Okay, here's a disclaimer before we even start. This is not meant to be offensive. It is not a troll, or inflammatory. Please keep it on topic, and put your jokes in another thread.

Imagine a first-person game where every member of your team has some form of disability. You're a team of severely disabled people, verses another team of severely disabled. Both teams would be competing to complete a task (Capture The Flag, or some other objective).

Having disabilities means no one character can complete the complex tasks alone, you are naturally required to depend on your teammates.

I'm looking for disabilities with interesting modifications to game play mechanics.

Here are some ideas for classes I've thought of so far:

Definite Classes

Little Person
- Can fit into small spaces and is normally mobile (though slower than someone with longer legs).
- Can't reach anything up high without help.
- Can be picked up and/or hurled by larger classes.
- Very easy to push around though.

Bad Back
- Can't carry anything heavy. Otherwise mobile.
- Running for long periods hurts.
- In pain for much longer periods if hit hard enough.

Paralyzed from the waist down
- Wheel chair bound. Can't go up stairs, can hop up steps, can move fast.
- Can carry medium loads on his lap but moves slower during that. Harder to brake when loaded.
- If gets knocked over, it's a little bit of a task to get up.
- If gets knocked out of chair, he has to crawl back to his chair.

Overweight
- Maybe he can fall on people to slow them down, or block walkways with his largeness)
- Slow
- Strong?

Other Possible Disabilities (possibly each player is randomly alloted these disabilities so that each game, a new, personalized strategy must be devised to win.)

ADD How would we do this? anything that you see that moves becomes EXTREMELY BIG and bright on the screen, everything else gets dimmer and greyer, making it harder to focus on what's actually important. Imagine a History Channel special or a Worlds Scariest Police Chase video where they grey out a video and highlight one portion of a video, except the highlight is on stuff that doesn't matter.

ADHD
Like ADD but additionally, you can't stop moving, making it very hard to stay still in key situations (walking tight-rope, or hiding).

SAD
Social Anxiety Disorder, the fear of people. Your character has panic attacks whenever there are characters he doesn't know (the other team) around him, even if heard. It's the excessive fear of what people might think about you.

Long-term Smoker (OR drug addict?)
The character runs out of breathe if he runs too far, and must take smoke breaks throughout the match.

Blind?
This one would suck, and might not be very fun to play. Unless you're like the Dare Devil and can see with your sight!

Deaf?
This one might suck, but it might be cool. People would have to have a key to tap you on the shoulder to communicate with you, or you'd just have to know what to do.

Chronic Fatigue
You're always tired. This one sucks. I should know.

Sickly?
Parkinsons (shakey, can't grip controls or items well?)
Cerebral Palsy (wheel chair bound and no motor control?)
Double Arm Amputee
Diabetic (how would this affect anything?)
Foot amputee runner?

(what drawbacks? Easy to unbalance? or is he the flag runner?)
Speech (people can't understand what he's saying...)
Alcoholic

Ailments

Stunned/pain
The more pain, the more red, dark, and blurier the screen gets. The inability to focus.

I think this game, if done right, would do a lot to spread the understanding and empathy of people with disabilities more so than be a slap to the face. Moreover, I hope it would be a fun new way to look at first-person shooter strategies so that you're not thinking of playing "the cripple game" but rather "the fun, original game."

I haven't really decided if this would be a "shooter" game, or a more indirect form of combat. (Pushing people, hitting them, blocking them, insulting their mothers, etc.) I think it would be a fresh expansion of the FPS genre, since most of them feel generic outside of the storylines nowadays (to me at least).

So what other disabilities can you think of that would pertain to this? Any ailments? Any modifications to ones I've mentioned?

I'm welcome to your feedback! Thanks!
--Chris Katko

No.

Players should not have disabilities. If you're aiming at requiring the players to use teamwork, then players should have specialties, not disabilities.

Why?

1. It sounds cooler
2. It's less offensive

I knew this would come up, so very quickly:

I have disabilities.

There are zero representations of me in video games.

That is offensive.

Back to the thread.

Disabilities would not be fun to play with.

By nature, casual gamers play with a lone-wolf style. Even in games that try to force teamwork, players are always running about by themselves doing their own thing (with the occasional good deed for a teammate).

Team Fortress 2 might be a good base point to use for a teamwork game. Not so much for the Left 4 Dead series.

You could do the gameplay similar to The Lost Vikings, which was an awesome DOS game.

Not at all. To echo what Chris said, there is next to no representation of disabled people in games at all, even though people with disabilities make up a significant portion of the population (one in five for mental illnesses alone). Making fun of people with disbilities is offensive, but showing that people with disabilities can still accomplish goals is definitely not.

Does it have to be a FPS? I guess you want that for the 'special perspectives'.
I think a (isometric) puzzle game could do well too. For instance for the ADD person every brick and stone on the map could become a clickable item.
Blind people could have a 'memory' of the path they were shown to walk only. (Easy backtracking in mazes, but no to little exploring.)
You want this to become a sort of multiplayer online shooter?
Maybe it would kind of cool if good players were given a handicap as their skill progresses. (How would a combination of ADHD and chronic fatigue work out? )
I do think you should separate the abilities from the disabilities in a sort of RPG style: a blind craftsman, an engineer with chronic fatigue etc. In that way most disabilities are really disabilities.

I find that offensive... or over the top fictional. But I think you're going for some sort of realism that shows real problems (and solutions). In general I think it is offensive to think of peoples abilities directly related to their abilities.
By the way your game is sure to be offensive, because you are entering the domain of politics/ politically correctness. Is an addiction a disability? Can a good diagnosis of ADHD be made? Etc. So you shouldn't be discouraged by any offense people take... I think. (Feel free to be discouraged by any other reason )

I think it's ignorance... It's kind of hard to work out how a character would behave, if you're not familiar with the conditions in question. So if you're working out a character it's not something that could easily 'pop into your mind' as a trait of your character.
Starting out a character on the premise of a disability and thinking of a character solely in terms of his disability seems more offensive to me. (It's not like you are doing that.)
Could you give an example of how chronic fatigue would work in the game?

You might have an idea here! We still have a lot of the attitude that everything about disabled people had better be kept out of sight. But a slight change can be recognised. In Finland the association for mental health supports a campaign where a small company prints and sells t-shirts and other clothes with rather provocative texts. I got one, which says "I hear voices". Most slogans are like that, something one could imagine mental patients would say. Here's one classic:
{"name":"178_2_adhd_mies_521.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/d\/0dfd91c1ee63d1a737d3ba8a9895ac05.jpg","w":521,"h":261,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/d\/0dfd91c1ee63d1a737d3ba8a9895ac05"}

I bet these associations for disabled people would welcome a game like this. Make it good and they might pay you.

I remember playing a D&D match, where after an accident with a ship(it exploded), all the players were left in the beach, each with different disabilities; one was deaf, another one couldn't walk, my body was severely burnt, which didn't help my 18 charisma score as a sorcerer.

Anyway, it was kind of a fun part, since we had to find a way that someone went to town and got some healers to the beach, and deal with the consequences of these problems later. We had to do a LOT of teamwork for the rest of the match.

So maybe it would sound less offensive that instead of picking disabilities that someone could be born with, make them the consequence of an "accident" or something.

I can see it ending up like postal...:-[

Postal is intentionally offensive in a childish way. My proposal only uses people with disabilities as a game mechanic--not the butt end of a joke. It'd definitely be a thin line to walk though, I understand!

I'm 5'3" and 120 lbs, and I've literally been thrown over and over by larger people. At concerts, even at work by a manager into a sideways mattress. If I'm not offended by it, I don't really see what the difference is between me (one of the shortest guys you'll ever meet) and this fictional, man-defined, "little person." (Defined as 4'10".) I'm 5 inches taller than the definition, but politically, I'm not allowed to exploit all of my physical characteristics in a video game? Now, I understand that you're not targeting me, specifically. But I find that side of politically correct society to be more odd than me.

That's cool too! It'd probably be much more in the realm of my coding ability but I'm not sure at the moment.

That's the point though! It's hard to empathize without research or personal experience. I have personal experience with chronic back problems (and the pain and chronic fatigue associated with it), being short, and growing up bipolar disorder and with social anxiety disorder. I know many people with fatigue issues stemming from smoking or being overweight. Having used to have many panic attacks, I understand Agoraphobia (not the fear of outdoors, but actually, the fear of seeing things that might cause a panic attack.)

The rest, is an exercise in online literature to find out how people with these disabilities act and have to deal with their problems.

I don't know if I'd want it, because it's so horrible for getting tasks done. It's basically the feeling of always being tired, sleepy and weak; and the sleep you do get never seems to alleviate your problems. So in a game, the character would visually be tired (lower in perception, so less onscreen stats. Calculated numbers would take longer to compute for your HUD), sluggish, and physically weaker.

I will say this, it will be hard to balance the intended consequences (understanding and empathy for disabilities) with the fun factor.

Ultimately, this game would offend many people, but for the wrong reasons. Because everyone has been taught to tip-toe around people with disabilities so much that any mention that people with them are different (which we are) is automatically tagged as offensive. Calling me less human, or my opinion irrelevant, because of a disability I have is offensive to me and a grounds for butt kicking. But saying I can't do heavy lifting because of my bad back, isn't offensive to me. It's logical. It's all in the context. People with disabilities are distinctly different, and unable to do all the things a perfectly healthy adult can do. But that doesn't imply any form of negativity. It's just logical. Most people in the world are disabled in one way or another, and we have to work around those issues. Some people are hot tempered, some people have zero self-motivation. There just social mechanics that we have to work together on to move forward.

Though, for people without disabilities, or personal experience with them, I can understand how people would take the safe route and assume it shouldn't be said. But that automatic rejection destroys the freedom of speech. When people don't consider all the angles, it destroys the chance of complete understanding of a topic. I think if we automatically rule out a game with disabled people where their disabilities are very important to success, we're ruling out a fun way to get people to empathize without feeling like they're being preached to.

We did that once as kids! We all had mental disorders, and so it was fun to try and act the part. One person head voices, so another person also played the voice in his head. He would yell "You're gonna mess it up!" and random gibberish to the point that the person with the mental disorder actually started getting really frustrated and freaked out. My charactor had hallucinations. We had fun, and we had to think about what someone in those shoes would be going through.

I think that you will have trouble giving everybody enough to do. At best, I expect you'll have very lame puzzles where entire teams are stuck waiting on a particular class of player to get there. It won't be exciting and it won't be fun. Also, some of your suggested "disabilities" are stupid. Others aren't disabilities (i.e., alcoholism). I think you should probably focus on physical disabilities because it's very hard (and perhaps over the top offensive) to simulate mental ones.

The idea isn't bad, but good luck executing it well. Also, I'd say instead of researching disabilities you should ask actually people with disabilities what it's like. As a matter of fact, you should ask for game ideas from the disabled communities themselves. Who else would be familiar with the challenge and limits than the very people that live with them? If you want a chance in Hell of getting their support on the project then I bet that you'll need their help.

In any case, I don't think it's offensive and I don't think you should care if it's offensive. I also don't think you should try to hide behind a positive image, like trying to raise awareness, even if you are. The people that care about awareness are the people that already know about these disabilities, and either experience them or have to live with them. You aren't making these people aware. The people that don't care about awareness aren't going to be attracted by it. I think that presenting an idea as offensive is a good way to get people listening. If you get a bunch of people playing they may not even realize how much they learn along the way. Just keep focus on the game and fun and don't draw attention specifically to the disabilities.

That's my two cents, anyway.

How is a wheel chair bound person going to hop up steps?! And are you sure they're fast? I would imagine that they would be slower than the general population.

Typo?

Well, in some roleplaying systems you can choose to have a disability on character creation to get more points to spend on other skills.

You can also roll really badly and end up with a really crappy character. If you're a real roleplayer you'll accept than you're playing a stupid, ugly, weak dwarf that'd couldn't hit the side of a barn. A real roleplayer makes it a fun game no matter what character he plays.

I wonder if it can be done in a good way if it's not an RPG or adventure game. You may have to limit the number of disabilities to cover.

I think this could make an interesting speedhack rule, if it's not already in there.

Agreed. Having three or four distinct characters is better than having a bunch of ones.

Also, ignore anybody who whines about it not being politically correct.

Agreed. There's nothing wrong with a little political incorrectness, even if this game idea was.

I don't think you've watched too many people with wheel chairs!

Speed and Agility (he does his first backflip around 2:30!)

Hopping

MURDERBALL

I wonder if the wheelchair movement system could be initially hard to learn (like a helicopter in Battlefield Vietnam) but the finesse grows on you (like it would in life). Perhaps something odd at first, but powerful once learned allowing tricks like in those videos.

I just listed random ones.

Yes! Definitely. I'm looking for brainstorming ideas so that I can take the ones that would most be a distinct major class system (big guy, small guy, wheelchair guy, etc). Additionally, "minor" traits can be added to each team (deaf in one ear, chronic fatigue, red-green color blind!, etc) depending on the game type requirements.

Thank you for the encouragement!

A game that has integrated disabilities into the gameplay is BZFlag. If you don't want to try the game, you may just check out this section on their wiki.

Sure, somebody in a wheel chair can go damn fast down a slope. They're going to go a lot slower up it though, and nowhere near as fast across level ground. I think for the most part a person running could have kept up with him. He never really got moving really fast. Or at least, it didn't look like it.

That looks more like a half step and he requires a large enough surface on the other side of it to rest the chair. Most steps are not like that (he appeared to be going up and down a sidewalk or curb or similar). I thought you meant steps AKA stairs.

I thought about bleating and complaining, but Matt has a point. Screw political correctness, just make a fun game.

Just what is politically incorrect about putting disabled people in a game, unless you're doing it in a way to make fun of them?

Some people have a knee-jerk reaction, and will just assume you're making fun of them.

Yes, certainly. That still doesn't make it politically incorrect however. And I'd be willing to bet that not many people who are actually disabled would find the idea offensive. The only disability someone who finds the concept offensive has is terminal stupidity.

A disability I am proud to admit I suffer from every day!

{"name":"1135260497344.gif","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/f\/7f9b60a74539f9840ed515c9b6c56373.gif","w":600,"h":203,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/f\/7f9b60a74539f9840ed515c9b6c56373"}
- Our guest scientist needs a personal assistant.
- I'm good at working with disabled persons in a correct way.
- Those lights are S-T-A-R-S! They are VERY far away!

This could be fun, provided that you don't model the 'disabilities' on real-world disabilities - if you make them abstract, related only to game mechanics. I mean, the bottom line - best case scenario - is that the use of real-world disabilities will be the glaring feature of the game, making the actual game itself an attached novelty.

Politically correct BS aside, games don't feature disabled players because no one wants to be disabled. People want to be bad-ass space marines or deductive powerhouses with top hats and boy sidekicks. You might use a disabled player character to make a statement about disabilities in a game, which is entirely different than making a fun FPS.

I certainly agree it might be a challenge to prevent it from being a 'novelty'. You will have to do lots of outside-of-the-box thinking to make the abstract game layer and the (already decided upon) presentational layer be in harmony. (Most games don't have that; and you probably won't get that harmony by using standard genres and mechanics.) You might want to drastically limit number of disabilities to make this process easier.
If you were given random disabilities, it might be fun to have the disabilities you do best with attached to your name as a title. IMHO this really gives the message that being able to cope with a disability is cool.
I'm sorry I don't know any severe disabilities...
BTW what I thought was offensive, was that I would normally not think of chucking my team-mate into somebody else.
And I hope you will see this project through.
And, Johan, that's hilarious!

A kind of head-over-heels game with multiple players in 3d would be cool.

Hoping I didn't miss it but what about hyperglycemia?

There can be a blood sugar gauge and you break down and collapse when it's too low, then people have to revive you. This could be related to the diabetes thing since they go together.

It'd be cool (assuming it was a deathmatch game) looting dead bodies for pills/sugar/nutrients beneficial to other players (assuming each class can carry assistance to another)

I could see where the game would offend people...maybe no death involved? My friend's grand-dad died from Parkinson's.

The blind guy could just have poor sight, and need special glasses or else the light would be to bright.

It'd be amazing to see a one-eyed guy assuming you can somehow illuminate the existing illusion of depth perception since you need two eyes to judge distance.

For a blind person you could just enhance the audio cues in the game and use minimalistic visual cues to indicate bumping into something, etc.

You could give them a stick, controlled by the mouse (always visible since a blind person would be able to perceive the position of the stick relative to themselves) and when you bump into something use a visual clue to give the player the message (obviously, vibration would be helpful here, but most PC gamers don't have peripherals that vibrate).

Additionally, enhance their sense of sound by letting them more easily hear players and the environment around them.

Moving on, I nominate "woman" to be a character class in the game.

Allergies! To things like bees, and someone has to carry an epi pen.

Great idea!

I haven't really decided on the broad mechanics yet like death, or guns, or things like that. But I can see how that would be distasteful--however, I don't think anyone would die from their condition in the game. It'd be more along the lines of temporarily incapacitated.

Actually, this could be very pivotal to gameplay! What if (for the most part) nobody dies in this game, but is merely stunned and needs to be revived in the correct way by a teammate in proximity. Most of your team could end up incapacitated and the remaining players will have to shift from objective achievement to team revival.

With no easy respawning, becoming incapacitated is more of a risk and you will want to avoid it--because it implies longer waiting and your team having to pick up your slack.

Needing glasses could be a "minor" ailment and they could get knocked off. Blind should be close to actual blind, if it's an archtype. However, I'm not opposed to a Dare Devil sound-based visual system.

{"name":"houdini01_daredevil_shadoww.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/b\/4b29b0b22143f39295e7f07d79a79f50.jpg","w":620,"h":280,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/b\/4b29b0b22143f39295e7f07d79a79f50"}

I was referring to the 'old people' glasses that have a strong tint since light without them actually is blinding and hurts them. Perhaps in the game they could be jostled off and cause damage around light sources like the sun. Unless a button is held to 'close their eyes.'

Maybe there can be a simple 'elder' combining 'bad-back' and 'eye sensitivity.' Combining multiple would be fun, like if the ADHD character coincidentally had glasses or something. Don't use that example.

Maybe combining ailments until a certain level of handicap is reached. I also still don't know how the classes would be chosen without any specialties for any.

You would do good to have 'special skills', passive or activated for the characters, IE the blind person could passively effect the range of a radar with heightened hearing whereas a paranoid/SAD character could install a limited amount of locks on doors to keep enemies out of (or in) an area. A wheelchair-bound character (alone or with another character's help) could manually initiate a full-speed ram to locked doors/enemies for varying strengths depending on the character pushing the wheelchair, if any.

Developing key skills and dependence on other classes is key. In Resistance 2 there was a standard soldier class which had a limited amount of impenetrable shielding power to allies, a medic that could heal itself and others and revive faster, and a spec-ops/bandolier to other classes, and could replenish the soldiers shield and the medics 'healing orbs.' Normally there was a 20-second respawn time and the mission failed if everyone died. he medic revived in like 2 seconds and others in around 10 from the full-wait of respawn time. All the classes needed each other.

Noobs do this in Resistance 2, but surprisingly most of the time there is tons of teamwork, in fact when each of the classes are in formation, literally nothing can stop you. (Unlimited healing, shielding, and firepower in best formation)