WEBVTT

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think about your favorite video game if

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you lost your site tomorrow would you still be able to play it what about your

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hearing or the dexterity in your hands anyone can be a gamer at least in theory

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but historically very few games were designed to be played by everyone these

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days developers are using some cool tricks to bridge The Divide and we're

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not just talking about closed captioning but also settings that changed the

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actual gameplay but to appreciate these it helps to understand what gaming was

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like in the olden times due to the

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limitations of early gaming technology designs were simple and rather

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inflexible games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders had high contrast visuals

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straightforward gameplay no dialogue and a minimal number of possible inputs

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which meant they happen to be somewhat accessible games like these were fine

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for people with moderate low vision developmental delays or learning

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disabilities even if that wasn't at the front of the developers Minds there's

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not a lot of tactical complexity to a game like pong you move the paddle up

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then down then up again if you're feeling cheeky

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compared to a modern controller the big buttons of an arcade cabinet don't

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demand a ton of precision and you can see some common design themes between

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old arcade controls and specialized peripherals like the Xbox adaptive

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controller and it's assorted plug-in accessories but some of those old games

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were also highly visual fast paced and

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they had no real easy mode a problem for people who are nearly or completely

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blind and for people with more profound fine motor challenges even something as

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common as arthritis can seriously impact a player's ability to engage with genres

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like first person shooters and Rhythm games as gaming matured we started to

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see Gamers getting more options for how they'd interact with their games things

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like adjustable difficulty settings simultaneous text and audio dialogue and

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lightweight ergonomic controllers but these weren't true accessibility options

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as much as they were basic quality of life measures that improved the gaming

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experience for a much larger popular Nation than just disabled Gamers for

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example assistive settings like tutorials and Story Only modes were

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designed to help new and inexperienced players but they also help Gamers with

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physical and cognitive disabilities while these helpful options have been

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with us for a long time they've often been implemented haphazardly or as an

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afterthought because it was left up to individual developers to decide whether

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or how to include them unsurprisingly

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those developers rarely got it right the first time a good example is the

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original Assassin's Creed which has a score of 3.3 out of 10 on can

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iplaythat.com because it has no option for subtitles despite being released in

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2007. subtitles had been invented only

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two years later the second Assassin's Creed had both subtitles and fully

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voiced lines in five different languages now many many games later into the same

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franchise the accessibility options for Assassin's Creed are a extensive albeit

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imperfect and players can separately control the difficulty level for

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different aspects of the game like combat exploration and stealth taking

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into account cognitive motor vision and

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hearing challenges and Ubisoft has been far from The Cutting Edge when it comes

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to accessibility compare naughty dog for example who released The Last of Us in

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2013 with visual cues for important sounds highlights for small hard to

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notice pickups and the option to change handwritten notes to more readable plain

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text 2020 is The Last of Us Part Two was

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especially ambitious including text to speech fully remappable controls a high

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contrast mode labeled subtitles indicating who is saying what a glossary

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of game important audio cues screen magnification auto aim and navigation

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assistance in fact Naughty Dog promised that blind players could play through

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the entire game without cited assistance which many did Naughty Dog more like

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well-behaved dog if you don't count crunch but naughty dog and Ubisoft are

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large established game developers how are small independent Studios supposed

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to provide the same level of accessibility and how are Studios small

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and large implementing features specifically designed for disabled

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players we'll tell you more right after we thank sidekick for sponsoring this

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productivity potential click the link below to get started the truth is that a

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lot of the push for accessibility in games came from naturally disabled

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Gamers themselves a lot of experimentation in both software and

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Hardware came from independent programmers and Hardware developers

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looking to serve a niche Community often because they or someone they knew wanted

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to play video games but couldn't it's hard for an able-bodied developer to

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imagine in a vacuum all the barriers disabled Gamers might run into never

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mind how to address those barriers that's also why the PC with its plethora

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of specialized peripherals and open standard connectors like USB has been

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the machine of choice for many disabled Gamers the adroit

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switchblade controller which allowed Gamers with limited Mobility to play on

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the Xbox 360 was originally developed by ablegamers a non-profit organization

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dedicated to accessible video games ablegamers was founded by Mark Bartlett

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whose best friend was slowly losing her ability to play EverQuest due to

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multiple sclerosis it was only after the launch of the adroit switchblade that

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Microsoft took notice and tapped ablegamers to help make the Xbox

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adaptive controller but the good news is is that the push for Solutions has

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already led to some useful features like screen magnification for Low Vision

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altered color schemes for different kinds of color blindness and haptic

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feedback as a replacement for audible signals any new feature a developer

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implements is going to take time and effort but open well-documented

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developer resources can shave down that workload to make it more realistic for

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small teams to implement some of these Solutions some of the past reluctance to

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fully Implement certain kinds of accessibility options like adjustable

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difficulty settings aim assist automatic navigation and glowing visual guides

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comes from concerns about cheating as

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well as a certain stigma common to the mainstream AAA sector a get good

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gatekeeping mentality that wants to preserve the perceived exclusivity of

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especially challenging games I have Dark

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Souls from software some games don't even allow the player to finish the game

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on easy mode for an extreme example of

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this twisted Metal 2 from 1996 has an

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easy mode that ends after the first boss telling players no losers allowed Beyond

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this point you must switch to medium or hard to continue because how dare you

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try to have fun another concern is that

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well certain changes to a game might turn it into a wholly different

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experience the accessible version of The Last of Us Part 2 is still a poignant

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and brutal narrative experience thanks to the thoughtful work of its developers

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however if you took a game like getting over it an experience that is

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fundamentally about accepting the frustration that comes with having to

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start over from zero and you made it impossible to fail well then you haven't

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made a game accessible you've made a completely different game instead

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getting over it has options for using a mouse a joystick or a touch screen

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allowing flexibility but still retaining the spirit of the experience

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a big part of what makes games fun is the catharsis of overcoming a

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significant challenge especially a challenge that is difficult or impossible for Less dedicated players

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but being unable to participate in a game because you are physically unable

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to play is a fundamentally different challenge than the one that was intended

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and there are a lot of accessibility options that do not necessarily

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eliminate challenge for their intended users for example the quadstick is a

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controller specifically designed to allow tetraplegic players to game using

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their mouth and honestly if you can't get a killstreak in cod with just your

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lips are you even a real gamer the fact that gaming is a more participatory

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experience than watching a movie or listening to music complicates the goal

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of a universally accessible experience but it also means that games can provide

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experiences that might otherwise be Out Of Reach for people with disabilities

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for example it's often much harder for wheelchair users to leave the house

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which can be extremely socially isolating online video games can be a

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great option for shared social experiences despite those physical

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barriers there are still Financial barriers however as adaptive controllers

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can be prohibitively expensive and it's not all about adapting existing games to

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suit disabled Gamers audio games are entirely blind accessible by default

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using just audio and haptic feedback to communicate with the player a recent

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popular example is the veil a story about a blind Adventurer where the

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player has to navigate and even fight and Dodge enemies using only auditory

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cues these kinds of games often use binaural audio recording which uses two

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microphones specifically positioned to give a sense of 3D space so the player

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can tell whether a sound comes from the left or right front or back if you're

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wondering what the game looks like well we would show you some gameplay footage but well in the end we're probably never

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going to live in a world with perfectly accessible games but there's a lot of

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low hanging fruit and great new ideas when it comes to making gaming a hobby

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for everyone and my thanks to everyone who watched this whole video like the

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video if you liked it dislike it if you dislike to check out our other videos we

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got lots comment below with video suggestions we can make a lot more and

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don't forget to subscribe and follow in techwiki that's this channel so in case

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you were where am I