Am I crazy for thinking that saying "games don't need to be for everyone" is inherently ableist because the only people being literally prevented from even having the choice of deciding if a game is for them are people who cannot access the fucking game?
But... games really don't need to be for everyone. Whatever person you pick, there will be games they cannot enjoy, for a variety of reasons. Forcing games to be accessible to everyone will just decay game designs and genres to the point where it'll be one homogeneous mess. You can't make a person who can't enjoy and doesn't have the capacity to play strategy games, good at strategy games - not without making the game play itself, at which point it's the equivalent of handing them a disconnected controller and cheering on them for "helping", which is just condescending.
Stop looking at what a disabled person's sense of accomplishment might be through the lens of someone who is able bodied.
Your threshold for what is accomplishment is much more easily crossed than it is for me. So imagine for a second that you don't have the fine motor skills to actually play the game the way an able bodied person might play the game. That means that playing the game is more challenging for me than it is for you.
And if accessibility options don't exist to level the playing field, isn't that directly voiding the developers vision that YALL so desperately gatekeep?
Outside of the gaming sphere, the world already has a series of events where participants directly compete against each other, overcoming challenges and comparing their achievements. And in the interest of
fairness, the regular Olympics and the Special Olympics are separate events.
I do not mind the inclusion of "easy modes" in games. But I do mind when people, for any reason, want to claim the same level of achievement for "completing" the game on different difficulty levels. They are different levels of challenge. Overcoming them should produce different rewards, and different acknowledgement.
As you say, to a disabled person, completing the lesser achievement - finishing the game with assists or on an easier difficulty - is in itself a greater achievement. So why can't the games clearly delineate the level of those achievements, whether literally as achievements or through other means like labelling the intended difficulty level as "normal", so that the people with reduced ability can still boast their feats, without infringing on the sense of accomplishment of those for whom it was the greater challenge that provided the same sense of achievement?
At what point do the people who desire greater challenge become the minority that has to beg for the industry to cater to them as well? Why is it only gatekeeping if it's the ones who want
less are shut out, and not the ones that want
more? So few games still cater to the hardcore crowd nowadays, with all of the industry increasingly targeting broad age and social groups to maximize profits. Why is it that out of hundreds of games that release every year, it's the few that still position themselves for the challenge-oriented gamers that draw everyone's fire? The industry is full of games that cater or try to cater to everyone, why can't hardcore gamers have their own little island in it too?
