Using the Tar Heel Gameplay website, it’s easy to make games and activities out of YouTube videos. Tar Heel Gameplay has enabled me to convert ten of Francis Alÿs “Children’s Games” videos recorded from around the world, into very low-pressure accessibility activities. If you can activate a mouse click or a space bar press (perhaps using special assistive technology), it should be possible to play these, certainly on a Windows PC using Chrome.
If you sign up for an account at Tar Heel Gameplay, you can create simple activities yourself. It’s possible to make a multiple-choice adventure game, for example, with branching choices from the “Advanced” Create tab. Easier still is to make a “Basic” gameplay where the chosen video will pause after a fixed length of time, waiting for the user to decide when the action should continue. Whatever you decide, give the Gameplay a name, rating, topic and language then publish it. Next select Home, Find a Gameplay, then search for your creation. Click on it to play. You can then share the link as I’m doing with you below.
Games adapted in this way include: Kick the Bottle (game 1), African Subbuteo (game 27), Sandcastles (game 6), Skipping (game 22), Snow Games (game 33), Snail Races (game 31), Don’t Step on the Cracks (game 23), Hand Stacks (game 21) and a couple for parental guidance perhaps… The Wheel (game 29) played by a very brave lad, and Mirrors (game 15) a deserted town first-person shooter for kids in real life using the sun as a weapon. Some of these activities have a surprise ending such as Snail Races and African Subbuteo.
