[the_logos]

That depends on what your goals are. Graphics are, flat-out, one of the most important parts of computer/console games for most of the audience for them. Whether the audience is "right" or "wrong" is kind of irrelevant. The text interface and presentation is easily the #1 reason text MUDs represent only a tiny niche in the overall MUD/MMO market.

I'm partially color-blind myself actually, and color-blindness is reasonably prevalent among men, so it's worth taking into consideration, certainly, because at most it requires minor changes to development to accommodate them, in my opinion at least.

Not efficiently and in a cost-effective manner, no, or at least, not without sacrificing a lot of possibility. Imagine playing a first-person-shooter, for instance, like Gears of War under that kind of system. The info the game would have to throw at you is far more than can be communicated verbally. I'm running on vector A, having to dodge around piles of rubble in my way. Meanwhile I'm watching my multiple teammates go here there and everywhere while the enemy does the same thing. Ooops, there's a grenade coming in on trajectory Y and quick, your teammate is being chainsawed to death a few feet to your right while you're keeping an eye on whether anyone's picked up the sniper rifle on the ground over there.

Unfortunately, the maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words comes into play here. It takes a LOT of words to describe, with any degree of detail, what's in a picture that has any degree of complexity (and the 'pictures' that most modern 3d games present are fairly complex), and in a 3d game, what's in that picture can be constantly shifting.

--matt