The beauty of gaming is that, while it can often divide, more often than not, the hobby brings people together. Over the weekend, a Reddit poster named Mandi shared a story about how the Nintendo Switch allowed her and her blind husband to share a game together.
1-2 Switch highlights the system’s new HD Rumble feature, which provides the Joy-Con controllers with a feedback ability that much more closely mimics the actions taking place in the game. For example, rather than giving players a generic vibration, the hardware can simulate things like the clinking of individual ice cubes in a glass. According to Mandi, this particular feature allowed her and her husband to spend hours playing the game together.
I was amazed at how accessible this game is for blind people. So many of the games require listening for a prompt to react (like Quick Draw) or feeling the rumble in the joy con to know when you’ve hit the mark (like in Safe Crack). Out of the 28 games he was able to play against me in 21 or 22 or of them, and he beat me most of the time. Even at ping pong! So it turns out, this was a worthy investment for me.
Interestingly enough, 1-2 Switch has been far from a critical darling since it debuted on Friday. But Mandi’s story does show that sometimes games can transcend things like review scores, as the experiences take on a much deeper and more personal meaning. For an industry that often obsesses over point scales and letter grades, it’s certainly nice to see.
Source: Reddit