A data-driven entity-component approach to develop universally accessible games

Abstract

Design and implementing accessible games can be challenging, particularly when the designers wish to address different interaction capabilities. Universally-Accessible Games (UA-Games), for instance, follow the principles of the Design for All, aiming to enable the broadest audience as possible to play. Although there are papers regarding the design of UA-Games, the implementation can still be challenging. This paper presents a flexible and extensible approach to implement an UA-Game. The approach relies in a data-driven and component based architecture to allow game entities to be created, managed and customized during run-time. Doing so, it is possible to change the behavior and presentation of the game whilst it is running, allowing the game to adapt itself to better address the interaction needs of the user. Furthermore, being data-driven, it is possible to create and customize user profiles to address specific interaction requirements. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.