Bring your karma
Join the waitlist today
HUMBLECAT.ORG

Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2020 - 12 - 23 - ID#kj2w5c
26
Can I become a game designer / developer although my eyesight is very bad? (self.Blind)
submitted by LingoKnight1994
My passion is programming and I love it so much. I’m trying to make people happy with it and that made me think of becoming a game developer / designer.

I like making pretty stuff too, although I’m not the fastest and probably not the greatest at it.

Is it possible for me to become a game developer? I mean ... I know it’s gonna be very difficult .... but I really want this .... but I’m still afraid of not being good enough to even be considered at my local collage because of my visual problems...
LifePickle 9 points 2y ago
Make an awesome text adventure! It doesn't have to be graphical. Make a fun Alexa skill. If you really get into it, collaborate with an artist.
LingoKnight1994 [OP] 2 points 2y ago
Thanks for the encouragement... of course a text adventure game would be nice! But I’d like to try my hand on programming with Unity or something similar also if possible
bondolo 6 points 2y ago
Sure, it depends what aspects you focus on.

For example, a friend of a friend is low vision and works as a level designer for mostly side scroller and rogue-like mobile games for the Asian market. He keeps his hand in with programming by doing level scripting and sometimes doing the implementation for custom actions or novel features that arise from the level design.

There are other low vision and a few blind people working in the games industry. I believe that Steve Saylor has mentioned a forum on his youTube channel.
Fridux 3 points 2y ago
I developed a simple 3D game using Apple's SceneKit, SpriteKit, and GameplayKit frameworks without any sight. The original idea was to teach my niece how to code, but eventually she lost interest so I finished the project alone to prove to myself that I could actually code blind. The development itself was surprisingly easy considering that it was my first project since going totally blind 5 years prior, but I already knew what I was doing, and the only help I had was for testing and bug reporting since I couldn't play it myself. The game itself is nothing special, and the code is rather messy, but it serves as a proof of concept that a blind programmer can even make graphical games. The code is available $1.

Given you are visually impaired I think that your biggest problem will be convincing potential employers that you can do the job, and for that you might find yourself having to work twice as hard to prove your worth, so my advice to you is to invest the necessary time to learn stuff properly and not cut corners anywhere, which in your field probably means building a simple game engine that can serve as proof both to yourself and the world that you actually know what you're doing. Even then you might still find obstacles, since as I understand it the gaming industry is oversaturated with able job applicants willing to work long hours, so for the sake of quality of life you might want to develop other skills to pay the bills and moonlight as an indie mobile game developer until it becomes profitable enough to quit your regular job. That's at least what I planned on doing before going totally blind.
siriuslylupin6 1 points 2y ago
Why not I don’t see what’s stopping ya.
thicccdragon 1 points 2y ago
How bad is your vision exactly? There are alot of programmers in the blind community
LingoKnight1994 [OP] 2 points 2y ago
I don’t know the official terms for the stuff, but I’ll try my best to elaborate about my condition:

On my official documentation it says that I have a 65 % disability thanks to severe visual impairment... for what that’s worth.

I’ll try to explain what I see...
Anything more than 3 meters away might just as well be white noise and I cannot read anything from paper, or the font has to be huge... talking at least 30pt I think ... that’s why I prefer reading on a screen... it breaks through the cloud and provides my with enough light to read more comfortably at around 25px (I guess) but my vision fluctuates wildly so one day I read 20px other days 28...
It’s like I have a constant mist in front of my eyes that can only be broken with enough (concentrated) light

This is the main reason why I have trouble focusing my eyes I imagine because I don’t know where to look because everything that’s not emitting it’s own light (or reflecting a sufficient amount of it at the very least) might as well not exist.

I’m sorry for the very not medical analysis... I just really don’t know how to call it... let alone translate it to English

Edit: So I’m not exactly blind .... but I guess the term is still legally blind... I’m in this weird situation that I can see stuff very well very close-by ... and it really has to be inches from my eyes here... but still am technically blind to anything and for any purpose that requires sight for more than a meter ....
intellectualnerd85 0 points 2y ago
Low vision and blind folks can do virtually everything sighted folks.
Bobtownee 0 points 2y ago
Yes. Absolutely. I can do anything you want to do.
This nonprofit website is run by volunteers.
Please contribute if you can. Thank you!
Our mission is to provide everyone with access to large-
scale community websites for the good of humanity.
Without ads, without tracking, without greed.
©2023 HumbleCat Inc   •   HumbleCat is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Michigan, USA.