I could implement something like this in most environments within 2-3 days. Hell, it could be as simple as an extra application that gets called with "-text 'lol you shithead, learn the meta' -lang en_us -volume 0.7" and just called by the actual game...
Nobody says the implementation has to be brillant, right? Even a rather crappy one, featuring only English would suffice and actually help people.

I dont imply that so many people clearly want it.
I implied that THEY want people to think that people want it, THEY want people to think they represent people, and thus THEY force that directive down people in game dev industry.

The point is more that nobody is harmed by such a law, while a small minority is helped.
If this would take ages to implement, sure, that would be bad. But it doesn't.
A AAA-developer saying "this is why we won't have text chat" is simply using the law as an excuse to not have to deal with other implications of a text chat (toxicity, moderation, censoring, whispering, blocking, groups, channels, etc.... there's quite a lot here). TTS is just one more feature on top of already quite a lot of features.

With your logic and that of some others here, there shouldn't be laws enforcing accessibility (ramps, lifts, ...) in certain buildings. "Those wheelchair people can just go to other buildings, then!" Right...
I think the problem with this law is more the broad application and that it could be used (if I understood it correctly) to remove a product from stores for non-compliance. Even if that product just had text communication as a minor part of the package. That just seems too harsh, IMO.

 

[abija]

As I said, isn't this a non-issue?
There are so many libraries out there that you can simply feed a string to that will then output audio, this is a 1 day research, 2-3 days implementation, 2-3 fine-tuning issue. At max.
I'm rather positive I could implement something like this in most environments within 2-3 days. Hell, it could be as simple as an extra application that gets called with "-text 'lol you shithead, learn the meta' -lang en_us -volume 0.7" and just called by the actual game...

You sound like most managers I had while working in game dev.

 

[GrainWetski]

With your logic and that of some others here, there shouldn't be laws enforcing accessibility (ramps, lifts, ...) in certain buildings. "Those wheelchair people can just go to other buildings, then!" Right...
I think the problem with this law is more the broad application and that it could be used (if I understood it correctly) to remove a product from stores for non-compliance. Even if that product just had text communication as a minor part of the package. That just seems too harsh, IMO.

There's a slight difference between being able to go into the hospital and reading/hearing about what a nigger you are in Call of Duty's chat.

 

[laclongquan]

The point is more that nobody is harmed by such a law, while a small minority is helped.

Indie devs who cant afford the extra cost in implement such a feature for such a minor customer base, is why. IF there's a minor segment in their client base, because the disabled gamers are such a tiny minority, and indie devs often work on games for niche players. That translate to wasted cost.

Of course, they could just ignore 100% that kind of feature (ie no game communication AT ALL). In that case, you have a law that crush innovation for no gain.

Worse, this open a precedent in laws and governance, and precedent is VERY important in such things. Later on they could just force laws and directives on OTHER things, like you can not say/design dialogs bad things about whatever.

This is the latest move of legal staffs to test the water, so to speak, in how you design laws to govern games and digital entertainment. I see it as the testing phase before the next " you can not have racial slurs AT ALL". Saying Dwarf cock like Witcher is simply not ON.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

With your logic and that of some others here, there shouldn't be laws enforcing accessibility (ramps, lifts, ...) in certain buildings. "Those wheelchair people can just go to other buildings, then!" Right...

 

[thesheeep]

As I said, isn't this a non-issue?
There are so many libraries out there that you can simply feed a string to that will then output audio, this is a 1 day research, 2-3 days implementation, 2-3 fine-tuning issue. At max.
I'm rather positive I could implement something like this in most environments within 2-3 days. Hell, it could be as simple as an extra application that gets called with "-text 'lol you shithead, learn the meta' -lang en_us -volume 0.7" and just called by the actual game...

You sound like most managers I had while working in game dev.

I sound like someone who actually implemented TTS in a few projects. Not in a game, but for that functionality, there is no difference.
Hell, one of them was actually both ways (speech to text), including speech analysis to translate to 3D mouth movements (how to move the animated mouth to fit what was said). And it still only took a week for two people.

Sorry, but any coder who cannot implement a simple feature in a short time is not worth their money.
Many game devs are terrible coders, though, I'll give you that...

The point is more that nobody is harmed by such a law, while a small minority is helped.

Indie devs who cant afford the extra cost in implement such a feature for such a minor customer base, is why. IF there's a minor segment in their client base, because the disabled gamers are such a tiny minority, and indie devs often work on games for niche players. That translate to wasted cost.

Again, a few days of work.
If you cannot even afford that, you have no business developing a game, if a few days for a feature mean the end for you.

Worse, this open a precedent in laws and governance, and precedent is VERY important in such things. Later on they could just force laws and directives on OTHER things, like you can not say/design dialogs bad things about whatever.
This is the latest move of legal staffs to test the water, so to speak, in how you design laws to govern games and digital entertainment. I see it as the testing phase before the next " you can not have racial slurs AT ALL". Saying Dwarf cock like Witcher is simply not ON.

True, this is an actual danger of this.
You can't have X, because it might hurt someone's touchy feelings.
We'll see how it turns out...

 

[laclongquan]

With your logic and that of some others here, there shouldn't be laws enforcing accessibility (ramps, lifts, ...) in certain buildings. "Those wheelchair people can just go to other buildings, then!" Right....

There is a critical difference in your above reason, and the current law we are discussing.

The service you said sometimes are critical, time consuming, and must-do. Thus the laws enforcing accessibility to the disabled.

GAMES are a fucking luxury. Nobody have to buy a game. Nobody have to pay for a game they cant play/use. The laws govern game devs is just... busywork and government-encroaching.

 

[thesheeep]

With your logic and that of some others here, there shouldn't be laws enforcing accessibility (ramps, lifts, ...) in certain buildings. "Those wheelchair people can just go to other buildings, then!" Right....

There is a critical difference in your above reason, and the current law we are discussing.

The service you said sometimes are critical, time consuming, and must-do. Thus the laws enforcing accessibility to the disabled.
GAMES are a fucking luxury. Nobody have to buy a game. Nobody have to pay for a game they cant play/use. The laws govern game devs is just... busywork and government-encroaching.

Yeah, disabled people shouldn't have easy access to luxury goods. Screw 'em, they should be happy we spend effort to give them the bare necessities.

Sure, other things are more important, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be similar rules for less important sectors.