Think about your favorite video game. If you lost your sight tomorrow,
would you still be able to play it? What about your hearing? Or the dexterity in your hands?
Anyone can be a gamer, at least in theory, but historically, very few games were designed
to be played by everyone. These days, developers are using some cool tricks
to bridge the divide. And we're not just talking about closed captioning,
but also settings that change the actual gameplay.
But to appreciate these, it helps to understand what gaming was like
in the olden times. Due to the limitations of early gaming technology,
designs were simple and rather inflexible. Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders
had high contrast visuals, straightforward gameplay, no dialogue,
and a minimal number of possible inputs, which meant they happened to be somewhat accessible.
Games like these were fine for people with moderate low vision, developmental delays,
or learning disabilities, even if that wasn't at the front of the developer's minds.
There's not a lot of tactical complexity to a game like Pong.
You move the paddle up, then down, then up again, if you're feeling cheeky.
Compared to a modern controller, the big buttons of an arcade cabinet
don't demand a ton of precision. And you can see some common design themes
between old arcade controls and specialized peripherals,
like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and its assorted plug-in accessories.
But some of those old games were also highly visual,
fast-paced, and they had no real easy mode.
A problem for people who are nearly or completely blind, and for people with more profound, fine motor challenges.
Even something as common as arthritis can seriously impact a player's ability
to engage with genres like first-person shooters and rhythm games.
As gaming matured, we started to see gamers getting more options for how they'd interact with their games,
things like adjustable difficulty settings, simultaneous text and audio dialogue,
and lightweight ergonomic controllers. But these weren't true accessibility options,
as much as they were basic quality of life measures that improved the gaming experience
for a much larger population than just disabled gamers.
For example, assistive settings like tutorials and story-only modes were designed
to help new and inexperienced players, but they also help gamers
with physical and cognitive disabilities. While these helpful options have been with us
for a long time, they've often been implemented haphazardly, or as an afterthought,
because it was left up to individual developers to decide whether or how to include them.
Unsurprisingly, those developers rarely got it right the first time.
A good example is the original Assassin's Creed, which has a score of 3.3 out of 10 on CanIPlayThat.com
because it has no option for subtitles, despite being released in 2007.
Subtitles had been invented. Only two years later, the second Assassin's Creed
had both subtitles and fully voiced lines in five different languages.
Many. Now, many, many, many games later into the same franchise,
the accessibility options for Assassin's Creed are extensive, albeit imperfect,
and players can separately control the difficulty level for different aspects of the game,
like combat, exploration, and stealth, taking into account cognitive, motor, vision,
and hearing challenges. And Ubisoft has been far from the cutting edge
when it comes to accessibility. Compare Naughty Dog, for example, who released The Last of Us in 2013
with visual cues for important sounds, highlights for small, hard to notice pickups,
and the option to change handwritten notes to more readable, plain text.
2020's The Last of Us Part II was especially ambitious,
including text to speech, fully remappable controls,
a high contrast mode, labeled subtitles, indicating who is saying what,
a glossary of game-important audio cues, screen magnification, auto-aim, and navigation assistance.
In fact, Naughty Dog promised that blind players could play through the entire game without sighted assistance.
Which many did? Naughty Dog, more like well-behaved dog,
if you don't count the crunch. But Naughty Dog and Ubisoft are large, established game developers.
How are small, independent studios supposed to provide the same level of accessibility?
And how are studios small and large, implementing features specifically designed
for disabled players? The truth is that a lot of the push for accessibility in games
came from, naturally, disabled gamers themselves.
A lot of experimentation in both software and hardware
came from independent programmers and hardware developers
looking to serve a niche community, often because they or someone they knew
wanted to play video games, but couldn't. It's hard for an able-bodied developer
to imagine in a vacuum all the barriers disabled gamers might run into.
Never mind how to address those barriers. That's also why the PC,
with its plethora of specialized peripherals and open standard connectors like USB,
has been the machine of choice for many disabled gamers.
The Adroit Adroit Switchblade Controller,
which allowed gamers with limited mobility to play on the Xbox 360,
was originally developed by Abel Gamers, a non-profit organization dedicated
to accessible video games. Abel Gamers was founded by Mark Bartlett,
whose best friend was slowly losing her ability to play EverQuest due to multiple sclerosis.
It was only after the launch of the Adroit Switchblade that Microsoft took notice and tapped Abel Gamers
to help make the Xbox Adaptive Controller.
But the good news is that the push for solutions has already led to some useful features
like screen magnification for low vision, altered color schemes for different kinds of color blindness,
and haptic feedback as a replacement for audible signals.
Any new feature a developer implements is going to take time and effort,
but open, well-documented developer resources
can shave down that workload and make it more realistic for small teams
to implement some of these solutions. Some of the past reluctance
to fully implement certain kinds of accessibility options
like adjustable difficulty settings, aim assist, automatic navigation,
and glowing visual guides comes from concerns about cheating,
as well as a certain stigma common to the mainstream AAA sector,
a get good gatekeeping mentality that wants to preserve the perceived exclusivity
of especially challenging games.
Dark Souls, from software. Some games don't even allow the player
to finish the game on easy mode. For an extreme example of this,
Twisted Metal 2 from 1996 has an easy mode
that ends after the first boss, telling players no losers allowed beyond this point.
You must switch to medium or hard to continue. Because how dare you try to have fun?
Another concern is that, well, certain changes to a game
might turn it into a wholly different experience. The accessible version of The Last of Us Part 2
is still a poignant and brutal narrative experience
thanks to the thoughtful work of its developers. However, if you took a game like Getting Over It,
an experience that is fundamentally about accepting the frustration
that comes with having to start over from zero, and you made it impossible to fail,
well, then you haven't made a game accessible, you've made a completely different game.
Instead, Getting Over It has options for using a mouse, a joystick, or a touchscreen,
allowing flexibility, but still retaining the spirit of the experience.
A big part of what makes games fun is the catharsis of overcoming a significant challenge,
especially a challenge that is difficult or impossible for less dedicated players.
But being unable to participate in a game because you are physically unable to play
is a fundamentally different challenge than the one that was intended.
And there are a lot of accessibility options that do not necessarily eliminate challenge
for their intended users. For example, the Quadstick is a controller
specifically designed to allow tetraplegic players to game using their mouth.
And honestly, if you can't get a kill streak and cod with just your lips, are you even a real gamer?
The fact that gaming is a more participatory experience than watching a movie or listening to music
complicates the goal of a universally accessible experience.
But it also means that games can provide experiences that might otherwise be out of reach
for people with disabilities. For example, it's often much harder
for wheelchair users to leave the house, which can be extremely socially isolating.
Online video games can be a great option for shared social experiences,
despite those physical barriers. There are still financial barriers, however,
as adaptive controllers can be prohibitively expensive.
And it's not all about adapting existing games to suit disabled gamers.
Audio games are entirely blind accessible by default,
using just audio and haptic feedback to communicate with the player.
A recent popular example is The Vale, a story about a blind adventurer
where the player has to navigate and even fight and dodge enemies using only auditory cues.
These kinds of games often use binaural audio recording, which uses two microphones specifically positioned
to give a sense of 3D space. So the player can tell whether a sound comes from the left
or right, front or back. If you're wondering what the game looks like,
well, we would show you some gameplay footage, but well. In the end, we're probably never going to live in a world
with perfectly accessible games, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit
and great new ideas when it comes to making gaming a hobby for everyone.
And my thanks to everyone who watched this whole video.
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