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SpiderManiac

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A member registered Jul 02, 2022

Recent community posts

First and foremost, I want to thank you for creating a game that blind people can play. I do appreciate that and I hope it was a worthwhile experience for you.

That said, I found this game incredibly frustrating. I'm typically the water off the duck's back type of thinker. But this particular game really got on my nerves for a variety of reasons. I'm a totally blind man, for context, and some of the experiences in this story are ones I've lived personally. Some of the experiences in this story are things I've heard some of my friends complain about. They are frustrating. There are options in this game that navigate them how I typically do. However, the way the dialogue is written, and the protagonist's inner monologue, is incredibly stereotypical and one-dimensional, and makes it feel like they view every person they interact with as lesser than them.

This brings me to my next point, all but maybe 2 sighted people in this entire story are absolute buffoons. Oh boy, the character lets you know that too. I do recognize that you try to build a bridge in some places, "You appreciate the thought, you really do," so on and so forth. However, this is quickly mitigated by the fact that the person is just sitting there thinking "Ugh, my life, I sure can't wait to get on the computer!"

I feel as though this game builds barriers between the sighted and blind communities. Sure, you could make the argument that by shedding light on the struggles of the disabled, you create unity rather than division, but I don't think that's entirely true here, if at all. You say this game is meant to show humor rather than mock, but I didn't hear a joke, and all I did was roll my eyes.

I also think the navigational descriptions are somewhat tacky, but they're pretty low on my list of things I have an issue with. I do navigate with echo-location, that's true. However, I don't think I've met a single blind person who counts steps. Minor nitpick on my part.

I think this game harmfully shows the relationship between the blind and the sighted. I appreciate the blind person being a hardworking, independent individual with their own routines and confidences. But there seems to be an ever-present flavor of "me versus them" in their line of thinking that's prevalent the entire time. Like, does this person even LIKE Gregory? In that same vein, you assume blind people have this latent super power to remember exactly where they left things and can just reach out and grab it. I can tell you that that simply isn't the case. I fumble for my phone all the time.

Overall, I just think this entire experience does more harm than good for the two communities. On one hand, it mis-represents disabled people to the sighted, and on the other, blind people don't want to play a game about being blind. It feels as though you got your lived experiences from stories on the Internet and popular media.

Again, thank you for making a game for the blind. I do hope you make more. But, in the future, either reconsider how your blind protagonists behave, or just make your protagonists sighted. Games are escapist media, after all.