Game Design: What Can Game Designers Learn From a Blind Person

Terry Garrett is an engineering student with a dream to work at NASA and become the first blind person to go to space. Not only does he have extraordinary dreams, he already has extraordinary accomplishments in the gaming field. He’s beat both 2D and 3D games.

In this video he talks about the kind of games he likes, how he uses sounds to play games and how the sound design can help him finish them. In the end of the video the screen goes black and the sounds keep playing. That just shows you how hard it truly is to do what he’s doing.

In this one he walks through a part of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Even though he had already played through that part, it’s still amazing to watch how well aware he is of everything surrounding him in the game. For example, there’s a moment that he misses the door and walks around a bit then comes back to the same exact spot. This kind of awareness is very impressive.

There’s a specific feature that greatly helps him finish the games, which is the quick save. Anytime he gets into a mini checkpoint, he presses the quick save. This feature is specially useful when there’s a part in the game where he must go through a process of trial and error in order to pass it.

Although the games Terry has played probably haven’t been specifically developed for people that have eye sight problems, the sound design of those games enabled him to go through them. These videos will hopefully help you look at sound design in a different way.