Hey folks, it\u2019s me again, your blind accessibility dude. As you know, one of the things I do is talk about how we play games that aren\u2019t necessarily intended to be accessible for us. Well, mostly back in the old days, one answer to that question was a quite fun and interesting one. That answer, ladies and gentlemen, is cheat codes!<\/p>\n
When I was a young boy in the 90\u2019s, I had a computer, and very few games which were given to me by a friend of our family. Two of those games were Doom, and Doom2. At first, I didn\u2019t really se these as playable, though I had been messing around with many console games by that point. At first I thought it was the shooting, but that notion was dispelled once I learned that, in those older games at least, you only had to be facing your enemy to fire upon them. The real reason turned out to be the exploration, and in a couple cases, the traps. The blind had no points of reference in Doom 1 or 2. No footstep sounds, no indication of where walls or doors were unless you happened to press the spacebar at the right time, and so on.<\/p>\n
I almost abandoned all hope, but then I discovered a mystical, magical solution. Cheat codes! With these, I could have it all! I could wield every weapon in the game, I could walk through those annoying walls that blocked my path, and I could be invincible to my enemies! And if I could not locate the exit to a level, no problem. One quick code, and it was onto the next. Using this newfound knowledge, I rampaged through the demon hoards, laughing at my enemies as they expired before my tremendous might.<\/p>\n
So I know what some of you may be thinking, and I get it. Technically, if I used cheat codes, I wasn\u2019t really \u201cplaying\u201d the game the way it was intended to be played, and argueably I wasn\u2019t really completing levels either since I could jump around. You are correct, but consider these things. Firstly, accessibility of games wasn\u2019t really a consideration back then. There was no real hope that Doom or Doom 2 would be made more accessible to the blind. Therefore, rather than not play it at all, I did so in such a way that I found lots and lots and lots of enjoyment in it. Given the circumstances, I don\u2019t see anything wrong with that.<\/p>\n
Secondly, I would argue that, in some cases, making a game accessible sometimes requires us to play it in a way it may not originally have been intended. Of course, the ultimate goal is always to preserve as much of the game as possible, adding accessibility while maintaining the developer\u2019s vision, but still, changes must be made. Cheat codes, at the time, represented ways to change a game to make it more playable in cases where it wasn\u2019t already. I repeated my Doom strategy several times on games like Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, and so on, and had great fun with all of them.<\/p>\n
Another great example of cheat code use to get enjoyment out of a game I cannot necessarily play to its fullest is Grand Theft Auto. Oh I Thoroughly enjoyed it when my friends played the GTA games for me, allowing me to hear the story, but I longed to get into the action in some way. Imagine my elation when I learned what cheat codes existed in those games. Imagine my delight when I learned I could summon a tank.<\/p>\n
Yes, that is where that\u2019s right. My enjoyment of GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas all came from getting the greatest weapons, lots of ammo, and a tank, then causing mayhem. Call it a stress reliever, call it a disturbing peak into my young mind, call it what you want, but I LOVED it. I couldn\u2019t do much else, but man oh man I could spend hours laughing as police cars attempted to ram my tank and exploded on impact. It was just something in a video game that made me feel awesome for a little while. I promise I am not a psycho.<\/p>\n
Cheat codes these days are a little less prevalent. There are still some games that have them, but they were once far, far more common. We\u2019re also in an age, though, where accessibility is being taken more seriously, so I\u2019m not all that worried about it. The point here is that, among other things like fighting games and surprising gaming accomplishments, cheat codes were also part of my gateway into gaming, and I would say they were just as important a part as all the others. They taught me that there was more than one way to enjoy a game, and I think that\u2019s part of the reason I tend to think outside the box when it comes to accessibility ideas. The influence is real, and I\u2019m proud to acknowledge it. As always, thanks so much for reading, and of course feel free to give your feedback however you like. Continue to be awesome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey folks, it\u2019s me again, your blind accessibility dude. As you know, one of the things I do is talk about how we play games that aren\u2019t necessarily intended to be accessible for us. Well, mostly back in the old days, one answer to that question was a quite fun and interesting one. That answer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,169,119,126,76,188,185,183,184,187,186],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-accessibility","tag-audio-gamer","tag-audio-gaming","tag-blind-gamer","tag-blind-gaming","tag-blood","tag-cheat-codes","tag-doom","tag-doom-2","tag-duke-nukem","tag-pc-gaming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}