Accessibility in Games

[Cube]

This seems to be becoming a bigger and bigger thing. Microsoft have their adapted controller and have just posted a pledge for further support. Sony had an amazing amount of accessibility settings in The Last of Us 2. I'll separate my thoughts based in different categories.

Visual

I'm colourblind. This isn't an extremely rare thing (5% of males and 1% of females) but the trouble is...how people are colourblind varies massively. Some may be just red-green colourblind, others may be a wide variety. I have issues with certain shades of: red/green, green/yellow, green/grey, blue/purple, orange/green, purple/pink, red/black and probably some more. 

One recent "fix" seem to be colourblind filters. These don't help me in the slightest, and also make the games look hideous. Microsoft's proposal is exactly what I want: try and allow symbols or shapes to signify stuff alongside colour (the board game Ticket to Ride does this and it's great), or allow the user to customise it to select the colours of their choice.

Some issues that I've encountered in games:

• Health bars. Some of them have red on a dark background and it's very difficult for me to see sometimes. Breath of the Wild is one (and ironically, the "important" highlighted text is also very difficult to read) where it's very hard to see. If I squint I can make it out, but not really useful for combat. Dragon Age 2's health bar was literally impossible for me to see but luckily there was a mod to fix it.
• Detective Mode. A mode that's supposed to make things easier to see, but sometimes the choice of colours makes it difficult for me to see. Witcher 3 was the worst for this. Even though you could choose from a couple of colours, the "scent trails" were extremely difficult to see. Sometimes I even had to look up where to go as I couldn't see it in the game.
• Puzzles. A fair amount of puzzles require matching colours. Sometimes this means I have to try stuff a couple of times to get the colours right. It's annoying, especially if a time limit is involved.

One thing that is an absolutely amazing achievement in terms of visual accessibility is The Last of Us 2. With accessibility features, people who are completely blind can play the game from start to finish. 

Audio

Now, I can hear fairly well, but at the same time I do find that voices in video games are nowhere near as clear as they are in most films/tv shows. This is especially the case during gameplay, when various sound effects and music are happening and as they're dynamic, there's not sound editor to balance the audio levels perfectly. So I often play games with subtitles on. 

Subtiles can be a mixed bag. For starters, there can often be mistakes and errors in the subtitles. I think some of them are from earlier versions of the script. Some I've noticed are:

• Greedfall: A complete an utter mess. Loads of spelling mistakes, sometimes alongside correct ones in the same line ("fantom" and "phantom"), some lines are completely different, others sort of mean the same thing but with different words. Lots of misgendering (sometimes in the voice work, too).
• InFamous Second Son: Definitely seems like a slightly earlier script was used for it. Every spoken and subtitle sentence has the same meaning, just often using different wording.
• Saints Row IV: All NPC voices are subtitled fine. The player character has quite different subtitles. For this, I think that each of the 7 voice actors had a lot of freedom in terms of putting their own spin on things (not 100% sure) and that the ad-libbed parts weren't written back into the subtitles.

I feel like I also need to give a dishonourable mention to Singularity (even though most people have probably forgotten about the game. In that, important plot points are given to you in noisy combat in really bad Russian accents. There are no subtitle options whatsoever. 

Most subtitles also are lacking in options, just turn them on or off. Better ones give you more useful options such as size (some subtitles are tiny, especially on a large TV), applying a background to subtitles, having the name of the speaker on or using different colours to show different people talking.

One great subtitle system was Left 4 Dead, which had an option which included subtitling specific audio clues for the special infected spawning. 

I think it would be nice for systems to have their own in-built subtitle system for developers to use so that settings could be applied globally.

Control and Physical

Microsoft's adaptive controller is definitely an amazing thing. I really think that Nintendo and Sony should add native support for controllers like that (creating their own ones would be bad if they also don't allow using others as the cost of customising your own setup is expensive, and would be ridiculous to have to do multiple times for different systems). You can already buy adapters for it for Switch/PS4, but native support would just be nice for those who needed.

For using another controller, things like inverting, swapping sticks and things like that should allow for a global setting (while still allowing you to override it for particular games because sometimes the other way can just feel right for certain situations). Button swapping should also be standard. Steam has some great controller options, yet strangely they're not accessible from the default Steam view (you have to use Big Picture Mode to access it). 

Button mashing should also be something I feel should have an option to turn off. It's something people may physically struggle with, but can be immersive when used in the right way so it should be up to the player. 

Difficulty

This is probably one that can be controversial. How difficult should games be? Should there be different rewards for different difficulties? What if a game is supposed to be a difficult task? Should there be an option for other people to experience the whole game? The Dark Souls games are often one of the ones talked about. They're about overcoming a challenge. 

But should people who find it too difficult be given the option to reduce the difficulty? At the same time, would that also mean that some people will spoil their own experience by giving up too early and reducing the setting when they could rise to the challenge? And what if someone wants to experience the lore of the game but also likes to relax while they play? Personally, I'd say let people customise their own experience.

There's also various different aspects of "difficulty". Most is focused on combat, but some games will dish out things like puzzle hints a lot quicker on easier settings, or potentially even cut some things out (GoldenEye is a classic example of that, with fewer objectives on easier difficulties). Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a great difficulty section where it's divided between combat, puzzle and exploration. I loved the ability to have combat on a lower setting while keeping stuff related to puzzles and exploring on the maximum difficulty.

Control added a patch which let you customise specific aspects of combat. Instead of a difficulty slider, you can manually adjust things like how much damage you take and deal, weapon reload times or even just turning off death. On top of this, these settings have no impact on saving, unlocking rewards or even achievements/trophies. It lets you tailor the combat to your liking. It's even useful if you've finished the game and want a more relaxing time just hinting for secrets and collectibles.

 

So, what does everyone else thing of accessibility? How much effort should go into it, and should the console manufacturers provide more options for developers to use to unify some of the settings across games?

 

Do any games come to mind when thinking of specific accessibility problems or ones that do a great job with it?

[Dufniall]

This is a tricky topic for me to give input on, as I don't have any accessibility problems myself so I can't speak from experience. Sure, I have had issues with subtitles being to small or weird contrast/colour choices, but that's from poor decisions in the game itself. I'll try to give some of my feelings per subject:

Visual:

Colour-blindness is indeed quite common, but like you said there are quite a few different versions of it. It's hard to imagine how colour-blindness is experienced. In your case, would it work for example to play a game in greyscale?

Shapes can be a great help. We have Ticket To Ride and at first I wondered where the were for, but then it dawned on me and it's clever! I can imagine this should be an option on match-3 kind of puzzlers, just slap a shape on a colour. Should be an easy fix.

But making different filters for different kinds of colour-blindness, or even a mode for blind people, it's something I'm sure not every developer can or wants to dish out the resources for. It's a costly thing for a small target audience. Maybe the colour-blind filters can somehow be integrated in the game's engine so at least all games on the Unreal/RE/Frostbite engine can have it by default.

Audio:

First: I can't imagine playing a game without the audio. It's like watching a movie with the sound off. Sure, maybe play the occasional hour of Animal Crossing or grind a bit in a game but for the rest I want my audio. As a non-native English speaker I think subtitles should always be an option, and it's the least they can do from an accessibility point as well. But after that it gets difficult; how far should a publisher go? Hearing-impaired kind of subtitles (stuff like [ocean rustles in background]), coloured subtitles to differentiate different speakers. In shooters it also matters if sound comes from the left or right, should they implement visual cues for this as well? Again it's a trade-off between the demand and the resources it is costing a developer.

Control:

I agree Microsoft's adaptive controller is great. Since it is more an overall tool than a Microsoft product, and each PlayStation and Switch dock has a USB port, they should just integrate the drivers into their software. With regards to button remapping, it's now an option on the Nintendo Switch. Button mashing I'm on two legs; on the one hand I can see how it's difficult if you for example have less strength or reflexes in your hand. I personally don't like the ones where I have to maniacally flick a control stick because I don't want to bust it haha. On the other hand a sudden button mash trigger does add to the tension in a game, and it is a fair gameplay mechanic. Luckily the 90s already had a solution: the turbo switches!

How do you feel about easy combos in for example fighting games? Dragon Ball FighterZ for example has easy combos/auto combos. I'm on the same two legs there. It takes away the feeling of mastery, but it does make the game more accessible.

Difficulty

This is one where I would really leave it to the developers. They make a game with a certain difficulty and target audience in mind. If they want a game that is accessible for everyone make it easy or with different difficulty options. If they want to create a challenging game not everyone can finish, it's up to them. And if it's a game where you want to experience the lore but the game is too difficult, well that's too bad. Luckily YouTube is full of play-throughs so you can catch up there. That said, Tomb Raider's 3 different difficulty system is pretty darn clever.

As a general conclusion, there are definitely things that are easy to implement that can increase the accessibility of games but it can be a costly thing, especially for smaller devs. Maybe standardized mechanics in the bigger engines or the hardware systems can help. But there will always be people who are left out and won't get the full experience. It's easy for me to say as I don't have accessibility problems. But I'm a short guy, and I've experienced concerts where I could hardly see the stage because tall people would be standing before me. I know this happens and I accept it, instead of for example petitioning they should sort concert audiences on length and let the short get in first.

You can't cater to everyone. Start making a game that is accessible for the blind, deaf, handicapped, and even then you will get comments that it is not inclusive on a different level.

[Goafer]

On 17/02/2021 at 1:09 PM, Cube said:

For using another controller, things like inverting, swapping sticks and things like that should allow for a global setting (while still allowing you to override it for particular games because sometimes the other way can just feel right for certain situations).

Stick swapping is something I sometimes struggle with. As I'm left handed, I'm much better at aiming with my left hand, so need to swap sticks for shooters. I'm generally ok for third person games, as they tend to be more platforming based or action based, but for first person shooters (or third person games that are mainly shooting), it's a must.

Having the ability to swap sticks at a console level is great, but the problem comes with games like Cyberpunk that have vehicle sections. Swapping sticks at a console level means I have to steer cars with the right stick, which is fucking awful. 

Games like Battlefield handle this brilliantly, allowing you to customise your controller layout independently for each scenario (on foot, land vehicles and air vehicles).

I think it was the PS3/360 era that was the worst though. Some developers (like Bethesda) straight up refuse to put any stick options in their games. I ended up buying a specially modded controller for the 360 that had the stick inputs resoldered to have them permanently switched. I ended up giving that to someone on here (I forget who) when my third 360 got the RROD.

For the PS3 I bought an adapter that had options to swap buttons and sticks on a wired controller and bought a wired 360 pad. Still got that somewhere.