“This has helped me understand the importance of inclusion and has greatly [influenced] my accessibility work.”

– Karen Stevens shares how her own experiences gave her perspective

FIFA 18 recently received an update that added in a host of new features geared at making the game more accessible. The new options gave players the ability to, among other things, enlarge clickable targets, remap controller sticks, bumpers, and triggers, or toggle an on-screen pause button that can be used with only a mouse on PC. 

Following that update, Waypoint spoke with some of the key players behind EA Sports’ growing focus on accessibility about how those changes have been reflected in games and the company since.

The story is one example of how developers can (and should, when feasible) implement new features and options to help make their games playable by as wide of an audience as possible.

Karen Stevens, once a rendering engineer at EA, leads the charge as the company’s first accessibility lead. Her efforts started during an internal game jam and yielded the addition of accessibility features like resizable icons for Madden NFL 17. She now heads the company’s accessibility drive and EA’s Accessibility Portal where she solicits feedback on features from players.

“I once asked a friend if he was looking forward to the next Madden NFL, as he is a huge Raiders fan,” Stevens told Waypoint. “He told me he can’t play Madden due to vision problems; he couldn’t see anything that moved quickly and was small — like the pass icons. I decided that if I ever had the chance, I would try to improve the game so a wider audience could play Madden.”

Waypoint’s full story has more information on Stevens’ efforts, as well as a look at how accessibility options in EA Sports games have evolved in just recent years.  

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Austin, Texas

Mothership Entertainment is seeking an experienced Technical Director to lead our engineering team.  The Technical Director will take responsibility for developing, maintaining, and optimizing the next title in the award-winning Aven Colony franchise.

Mothership Entertainment is a plucky micro-studio located in northwest Austin, TX, in the Jollyville neighborhood.  We focus on creating highly polished strategy game experiences with a tiny team and a close-knit studio culture.

The Technical Director will be responsible for:

• Assisting in the development, maintenance, and optimization of the next game in the Aven franchise
• Spearheading the port of the next Aven franchise game to other desktop and console platforms as needed
• Setting and maintaining coding standards and code integrity
• Developing new features and refactoring existing tech as needed
• Refining the art pipeline and specifying and maintaining benchmarks and constraints for art development
• Assisting artists with technical issues as needed
• Managing and growing the engineering team

Desired skills:

• Excellent C++ programming skills
• Excellent communication skills
• 5+ years professional experience in the game industry
• 5+ years professional experience as a software engineer
• Strong debugging skills
• Strong optimization and performance profiling skills
• Strong multi-threaded programming skills
• Unreal engine and Blueprint experience
• Console development experience
• A passion for making and playing games
• Work well in a cooperative environment
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills.
• Self-motivated and willing to pitch in on many areas of development

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Starting at 6 p.m. PDT today, members of the Xbox One Preview Update Alpha ring will begin receiving the latest Xbox One system update (1804.180321-1920). Read on to learn more about fixes and known issues in the latest system update.

Fixes:

Home

• We have resolved the issue in which some users encountered a Black screen on boot and were unable to recover the console.

My Games and Apps

1. We resolved an issue in which some games and apps are missing from your collection.  You will no longer see the tabs in your My Games and Apps show  a spinning circle/no titles/and or some titles missing in your (1) Game Pass collection and (2) EA Access collection.
2. Users will no longer see install progress reports over 100% when installing game titles.
3. Resolved an issue in which some users when launching various games and apps would result in the app or game not successfully starting.

System

• Resolved an issue in which some users had been experiencing the console shutdown after you turn it on or an experience of taking a long time to shut down the console.

Mixer – Games UWP Games

• We have resolved the issue with broadcasting UWP Games.

Cortana

• Fixed an issue in which users had trouble launching games with Cortana and then Cortana showing up as a game.

4K Game Crashes

• We resolved an issue when resuming a 4K HDR game after watching captured 4K screenshots and gamedvr clips would result in the game never starting again or result in crashes.

Microsoft Edge

• Resolved an issue with videos playing no audio in Microsoft Edge.

Audio

1. Resolved an issue in which some Audio receivers would lose spatial sound.
2. Users of Spatial Audio will no longer experience loss of center channel audio / voices.  This fix also addresses the lower Amazon audio relative to other apps.
3. Resolved an issue in which some games would fail to play audio or loss of audio would crash the game.

Family Timer

• Resolved issues in which some families with multiple Xboxes or multiple shared Windows PC’s, who use Microsoft Accounts with their family.  This fix resolves time limits across devices to behave in an consistent way.

Settings

• We have released a new version of Upload studio to resolve issues in which some users had been unable to navigate to “Allow game captures” in settings.

Virtual Keyboard

1. Resolved the issue to enable the Chinese virtual keyboard.
2. The virtual keyboard will no longer disappear randomly when inputting text.

Miscellaneous

• Miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

Known Issues:

Pi-hole

• Pi-hole users may encounter issues signing in, creating, or recovering accounts upon downloading the 1804 update. This is due to a new configuration file which is downloaded from a URL Pi-hole blocks by default.
• Workaround: Add clientconfig.passport.net to the Pi-hole allowed IP address list.

Netflix

• Netflix on Monitor only works at 1080p and does not support 1440p – Netflix is aware of the issue.  Workaround : If watching Netflix on a Monitor/LCD please set the display output to 1080p.

HDR Issues

• Some users are discovering that some games are not showing in HDR – Please file feedback when you encounter this to help in the investigation.

Spotify Search

• Some users are discovering that the search function in Spotify is not working. Please file feedback when you encounter this to help in the investigation. Workaround – Type in a search hit enter and nothing happens. Click the left stick twice and it searches properly.

Controller sharing/ Co-pilot vibration issues

• Some users may experience a problem with a controller vibrating non-stop when using the share controller or the co-pilot feature.

Danish developer Mighty Moth has announced its upcoming whimsical flight simulator Above will be landing on ‘consoles’ in 2019. In this isometric affair you’ll pilot a bright red plane and guide its pilot, Mary, around a flooded world full of sky pirates and other dangers lurking beneath the waves.

You’ll be able to land and upgrade your trusty flying contraption, as well as pulling off all sorts of daring aerial tricks when you’re soaring through the sky. From battling sea monsters to unravelling the mystery of Mary’s lost brother, Above promises to be a cut… ahem… above when it arrives on ‘consoles’ in 2019.

Does Above get your piloting juices flowing? Will it be enough to sate your desire to fly before we eventually get a new Pilotwings on Nintendo Switch? Let us know in the comments below…

MX vs ATV All Out is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*

All Terrain, All Vehicles, All You! MX vs ATV All Out is the complete off-road racing and lifestyle experience! Find your Rider Style at your private compound, Free Ride across massive environments, and compete in the best series events!

*Offer ends April 3 at 10AM Pacific Time

This week at Bungie, we deployed Update 1.1.4.

If you haven’t heard, Destiny 2 just got a pretty substantial update. There are changes to your abilities, your weapons, gameplay in the Crucible, rewards in the Nightfall, and more. To give us a taste of the human element behind game development, Design Lead Josh Hamrick sat down in front of a camera to represent the team that worked on this new update.

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Want to see these changes in action? We also put out a video showing off the hero moments you can expect in the new state of Destiny 2.

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Drang-o Unchained

With 1.1.4 out the door, we now turn our attention to 1.2.0.

Jon: Hello everyone. I’m dropping by for another tease of the Exotic Weapon tuning work being done for 1.2.0. Today we’re going to talk about Sturm & Drang.
For those who don’t know the core loop of Sturm and Drang, kills with one weapon reload the other while it’s stowed. Consecutive kills with Drang will overload rounds into Sturm, capping out at a 20 round mag for a Hand Cannon. Currently, the gameplay is focused on fast swapping, and while fun, this lacks that exotic flare we’re hoping to add. Sturm is also a bit unwieldy to use, so we’re addressing that, too.

As standalone weapons, both Sturm and Drang have had their base stats improved for ease of gameplay. Drang now has Rampage and a maxed out magazine to help rack up sidearm kills quickly. The true payoff comes in the overloaded Sturm magazine: overflow rounds in Sturm now have a damage boost of 1.8x. This allows for a significant damage increase in PVE and crispy precision 2-taps in PVP (just don’t miss).

Now that we’ve told you how these guns are changing let’s show you how they’re behaving with the current changes applied.

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We’ll talk more about the changes to Exotic weapons in the weeks to come. All of these upgrades to weapon performance will land in the inventory of players when Season 3 begins. We’ll have a lot more to talk about before then.

Companion Update

As the game changes, so does its Companion. The Bungie.net team is working on some upgrades to both the website and mobile apps. These changes will deploy next week. 

Bungie.net Team: The companion has a new update coming on 4/4, and we’re excited to share some of the details with you.  The team is working on bringing back one of our more frequently requested features from the original Destiny companion — viewing your full 3D guardian in all their glory and sharing their awesomeness with your friends. Here is what you can expect when this releases:

We expect that this version will replace the existing Find Fireteam feature in the near future, but both will be available when the beta releases.  We’re anxious to have you all try the revised version, then head over to the feedback forums and let us know what you think!  While the beta is missing a few important things (an Android version, chat, and locale support), we will be adding to this beta over time, and your feedback is key to making sure is the best it can be.

And last, but certainly not least, the team has made some quality of life improvements to the website and mobile applications:

Long Live the King

New Monarchy cannot be stopped. They claimed their fourth Faction Rallies victory in a row this week. We’re starting to wonder if anyone can challenge the dominance of their growing dynasty. Here are the results of the final Faction Rallies of Season 2:

Most Dangerous Game

With a new state of combat live in the Crucible, you’re invited to hunt us down and beat us at our own game. Next week, we are putting a target on our back. We’ve decided to fire up the stream machine and conduct a Bungie Bounty on PC. Here are the full details:

4/4/18 10 AM – 12 PM Pacific

Platform: PC

Playlist: Mayhem

That’s right, we are going to let the Supers fly and chaos reign as Mayhem will be the gametype. Here is the fireteam of brave Bungie volunteers you will be hunting for.

TTLCozmo

Dmg04

Teribble

Liqvid

If you are able to match against us and win the game, you will be rewarded with this special emblem. 

Alpha Dogs

Even with the current methods available to run up the scores, most of the community is putting up scores within our expected thresholds, well below the outliers at the top. Only the top 1% are breaking 100K each week. We will continue to track these scores and evaluate if we should change up the thresholds for earning the emblems.  

This is Bat Country

The members of Destiny Player Support are the watchful protectors always working diligently behind the scenes. They are making sure you have the info you need to have the best Destiny 2 experience.

This is their report.

BAT Errors

At the release of Destiny Update 1.1.4, we began to receive reports that players were encountering BAT errors after completing matches. When encountering these errors, players would be returned to orbit and have to manually enter Strike or Crucible matchmaking to continue playing.

We have identified that this was caused by the Strike and Crucible Repeat Repetition feature introduced with 1.1.4, and have since disabled the feature. While players should no longer expect to encounter BAT errors, they will now encounter repeat Strike activities or Crucible maps when playing these activities.

We are currently investigating the issue to see if we can address the root cause of these errors, and potentially re-enable the repeat reduction features. 

Issue Progress: Tower Black Screen

Since launch, we have been investigating an issue where players could encounter an indefinite black screen when attempting to load into the tower. This week, we have discovered the root cause, and are aiming to address the issue in Destiny Update 1.2.0. Until resolved, players may have to enter alternate activities from the Director and attempt to re-launch the tower if they encounter a black screen error.

Cream of the Crop

Movie of the Week: 2 Man Calus 1 Phase

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Honorable Mention: Street Fighting Man

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