Jordan Verner, Blind Gamer, Beats Zelda (VIDEO)

On Wednesday, CNN aired a nice segment on a Jordan Verner, a blind gamer who, with the help of the gaming community beat "The Legend of Zelda." Verner had been playing small parts of the game, blind, when he decided to reach out over skype for help. Three die hard gamers responded to Verner's call -- they split the game into three parts and each copied down every single move. Verner than entered the lists into his computer, which read the instructions aloud while he played. It took him 2 years to complete, and beat the Zelda. Verner reflected, "I thought, that's far from reality, that's more fantasy than the game itself."

WATCH

Comments

[mcmutter]

06:04 AM on 03/04/2010

Pinball Wizard !!

[m66]

07:30 PM on 03/03/2010

Here, I'll help you with the headline: "He's a Zelda Wizard", sub-head "There's got to be a hitch."

[SwingingFromCenter]

06:09 PM on 03/03/2010

The story itself is interesting, but...I'm sorta failing to see the point to this.

He didn't actually "beat" Zelda (I assume it's the first one, as every incarnation of Zelda since then, it would be impossible to record moves). He followed a list of instructions fed to him on his computer.

He didn't actually play the game. What he did was no different than touch typing. I'm not knocking the guy - he did something interesting - but let's not make it out to be something it's not. The first word in "video games" is....video. Graphics. You have to be able to see to play them. That's how it will always be. The only exception are text-based games (MUD's for example)

[ZenBastard]

02:25 PM on 03/04/2010

Tell ya what sparky. Let's take away YOUR sight & then we can have someone dump on YOU when you manage to do something that nobody else has ever done.

[SwingingFromCenter]

04:41 PM on 03/04/2010

If I had 2 weeks to adapt to life without sight, and then was given a computer to speak the instructions to me for the game? Absolutely, I could do it.

[Harry Pujols]

05:55 PM on 03/03/2010

So the headline says "Blind boy beats Zelda" and I say, cool, which one? The game he plays in the video is "The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time" launched 10 years after the original "Legend of Zelda". Please give us a bit more of information in your articles.

[Balzac]

05:29 PM on 03/03/2010

Nice. But this is a statement about accessibility in games. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

Every single online RPG and indeed every mass-market game should have a text meta-data for all sprites, obstacles, players, interactions, so that people like Jordan Verner can play the same games as everyone else and share in the experience without struggling with technological barriers.

That is how I would design games, so that they can be played in text-only mode as well as rich Open-GL graphics on the latest, fanciest graphics card with free/open source drivers available.

Regards to Jordan Verner.

[ZenBastard]

02:42 PM on 03/04/2010

No, it's NOT a statement about accessibility in games. It's a story about how a blind gamer beat a game with the help of some other gamers.

You're attempting to MAKE it into a statement about accessibility in games.

You talk about how "Every single online RPG and indeed every mass-market game should have a text meta-data for all sprites, obstacles, players, interactions..." Clearly you've never worked in the gaming industry. Every asset has a cost assigned with it. You have to carefully balance the cost of these assets with the overall cost of making the game. What you are suggesting would add to the overall cost of the game which would end up meaning that you'd have to spend less on other parts.

When it comes down to it the number of special needs gamers is so small that it's not cost efficient to put in the kinds of features you mentioned.

[Balzac]

03:14 PM on 03/04/2010

You obnoxious f*ckstain!

[Balzac]

03:18 PM on 03/04/2010

You nit-picking ignoramus. Take your pretentious user-name and shove it!

It would be easy and nice to give blind gamers the ability to participate in major MMORPGs with a text-based interface.

[cameron d]

05:21 PM on 03/03/2010

I gotta say it "NEERRRRDDD!"

Ok, I got that out of me. Now as a fellow gamer I gotta say that's pretty cool.

[CRMurray]

05:08 PM on 03/03/2010

ooooook? So he was told every move in order to beat the game...I'm sorry but I'm not impressed. All he did was follow instructions that he was told.

I'm honestly more amazed that people took the time to record every single move that was necessary.

[MalteseTiger]

12:42 PM on 03/04/2010

Why is this not impressive? How else would he play a game?
Would you deny him his honor if he built a car using audio instructions?
What if he built a model car? Is that accomplishment any less worthy of praise?

Lets see you gouge your eyes out and then try to do things and see how far you get.

[CRMurray]

01:09 PM on 03/04/2010

It is not hard to follow instructions that you are told if they have the proper amount of detail.

I'm glad he was able to enjoy the game with the help of others.

[headly66]

05:01 PM on 03/03/2010

Whats the point, he still can't see the game.

[Soundofthunder]

12:21 PM on 03/06/2010

True. But this is a human interest story. People sometimes do strangely uplifting things. This is one of them.

S

[scienceVSfaithVSpredator]

04:49 PM on 03/03/2010

"It took him 2 years to complete, and beat the Zelda."

[anthonytaurus]

04:45 PM on 03/03/2010

Ok... so what!!

Ok, I get it. Blind kid.. playing games.. yeah yeah yeah..

Now what?

[darkpragmatist]

09:55 PM on 03/07/2010

now we vicariously enjoy the sense of accomplishment this kid feels in having done something most people would call impossible. it's not earth changing, sure, but it's still heartening and that'll do.

[anthonytaurus]

09:08 AM on 03/08/2010

impossible? close your eyes and follow directions! who would call that impossible? sounds more like a 2 year trust exercise. i find it more incredible that a blind person could learn the whereabouts of every little thing in their home or just walking around their neighborhood. and they do all of that with minimal help and sometimes no help.

Look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBv79LKfMt4

now that's amazing.

[Vurz]

04:40 PM on 03/03/2010

Incredible! Awesome job to everyone involved!

[cbvani]

04:27 PM on 03/03/2010

Awesome!

[screamadelica02]

04:21 PM on 03/03/2010

That's pretty awesome. Good job, guys! :-)