SimCity has three filter options for colour blind players
By Alice Lynton on January 26, 2013 at 9:57 am
In an admirable move towards accessibility, EA Maxis has kitted out SimCity with three different colour blind-friendly options. Creative and art director Ocean Quigley told Destructoid that he was inspired to include different colour filters because the game’s QA lead is red-green colourblind and was just putting zones down randomly to see what happens, since he couldn’t see the difference between them.
“It’s a game where there’s always data embedded in the environment – the environment is a UI. The environment is trying to give you feedback, and if you can’t make out the cues because they’re color-based, then it’s just much harder and less pleasant to play the game,” Quigley said.
Impaired colour vision is surprisingly prevalent, especially amongst those born with a Y chromosome; estimates vary as high as 10% of the population are affected by one form or another. You can see a demo of the colour blind options below. If they all look the same to you, let someone else choose your clothes.
Source: Destructoid
Maxis keeps the big numbers coming: SimCity to get 4.0 patch tomorrow
Still no offline mode. Sorry, fans.
SimCity Amusement Park expansion accidentally leaked, coming May 28
That sweet Ferris Wheel cash.
Will Wright speaks out about new SimCity, says server issues “inexcusable”
Wright sympathises with frustrated consumers.
You can use the following bbCode
[i], [b], [img], [quote], [url href="http://www.google.com/"]Google[/url]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
facebook
twitter
google+
rss
I wonder if that’s what they were also trying to do when they ruined BF3 with that god awful blue tint?
I’ve been considering something like this for a project I’ve been working on. Good to see I’m not only thinking of our colour impaired friends. Unfortunately for me it will come down to how much time it will take to correctly implement.
I would like to see more devs look into it though. Ive had friends who chose not to play certain RTS and FPS titles simply because they are often at a serious disadvantage.
But..but…it’s EA! They’re evil! They’re not supposed to do things like this!
You do realise the video you embedded is not the colour blind options, but a filter that emulates what the game would look like for a red-green colour blind individual?
Great! All QA leads for all games should be colourblind!
That video makes me want to write ragtime.
Sepia tones just bring out the worst in me.
thanks nider, for a second I wondered if I was colour blind lol
schrapple,
BF3 had colourblind support as well ironically
Thanks nider. I am colour blind, and I was watching and waiting for the changes thinking; Dear God, it’s worse than I thought…!
Don’t worry they will never stray to far from their roots.
http://games.on.net/2013/01/ea-can-ban-you-from-all-origin-games-if-you-dont-report-bugs-in-simcity-beta/
It’s not fair to post that without mentioning this, though.
http://games.on.net/2013/01/ea-recants-on-company-wide-ban-for-unreported-simcity-bugs-changes-eula/
Do you think that decided to re-evaluate their agreements wording off their own backs, or do you think that decision was due to the backlash? It’s not charity if you are only doing it because someone is watching.
My opinion is irrelevant. It’s silly to villainise them without telling the whole story.
Good deeds done with selfish motives aren’t really good deeds, the whole story is they done something that was viewed by the community at large as bad. Fixing something after being caught out doesn’t change the original intent at all.
I agree, it doesn’t make having it in there ok.
It does, however, change how things are now.
Removing it doesn’t change that it existed, you said it’s not fair to post that it was included without saying that it was also removed. But it was removed in the interest of self preservation not in the interest of what is right (proven by the fact that they didn’t do it off their own bat, there hand was forced by public opinion), so it isn’t really able to be counted as a good deed.