An investigation into online multiplayer battle royale games to help deaf people

Abstract

Online multiplayer battle royale games (OMBRGs) gaining popularity day by day. Generally, OMBRGs played as a solo, duo, and squad match up to four players in each team. As a duo or squad players able to communicate with each other through voice chat. And other important features of OMBRGs was the use of sound and audio information. Research has shown that audio or sound information in video games creates barriers for deaf people. Most of the research has done providing accessible subtitles in a video game to help deaf people. But the OMBRGs was different than what previous research has done for deaf people. This research aims to identify the problems and issues experienced by deaf people in OMBRGs. And try to find subtitle and caption were enough to make video game accessible for deaf people. Previous studies show that implementing subtitles and captions in video games helps deaf people to play video games and increase their gaming experience. A combination of methods was used where content analysis and game guidelines review was chosen to find the problems and issues experienced by deaf people in OMBRGs. The feedback of deaf players was analyzed from the discussion and feedback platform of PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG). The analysis of deaf player's feedback shows two major problems lack of text chat as an alternative to voice chat to communicate with team members and lack of visual feedback elements as an alternative to sound or audio. Due to a lack of text chat and visual feedback elements in PUBG, deaf players use external text chat and visualization plugins that allow them to text chat and represent visual cues of sound activities. But deaf players also mentioned the problems of text chat and visual representation of sound activities such as difficult to type text in a rush situation, text chat distract focus from the game and visual representation was not accurate and reliable. So, Game testing carried out using game accessibility guidelines to identify the problems in current OMBRGs to support the finding of deaf player's feedback. The problems and issues which were not identified from deaf player's feedback were checked by the game testing process. The finding suggests that some OMBRGs implemented text chat and visual feedback elements. The next phase designed to test how deaf player's gaming experience can be improved implementing text chat and visual feedback elements in OMBRGs. Two game samples were created: first sample with wheel predefined voice phrases and visual feedback of sound activities, and second sample with typing text chat and no visual feedback of sound activities. The test was conducted with 10 participants where participants played both game samples without sound. The results show that wheel predefined voice phrases and visual feedback of sound activities in video games help to improve the gaming experience of deaf people. The finding shows that text chat and visual feedback elements in OMBRGs need to be studied. The current findings only suggest implementing text chat and visual feedback in OMBRGs helps deaf people. Further investigation requires to implement accessible text chat and visual feedback elements in OMBRGs.