Harmonium, a Deaf-Centered Musical

I am a person that really loves video games. Games that I like to play are games that I like to recommend to friends and family. I am also someone that likes to stay in the know on upcoming games. As someone who works in The Whole Person, I was looking at how the video games I play try to incorporate accessibility. On December 7, 2023, I decided to stay up a bit late to watch the “Video Game Awards.” Unsurprisingly, this is an award ceremony to Video games, akin to something like the Emmy’s, Grammy’s, etc. This game ceremony is a great way to stay up to date with new video game releases and announcements. For instance, one particular game caught my eye.

There was a trailer for a video game that said it was aimed at people that are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. This game is called “Harmonium.” The game trailer opens up with a kid talking in American Sign Language, excited for the main character’s upcoming show. The scene changes to the said main character, who signs to her father that she wants to make her show special. Strangely, the trailer then transitions to a song that is vocally sung as the main character seems to be magically whisked away into another world. The background is filled with various colors and the main character signs her an articulate manner to convey her feelings. Various scenes from the game seem to be clipped together to display the journey that the main character will venture through.

As someone who is not deaf, I found this trailer somewhat strange. Harmonium aims to make a Musical, which is full of audio notes and tunes, and then aims at an audience that is mostly deaf or hard of hearing. Additionally, there seems to be vocal tracks. I decided to contact a member of our Deaf Services department, Micki Keck, to see what her opinions on the matter were.

This is what Micki had to say:

“This game is a step in the right direction for accessibility for deaf representation because it is deaf-centered.” 

According to the ASL website, Hand Speak, deaf-centered is defined as “a cultural, linguistic, and ethnic perspective of the Deaf people, as opposed to pathological, medical perspective of phonocentric people.” Essentially, it boils down to treating hearing impaired individuals as a person, rather than someone with a medical condition.

Due to the deaf-centric approach, Micki notes that the game provides some representation for the deaf community. She says that “It is off to a good start,” but also that she would like to “see more deaf-centered video games.”

Micki goes into more detail about her thoughts:

“Music might be a little different for us deaf and hard of hearing people. I went to concerts with my Ex hard of hearing husband who was a die-hard concert goer in the past. I prefer visual shows like ‘Stomp’, ‘Blue Men’, ‘Cirque due Soleil’, and more. That is my kind of visual music, music to my eyes.”

This insight by Micki is quite interesting as it shows that Harmonium may be a promising game to look forward to, but also a game that needs a lot of development time to ensure that it is properly accessible. If the game developers take a deaf-centric approach to programming, the game may be a hit amongst the Deaf Community. That said, Harmonium was only just announced, so there is currently little to no gameplay footage, at the time of this writing. The game looks to be ambitious in its vision, so I personally hope that they give the programmers enough time. It will be interesting to see how Harmonium develops over the years.

To learn more about Harmonium, and its developers, click HERE

To learn about our Deaf Services, click HERE