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Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

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Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#31

Post by NicoJuicy »

dividuum wrote: post #29
NicoJuicy wrote: post #19

My neighbor has MS and can't physically move ( his head and he can still talk, but not the rest of his body) Is there anything that i can buy to improve his quality of life with? Even something small could be useful.

Can't really make any hardware recommendation, but as this post is about games, I would suggest trying out more puzzle like games like "The Witness" or "Outer Wilds". Despite being single player, I played both of them in tandem with my wife and I feel like it was a much better experience than playing alone as there was always something one of us would have missed or would get stuck on.

Well, it's game hardware for "disabled", so this is one of the best threads similar to my question. Where people could have the same interest or know about something already.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#32

Post by mclightning »

SalimoS wrote: post #26
mclightning wrote: post #11

I wonder if they could make an AI co-pilot for those who don't have someone to company them as they play.

Won’t that be cheating ? (That’s how aimbot work on warzone and many fps on PC )

It is as much of a cheating as the co-pilot thing, yes. I guess it shouldn't be applied to multiplayer competitive games.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#33

Post by least »

dividuum wrote: post #9
city41 wrote: post #5

Co-pilot is a really great idea, and also so simple. Definitely one of those "why didn't we think of that before?" moments.

One game I particularly remember is Super Mario Galaxy 3D on the Wii. It had a two player mode where the second player didn't control Mario, but instead had the ability so interact with the environment and player in limited ways to help. I wonder why there aren't a lot of other games that do that.

Game design is hard and asymmetrical game design is incredibly hard. Game developers can hardly make symmetrical cooperative systems that properly take advantage of the multiplayer aspect. Borderlands, for example, doesn't add unique systems that take advantage of the fact that there are multiple players. There's no unique mechanics to bosses or enemies. There's not really interesting synergies that you can take advantage of by the different classes.

When games do coop well, it's usually an inherent part of the game. If you can make the assumption that there is at least two players playing together, you can create unique and interesting ways for the two players to interact on screen. "It Takes Two" is a recent game that was designed explicitly for two players and you can immediately tell the difference from it to a game that cooperative modes were an afterthought to the solo mode.

Games requiring more than one player immediately alienates a lot of players and limits your audience a lot, so that's probably why pure coop titles are extremely rare.

As for asymmetric titles like Mario Galaxy where the second player is not essential, it's pretty hard to make the gameplay satisfying for the secondary player while not impeding the first player or making it feel essential to the gameplay. The "little brother" mode costs a lot with little perceived benefit for the developers.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#34

Post by least »

Microsoft has done a lot of things that they didn't "need" to for the sake of accessibility and I think that's worth celebrating. Particularly when it comes to something as simple as this I think there's no reason why it can't exist on every other console. As mentioned in other comments, their adaptive controller is also great.

This co-pilot mode sort of reminds me of Starcraft: Brood War where there is a cooperative mode where two people can control the same set of buildings and units. The amount that each player contributes to the game can be as variable as you need it to be, as far as one player not doing anything at all. Or if you were both skilled, it could simply augment what you could do. One person could be making sure you're spending resources and building the base while the other focused on controlling the units fighting the enemy, for example.

Overall I think the video games industry is very very behind in accessibility, though. Even some relatively simple accessibility options are absent from some of the biggest games. I believe Ubisoft has made great strides to make their video games more accessible to everyone and there are some notable ones such as The Last of Us 2 [1] and Celeste [2] that go above and beyond to ensure that anyone that wants to play the game can.

Accessibility can be expensive to implement and gaming isn't really considered an essential, even in terms of entertainment, but I think it's worthwhile to try and encourage even smaller developers to try to make their games more accessible.

[1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/the-last-of-us-part-... [2] https://celeste.ink/wiki/Assist_Mode

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#35

Post by telesilla »

rm445 wrote: post #30
telesilla wrote: post #25

I am terrible at video games. It's not what my brain does well so I miss out on playing computer games in general, I'm more interested in board games or cards. Not long ago I was waiting for laundry to be done with a friend who had a Nintendo Switch on her, and we started a game of Mario Kart. The entire time we played, maybe 15 mins, I thought wow, I'm better than I think! Then after the game I told my friend and sh…

I don't think another player can actually be that helpful in Mario Kart, but it does have extremely strong steering assistance, which can be enabled/disabled in the pause menu. Not trying to be rude by comparing you to a small child, but the main benefit is that little ones can join in and have fun while they're not quite co-ordinated enough to steer properly. If you wanted to get more into gaming, a Switch would be…

No offence taken! It's not so much the coordination but that I just don't care about playing. My sense of being entertained is different than what computer game play provides, so I don't put any effort into learning the moves. So in relation to the topic here, it's nice if I can hang out with friends who love games while I don't need to invest effort to join in on occasion, as I could get quite a lot out of copilot mode.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#36

Post by dstick »

rm445 wrote: post #30
telesilla wrote: post #25

I am terrible at video games. It's not what my brain does well so I miss out on playing computer games in general, I'm more interested in board games or cards. Not long ago I was waiting for laundry to be done with a friend who had a Nintendo Switch on her, and we started a game of Mario Kart. The entire time we played, maybe 15 mins, I thought wow, I'm better than I think! Then after the game I told my friend and sh…

I don't think another player can actually be that helpful in Mario Kart, but it does have extremely strong steering assistance, which can be enabled/disabled in the pause menu. Not trying to be rude by comparing you to a small child, but the main benefit is that little ones can join in and have fun while they're not quite co-ordinated enough to steer properly. If you wanted to get more into gaming, a Switch would be…

Not quite true :) I’ve played a lot with my 2 youngest daughters and the AI adapts to the fastest player. So if you hang behind the “worst” player, it will become very easy.

Subsequently, if you race full-pull the other person will be in a permanent #12 spot. They will receive a lot of star and bullet power ups though ;-)

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#37

Post by tyleo »

I love co-pilot. Throughout the pandemic my fiancé and I used the feature to play different sections of single player games as though they were multiplayer. I don’t think either one of us would consider ourselves to have a disability.

I used to work on games at Microsoft and they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to accessibility. I had spent multiple days in the accessibility lab interviewing and understanding how to make games easier for people with various disabilities. One of my managers encouraged me to test my features using the controller with one hand and farther away from the screen where bad font decisions were more obvious.

Two things I remember in particular from that time at Microsoft:

* The claim that making games better for people with disabilities makes them better for everyone

* The claim that most people will have a disability (not necessarily permanent) at some point in their life

I feel that those two lessons have permanently impacted my design lens.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#38

Post by Avshalom »

mclightning wrote: post #11

I wonder if they could make an AI co-pilot for those who don't have someone to company them as they play.

We're not anywhere close to just having a general purpose game playing AI for the current gen (though there is that Atari playing one)

But there are a lot of affordances devs can make in individual games. Someone else mentioned Celeste and Last of Us, but Microsoft's Forza series has a bunch of options, like brake assist or turning assist, that can take a lot off your plate.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#39

Post by OJFord »

arpa wrote: post #7
city41 wrote: post #5

Co-pilot is a really great idea, and also so simple. Definitely one of those "why didn't we think of that before?" moments.

We did - I remember playing Doom with my friend as a kid - one of us would do the walking, another would do the shooting, on different peripherals. The idea is pretty fresh on the consoles, however.

That reminds me that when USB came out (or came to our, my parents' computer) I thought if only we got a new mouse, I'd be able to plug both in, getting two cursors, and be able to cheat at solitaire. Heh.

Re: Xbox co-pilot mode changed disabled sister’s life

#40

Post by OJFord »

mclightning wrote: post #32
SalimoS wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t that be cheating ? (That’s how aimbot work on warzone and many fps on PC )

It is as much of a cheating as the co-pilot thing, yes. I guess it shouldn't be applied to multiplayer competitive games.

Only from the perspective of the 'inferior' player - 'co-pilot' seems fine for competitive multiplayer, since as far as other players are concerned you could have been performing better, if you were only the better of the two of you, 'unimpeded' by the one being assisted.
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