Last updated August 31st, 2023 | by steinaech | Posted in Gaming
Accessibility as a word is a measure of how easy it is to use or access something. Usually, regardless of subject, this is used in the context of people with disabilities. The simplest accessibility options are those such as subtitles and closed captions for hearing impairments, scalable UI and colorblind options for visual impairments. More advanced accessibility options include things such as custom controllers for people with missing body parts or control issues with body parts.
But there’s another facet of life where accessibility can play a role – parenthood. As a dad of a 9 and 5 year old, husband, and homeowner, time is a luxury. I don’t always know how much time I’ll have to play something so a lot of the time I’m restricted to the type of games that I can play. Do I want to get into a story heavy game if there’s opportunity for interruption? Not really. Do I want to play a round based game like Counter-Strike or Apex? No, because if I die early I’m just losing time until the round resets.
I first started thinking about other ways games could be accessible when playing through Dark Souls Remastered a couple years ago. In Dark Souls’ case not being able to pause is part of the game’s design. Luckily Dark Souls is good about saving often and it saves when you quit which is only a few taps away when you need to suddenly leave but if you’re in a boss fight and need to leave you’ll need to restart as you cannot rejoin those after exiting.
I understand that Dark Souls can’t be paused because of the online component but the game can be played in a fully offline mode. Why can’t I pause the game then? Is it truly a design choice or a failure to program a pause state when offline? The latter is remedied simply enough. However, if it’s a design choice then why not add an option in the settings to allow pausing? Ship the game in it’s intended to play state but allow those that need pausing for whatever reason the ability to do so. As a designer I understand the desire to not compromise one’s vision for a project but I would also want as many people as possible the chance to enjoy it as well.
Debate about having difficulty settings in Dark Souls has come up in the community as well. Dark Souls (as with many FromSoftware games) are supposed to be hard. It wasn’t until I watched Dark Souls speedrunners that I figured out how to be good at the game and was able to beat it for the first time since first playing Prepare to Die Edition. But why do they have to be hard? Dark Souls is an amazing world full of interesting creatures, people, and lore, so why can it only be experienced if you’re good enough at the game? Star Wars Fallen Order and Remnant: From the Ashes are both Soulslike games with difficulty settings allowing people of lesser skill capability to still enjoy them.
Difficulty settings as an accessibility option have found their way into other games as well, particularly horror games such as SOMA and Outlast 2’s “story mode” difficulty where you are more or less free to roam the world and explore all its intricacies without much worry about enemies that would kill you in other difficulty settings. Even Assassin’s Creed Origins and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey have a “discovery mode” that gets rid of the game’s combat and allows players to explore the worlds without threat.
I’m sure there are many, many examples I’ve not considered here, this is by no means meant to be a comprehensive essay, just to explore a different side of what we traditionally think of when considering accessibility for video games.
Let me know if there are any interesting options a game had that made it more accessible to you!