Anthem - About PC Version Features

since the Americans with Disability Act went into place accommodating the impaired has been pretty militant.

People complaining about the blind using computers, to let you know I have sold equipment to blind people as much as 20 years ago. They use special monitors. In fact, there's always special funding for equipment that helps the disabled in libraries and colleges. My buddy in college actually won a special award for some innovative mouse he and his buddy developed.

Text to Speech has been around a long time, and is only getting better. How difficult is it to slap a standardized module on if you plan for it right? Heck, you can probably use the API's built into your favorite operating system,

Another thing about chat, have they made a deal with Teamspeak to only work with that?

Laughable. Saying that you'd need text-to-speech for a chat line in a shooter game is like saying you need braille numbers on the stick-shift knob in your car. Makes zero sense, and I suspect this interpretation of the FCC rule is complete horseshit and just the BioWare guy making excuses for them being too lazy or rushed to provide a basic feature that pretty much every multiplayer game has had for the last 30 years. Also rather likely that they just don't care about PC users since almost everyone playing this game will be console.

Speech-to-text would be far more important, because deaf people, unlike blind people, could actually realistically play and appreciate this game. So, is speech-to-text already in for all voice com in this game on the PC?

Stingray said:

Laughable. Saying that you'd need text-to-speech for a chat line in a shooter game is like saying you need braille numbers on the stick-shift knob in your car. Makes zero sense, and I suspect this interpretation of the FCC rule is complete horseshit and just the BioWare guy making excuses for them being too lazy or rushed to provide a basic feature that pretty much every multiplayer game has had for the last 30 years. Also rather likely that they just don't care about PC users since almost everyone playing this game will be console.

Speech-to-text would be far more important, because deaf people, unlike blind people, could actually realistically play and appreciate this game. So, is speech-to-text already in for all voice com in this game on the PC?

Click to expand...

You should call the ESA (Electronic Software Association) to tell them they wasted money and lawyers on horseshit interpretations these last 6 years when they fought the FCC 3 times to get video games waived from the CVAA.

The CVAA covers deaf people too, but the law requires only one mode of communication that accommodate a disability and they can read text. But if you make a game with just VoIP, speech-to-text is required if your game release after January 1st 2019.

Also, there are part of the CVAA that games won't be able avoid like color-blindness support.

Lucky Day said:

Another thing about chat, have they made a deal with Teamspeak to only work with that?

Click to expand...

Why? Both the consoles and Origin have VoIP applications and being old software they do not have to comply with the CVAA. I believe they all have chat app too. Or they could do like a few newer games, that use smartphone app (smartphone OS comes with text-to-speech integrated).

azarhal said:

You should call the ESA (Electronic Software Association) to tell them they wasted money and lawyers on horseshit interpretations these last 6 years when they fought the FCC 3 times to get video games waived from the CVAA.

Click to expand...

If you'd read the FCC's docs on these waivers (which I did earlier before posting anything), you'd know they weren't fighting anyone, all sides involved were fine with granting those waivers.

Anyway, yeah, I still say it's horseshit. If someone ignores it (which is pretty much inevitable, indies aren't going to pay attention to this ridiculous stuff), gets taken to court, and loses, then you can say "I told you so". Until then, we don't really know.

Even if it's taken seriously, enforced, and all holds up in court, it's still no excuse for a big company like EA/BioWare to omit one of the most important features out there, text chat, from a multiplayer / MMO'ish game. Just because of a law in one country? Yeah…laughable.

Oh, they are so sad. All of this stuff is so complicated than PC people will have to do with exactly the same version than the guys on the consoles.
Sorry, sorry, it is soooo complicated than we will have to port the code from console to PC directly. You have no idea, let me look at Wikipedia, oh yeah TTS. So complicated, unbelievable. Stuff from the future. Not for our generation sadly.
By the way, let me introduce to you the team in charge of optimizing the game for the PC, Joe the Intern.
Say hello Joe and go back to lick some stamps in the meantime.

Stingray said:

Even if it's taken seriously, enforced, and all holds up in court, it's still no excuse for a big company like EA/BioWare to omit one of the most important features out there, text chat, from a multiplayer / MMO'ish game. Just because of a law in one country? Yeah…laughable.

Click to expand...

Anthem is not a MMO'ish game. It's like ME3MP/MEAMP/DAMP where instead of horde mode/dungeons on closed maps, you get various type of missions on an open world map and some of them are tied together in a story line.

Also, Origin has text chat already if you need to text something to another player while in the game.

Pretty odd decision. First text, then voice chat for romance, isn't that how it goes?
Ohh, baby you mech flies like a bird..

azarhal said:

All video games released post December 31 2018 have to support text-to-speech (for every text in the game including UI elements) in the US among other accessibility requirements for visually impaired people (and others). It's a FCC policies that have been waived 3 times for video games, but the FCC doesn't want to waive it anymore…

Why the FCC thinks blind people want to play video games when 99% of the content is visual is beyond me though.

Oh and I expect lots of future video games to move to icons everywhere instead of text for UI elements.

Click to expand...

Well the accessability features are not necessarily for the completely blind. There are various levels of visual impairment that can fall under the term “disability”

For example, my relative had optic nerve hypoplasia, was legally blind but still enjoyed playing video games using an extremely HD and large tv and corrective lenses that aided in focusing somewhat. However, stuff like UI can still be basically impossible to read sometimes unless you get extremely close to the screen. So having those accesibility options can, in theory, be helpful to navigate menus.

I really wish more worthy (or worthwhile) products received the kind of attention that games like this one garner, although I suppose that would mean they'd also get a fair amount of not-so-nice comments as well. =p

you said:

Please read what has been said. This is not about enabling game playing for blind people. This is about enabling communication for blind people. The problem is the way the laws are written and enforced communication (chat) with in a game has become lumped with communication in general. It is stupid but that's USA for the common folks.

Click to expand...

This is not about enabling game playing for blind people. This is about enabling communication for blind people. The problem is the way the laws are written and enforced communication (chat) with in a game has become lumped with communication in general. It is stupid but that's USA for the common folks.

fixed

Come on guys, it is just an excuse. That allows them to have a same base code for everyone whatever the platform. And, the direction is from Consoles to PC. They would never lose any time for a PC only feature.
If they really want a feature, they will put it in there and magically produce the budget to have it. I am pretty sure than the MP will respect EU Privacy laws, for instance, in the code, on the Web sites, and all communications with players. And that is something new.

It doesn't sound like an excuse, it's just an argument in favor of their position - and it makes sense. Obviously - it would be possible to implement, but there's no denying that the TTS feature is a new thing for games and it's perfectly reasonable to argue it might be a costly feature, because it's uncommon ground within this context.

But if you actually understand how this genre works - you'd realise that chat is more or less superfluous. These days, you don't join up by manually writing to people and asking them stuff. You simply join open games if they're public - or you join up with your friends.

The rest is handled via voice chat - either in-game or using Skype, Discord or whatever. Beyond that, there's a bunch of emotes in place for basic communication - though I find people rarely use them for anything but stupid displays of dance moves.

This is how it works in Destiny 2 and Division in 99% of the cases. I don't even know if those games have chat, because I've never used it and I don't remember anyone ever writing to me.

Chat would, at best, represent a minor convenience for a tiny minority. Some games in the MMO-lite genre still have it - but I honestly can't remember people using it for anything other than pointless spamming or stupid remarks in public areas.

In that way, I consider it more of a blessing to omit the feature than anything else.

Of course they prefer having one version (in terms of features) to maintain across platforms. Anything else would be grade-A stupidity - as it's a ton of work having to work on multiple development branches, with one having a feature that's never being used on other platforms.

So, in that case - they'd probably have to implement the feature for consoles as well, knowing it would never be used by anyone. That's not a trivial matter of coding for ten minutes. A lot of people are involved in any new feature - and it takes a ton of approval procedures and focus testing, etc. They would have to take into consideration how the various consoles work when it comes to elaborate text input and they'd have to integrate stuff into the UI for this, too.

Employing hundreds of people for total development and testing for an extra few weeks could easily mean millions of dollars.

If you want to bash Bioware just for kicks, which I can only assume is the primary motivator behind the ignorant whining - you should probably find a more valid position.

Game is still a ways out. Maybe it's smarter to wait until release - so we have something real to bitch about?

Darth Tagnan said:

This is how it works in Destiny 2 and Division in 99% of the cases. I don't even know if those games have chat, because I've never used it and I don't remember anyone ever writing to me.

Click to expand...

Destiny 2 has no text chat.

azarhal said:

Destiny 2 has no text chat.

Click to expand...

Didn't think so, but you never know

This game is the epithome of "Bioware Went Into Zombie Mode". Ridiculously soulless characters. Those idiotic Andromeda-character-tech faces and lifeless eyes totally lacking those amazing shiny highlights we loved so much in the original Mass Effect 1-3 series!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR5DOEi1lPQ

Darth Tagnan said:

Game is still a ways out. Maybe it's smarter to wait until release - so we have something real to bitch about?

Click to expand...

I do not bitch, I am commenting the fact than he is having a corporate bullshit talk which has nothing to do with the game or the kind of game.

We are just few months from the release and that guy is saying stuff like "we are still thinking".

You need an infrastructure to filter and dispatch the chats through the clients. You need a solid archiving mechanism because you will have legal or arbitration issues if you have people talking together in a very competitive environment. Then, you need also a team to review the chats in case of complains, insults, racial or sexist abuses and so on.. Oh, and that team must cover some languages and be spread to cover lot of time zones. Because, obviously, you do not want to ban half of your players the first day by using a full automated process. They are teens, drowning in hormones, and playing an action game so you have to have "human" touch.

When you are the size of EA, you want millions of players and your target is Worldwide those are the kind of things you have to think about. The stuff about TTS does not even register in a project like this one which must be north of 400 FTE.

A legal, and support nightmare just for a PC feature.

So, no, few months before the release you are not thinking if you are making a chat or not.

He knows perfectly well that but he does not say so, because that would give something negative to say to some people. So he says "We are thinking about it".

Perfect Corporate Bullshit.