Inclusive design needs to go beyond accessibility

[Alek]

Hi folks,

I've wanted to make this thread for some time because it relates to many discussions I see taking place on Restera and other gaming forums. I think that some of the conversations that we're having surrounding games and accessibility are a little limited and I wanted to use this thread to open up a wider discussion about inclusive game design.

An area of discussion that I think I important, but under explored in conversation on communities like this, is the distinction between accessibility and enablement, and particularly what that means in the context of games.

Games as a distinct inclusivity challenge

The first thing I think that is important to highlight is that games offer a distinct challenge for inclusivity because they often have many purposes. Historically, a lot of work has focused on areas like web accessibility where the users goals are pragmatic, they need to get x information out of the system and the designers will try to provide accessibility tools to help the player accomplish those experiences.

However in games, alongside those pragmatic (functional) goals, games most frequently feature hedonic (enjoyment) and eudemonic (meaning) elements.

Games require players understand the systems and are able to get information out of them but they also intend to deliver an experience that elicits a sense of pleasure for players. And many games also seek to have long-term meaning, with content like video game narratives seeking to change the way players think and feel about particular topics, and resonate with players in the long-term.

So in order for a game to be truly inclusive, video game players need to be provided with both access so that they can theoretically use the systems featured in the game, but also enabled so that these players are able to realise the games experiential goals (which may be hedonic and or eudemonic).

Enablement vs Access in Context

In real terms, this means if games really want to be inclusive, playable by everyone, then they need to go beyond features that only provide access to the system, and include features which enable players to accomplish their hedonic goals. As an example I want to use Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuelled.

Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuelled is a an arcade racer targeting a wide range of audiences, and the original game is one of my favourite childhood titles. Yet, it's a game that I don't feel is very inclusive, both for reasons of accessibility, and enablement too.

On the access side of things, Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuelled lacks features like custom control remapping. Custom button remapping means that some players simply won't be able to play, for instance a player who only has control of one half of the controller due to disability, won't be able to steer and accelerate at the same time.

But on the enablement side of its design, you also have some very punishing track design which can make the game difficult to enjoy if you're not able to operate the game as quickly or efficiently as other players.

To provide an explicit example, Hotair Skyway (pictured above) is not a track we can enjoy when I play Crash Team Racing with my mum. She can't stay on the track, she can't keep up with the AI. Even when the AI is placed on easy mode the game isn't successful in enabling her to have the same hedonic experiences that my sister and I have when playing the game. The experience isn't inclusive.

The Mario Kart series actually tackles this issue in a number of ways. Engine classes let you modify the overall race speed, making turns approach you less quickly and becoming more manageable. While a driving assist option gives players a little bit of assistance in staying on the track.

Another example that I quite like is the bowling alley scenario. This too is a game, but a real world one. Bowling alleys often offer 'gutter guards' so that players can experience the game in a positive way even if they'll don't have enough power to throw the ball. Does it make the game easier and significantly alter it's design? Absolutely, but it doesn't detract from the experience of anyone that is playing without the guards and it provides a means in which players who can't aim the ball in a straight line (due to a motor disability, a cognitive impairment, or any other reason) can have an experience of bowling that isn't absolutely terrible.

If you're interested in reading more about accessibility, enablement and inclusion there's a neat HCI paper that centres on this discussion on the link below.

https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~pcairns/pubs/Power_ThirdWave_18.pdf

Options are optional

I think this is where the discussion can become a little bit stunted, because it's easy to see how a feature like Mario kart's driving assist affects the overall design of the game. It's not just about providing access, but changing how players interact with the game, how it is played, the challenge it poses, even the routes the player can take on the track.

However if you backtrack to the experience that the designers want players to get from the game, the feelings they want players to feel during play, these features enable someone like my mother to have an experience of the game that's much more closely aligned with that of my sister and I, she can experience the whole race from start to finish, and she gets to have a fair chance at beating at least some of the AI.

Additionally, to provide a brief note about options, the inclusion of options and features that enable inclusive player experiences does not take away from the experience of any other player. My mum playing Uncharted 4 on the easiest difficulty with all of the accessibility options enabled does not take anything away from me for completing the game on the hardest setting. I love that she has been able to get an experience of that game that's somewhat close to my own.

Disability as a social construct

I think something that's important to bear in mind when opening the space for this conversation is that disability is widely considered a social construct. People aren't inherently disabled, instead the disability manifests from the result of a mismatch between the users capability and the expected interaction.

Broadly speaking, I do not consider myself disabled, but when playing standing VR games my untreated scoliosis can make the game experience quite painful after a little while. Plus, I'm not quite as flexible as everyone else so the speed and range of movement expected in some titles inherently makes things more difficult. In those experiences, the presence of difficulty options enables me to re-align the games expectations of the user (me) in such a way that I can have the types of experiences expected by the games designers. Difficulty options (and many other techniques that adjust the games design) help enable players and therefore, create inclusive player experiences.

This idea of disability as a social construct emphasises why I think that inclusive design is so important within games, because within this space we have an opportunity to ensure that as many as possible can share our experiences.

Key points and guidance for discussion (TLDR)

• I think when thinking about inclusive design, we should also be thinking about both accessibility, but enablement too. It's often the case that I see users talk about inclusive design as if it's only limited to surface level access, but I think within the context of games we have to go beyond that to enable players to have similar experiences (see discussion above).
• Feel free talk about any nice features that you've seen in games that you think 'enable players. I think more recent titles like The Last of Us Part 2 and Assassins Creed Valhala have some especially good options.
• I think it's important to think of disability as a social construct, and when framed in that way, games are a powerful opportunity to make people less commonly disabled, through inclusive design.
• In my opinion, we should have an inclusive design OT of some kind, where players can openly talk about accessibility issues and ask others about those elements of the games. I think having more and more players drive discussions about these subjects helps remind developers that inclusive design is important to players. I would think this would serve a similar purpose to the threads about representation in games.
• For this discussion, I would like to avoid talking about Dark Souls. It feels every accessibility discussion gravitates to that, but there are so many more games out there that also need to improve.

I've been thinking about posting this for a little while, hopefully it sparks some discussion here.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

 

[Rosebud]

Great thread.

For all the shit they get for being "too easy", Nintendo make games accessible to everyone. People can buy Mario Kart, Mario Odyssey, Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc. without a worry, and this shows every month on the charts.

 

[CortexVortex]

The Grimrock one is the wholesome content we all needed. Stuff like that makes me incredibly happy.

And yes, everyone should be able to enjoy their games, no matter if they have some kind of disability or maybe are just not very good at a specific genre.
As you already said it, an easy option doesn't ruin my fun when playing a game on hard. I love what Nintendo and Naughty Dog (and others of course) are doing to make sure that their games are accessible for everyone. That is the right way and I hope more devs will follow.

 

[Alek]

Click to shrink...

Some of the research I've conducted myself has involved speaking to game designers about the barriers to inclusive/accessible design and one of the most powerful tools is just having conversations with people with disabilities. People so often only design for themselves, and experience tremendous difficulty imagining the experiences of people with distinct capabilities / mindsets etc.

That's why playtesting is so important, and including people with disabilities in your testing plan is crucial in pushing to make inclusive games.

 

[Vimes]

As a designer, I've been thinking some similar thoughts and this helps kind of organize them.

I think something that's important to bear in mind when opening the space for this conversation is that disability is widely considered a social construct. People aren't inherently disabled, instead the disability manifests from the result of a mismatch between the users capability and the expected interaction.

Click to shrink...

I think this kind of framing is not only good for tackling accessibility issues, but is just generally a good way of thinking about design. Since the fundamental task of a designer is to resolve that mismatch.

I worked on levels for mobile physics puzzlers that had been contracted by the dev to the company I was working for, for a period of about a year. We had access to a live feed of people playing the game for playtests, brought in from other divisions of the company (in other words, average folks). I'm on the hardcore end as a gamer so let me tell you nothing is more humbling than realizing your genius puzzle design is simply not going to fly with a wider audience, or isn't going to be practical on a touch interface. The way these folks looked at the game was so fundamentally different from my own experience, and it's easy to see how that ought to be extended to differently abled folks.

That's why playtesting is so important, and including people with disabilities in your testing plan is crucial in pushing to make inclusive games.

Click to shrink...

Amen.

 

[Deleted member 1627]

Great OP. Really good stuff, thank you!

 

[Valentonis]

Mario Kart is the perfect example now that I think about it. Seriously, put on auto-accelerate, tilt controls, that antenna thing, and 50cc and literally anyone has the opportunity to do well. Would love to see other games follow that example.

 

[Juan]

Just posting to say I love that you're usually making this kind of thread (I mean detailed thread with a clear goal, details and explanation), I'm always excited when I see one thread of yours as I'm always expecting this kind of rich content within.

Also, my father was almost blind due to an illness related to his eyes, and as a Product Designer, it's always been on top of my mind to design for and with people who could share all sort of disabilities, even if they represent only a very small % of your users.

I thought Microsoft was pioneer on this topic regarding the large audience they have.

Quoting this specific part as I think it always should be on top of all designer's mind:

People aren't inherently disabled, instead the disability manifests from the result of a mismatch between the users capability and the expected interaction.

Click to shrink...

Again, thanks for those detailed threads of yours.

 

[Alek]

Just posting to say I love that you're usually making this kind of thread (I mean detailed thread with a clear goal, details and explanation), I'm always excited when I see one thread of yours as I'm always expecting this kind of rich content within.

Also, my father was almost blind due to an illness related to his eyes, and as a Product Designer, it's always been on top of my mind to design for and with people who could share all sort of disabilities, even if they represent only a very small % of your users.

I thought Microsoft was pioneer on this topic regarding the large audience they have.

Quoting this specific part as I think it always should be on top of all designer's mind:

Again, thanks for those detailed threads of yours.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! I'm really pleased that you like my threads.

That's interesting about your father. I think a lot of people are driven to make their product / game more inclusive due to experiences like that. I often talk about my Mum in these context because she's the closest to my memory, but she doesn't have a disability. She just has quite poor reaction times, and didn't grow up playing games. She can't operate two halves of the controller at the same time very well (so she can't do something simple like jump up a ledge in Spyro), and she seems to get a little worse with age.

When I was young I used to try and coach her to play games like Mario and Spyro, but she could never get far. But I was so happy that she was able to beat Uncharted 4, it's by far the most complex game she's ever completed and I'm really impressed with all the options Naughty Dog offer in that game.

 

[Android Sophia]

Really good thread, GungJoe. Inclusive design and accessibility are topics dear to me, due to being disabled in more ways than one. It can really frustrating to not be able to play a game properly because the designers something THEY thought was simple, but is actually very difficult for the user.

Click to shrink...

As someone who deals with joint and hand pain on a regular basis, options like this can be a godsend. Stuff like:

• Having the option to click stuff on screen vs pressing a key button.
• Being able to toggle features that normally require holding, such as crouching and aiming down the sights.
• Being able to hold a button instead of having to rapidly press them.
• Ensuring that every key on a keyboard, mouse, or gamepad can be mapped, no matter which key it is
• Ensuring that any key can be used as a modifier key, if needed.

Sometimes I've had to stop playing a game simply because doing a basic gameplay function is impossible. :\

 

[Deleted member 3815]

Great thread.

For all the shit they get for being "too easy", Nintendo make games accessible to everyone. People can buy Mario Kart, Mario Odyssey, Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc. without a worry, and this shows every month on the charts.

Click to shrink...

Actually Nintendo is by far the worse offender when it comes to inaccessibility in gaming, what with their stubbornness to allow players to access the option menu, not providing players the option to disable motion control or updating a game with a patch for accessibility reason.

Even basic game like Animal Crossing: New Horizon is inaccessible, especially if you're deaf as fishing, listening for balloon and shooting stars is a struggle. And there's the small text in the localized version of Fire Emblem: Three House which as far I am aware, never got a patch to increase the size. Heck Pokémon Let's Pikachu/Eevee was inaccessible to disabled games due to the forced motion controls which was present in both dock and handheld mode.

With Microsoft and Sony making an attempt to provide accessibility options in their gaming, Nintendo is pitifully falling behind.

So no Nintendo games are not accessible at all and anyone saying otherwise is clearly not speaking from a mindset of a Disabled gamers.

 

[Rosebud]

Actually Nintendo is by far the worse offender when it comes to inaccessibility in gaming, what with their stubbornness to allow players to access the option menu, not providing players the option to disable motion control or updating a game with a patch for accessibility reason.

Even basic game like Animal Crossing: New Horizon is inaccessible, especially if you're deaf as fishing, listening for balloon and shooting stars is a struggle. And there's the small text in the localized version of Fire Emblem: Three House which as far I am aware, never got a patch to increase the size. Heck Pokémon Let's Pikachu/Eevee was inaccessible to disabled games due to the forced motion controls which was present in both dock and handheld mode.

With Microsoft and Sony making an attempt to provide accessibility options in their gaming, Nintendo is pitifully falling behind.

So no Nintendo games are not accessible at all and anyone saying otherwise is clearly not speaking from a mindset of a Disabled gamers.

Click to shrink...

I was only talking about the game design because it was the focus, but I agree with you.

In terms of accessibility for disabled gamers, TLOU II is leagues ahead. But it's still not a game that anyone would like or feel comfortable playing.

 

[mael]

Click to shrink...

That is seriously awesome.

I saw GMTK shift toward accessibility in recent years and I think that's a shift that the whole industry should take.

Actually Nintendo is by far the worse offender when it comes to inaccessibility in gaming, what with their stubbornness to allow players to access the option menu, not providing players the option to disable motion control or updating a game with a patch for accessibility reason.

Even basic game like Animal Crossing: New Horizon is inaccessible, especially if you're deaf as fishing, listening for balloon and shooting stars is a struggle. And there's the small text in the localized version of Fire Emblem: Three House which as far I am aware, never got a patch to increase the size. Heck Pokémon Let's Pikachu/Eevee was inaccessible to disabled games due to the forced motion controls which was present in both dock and handheld mode.

With Microsoft and Sony making an attempt to provide accessibility options in their gaming, Nintendo is pitifully falling behind.

So no Nintendo games are not accessible at all and anyone saying otherwise is clearly not speaking from a mindset of a Disabled gamers.

Click to shrink...

Nintendo is notorious in NEVER providing options, it's been the case since the NES era if not before.
I don't think it's possible to adjust volume in the vast majority of their games.
I had a friend who gamed on a tv where the sound was ALWAYS maxed out, playing Nintendo games was certainly an experience...
The fix we found was unplugging the sound part of the RGB cables from the consoles to make it bearable.
Sometimes it's better to play without sound than letting the whole neighborhood know you're gaming (that was in the 90s btw).

So yeah not surprised Nintendo is so shit at providing accessibility options.
They're kind of a one size fit all mentality, they've gotten vastly better recently though.
Mario Kart 8 DX's driving aid is fantastic for example.
But it just shows how far they're coming from really.

 

[Alek]

Actually Nintendo is by far the worse offender when it comes to inaccessibility in gaming, what with their stubbornness to allow players to access the option menu, not providing players the option to disable motion control or updating a game with a patch for accessibility reason.

Even basic game like Animal Crossing: New Horizon is inaccessible, especially if you're deaf as fishing, listening for balloon and shooting stars is a struggle. And there's the small text in the localized version of Fire Emblem: Three House which as far I am aware, never got a patch to increase the size. Heck Pokémon Let's Pikachu/Eevee was inaccessible to disabled games due to the forced motion controls which was present in both dock and handheld mode.

With Microsoft and Sony making an attempt to provide accessibility options in their gaming, Nintendo is pitifully falling behind.

So no Nintendo games are not accessible at all and anyone saying otherwise is clearly not speaking from a mindset of a Disabled gamers.

Click to shrink...

I think that Nintendo's issues come from the fact that they're not thinking about accessibility as a global strategy. You get individual accessibility features here and there which are nice to see, but as a company they don't have accessibility as a focus at a strategic level. What that means is that they're not building their games with an integrated focus on the player experience of people with disabilities. They're not bringing people in to test their games ahead of launch as a broad strategy (I think they do this on occasion, but not universally), they're not consulting with players with disabilities on the design of past games and they're not empowering staff to drive their games to be more inclusive.

At Sony and Ubisoft, accessibility is someone's job, and that person is driving for the inclusive player experience from the very moment of the games inception. From pre-production, to production, and post-release they have someone that's questioning the design of their games, and making sure that their teams are aware of the accessibility implications of their chosen design.

It makes a big difference, because having that person or team, slowly spreads that design thinking throughout the entire company. But Nintendo don't have that, so the accessibility considerations come at the whims of an individual team or individual designer. You get custom remapping in one game, but not the others, you get neat enablement features like driving assist in Mario Kart, but then you can't even play some of their games if you can't use the motion controls.

I would say, it's worth giving them credit for the individual features that are valuable in their games, like the driving assist, but broadly speaking I agree with you. They're not doing a good job.

Out of curiosity do you think this is a wider cultural issue with Japanese development studios? I ask this because as far as I'm aware, the recent titles I've played from publishers like Capcom and Sega aren't especially accessible either. Persona 5 is the perfect example of form over function with its stylised menus being potentially difficult to read for people with visual or learning disabilities, and Resident Evil 2 becomes extremely difficult to play for players who are deaf very early on due to how Mr X is cued exclusively via sound.

 

[That1GoodHunter]

It's always going to be an upwards climb, as, even with publishers with great track records, like Sony, it varies wildly between studio to studio. None of the SIE studios, or even second parties like Bluepoint are trying to follow Naughty Dog's lead. Perhaps something like Sony's ICE team (develops technology used by all SIE studios), but for accessibility would be a good next step for publishers.

 

[jsnepo]

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This is amazing. Those devs should be commended.

 

[nitewulf]

Great thread.

For all the shit they get for being "too easy", Nintendo make games accessible to everyone. People can buy Mario Kart, Mario Odyssey, Pokemon, Animal Crossing etc. without a worry, and this shows every month on the charts.

Click to shrink...

Is this true for modern Nintendo though? I had no issues picking up N64 games but when I tried Mario Kart, Tennis and Smash for Switch with me nephews......my brain twisted trying to learn the controls.

 

[Alek]

It's always going to be an upwards climb, as, even with publishers with great track records, like Sony, it varies wildly between studio to studio. None of the SIE studios, or even second parties like Bluepoint are trying to follow Naughty Dog's lead. Perhaps something like Sony's ICE team (develops technology used by all SIE studios), but for accessibility would be a good next step for publishers.

Click to shrink...

Worth noting that before The Last of Us Part 2, even Naughtydog's own games weren't exactly packed with accessibility options either. Uncharted 4 doesn't even have something like full custom remapping.

Many of the games that seemed not to be following Naughty Dog's example likely did not have time because they were already in late stages of production. As an example, something like custom button mapping has to be planned for at an early stage, else it can be very difficult to integrate late in development.

As such, I'm optimistic that we will see their games featuring more and more accessibility options across the board going forward. I know that Spiderman: Miles Moralis has a decent set of accessibility options too, for example.

Oh, and in some ways The Last of Us Part 2 actually takes some steps backwards when it comes to options like customisation of the camera controls, which is a shame. These options were more robust in Uncharted 4, than TLOU Part 2.

 

[laoni]

Great thread, and more eloquently puts the points a few of us disabled gamers have been making for a while now.

There are 3 games that have added stuff I've played recently that have been super helpful for making a game accessible to me.

Hades' God Mode, which when you die, gives you a damage resistance buff. It keeps the rest of the experience the same but gives you the leeway to take more hits, and adjusts to the level you need by scaling up when you die. I'd love to see just personally, it scale back down if you get a clear because over time, you're going to get stronger because of the nature of the game, and I'd love to have that same sort of level of difficulty as the character gets stronger but, that's just me.

Control's added accessibility options had a lot of little granular options, things like increased aim assist to a one-shot kill, to sliders on how fast your ammo/energy would recover, damage reduction slider, or straight immortality. As part of the same update they made walk and sprint both toggles rather than hold-downs, which was anothe great move. I used the aim assist most of the way through the game, and if was really struggling with a difficulty spike, I bumped up the damage reduction a bit. I had a few of my able-bodied friends tell me they found the assist mode options in Control really helpful for them as well

Watch Dogs Legion I expect has much the same options as Valhalla, which I haven't needed to turn on anything in there myself yet, other than adjusting some sensitivities (Having so many options in ways of dealing with missions without getting into a gunfight really helps, for me), I want to give a shoutout for the Simplified Puzzle option, which will turn hacking nodes into the correct position when you activate the node, rather than the normal of rotating it into the correct position manually. Not many games have options to take into account cognitive disabilities and adjusting puzzle difficulty to help with that I wanna call out as being really good.

 

[Neiteio]

The smart steering in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is genius. When I play with casuals/nongamers, I turn on smart steering for their character and it keeps them on track with invisible walls, like bumpers in bumper bowling. I can still fall off the track, but if they get too close to the edge the game will gently nudge them to safety, no matter how fast they're going. It's brilliant, and allows them to complete tracks like Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road.

 

[Eeyore]

Great thread. It's all about pushing that window where accessibility options are expected instead of praised. Stuff like TLOU2 is wonderful but it needs to be the default.

As much as I laud the Souls games for their level and game design, I do think having options isn't a big deal (though seeing how some have reacted to the remake perhaps to some it's a step too far which is absurd).

I'd also put out there that this goes beyond just accessibility options when playing the game, but also showing disabled characters in games and not making a big deal about them or making their entire character revolve around their disability. Miles Morales has a deaf character and the main character knows ASL and communicates with her and there was just something so matter of fact about their interactions that it warmed my heart.

Obviously the biggest step is having disabled people on teams when developing games. Like other industries and governmental institutions, the only true way of fixing the problems that people can encounter is making sure you listen to the people affected and factor in how they play and interact.

 

[Alek]

Great thread. It's all about pushing that window where accessibility options are expected instead of praised. Stuff like TLOU2 is wonderful but it needs to be the default.

As much as I laud the Souls games for their level and game design, I do think having options isn't a big deal (though seeing how some have reacted to the remake perhaps to some it's a step too far which is absurd).

I'd also put out there that this goes beyond just accessibility options when playing the game, but also showing disabled characters in games and not making a big deal about them or making their entire character revolve around their disability. Miles Morales has a deaf character and the main character knows ASL and communicates with her and there was just something so matter of fact about their interactions that it warmed my heart.

Obviously the biggest step is having disabled people on teams when developing games. Like other industries and governmental institutions, the only true way of fixing the problems that people can encounter is making sure you listen to the people affected and factor in how they play and interact.

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I think both are really important, praising existing designs and options and highlighting areas where developers need to do better.

What we see from developers is that in theory, they do want to make inclusive games, but it's mostly the case that they just aren't thinking about it, it's not at the forefront of their mind, it's no ones responsibility, and it gets forgotten until it's far too late in production to do anything about it. Typically either the studio doesn't have internal processes that integrate inclusive design thinking and practices, or they don't have the personal knowledge and experiences to design for people with disabilities.

Hiring folks with disabilities is a good idea, but even then there are so many diverse experiences that people might have with a game. I think the most important step is user testing and collaborative design with people with disabilities. Because in other cases, what we see from studios is that they only address the 'low hanging fruit' which often are the disabilities represented within their studio, and the the rest get see less focus. User testing and collaborative design pull more people in to generate insight on the experience of play from the perspective of a player with disabilities, so you get to see a wide range of issues and areas that your game might not match up with the players ability.

 

[paranoodle]

thank you for the really good thread, op! it's really nice to see a write-up that's so well worded and well explained.

this is something i often start arguments over with other people, where there's so many small things that can be issues, but that the average player (or, unfortunately, sometimes developer) isn't usually aware of unless they're affected by it directly. a lot don't understand that feeling of "this appeals to me a lot and i want to play it but lack of accessibility options mean i'm stuck watching other people instead".

one thing that especially surprises me, as a disabled dev, is that there's a really good feeling to being able to tell someone "no, don't worry, i'm not going to prevent you from playing this" and yet there's still a lot of reluctance to doing it. why would you want to let less people play when they've already shown they're excited about your game? like, obviously some accessibility options are more complex to implement than others (though, without exception, that complexity is lowered if you already have them in mind as you're starting development) but there's constantly lots of reasonably easy ones that get glossed over.

i'm pretty lucky in that i'm fine with most motor control things in games (save for some struggles with hand spasming that make difficult games without action-canceling a nightmare), but on the cognitive side i've had to give up on so many games due to design that required abilities or levels of focus i don't have (games that lack any sort of maps, games that don't keep track of tasks/terms, games that require decent situational awareness, games that require split-second or otherwise quick decision-making, games that don't offer subtitles, etc) and those often come as a surprise to people because several of these aren't super common to test for.

 

[That1GoodHunter]

I don't even want to imagine how bad a talk about this subject could go with an average gamer, when it comes to multi-player games.

 

[Alek]

I don't even want to imagine how bad a talk about this subject could go with an average gamer, when it comes to multi-player games.

Click to shrink...

It's difficult with multiplayer games. It is a different scenario because I think a change that you've placed into the game to benefit players with disabilities, suddenly affects everyone.

For instance, let's say you put a high contrast mode into The Last of Us 2

This is a great aid for people who have a visual impairment, enabling them to more easily see and focus on areas of the game that are critical at any moment in time. However, if you were to take this and apply it to a game like Apex Legends, where actually being able to pick out and identify the enemy characters at a distance is part of the intended challenge, then I think you see options like this adversely affect the player experience for a very wide portion of your player base.

In this scenario, the issue is not that this option levels the playing field, but that this option if used by players who do not need it, would actually be likely to elevate them to a level of ability that is unintended by the game designers, which then creates an issue for anyone not using this feature.

I don't really have the expertise to say how that challenge should be tackled, but I think it's a difficult design problem. Do we know of any examples? I know that things like Mario Kart and Wipeout offer 'race assist' which helps but also hurts players at the same time (race assist prevents some shortcuts, and restricts your maximum boost charge in MK, or maximum speed in Wipeout). How do people feel about that style of solution?

A tonne of my friends in Apex play with 'colour blind mode on' because it offers a very minor visual contrast against some of the backgrounds in the game. I think that's a very minor thing, so it's fine, and everyone can enable it without spoiling the aesthetic of the game or drastically altering how people play. But I think more severe changes to the game design need more thought, because of how they will be used by everyone, not just the players that need them.

 

[Alek]

thank you for the really good thread, op! it's really nice to see a write-up that's so well worded and well explained.

this is something i often start arguments over with other people, where there's so many small things that can be issues, but that the average player (or, unfortunately, sometimes developer) isn't usually aware of unless they're affected by it directly. a lot don't understand that feeling of "this appeals to me a lot and i want to play it but lack of accessibility options mean i'm stuck watching other people instead".

one thing that especially surprises me, as a disabled dev, is that there's a really good feeling to being able to tell someone "no, don't worry, i'm not going to prevent you from playing this" and yet there's still a lot of reluctance to doing it. why would you want to let less people play when they've already shown they're excited about your game? like, obviously some accessibility options are more complex to implement than others (though, without exception, that complexity is lowered if you already have them in mind as you're starting development) but there's constantly lots of reasonably easy ones that get glossed over.

i'm pretty lucky in that i'm fine with most motor control things in games (save for some struggles with hand spasming that make difficult games without action-canceling a nightmare), but on the cognitive side i've had to give up on so many games due to design that required abilities or levels of focus i don't have (games that lack any sort of maps, games that don't keep track of tasks/terms, games that require decent situational awareness, games that require split-second or otherwise quick decision-making, games that don't offer subtitles, etc) and those often come as a surprise to people because several of these aren't super common to test for.

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No problem, I'm glad you liked the opening post. :)

I think for a lot of developers it's the fact that the costs involved in including accessibility options become especially high if they have not planned for it early on in development. Also, the larger your studio is, the easier I would say it is to have people focus on x accessibility feature. That's not justifying the barrier though, it's just that you need to think about accessibility early otherwise you kind of hit a point of no return (or at least, very difficult return) from a technical perspective.

 

[King Kingo]

As a neurodivergent individual, I can say with confidence that if your game can be easily accesible to a disabled individual, you've created a good UI/UX.

 

[GTAce]

Wonderful thread!

 

[Maledict]

I just wanted to comment what a superb thread this is. Thanks for making this, and a huge amount of food for thought.

 

[aiswyda]

This is a great thread, thank you OP!!

As someone who has audio processing issues, one aspect of multiplayer gaming I find particularly challenging is audio cues, whether they be directional or just voice. Although I'm awful at shooters, whenever I play with friends I end up having to ask friends where gunshots are coming from bc id really have to focus on just audio to narrow it down. The Apex pinging system is honestly a fantastic solve for that (and I think also helps out a lot of people who may have trouble communicating quickly and effectively). I wish every game had that haha.

I also recall overwatch giving me a lot of trouble—I'd recognize the voice when an ult went off, but never really processed the line or the language—meaning I'd have to ask a friend or check to see if my teams widow, for example, had her ult or if it was more likely the other teams. I'm not really sure if there's a fix for that—I tried subtitles but it was too hard to focus with everything else going on. I'm not sure how one could fix that without taking away an aspect of the game design of rewarding awareness.

 

[Kiro]

Very cool thread. I often like to think about ways to make games with complex controls possible. Thinking of Demon Souls for PS5 I tried to imagine if you could play the game with one hand.
L1 tap light attack, hold is strong attack.
L2 tap is parry, hold is shield
Dpad taps switch items, holding dpad uses them
Auto roll when an enemy takes a swipe (you must have no attack animation currently happening)

The rest is pretty simple from there, just double-up buttons for picking up items and have an auto camera.

I don't know why more games don't have way, way more accessibility options. Heck you could even make Demon's souls automatically shield and swing when near an enemy and I guarantee someone would appreciate that.

 

[Alek]

Very cool thread. I often like to think about ways to make games with complex controls possible. Thinking of Demon Souls for PS5 I tried to imagine if you could play the game with one hand.
L1 tap light attack, hold is strong attack.
L2 tap is parry, hold is shield
Dpad taps switch items, holding dpad uses them
Auto roll when an enemy takes a swipe (you must have no attack animation currently happening)

The rest is pretty simple from there, just double-up buttons for picking up items and have an auto camera.

I don't know why more games don't have way, way more accessibility options. Heck you could even make Demon's souls automatically shield and swing when near an enemy and I guarantee someone would appreciate that.

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Thanks! Yeah ways to remap the controls and solve some of these access problems can be interesting. I think something to consider is that ideally you want to preserve the intended design as much as possible, and I think timing your rolls is a big element of Demon's Souls. I'm not adverse to having auto-roll as an option for players that might need it, but someone playing with one hand might want control over that. I would even argue that being able to roll is more integral to the experience than being able to parry, a successful roll is where I get most of my satisfaction from combat in the game.

One issue though is that 'holding' can also be something that's difficult for people with motor disabilities. So pushing multiple functions into a hold might cause issues too. Still, I think that's where custom remapping and the support of custom controllers is especially helpful because it often ends up being about whether the player can remap their controls to their specific capabilities. For instance they might be able to use both hands but not press the face buttons, or they might need a bespoke device entirely, with some players using mouth input, or things like foot pedals to augment or completely change the existing controls.

Either way, it's definitely surprising how many games could be re-mapped for one handed play, even complex games like Demon's Souls. I think the worst thing is when you find very simple games, like 2D platformers or racing games which have no remapping. They have a style of game that has the opportunity to be incredibly accessible and it's ultimately squandered by the lack of flexibility.

 

[Kiro]

Thanks! Yeah ways to remap the controls and solve some of these access problems can be interesting. I think something to consider is that ideally you want to preserve the intended design as much as possible, and I think timing your rolls is a big element of Demon's Souls. I'm not adverse to having auto-roll as an option for players that might need it, but someone playing with one hand might want control over that. I would even argue that being able to roll is more integral to the experience than being able to parry, a successful roll is where I get most of my satisfaction from combat in the game.

One issue though is that 'holding' can also be something that's difficult for people with motor disabilities. So pushing multiple functions into a hold might cause issues too. Still, I think that's where custom remapping and the support of custom controllers is especially helpful because it often ends up being about whether the player can remap their controls to their specific capabilities. For instance they might be able to use both hands but not press the face buttons, or they might need a bespoke device entirely, with some players using mouth input, or things like foot pedals to augment or completely change the existing controls.

Either way, it's definitely surprising how many games could be re-mapped for one handed play, even complex games like Demon's Souls. I think the worst thing is when you find very simple games, like 2D platformers or racing games which have no remapping. They have a style of game that has the opportunity to be incredibly accessible and it's ultimately squandered by the lack of flexibility.

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Really interesting response, never thought about some of those aspects of accessibility. This is a very cool thread indeed. You're right about the rolling being integral, I'm sure with customizations many things are possible. I just imagined MK8D, you can have it auto drive and steer for you which is the heart of the game. But, similar to Demon's souls, some people who may not be able to play it "normally" may want to be a part of the social experience (I'm sure many posters here would love to discuss lore or the aesthetics of FROM games but can't for accessibility reasons).
As many posters here say, more options is never a bad thing.

 

[Alek]

Really interesting response, never thought about some of those aspects of accessibility. This is a very cool thread indeed. You're right about the rolling being integral, I'm sure with customizations many things are possible. I just imagined MK8D, you can have it auto drive and steer for you which is the heart of the game. But, similar to Demon's souls, some people who may not be able to play it "normally" may want to be a part of the social experience (I'm sure many posters here would love to discuss lore or the aesthetics of FROM games but can't for accessibility reasons).
As many posters here say, more options is never a bad thing.

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The elegance of Mario Kart's solution is that it doesn't take anything away from the player until they really need it. It doesn't steer for you until you're about to career off the edge of a course. Indeed you can argue that that still takes something away from the game, but I'd argue that the core experience is still very much in-tact, you can control your car, you can make decisions like 'should I go for the box, or the boost pad' just like everyone else. It feels like the player is still in control.

But I'm not adverse to more invasive options if the player might need them. Like if someone needs the game to steer for them and all they want to do is use items and experience the game that way, then by all means. Options are the answer here but I think it's also important for those options to be granular so as to preserve as much of the original experience as the player might be comfortable with.

 

[Alek]

I wanted to bump this up to speak about something that I think is sometimes underappreciated in terms of the impact it can have on accessibility. I figured it's better than making a new thread for every thought I have on this subject and perhaps we can spark some discussion in a single space.

Anyway, I think one of the underappreciated and often forgotten accessibility elements are the presence of 'safe' or 'practice' spaces in your game. For a lot of players with disabilities, or simply those that just want to tune the options or familiarise themselves with the games controls, these spaces can be pretty important.

This is especially true for people with disabilities who often need to figure out what all of the accessibility options are doing in the game. As a rudimentary example, colour blind settings often affect the game in different ways, some applying a filter to the entire game. So it's valuable to have modes that let players experience the game how that accessibility feature works, before they they move into consequential gameplay. This is especially true for multiplayer games where there's pressure to perform from other players (either killing you if you aren't ready to fight back, or from allies expecting you to keep up).

A lot of recent multiplayer titles do have this option. In Apex the firing range was patched into the game - prior to that you could play the tutorial, but you'd have to play through half of the tutorial each time, which is tedious. Overwatch also has a pretty comprehensive practice area where you can play with all of the characters and mess with your settings. But other games don't, Titanfall 2 for instance doesn't have a practice area, neither does Uncharted 4 or The Last of Us Factions.

In other games, practice modes are present but they're less obvious. In Call of Duty you can load into a private game with bots, which serves as a practice mode. In PUBG and Fortnite you can play inside of practice maps which let you play around with the games mechanics. These features are valuable but it's a little bit less obvious how to access them, which could be a barrier to some players particularly during the first time user experience.

I think Overwatch provides a good example of what an effective practice mode could look like, because it has a few key features which make it very pleasant to use, and more effective than some other offerings. First, aesthetically it looks like a regular Overwatch map. Sometimes you see practice modes represented as grey-box style areas in games like Rogue Company, but these are less good for players who might be using the practice space to tune and test visual elements of the game. Additionally, it features moving targets so players who want to get adjusted to the games controls and their settings can aim at something that's moving about like a real player (unlike something like Apex, which only features static targets unless you activate some obscure easter egg). Further, it lets you hot-swap with any of the characters at any time, letting you get a feel for all of the games mechanics and test out whatever settings you might need (such as character specific remapping), for each character, without being forced to load in and out each time.

 

[paranoodle]

GungJoe YEAH this is a really good point! this is one of the big differences between sekiro and previous fromsoft games that made it playable for me actually, (along with a handful of gameplay differences like snappier animations): having hanbei around to get a good feel for the combat and the timing and everything, and getting to practice it enough that i had the basics down before i ran into the more complex "real" battle situations. it doesn't really change the difficulty of the rest of the game, but it does provide with a slightly less steep ramp at the beginning of the difficulty curve, which makes a huge difference for some people.

 

[Alek]

GungJoe YEAH this is a really good point! this is one of the big differences between sekiro and previous fromsoft games that made it playable for me actually, (along with a handful of gameplay differences like snappier animations): having hanbei around to get a good feel for the combat and the timing and everything, and getting to practice it enough that i had the basics down before i ran into the more complex "real" battle situations. it doesn't really change the difficulty of the rest of the game, but it does provide with a slightly less steep ramp at the beginning of the difficulty curve, which makes a huge difference for some people.

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Yeah Sekiro is a good example. I actually had to go back to that practice area once because I was confused about one of the games mechanics.

Another good one I think is Hades, which has that sort of practice space just before you enter the dungeon proper to start your run. Once you enter the dungeon there's time pressure and enemies essentially relentlessly attack you, so it's good to have that space where you can make sure everything is working as it should be. It's generally good usability for everyone, but also especially impactful, I think, for people with disabilities.

I think the cool thing about these examples, in Sekiro and Hades is that they feel like they're integrated with the game. Both have training dummies which are 'living' characters and the need to practice is acknowledged as important as a narrative element. That means that it doesn't feel like you're being pulled out of the experience to engage with these activities.