Well being able to go blind in a game could be really problematic...
*accidentally set off a boomer box, requisite writhing, screaming, etc*
"Okay, I need to stop and consider things carefully. I can't see, but if I get to the Empaths I'll be fine. Fark it hurts! Uhh... felgercarb... which way am I facing?"
*fumbles around helplessly*
"Grr, this is madness! I'm doomed! I can't get all the way back to town from here!"
*flops down hopelessly on the ground*
*fiddles aimlessly with blades of grass and a small plant*
"I'll probably starve to death out here in this forsaken forest. Farking boomer! Who the heck keeps valuable objects inside an explosive shrapnel bomb anyways? Gorram piece of no-goo.... wait... is this..."
*grasps small plant and rips it out of the ground*
"Nemoih Root!!!"
*devouring of root, Popeye theme, wounds are miraculously cured!*
*gets hit by a train*
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On a side note, however, I've actually considered the possibility of blind characters in 3D graphical games and how you could make something like that work. Certain people like monks, or demon hunters, or whatever, could ritualistically blind themselves.
This makes their screen go black, permanently. They still have a UI though, and can still interact with things by bumping into them. Every time you bump into something you get a visual cue in the blackness, a quick and vague flash of whatever it is you bumped into. The visual cue quickly fades, though. This way you can stumble around and at first discern a "blur" object to show you hit something.
As you get more used to being blind, your character starts to compensate and to "see" in different ways. In a short amount of time you start to get flashes in the shape of the thing you bump into, like walking into someone will flash a humanoid shape in the blackness which will fade quickly. As you get more used to your condition, you develop area memory, and things you bump into or roads and paths you walk on you learn the place of and can start to "see" all the time in a kind of black and white outline. Moving to areas you have never been while blind will blur to blackness though, depending on how far you go.
Eventually you can start to see everything, even new locations, in a permanent, but still vague, black and white outline because your non-visual senses pick up. You can "see" moving objects very well, and can dimly make out the surrounding area, even if it is unfamiliar, just by listening. Eventually you can get so attuned to your other senses that you can see almost normally again, albeit with blurring and distortion and whatnot.
Why would you willingly go blind then? Well, aside from Roleplaying reasons, you could also add other unusual incentives such as the ability to "see" smells as clouds of gases in the air, the ability to hear things from much farther away than normal people, an immunity to being blinded by light, better "vision" in darkness, heat detection, and more.
~Dune Walker~
