BioShock 2 Hacking Sucks for Colorblind Folks

[modeps]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/bioshockhack.jpg

If you've played BioShock 2, then you'll know that the way they handle hacking this time around is by time based button press. A cursor bounces from left to right, right to left, and you have to hit the action button when it is over a green bar. If you happen to hit a red bar, then you fail. This isn't a problem for most people, but for those with color blindness, it certainly is. Over on the 2k Forums (http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57474), some people have brought this issue up but it seems like a strange oversight.

Please, please provide a patch for this. I propose a quick color selector for the various existing color levels; this is because "color blindness" isn't necessarily the same between two color blind people. There are some who can see the shades of red and green used in the hack tool just fine, and there are others (like me) that can't. If you just change it arbitrarily then you may fix it for me and break it for someone else.

Thanks murpes for the heads up.

UPDATE: Negative Gamer (http://negativegamer.com/2010/02/11/what-bioshock-2s-hacking-looks-like-if-youre-colour-blind/) has an article up right now about this, including samples of what people with color blindness see.

[Tintivilo]

If they cannot remember to fix the lame 4:3 widescreen perspective, then why would they put colorblind people in their plans?

[CalmPengiun]

One would think there'd be a market for a team of colorblind folk who travel the country testing stuff with colors in it.

I'd come up with a fantastic name but I'm not particularly clever this morning.

[Evil Avatar]

One would think there'd be a market for a team of colorblind folk who travel the country testing stuff with colors in it.

One would think that there are so few colorblind people out there playing games that those people would be smart enough to know it was going to be a problem once in a while and suck it up.

[modeps]

One would think that there are so few colorblind people out there playing games that those people would be smart enough to know it was going to be a problem once in a while and suck it up.

Evil Avatar, the most sympathetic man on the planet.

[Kweli]

soooo, is being colour blind a lack of sight, chemical makeup, or just people who skipped to many elementary school classes (the class where they taught you the different colours)

[Angelspit]

I need to scratch my balls once in a while when I play a game, and sometimes die because of that. I demand an accommodation.

[Ulysses]

Well, all the expected type of posts are here.

[brandonjclark]

Can anyone link to a recent statistic indicating the amount of colorblind people? I have no problem with the suggested choice of color for the hacking mini-game, but if there's a significantly low proportion of colorblind gamers out there does it make sense for devs and pubs to worry about that demographic?

[automaton]

One would think that there are so few colorblind people out there playing games that those people would be smart enough to know it was going to be a problem once in a while and suck it up.

No shit. It's hard to believe that this is the first game color blind people are struggling with. How in the hell do they play Zuma or Collapse or DragonStone or Luxor or Arkanoid?

[modeps]

Can anyone link to a recent statistic indicating the amount of colorblind people? I have no problem with the suggested choice of color for the hacking mini-game, but if there's a significantly low proportion of colorblind gamers out there does it make sense for devs and pubs to worry about that demographic?

I've read in a few people that it's like 1 in 12 people.

[CalmPengiun]

If I read it correctly, the wiki says that approx 7% of men have red-green colorblindness.

[pwnophobia]

Colorblind folks aren't real people, they shouldn't be able to enjoy the things we do!

/sarcasm

[CalmPengiun]

How in the hell do they play Zuma or Collapse or DragonStone or Luxor or Arkanoid?

With great difficulty, or not at all.

[brandonjclark]

Where the hell is that guy that came on the site awhile ago with the special website dedicated to this stuff? He'd be perfect to answer these questions.

[Tolgar]

Yah, that kinda hacking would be a deal breaker for me, and its not so much the specific color, even tho my grandpa can't see the red on a rose (literally). For me its the subtle change of hues. I had a hard time seeing the difference between blues and purples in WoW (border of icon, color of description text), aside from one being more awesome, the purples had a slightly fuzzier text outline, till they put in the color blind option and blues were a significantly lighter shade of blue.

And yah, we all get the , "lol yer colorblind? what color is this?" stuff year round, but a surprising amount of, "Dude me too, which colors suck for you?" ESPECIALLY among gamers, seemed like 1/5 of the ppl I knew in EVE were colorblind or knew a guy that was.

Remember folks, if yer colorblind, blame yer Mom, it barely hits women at all and they pass it on from their dads, and if yer Dad is colorblind, kick him =P

[vherub]

there are a lot of games that degrees of color blindness renders unplayable. Sometimes the developers offer a solution, sometimes not. I had a roommate, who could never play online shooters because of color blindness.

[Johan]

Well, all the expected type of posts are here.

You're not kidding. Apparently we have a diverse representation of the mentally handicapped posting here!*

* Unsympathetic idiots.

[Amalor]

If a person in color blind to say red (red and green are most common I hear) then what do they see when looking at a rose? Is it like some small part of your vision is greyscale like the old black and white TVs? Just a black void? Does a red light bulb shine darkness? I'm really curious if anyone knows.

[Testcase]

Well, all the expected type of posts are here.

THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS WITHOUT DEDICATED SERVERSSSS....


NOW all the expected types are here. ;)

[modeps]

Negative Gamer (http://negativegamer.com/2010/02/11/what-bioshock-2s-hacking-looks-like-if-youre-colour-blind/) has posted about this, including some examples of what this stuff looks like to people who are color blind.

[ElektroDragon]

This is news?! ALL videogames suck for the colorblind! Just like all music sucks for the tonedeaf.

Don't mess up art trying to appeal to the unfortunate.

[Orphiuchus]

The REAL crime here is that completely blind people can't enjoy this game.

[Tolgar]

If an extreme red/green colorblind cant see the red on a rose, the rose looks as green as the vine/bush its on. There are ones that can't see the green so much, but that is much, much rarer. Typically, red/green colorblind sees red things as greenish (or brown), the worst offenders were unlabeled colored pencils, makes for some interesting drawings when yer a kid. Blue/purple...Red/green/brown...some yellow/orange/red

/I made my dad's dark blond hair green in a kindergarten drawing, because the yellow crayon was way too light, and he defiantly wasn't a brown or black haired, looked fine to me, was first time my color blindness was brought to light.

[modeps]

This is news?! ALL videogames suck for the colorblind! Just like all music sucks for the tonedeaf.

Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb and GameSpot's Lynch-gate fame is color blind. Maybe that's the REAL reason he hated Kane and Lynch... because he was color blind and hates all games.
:rolleyes:

[ElektroDragon]

If a person in color blind to say red (red and green are most common I hear) then what do they see when looking at a rose? Is it like some small part of your vision is greyscale like the old black and white TVs? Just a black void? Does a red light bulb shine darkness? I'm really curious if anyone knows.

Don't be a nitwit. Here is how the colorblind see it: Dim your lights really, really low, and then go look at a component connection on your TV or receiver. Can you easily tell which is blue and which is green? They look about the same, don't they? In fact, you might even confuse the blue and the green!

Most of use are colorblind to some extent looking at small objects in low light.

[Amalor]

Oh, so its like a tint shift of sorts.Thats cool, I always thought the idea of colorblind people seeing a total void where the color should be would be really disorienting for them and the idea of a red light bulb producing some radiant darkness would be kinda maddening ,but fuck I'd want to see that once in my life just for the hell of it. Thanks for answering by the way.

[Orphiuchus]

According to that negativegamer article 7.01% of male gamers and .01% of female gamers are colorblind. In other words, if you took 100,000 gamers at random, 7.01% of them would be colorblind.

[greenapple]

This is news?! ALL videogames suck for the colorblind! Just like all music sucks for the tonedeaf.

Don't mess up art trying to appeal to the unfortunate.

There's a difference between it affecting your enjoyment of the game and whether it affects actual GAMEPLAY.

The number of blockbuster games where color is relevant to gameplay is probably pretty darn low. At 7-10% of the male population, RG colorblindness probably affects 6.9%-9.9% of gamers playing Bioshock 2.

While I'm not colorblind myself, I don't see why adding a bit of texture/pattern to the hack game would have been so hard. Alternatively, they could have picked colors other than red and green (as is the case in the ME2 hack game).

[ElfShotTheFood]

I'm so mad I'm seeing green!

[BabyJesus]

I'm so mad I'm seeing green!

Good thing you're not colorblind or you'd be seeing gray.


There are only so many colors available, they can't use green, red, yellow, or blue that does not leave them with much.. I suppose they could change the colors used to Blue and Green or Blue and Red, etc and change the blue sections to a pattern.. I don't have my copy of Bioshock yet because of the freaking snowpocalypse, so I don't know what the hacking screens look like in motion.

[brandonjclark]

According to that negativegamer article 7.01% of male gamers and .01% of female gamers are colorblind. In other words, if you took 100,000 gamers at random, 7.01% of them would be colorblind.


Well, wouldn't it actually be 7.02% since you forgot to add the female gamers?

[Johan]

With any foresight at all this would have been simple to solve, merely by placing a pattern of lines across the particular sections, making the "green" section one particular pattern (let's say "X" marks through the green area) and the red section another pattern (let's say "Y" marks through the red area). Pick your patterns/symbols, make them different. It's the same thing Peggle and other games do, allowing the user to toggle between 'color' mode and 'pattern/symbol' mode. This is an isolated aspect of the game that could have been handled quite simply, but wasn't, either through oversight or stupidity, or perhaps both.

[shadow763]

The REAL crime here is that completely blind people can't enjoy this game.

Or gaming in general...that is truly a sad sad realization. :(

[Apex]

One would think that there are so few colorblind people out there playing games that those people would be smart enough to know it was going to be a problem once in a while and suck it up.


My father was colourblind and short sighted before becoming entirely blind. Because of such ive done a fair bit of work for the RNIB and Guide Dogs for the Blind. In that time, you'd be surprised how many kids ive met who are registered blind that play video games. Sure they may not finish the game or do well or even know what they are doing but they enjoy the interaction and response they get from a game.

As for colourblindness, something like 1 in 10 men suffer from it and about 0.5% of women do. So one would think wrong to think there are so few.

[Apex]

Or gaming in general...that is truly a sad sad realization. :(

I worked at one studio where the CD was very sympathic toward people with disabilities, we tried to engage with publishers to look at pitchs for games aimed at blind and/or deaf people on the Wii and PSP. It's hard to get them to take it seriously, even a stupidly low budget project.

[gzsfrk]

Evil Avatar, the most sympathetic man on the planet.

JXvAAVaApek

[Sinistar]

All.Colorblind.People.Should.Buy.LifeAlert.Rule

[NuK]

All.Colorblind.People.Should.Buy.LifeAlert.Rule

color blind understanding fail :P

[brandonjclark]

Okay, so let's assume that 7.02% is the amount of colorblind gamers we're dealing with, k?

Does 7 out of every 100 gamers deserve to be able to understand the game? Is this a significant amount to start adding little help features?

I guess the money says no.

[White667]

I'm red/green colourblind :(

[pwnophobia]

I'm red/green colourblind :(

At least you're not red/green color blind!

[Hawkbat]

Well, wouldn't it actually be 7.02% since you forgot to add the female gamers?

Girls don't play games silly.....

(Everyone else was sterotyping, thought I'd join in)

[Syl]

Most games that are based around color recognition have patterns and such to make it so colorblind people can play them.

I'm surprised this didn't have something like that. I'm not sure how TK let that one get through.

[Apex]

Okay, so let's assume that 7.02% is the amount of colorblind gamers we're dealing with, k?

Does 7 out of every 100 gamers deserve to be able to understand the game? Is this a significant amount to start adding little help features?

I guess the money says no.

Yes, they do. The money says yes too ... when you consider 7% of 1 million or more. Is the equivilent of £2.8 million in revenue not worth the time to alter some trivial art? Were not talking weeks of work here, were talking hours or less.

This is just sloppy, inconsiderate and bad design. Shape, size, [patterns as mentioned, animated textures or even audio cues ... all of these things could of been used to differentiate the elements in the hacking mode.

[Demo_Boy]

At least there's a buyout option right in the hack.

[Meusli]

I am colour blind too, green & brown for me. I do not have problems with most games but the bubble bobble/puzzle fighter games are a severe disadvantage for me. I would think these days this sort of thing would not happen anymore, but alas if you do not suffer from it you would not think about it, I imagine. On a side note, colour blind people are born this way so it's not as if we are disabled as we adapt quite well.

[prence]

Colorblind folks aren't real people, they shouldn't be able to enjoy the things we do!

/sarcasm

Agreed. I demand separate water-fountains for those bastards. I don't want to catch color blindness from those.. those.. THINGS!

[Pluvious]

They could always use the buyout option (spend money to hack) or use the autohack darts.
A simple fix would be a patch that would allow you to toggle an unlimited supply of autohacks darts. People who don't have the problem could 'cheat' but I doubt many would, it doesn't 'break' the game actually.

[Testcase]

i'm red/green colourblind :(

burn. The. Witch.

[Orphiuchus]

Well, wouldn't it actually be 7.02% since you forgot to add the female gamers?

It was a joke about the lack of female gamers.


Even if I were being serious and I were assuming a 50/50 split of male to female, it would be 7.01% of the 50,000 male gamers which makes 3505, added to .01% of 50,000 female gamers, which is a 5, so a total of 3510 or 3.51% of all gamers.

[saulob]

Nice news post.
Nice article from Negative Gamer.

[Mav]

One would think there'd be a market for a team of colorblind folk who travel the country testing stuff with colors in it.

I'd come up with a fantastic name but I'm not particularly clever this morning.

Rainbow Rangers?
Rainbow Rodeo?

just to name a couple

[vallor]

Interestingly enough at Gamefest this year there is an actual talk about how to test your game for accessibility. The stats say that something like 57% of all people have some sort of a visual or audio impairment that could be accounted for fairly easily if you considered it during development.

[ElektroDragon]

This is just sloppy, inconsiderate and bad design. Shape, size, [patterns as mentioned, animated textures or even audio cues ... all of these things could of been used to differentiate the elements in the hacking mode.

How much you wanna bet that the hacking mode was the part designed in 2K China? :D

[dub3000]

If a person in color blind to say red (red and green are most common I hear) then what do they see when looking at a rose? Is it like some small part of your vision is greyscale like the old black and white TVs? Just a black void? Does a red light bulb shine darkness? I'm really curious if anyone knows.

it's like red and green are the same color for them - there isn't a void, it's just that they look the same.

the solution is easy: you just change one of the two colours to be bright and the other to be darker. most colorblind people can tell the difference between dark red and light green.

[Agnostic Pope]

Nice news post.
Nice article from Negative Gamer.

No witty comment? No sympathy? (more like empathy people PLEASE do look up the word in the dictionary.) No percentage/data? Nicely done.

[Sayntin]

If a person in color blind to say red (red and green are most common I hear) then what do they see when looking at a rose? Is it like some small part of your vision is greyscale like the old black and white TVs? Just a black void? Does a red light bulb shine darkness? I'm really curious if anyone knows.

My Dad is colorblind, so I know the answer. A colorblind person sees the red and the green as the same color. Usually brown. So he could tell that it is a brown rose in brown leaves close up. But if he was far away where he couldnt distinguish the shapes then the whole bush would be brown and he cant see the rose. If you threw a red rose in a yardfull of green grass, a red/green color blind person wouldnt know where the rose was from far away.
It's all the same color to them.

[Sayntin]

I always thought it would be funny to have a colorblind bomb diffusal guy. Ok, cut the red wire, no thats the green wire.