This topic is a bit of a spin-off of a discussion that started in the topic "Gaming Tags/Keywords That Turn You Off", so if you're lost for context, check that out. This opening will be a reply to a post by mqstout, which I will include underlined below. Of course, everyone is free and welcome to contribute their own opinions regardless of prior participation.

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On the accessibility sub-topic that was discussed above (not replying, too many folks, etc)... Accessibility is many things. I'm going to highlight some great ones.

Literal accessibility options

* Many games nowadays have color blindness settings (e.g., Grim Dawn). Great!
* FTL's color blindness setting? I always turned it on. It added an icon and slash over a room without oxygen, making it easier to notice.
* Flashes and screen shakes? I always turn those off when I can. They never add to the enjoyment of a game to me.
* [If using a controler] Vibration? OFF! A vibrating controller literally hurts. (Yes, it's medical.)
* On that, notice the option of using controller vs keyboard+mouse? That's accessibility.
* If a game doesn't let you remap controls, chances are it has a ton of other issues going against it too. Not that I'll discover them because I won't be able to play it. (A pox on WASD!)
* Input inversion? (Up means UP damn it!)
* Subtitles? They're going to be on for me if they're an option.
* Most games audio defaults are horribly mixed for my ears: I'll turn music way down, ambiance up, sfx in the mid, and voices to max. Or some permutation of that.
* Pausing [as I mentioned above].

I could spend time to think of more on that, but I think you'll get the point.

Difficulty and accessibility

The next part of accessibility moving out is about difficulty settings. "waah waah my [souls-like/retro-Nintendo-Hard] game wouldn't be a souls-like game without it being brutally hard". Fuck off. Difficulty settings are the way to go. There's literally no harm to you as a player if the developers add toggle-able difficulty settings. If you're an achievement hunter/e-penis-measurer, perhaps achievements are only enabled with default settings (or the game has a default setting). I say this as someone who really enjoyed the hell out of Nioh, which, sadly was pretty low on accessibility overall. I would have liked it a lot more and probably would even have gone in on the DLCs if it had had some difficulty options. Remember how hard FTL was on release, if you played it? It only got better when Subset added the easy setting (and also added hard setting for those who wanted it). I got better at the game -- even playing on normal -- when I could practice things and try things out on easy.

Here [attached] are a couple screenshots of Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark's difficulty settings screen (and, upcoming feature, New Game Plus choices). Sadface: I really wish Bloodstaned had New Game+ settings like that... More games need to be like that.

And still on difficulty (which is still accessibility): Final Fantasy X. Arguably the best in the series (certainly mine) can be completed without engaging with the sphere grid/level-up system at all. You have to do a lot of awkward things to do a "no sphere grid challenge", but it's a challenge that's possible and exists because the game was designed with a mind toward accessibility (see also: in game option for cursor memory and summon animation shortcuts). By making the game "easier", they also made the game harder for those who wanted that.

Cultural accessibility

This is one probably hit hardest in the discussion above, and it clearly should be discussed. Most of the "dumbed down for the masses" (to quote someone up there) could be approached by difficulty settings. It might be feelsbad (for designers even, perhaps) for entire subsystems to go away with settings, but such a two-pronged approach might be best. But sometimes things (including games) are significantly improved when they lose elements or are re-thought /re-designed (such as hunger and food management in early WRPGs). You might not know until they're try them out. Sid Meier has a few interviews/talks online about this and his game design methods.

I also subtitled this area "cultural accessibility". Different people like different things (which is entirely why markets are so successful). Sometimes a game can be "just so Japanese" that I won't enjoy playing it because, culturally, it's not for me. (Incomprehensible plot, or whatever else.) Or a game can be so overfilled with cheap jokes like memes and references that it's just cringey or even totally foreign to someone who isn't up with them. Localization teams can do a lot to work with cultural accessibility. The Dragon Quest localization teams are famously some of the best in the industry for smoothing cultural references, converting jokes, and so on. Mark Rosewater [Magic the Gathering lead designer] has a few articles about this, in particular about why he feels the Kamigawa and Lorwyn blocks weren't as successful as they could have been. He calls this 'resonance' in his posts.

But even corpse persistence options, blood color, or phobia avoidance options (such as ability to mod out spiders with some other monster) fall under this. Of course it can be argued this is bad when, say, skeletons are entirely removed from a game to make it available to the Chinese market. But that's usually a lazy developer if it's done that way.


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I like the idea of partitioning the issue up and looking at the different aspects of it. I think what distinguishes these categories is that different types of accessibility make games accessible to different audiences. Take the "Literal" category: for individuals whom Dark Souls is too difficult, the ability to turn on subtitles or rebind keys isn't going to make the game significantly more accessible. However, for people who can handle the challenges presented by the game's design, these options will make progress through the game smoother. I think this first category is generally uncontroversial then, because of this: the main benefactors of"Literal" accessibility options are people who already enjoy the game. After all, if you think a game is very badly designed and unfun, color blind mode and audio mixing won't profit you much, since at the end of the day you're still playing a game that you think is badly designed and unfun.

The other two are trickier, and I don't think they're entirely distinct. I generally feel that multiple difficulty options are a good thing, but I don't think there's any obligation on the creator's part to include them. It would be great if Dark Souls had an easy made that made it so more players could experience the game. That said, do I think that Dark Souls is worse because it DOESN'T have an easy mode? I absolutely do not. It is perfectly valid for Hidetaka Miyazaki and From Software to create a game that is intended for more patient, resolved players. Goodness grief, the game's English tagline was "PREPARE TO DIE"; if you bought it for a casual, relaxing experience, you only have yourself to blame.

This is where some contention arises: maybe creators aren't obligated to put these sort of accessibility options in their games, but why shouldn't they? The first, easier to make argument, is simply that adding these options to games takes resources that could have been allocated to other sectors. While in some games tweaking difficulty only requires incrementing and decrementing numbers, others require enemies to be moved, levels to be redesigned, items to be changed. Let's imagine that to add an easy mode to Dark Souls, an area would've needed to been cut from the game (let's say The Tomb of Giants). If this was the trade, do you think an easy mode should've been added anyways?

Getting into "Cultural", which is definitely the most interesting topic of discussion among the three IMO, I can't help but see accessibility as totally absurd. Forgive the inept analogy, but imagine someone is at a 5 star restaurant that's famed the world over for its unparalleled trout chowder. They order it, and eagerly set upon it when it arrives. Momentarily they spew out what they've imbibed and call a manager to complain. Their grievance: "I hate fish!". Who is to blame here? Is it the chef's fault for failing to prepare a trout chowder that would please someone who hated fish? Is it the chef's responsibility to ensure that every dish they prepare can accommodate every palate? Obviously not.

It works the same way for games. Take "One Night, Hot Springs": "one night, hot springs" is specifically about issues a trangender woman in Japan might face, involves an onsen (which is something that's specific to Japan), and even at least mentions a specific law in Japan. Localizing the game for another culture would not make sense; nor would removing all LGBT content (which would amount to removing all content in this case). What if someone who is homophobic and transphobic wants to play this game? What about a fundamentalist muslim? Is it incumbent on the developer to include modes for these people? As was pointed out, removing all content that makes this game inaccessible for these groups would be tantamount to deleting the game.

You can't expect all games to be made to your exact taste and spoon fed to you. You have to make an effort and exert yourself to meet the game on its own terms. Which isn't to say that games can't be critiqued. Some people may simply dislike trout chowder, but even for people who do like it, it may be over/under cooked/seasoned. But if you aren't willing to do any work to understand something on its own terms, then you abrogate your own right to ask it to understand you on yours.

Thank you for that link. I hadn't encountered it before and definitely plan to read through it.

You're welcome.

By the way, seeing the Intel HD Gaming topic reminded me of another accessibility issue, and that would be system requirements. Basically, a game with higher system requirements is less accessible than one with lower requirements, as not everyone can afford it. If a game requires a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to run, for example, the game will be inaccessible to thosg who aren't willing to spend over $1000 on *just* the GPU (nevermind the cost of the CPU, RAM, and the rest of the computer). On the other hand, if the game can run on a system with Intel HD 4000 and on a CPU as week as the z8350, far more people will be able to enjoy the game.

Note that, from an accessibility standpoint, what matters are the minimum specs for the game to run acceptably, not the recommended specs. Also, one could assume that graphics settings are turned down, which means the developers should make it clear, in the settings menu, which settings will give the best performance on weaker computers. There's been too many cases where I am trying to slightly improve the performance of a game but can't figure out what settings are best for that purpose.

I have seen a rare few games that noted such as "this is the one that really affects performance most" on a few options.

Having read through all those guidelines, I'm mostly in accord with their advocation. They seem to understand what to me is the critical principle: creative vision isn't the currency with which accessibility should be bought. To quote them,

"As with other areas of accessibility, the key principle is avoiding unnecessary exclusion." (bolding is theirs)

This accentuation of unnecessary explicitly implies the recognition of necessary exclusion. Take the guideline "Do not make precise timing essential to gameplay – offer alternatives, actions that can be carried out while paused, or a skip mechanism": It would be all but impossible to make a rhythm game under this constraint. People who lack finely developed motor skills will probably not be able to participate in rhythm games to any appreciable degree. And that is OK. Everyone has things they'd like to do that they'll never have the chance to. No one's got it all. Naturally, this applies to some more than others, inequity and all that. The point is that no one should be bound to satisfy or attempt to satisfy everyone's needs and wants with anything they do. When you make a rhythm game you shouldn't have to wring your hands worrying about the degree to which impaired individuals will be able to enjoy your game.

Reading back on that paragraph, it sounds a little harsh, but again, I agree with those guidelines, and I think it's laudable when developers (creators) labor to ensure the broadest reasonable accessibility for their work. I'm just positing that there are limits to how far accessibility can reach.

I don't believe there is any obligation for creators to move up to that line either. "Provide an option to disable blood and gore" is another guideline. While there is no reason why it couldn't be added, thereby moving one step closer to the line (maximum reasonable accessibility), DOOM doesn't need a "no violence" option. Ultraviolence and brutality are part of that game's ethos. It is silly to request that the creators renege on a game's vision to accommodate groups whos participation was never material in the first place. So again, to reiterate, I'm happy that options are added to games that expand the potential playerbase, but when it is a question of creative vision versus accessibility, creative vision should prevail. The vision (and its product) belong to the creator; it's their prerogative to decide what exactly does or doesn't hew to that vision. If Id Software decided (very reasonable) that a "no violence" option didn't fit with their game, you shouldn't blame them for not including it.

I think another important distinction is in what capacity you are making your game more accessible. Many of the "Literal" accessibility features are uncontroversial because their function is to mitigate challenges not intended by the game design. Doubtlessly developers never intended part of the challenge of any game to be that players are colorblind and can't properly parse the information on their screen, nor that on your keyboard the WASD keys are non-adjacent, and so moving with them is very difficult. Since those aren't intended to be part of the experience of playing the game, colorblind modes and re-bindable keys make sense. An easy mode for Dark Souls isn't quite the same thing. The difficulties average players encounter going through Dark Souls are intended to be part of the experience. Most players who don't finish the game will fail to do so not because they can't, but because they simply won't. They become frustrated and decide that the game is unfair, and that they aren't having fun. I respect that, and I'm not going to spew illiterate, childish taunts like "git gud" at them. Some of the challenges in Dark Souls ARE unfair, and it can be frustrating. However, I would be willing to bet that if most of these players gritted their teeth and told themselves they're going to beat this game, not only would they be able to complete it, they would likely do so in <100 hours, which is a reasonable time frame for a large scale RPG (although I guess you wouldn't consider Dark Souls an RPG). After all, I wasn't any better equipped to handle Demon's Souls the first time I played that, but I managed to complete it anyways. Ultimately, it seems to me that From's decision to make Dark Souls difficult is as valid as Id's to make DOOM violent.

Finally, I also want to mention appeal, which I see as the ultimate form of accessibility. If one wants to see the product born from absolute devotion to appeal, they need only look at popular media. In the pursuit of the broadest possible audience they've abandoned innovation, stylization, controversy, complexity, challenge. I personally find the results of this method to be bland, mindless, and most of all, unengaging. It is not my aim to ridicule or demean people who enjoy those entertainments. They find pleasures in those things, and I do not. What I want is to see that not all art becomes a homogeneous mass, accessible and inoffensive to all. I want there to be games where the player will fail. I think failure is as important as success. For me, the beatings, humiliations, disappointments and failures I've had in life are perhaps more important than my successes. I know, I know. Just because they're important to me doesn't mean I should force them on others. Don't let people fail at life. Don't let them languish for their entire existence in a tepid morass whose nocent gravity cloys their very sense of the desperation of their means. But sometimes people should fail; sometimes they should suffer. Even if only by their own volition. Should the self-loved envy the self-loathed the privilege of self-harm? Not all experiences in life are for everyone. You have yours, I'll have mine.

Relevant YouTube video, and was ABSOLUTELY a contributor to my giving up Guild Wars back when I did allow myself to play an online game. I also want to give out another shout-out to Grim Dawn (I know, I'm a broken record!): one of their more recent-ish updates improved spell effects/particles that made them simultaneously prettier, but also less likely to wash out the screen to whites -- making the game look better AND be friendlier and more accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NbwizzxQ_s

So recently I've been playing the PS4 Spider-Man game (disc version, of course). It has some good accessibility features.

Here's an article about it from when the game came out a couple years ago: https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/spider-man-accessibility-options-feature/

Subtitles aren't on this screen, but are on the main options screen rather than this sub-screen. The sound page also has audio normalization filters so you can tell it not to have super quiet and super loud moments (horray!).

What about this Spider-Man one makes me happy? Look at that "QTE auto-complete". That's awesome! QTEs add nothing to events and just interrupt cut-scenes. I was so happy to toggle that. (There are still a couple in the game that don't seem to be covered by that, oversight -- but they appear to be minor plot branch ones.)

"Change taps to holds"? Great! Fucking "mash button to wake up from stun" (and similar) is stupid.

I don't have skip puzzles on -- I like the game's puzzles -- but I'm glad it's there for those who just want the action game part of it.

Features like these should be STANDARD.

And, on a related note:

The original post mentioned spiders. I've seen enough posts in various game forums from people asking where spiders are so they can either avoid them, steel themselves to be able to deal with it, or know to bypass the game. Arachnophobia is common enough that developers should consider an arachnophobia warning or setting.

The problem with saying 'This is fine' to that design misbehaviour, is where it is abused as an excuse to deliberately avoid having to even think about merely considering making a game more accessible.
Such misbehaviour is what Niantic routinely do with their mobile device Augented Reality games. They thumb their nose at disability laws globally and are allowed to get away with it.
The moment any disabled gamer complains about such developer misbehaviour, the chorus from the able bodied fanbase is invariably, 'Go away. Find another game to play. Don't force OUR game to be playable by YOU.' All that manages to do is reinforce the developers mindset that their misbehaviour in deliberately excluding disabled gamers, is the correct course of action. Being able to turn off/on/set to overload, blood and gore is actually good.
Depending on how the blood and gore is generated and how persistent it is in game, some computers will have problems with it. So while it's an accessibility matter, it can fall under hardware capability, and how affordable, or not, appropriate hardware is. It isn't, always, part of violence/no violence.

How about an option to skip the action sequences, for those who are only interested in the puzzles and/or QTEs?

(I agree that having to mash a button (or pair of buttons, like on the control pad) to break free is a bad game mechanic.)

I like it when you can turn head bobbing off in FPS games. It makes me seasick!

I didn't try the lower difficulty settings, but of the 4 available at the start of the game, and 3rd of the 4 is default. The 1st one says minimal combat to experience the story. Difficulty can be adjusted at any point. Fortunately, there are no "rewards" for higher difficulty, etc.

Personally, I think head bobbing should be disabled by default.

Furthermore, I would say that:
* Subtitles should be enabled by default.
* Games that use a 4:3 ratio but are released for modern systems should default to keeping the aspect ratio.
* The default keymap should fit the conventions of the genre, but every function should, by default, be mapped to a key that is found on smaller laptops. (Final Fantasy 7 PC (CD-ROM version) is an offender here; by default, everything is mapped to the numeric keypad, making the game unplayable without a patch on laptops.) It is OK for the keymap to be redundant (map something to a key on the numeric keypad, but also map the same function to one of the main keyboard keys). In particular, it *must* be possible to reach the options menu and remap controls without access to keys that aren't found on some keyboards. (There's also the possible issue of players using non-US keyboard layouts, but as I only use US keyboards, I'll leave it to somebody else to discuss this issue.)

Developers also clearly don't test their remapping sometimes. Far Cry 2 had a remap screen that let you remap most everything... But a few things were hard-coded. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something like "use turret I'm standing near or gun of the vehicle I'm in" or something like that was hard-coded, and set to the key I had remapped enter/exit vehicle to. So there was that.

You can use a turret, but once you do, you can't get *out* of a turret if another key is bound to the hard-coded turret-use key. (Unless you have taken damage and the option to heal yourself comes up -- healing takes you out of the gun).

I wish I could see what the process is that causes a thing like that to happen in the first place.

If I'm writing a game, keybindings are always going through a translation map. It wouldn't even occur to me to somehow make a hardcoded binding for some specific thing in the game, and it would require me to go out of my way to work around the *normal* way input is handled. So what do they do wrong? First implement hard-coded console controls, then hope that the sorry-ass company that gets hired to make the PC port doesn't miss it? I can't think of much else.