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AbleGamers Announces ‘Player Panels’ for Gamers with Disabilities

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AbleGamers recently announced ‘Player Panels’, which will help disabled gamers take the lead on gaming accessibility testing and research. The charity is partnering with developers and researchers alike “to ensure game accessibility is at the forefront of game development.”

What Does AbleGamers Do?

The AbleGamers Foundation is a 501 (C) (3) nonprofit charity “that aims to improve the overall quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of video games.”

Mark Barlet founded the Charity in 2004. They make specialized gaming rigs, modded controllers, and assistive technology created uniquely for each disabled gamer they work with. This way, they make it possible for people with a wide range of disabilities to play games.

Specialists use technologies such as mouth controllers, eye gaze, and customized modded controllers.  Their goal is to “find a way for people to play video games no matter their disability… we’re using the latest, bleeding-edge technology to bridge the gap between ability and desire.”

AbleGamers also offer grants for disabled gamers whose medical bills make it harder to buy games and equipment. They’re also in the process of opening gaming centers for people with disabilities.

Player Panels

‘Player Panels’ is the next step for AbleGamers– helping change the way developers themselves think about accessibility. The program is “a platform for the voices of gamers with disabilities who need these in-game features.”

The charity is looking to put together a team of players with firsthand experience in gaming accessibility. In partnership with the University of York, panels will be paired with game companies and researchers as accessibility testers. The companies working with AbleGamers ensure proper compensation will be available to all involved.

AbleGamers explained the need for a program like this:“Every year we have countless calls for help from universities, game companies, and other organizations, asking us to provide the names and contact information of people with disabilities. Sometimes, it’s about testing games; other times it is about seeing if a new way of doing things helps make things more inclusive. We felt it was crucial to create a program that would protect players while enabling a database of accessibility testers to be created who WANT to be involved and contacted. We’re aiming to make the largest group of people who want to help shape the future of game accessibility ever created.”

If you’re a gamer with disabilities who’s interested in signing up, you can fill out the application here. If you’d like to support AbleGamers, go here to find out the different ways you can donate!

I play a lot of video games and watch a lot of cartoons. I'm probably complaining about Overwatch.

Gaming

Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made

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As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.

Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”

You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.

 

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5

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You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.

The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.

The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.

The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.

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This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive

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Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.

For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”

Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.

Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.

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