Sign language has reached the world of video games and does so with force. The video game is called Moss and is enjoyed with the virtual reality glasses PS VR.
In this game we will meet Quill, an ambitious and very funny little mouse who dreams of crossing the confines of his village.
One day, while exploring the forest, Quill discovers a mysterious stone that reveals an ancient magic. Soon dramatic events will happen while a distant evil imposes its yoke. With his uncle in danger, Quill will embark on an epic journey for which he will need our help.
We will travel through forgotten realms, we will solve puzzles that will make us think and we will face small and big threats.
In August they presented a video of Quill, the little mouse protagonist of the video game, presenting himself in American sign language: 'It's a pleasure to meet you, my name is Quill'.
https://emb.d.tube/#!/kastiuz/kwos17hs
The videogame Moss was presented during the most important video game convention in the world, Expo E3. All the press coincided in affirming that the game is surprising and that Quill falls in love with sign language people.
Unlike other virtual reality videogames, the person who plays is not the one who has the action immersed in the virtual world, but who accompanies and interacts with the protagonist, the Quill mouse, who knows that the player is watching it.
Richard Lico, animation director of Polyarc, said: Why sign language in a video game?
The creators of Moss wanted to help the person who plays to overcome the puzzles when they are stuck.
Quill is not a simple avatar, but reacts intelligently to the way you play and helps solve puzzles, for which at first introduced some mime, but finally it seemed better idea to introduce sign language fully.
The choice of sign language achieves this goal, while benefiting a very underrepresented part of players (Choosing sign language accomplishes this goal, while also benefiting a drastically underrepresented section of gamers)
When Richard posted on Twitter Quill's video presenting himself in sign language, he obtained more than 10,000 retweets and 31,000 likes, so he was very pleasantly surprised and is convinced that it should not be surprising that in the future more video games use the language of signs as a way to connect with people who play.
UNESCO recognizes the videogame as one of the cultural industries, specifically in the audiovisual and creative media sector.
Moss is the first commercial videogame in history that incorporates sign language as a form of expression of one of its characters, it also makes it a charming and fully integrated into history, so it could be considered the last cultural conquest that he lacked to perform in sign language.
Hopefully, as the director of animation of Moss said, it is the first of many that will come.
For the moment, if you're interested, you can already book it on the PlayStation Store at a price of 29.99€, but you can not enter its magical world until the end of February.
