Invite Player 2
Video games offer people with disabilities the chance for stigma-free socialization
I recently purchased the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and I’m not very good. Reviewing tips on r/Blackops4, the community-run subreddit filled with game-related stories and user-generated content, I came across a discussion titled, “Got my first kill in multiplayer.”
In his post, u/tj_the_blind_gamer announced that he managed to get his first kill in the Black Ops 4 multiplayer. As his Reddit username suggests, Tj is blind. He uses a surround sound headset to listen for footsteps and gunshots that help him identify where enemies are. Tj streams his gameplay on Twitch and posts game clips on YouTube.
If you disregard his username, Tj_the_blind_gamer’s disability is concealed online. His teammates are unaware that this zombie slaying gamer can’t even see the enemies in front of him. Video games offer people with disabilities an opportunity to socialize with others without the stigma that typically accompanies their disability.
“No one knows that they have a disability. They’re just an avatar. So, socially they feel like they just blended right in with everybody,” said Christopher Marotta, an occupational therapist at The Henry Viscardi School, a school for children with severe physical disabilities.
“No one knows who’s behind that screen or behind that mic, because they’re still playing the game just like the other kids are,” said Marotta.
Marotta uses video games to encourage his students to participate in their therapy. Problem-solving games, he said, are much more engaging for his patients than traditional pen and paper activities. Students can also continue their therapy at home, where they can compete against their family members or online players just like any other gamer.
Socializing is critical to a child’s health. Pointed out in a 2016 study on leisure participation of youth with cerebral palsy, 20 percent of the rights listed in The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) relate to participation in activities. Being that “children with disabilities are three times more likely to be left out of social activities,” they often deal with issues with of social exclusion.
According to the 2016 study, though, “adapted games can increase social inclusion for [youth with disabilities] among family, peers, and community groups.” Video games offer children with disabilities the opportunity to play with their peers, disabled or non-disabled.
For players who can’t hold traditional controllers, there are adaptive controllers that can be modified with accessible buttons, paddles, and switches. One high profile example of this is when YouTube comedian Zach Anner, who has cerebral palsy, played Killer Instinct against his lifelong friend Josh Flanagan using Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller.
There are therapists who speculate the skill curve of competitive games may discourage children with disabilities from playing against their peers. “Having the anonymity with an avatar is great to even the playing field, but would the game performance make the playing field uneven again?” said Margaret O’Neil, a professor in the physical therapy program at Columbia University. She worries that although gamers with disabilities may not appear that way online, their disability makes it more difficult to fairly compete against their non-disabled peers.
Think about this: Anner was only able to beat his friend at Killer Instinct because they started to shock Flanagan with electricity.
O’Neil said that artificial intelligence could potentially level the playing field by accessing a player’s skill level and then challenging an opponent based on that assessment. The idea is similar to a placement test that changes the difficulty of the next question depending on how well you answered the previous. “We both play the game but at different levels or are both getting a relatively same game challenge experience, but it’s adapted to our ability,” she said, “therefore comparing the scores makes more sense.”
Tj_the_blind_gamer has set a goal to get 100,000 zombie kills. He believes that if he can get “kills in the thousands without being able to see the game, then hopefully other disabled people can learn and manage to perform decently well.”
