when you hear accessibility, What do you think? What do you think of when you play a Souls-like game? If both answers have to do with difficulty, then you are partially correct. But not what you think.
2019, one Forbes Opinion articles The debate comes from software Ax: Shadow Dies Twice The need for a “simple model” has sparked a toxic debate on social media. Like most online arguments, this one eventually died down, only to explode again every time another Souls-like game comes out. As a result, the misconception that reduces accessibility to “easy mode” continues to spread.
early release Ring of EldenSeries creator Hidetaka Miyazaki tells us PlayStation Blog His game is more than just difficult. “We want players to use their ingenuity, study the game, remember what’s going on, and learn from their mistakes,” he explains. In other words, his games are designed to foster a sense of enjoyable challenge and the excitement of success through persistence. Broadly speaking, accessible design aims to avoid undue or unnecessary difficulty, but it also has many nuances. So let’s break down what accessibility really is, why difficulty differs for everyone, and which games you should play that are both accessible while keeping the challenge intact.
Accessibility 101
In video games, accessibility focuses on avoiding unnecessary mismatches between player abilities and obstacles. It does more than just help disabled gamers play video games. Accessibility features can help anyone, regardless of their disability.
Ian Hamilton, an accessibility expert with over 15 years of experience, explains that there are two aspects to accessibility: design and options. Since obstacles can’t always be avoided by design alone, “the wide range of human differences means that sometimes we must also rely on choice, as different actors have conflicting needs and preferences.” In other words, the abundance of assistive options in games (or lack thereof) only tells half the story.
The design aspect is more complex and often specific to a single game or scenario. Hamilton gave the example of using color in games.games like this call of Duty Players can be divided into color-coded teams, such as red vs. blue. Good accessibility practices can help players who may have difficulty seeing these colors, so developers can also create logos or symbols that correspond to each team.
Typically, there is no “one size fits all” approach. Human differences mean that while a feature may be playable by some, it may not be suitable for everyone, even if it was designed with disabled gamers in mind. As Ian puts it, that’s the key term: “spectrum of human variation.” Each person is unique and has a wide range of abilities and capabilities. Ability can be improved and exercised. Capabilities are hard ceilings that can be affected by defects, and defects are rarely switches. Often, disability can be viewed in either/or terms: are you totally blind, are you totally deaf, are you totally deaf. Like all human experiences, disability is a spectrum. No two experiences are exactly the same.
The difficulty lies in the hands of the lover
In the online debate about difficulty vs. accessibility, you may have heard the following phrases: “This game is designed to be difficult,” or “I’m all for accessibility, but accessibility and difficulty are two different things. thing.” Often, these arguments are made to defend a studio’s or director’s supposed “artistic vision.” But is this accurate? During a presentation at the 2021 Game Accessibility Conference, Hamilton gave a six-minute talk on the topic. This is a great resource to bookmark and watch enough to get a handle on this conversation.
In essence, Hamilton argued that the difficulty—at least as we now think of it—did not actually exist. Of course, we have decades of games offering easy, normal, and hard options. But Hamilton believed that difficulties were relative to people because of the differences between people I mentioned earlier. Hamilton explains that difficulty “is something that pops up when people play games. It’s a product of individual abilities and gaming disorders.”
When we think about it in these terms, disability does not equal impairment. It is a mismatched interaction with obstacles that makes it difficult to complete a task. To explain this in gaming terms, imagine an enemy is about to attack you from off-screen. You can’t see it, but you can hear it’s about to attack, which may be an intentional obstacle the player should overcome. So if the designer wants the encounter to be at a difficulty level of 5, consider a scenario where the deaf or hard-of-hearing player won’t be able to hear the sound. Now, the difficulty is closer to 10. There is a mismatch in the interaction between the player and the game, and obstacles arise. Accessibility means avoiding this mismatch by adding visual cues on the screen, such as arrows or flashing colors, so that attacks are not presented solely through sound. Now the attack difficulty is back to 5 – which is exactly what the designers intended.
So does making the game more accessible remove the challenge? “The most important thing to take away in this type of discussion is that ‘simpler’ and ‘easier’ are completely different things,” Hamilton explained. “Making a game easier is not the same as making it easy. You can make a game harder by making it easier, because hard is easier than impossible. Everything about accessibility is fundamentally It’s all about making things easier and avoiding or eliminating the unnecessary extra difficulty that inaccessibility creates. But that’s not the same thing as making things easier.”
What about the challenges?
If difficulty is unique to everyone, and making a game accessible removes barriers for players with disabilities, what about the challenge of the game? Can you make the game challenging yet accessible? Turns out, you can. There are some wonderful video games out there that keep the challenge intact while still being accessible to players with disabilities. Here are three exceptional examples emerging in 2023.
Forza Motorsport
The racing simulation game in the grass may not look easy to play on the surface, but the team Forza Motorsport Developer Turn 10 Studios has introduced some incredible innovations to allow more people to enjoy their games.they made the latest Forza Motorsport Blind players can use a new feature called Blind Driving Assist, which provides audio cues to let them know where they are on the track at all times. Staying true to the series’ analog roots, Forza Motorsport Only information about the track is provided – it’s still up to the player to decide how they want to race.
Street Fighter 6
This game is important for disabled fighting game fans. It includes three different input modes – Dynamic, Modern and Classic – and the option to use a simplified control scheme, making it popular with many gamers with disabilities. It provides opportunities for those who don’t have much experience with this daunting genre to learn and progress.They can then train with their favorite fighters or even compete in competitive matches, as modern controls are officially allowed street fighter championship.
star wars jedi survivor
when fallen order Upon release, reviews widely compared the game’s parry and dodge system to dark soul.But EA’s Star Wars The game also includes multiple difficulty modes, making the combat system more generous for those who need it.and eat survivors, the Respawn team has added more accessibility features, such as the option to slow down the game if you need extra time to parry and dodge. They also added a new difficulty mode, Jedi Padawan, based on player feedback.
There are many misconceptions about accessibility and disabled gamers. If you have some misunderstandings, that’s okay. If you don’t understand how disabled gamers need accessibility features, or if you don’t encounter people with disabilities in your daily life, you may not consider the needs of disabled gamers at all. But I hope this gives you a better understanding of accessibility and how we as advocates, consultants, and developers don’t try to take away your games. Accessibility simply helps us choose the games we want to play, rather than making us choose.