Back in July we ran a workshop to start figuring out how to make a sound-only version of our in-development citizen science game Nergal. We did this with iSightCornwall and their clients who have little or no sight - the notes from the first event are all available, and there was a lot to work with, it was great. Since then, we've been tinkering away trying to get this working, and on 30 Nov everyone came back for another workshop to test what we've made. We were pretty nervous about this one, it's the first time we've tried making a sound-only game, so we're on a super steep learning curve. Amazingly, it generally seemed to work, and most importantly there were no crashes!
We had this lovely email from the folks at iSightCornwall just after the workshop:
"The game was wonderful, we had great faith in what you would create but I think we were all blown away by it even still. The accessibility side of things was brilliant, the fact that [participant] and [participant] were able to play the game with no assistance from a sighted person was incredible.".
So, we're slightly buoyed up, and it's time to get back to work now - we have until the end of January (the deadline for the Impetus funding that's supported this work). Our aim is to release a single version of the game at the same time, including both the sighted 'day mode' and the high contrast 'night mode' that can also be used as sound only.
As before, the iSightCornwall staff and participants have been an absolute joy to work with, as have the researchers Matt and Nitara, we couldn't ask for a better gang! Our combined notes from the testing are all below, maybe not in a very digestible format, but there might be some gold dust in there for others trying to do similar work.
Our general notes
- Players need to turn screen reader off for it to work as the screen reader and game voices interrupt each other - seems easy/expected.
- The game/speech/sound worked on all computers.
- Sound level complexity wise is about right.
- Stereo sound positioning worked.
- NO background/audio music needed (quite strong on that!) - plenty there already. People really liked the sounds that were there though like piano keys, water and plants.
- It works well having different sounds for plants/walking into them.
- Difference between player and nergal sounds was good.
- WASD good for gamers, but cursors better for a lot of people because they are isolated keys, good to have both - one participant’s computer had these keys in bright white on keyboard.
- Interesting to see low-sight (and sighted people) use a mix of keys and mouse without realising/caring .
- 5 minutes is perfect length of time - this mode doesn't need to be any longer than the 'day mode' for sighted people.
- No standard keys are used for audio games because there aren’t enough of them.
- Request for access to more testing after the workshop.
Things we could improve/change, some will become a to-do list:
- More description of plants would be welcome in conversations perhaps.
- Add distance (in paces, naturally!) to clock descriptions.
- We’ve made disease too prevalent (as expected) - that's probably better than not getting sick at all, but some balancing needed here.
- Badgers/dolphin social networks are too hard because of the busy networks, elephants are too boring because you are often on your own, new networks needed (something we knew already but interesting to confirm it with this version). Matt and Nitara (the researchers) to supply better distributed networks - people felt they were spawning with either too many or too few Nergals.
- BUG: talked to plants = talked to Nergals in results count??
- Difficult to work out how to get a snack (mainly due to not realising conversations continue from the first speech bubble - need to make gap between speech shorter) - this might also explain sighted tester on ‘day mode’ who didn’t figure out friendships or snacks. Should add prompt about this as well as making conversations less gappy?
- The prompt speech interrupts conversations etc (“you have been infected”...) - change these to sound effects (dramatic chords, “oh no…” etc) so they don’t interfere? Means prompts aren't always heard.
- Oh no you’ve been infected message cuts across speech. Could there be a sound effect instead?
- Can we use cursor keys for menu selection (as well as movement?) - probably not…
- We don’t need to repeatedly ask which hat the player wants (until exit)
- Select friend Nergals first in keyboard mode. No sounds associated with ‘friends’ - cycle through friends and non-friends separately?
- Use the spacebar to skip any speech somehow.
- Using tactile f/j might be a good idea.
- Shift/Tab issue for some (as Tab takes them out of game and hard to get back ‘in’) (we also have a note that the space bar and shift key are too far apart, or something like that?? need to check this!)
- Phases/explanations/sandboxes
- Need for “sandbox”/tutorial mode
- Tutorial mode as a warm up stage - this could be built into the stages of the game. But for first time players, takes time to get used to keys and sounds, and friends so this might always be a trial game.
- Should each sound be explained?
- Explained idea that the first third of the game could run with no disease - then easy - then hard - this seemed to go down well as a solution (so no immediate diseased crowd at the start). Could have sound effects for any changes in mode/difficulty.
- Add gamepad control.
- People were unaware that you walked towards someone when you chose them and were trying to navigate to them. Add “approach and talk to” to explain that when you select a Nergal to talk you move towards it.
- People were unclear that friends follow you and that strangers follow you during conversations.
- Seems to be important to find a clearer way to tell people when you (or your friends) are not diseased.
- In results page, talking to clouds plants/clouds/moons included in final summary of Nergals talked to - needs fixing.
- More general- having descriptions of night mode availability and that it is suitable for people with low- no vision on the Nergal home screen. Two link versions where night mode is default maybe?
- Changing around the order of descriptions eg. “4’oclock, there is a stranger Nergal” instead of “there is a stranger nergal at 4’oclock” so that people with low vision can visualise the position before the information.
- Getting sick once still counts as being “more sickly” than most Nergals - is this average still counting the old version where it was tricky to get sick?
- Should be some subtle warning that you are ill at start of the incubation period.
IMPETUS is supporting our project. IMPETUS is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101058677. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This project has ethics approval from the University of Edinburgh under the title 'Nergal - a citizen science research and public engagement tool in behavioural epidemiology' - Ethics Assessment Reference: msilk-0003.