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[Squidly]

So one of the games that really surprised me was Squid Yes Not so Octopus: Squid Harder. Essentially this game was not something particularly groundbreaking at its core, it's a very pretty bullethell with no plot at all and a thumping good soundtrack. It is also a game that revolves entirely around surviving with exactly one hit point in a timed setting.

But, like I said, that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye were two files, the readme and gamesettings.ini.

From the readme:

Look, I'm going to be blunt here. I've implemented some stuff in SYNSO:Squid Harder and it's not just aimed at getting more people playing my game, although that's pretty nice. It's here as a bit of a demonstration as to how simple things, tiny little things that may take you an hour at the outside to implement can make a massive difference to people.

Stop getting so hung up and antsy and precious about your design, alright? Let more people enjoy your game.

Here's a few simple things I've done that you can do in no time:

Make the easiest mode in the world. No, really. Do it. Does it hurt you when people turn off collisions? Does anyone actually die? No. Good. Let people play the game how they want to. It's no skin off your nose, really is it? Don't make easy "a bit like hard but a bit easier", make it "so easy anyone can play through it". If you think you're designing for thickies in doing that then you're the thicky. K?

Sure enough, in gamesettings.ini you could tune the intensity of the effects (great for epilepsy) and turn off dying, just enjoying the game for its visuals, tight design, and damn good music.

What brought this back were three games: Civilization V, Spelunky, and Guacamelee.

Civilization V has an extensive modding suite that Firaxis very heavily advertised, everything can be changed, there are tons of mods, flawless steamworks integration... But if you turn on mods you can't get ANY of the achievements.

Achievements, mind you, that have absolutely no value whatsoever except for personal, you don't have a gamerscore, you don't get money, there are no prizes. But by turning off achievements Firaxis is essentially saying: You can tune the game anyway you want, but it'll never be yours.

Spelunky is an incredibly difficult game. This is a game where you can put in an hour to get to the ending zone and get impaled, poisoned, or obliterated in about five seconds. Boom. All your progress. To add insult to injury, throughout the game are spikes, automatic killing spikes. Mess up one platforming bit and spikes. Trip and spikes. Spikes everywhere. And if you don't like it, too bad - keep in mind, Spelunky IS fun, but at the 100th hour I just want to reach the end no matter how I did it. If I cheated, it's between me and myself. But no, that's not how it is. You have to play Spelunky at its most brutal, always, and if you don't have the 100 hours of skill, you're simply not allowed to beat the game. Despite its inviting promise of multiplayer fun and exciting locals, most players never make it past the second zone. Where's the fun in that?

And finally Guacamelee. It has an epilepsy warning in the very beginning, but the epilepsy only comes into play when you get an item, at which point the screen flashes incredibly fast to simulate... I don't know. You CANNOT turn it off. The entire game has been made inaccessible to a subset of gamers because an unnecessary artistic flair that - though is allowed to be there - you can't turn off.

There was once an article that was written by a gamer who has a disability that impairs nothing but his ability to tap repeatedly, no matter what special controller he could get, it could even be a big large button (look up modular disability controllers) it was the GAME DESIGN that said no. Compare this to Valve games which include full captions for the deaf, not just dialogue but every gunshot and important things like "jockey growling" so you can know what's coming.

So I'm bringing up the question, should we, as Game Developers, be nicer to our players? Not tune down the difficulty for everyone, but instead give options. Would it, like what Robert D. Faeron (SYSNO's developer) says 'kill us?' Do we NEED to make these things like they are? Could we turn on achievements for mods, let Spikes bounce the character up and deal damage instead of insta-kill, the epilepsy, etc.

Could we let our players decide what game they want to play?

[RoboticPotato]

I think this is a pretty good concept.

I think for my games I'll definitely aim to make them more modifiable.

However this gets a little more dicey for consoles/non-pc games. Most games with that level of moddability do so through XML files and the like. What happens when your players don't have access to that?

Also, there isn't a whole lot of guidance about what sort of medical issues we should be looking for. I'd like to think game devs are a kinder lot, but sometimes when you're making games in your basement apartment you're not thinking about people with epilepsy or other disabilities...frankly you'd be happy if your mother even bothered to play the game. I mean, there's a couple things going on here- what are the disabilities we need to look for, how do we solve those problems, and how am I going to find such a person to test those features?

There's a reason why may accessibility improvements are made aftermarket- there's really no guarantee of success that anyone would actually even play your game. The amount of time required to research and graft on such customizations could be considerable- in a one man shop it could be the difference between spending the day implementing actual gameplay functionality and that.

[Gatlink]

I think there are two very different subjects here, accessibility and difficulty.

In terms of accessibility, no question about that, we should try to include as many people as possible. Sure we may not know every problem our players may have, but internet is there to provide us with answers.

On the question of difficulty, it's a totally different matter. Most of the pleasure we have when we play comes from "grokking" the game. If we have nothing to learn from it (no obstacles to overcome), where is the pleasure? Sure, for heavily narrative games, it's a valid option. But an arcady shooter with more of a pretext than a story? What would you get from it without any challenges?

The difficulty in games like Spelunky and Dark Soul are part of what define them. It is an integral part of their personality. I'm completely rubbish at those games, but I still play them so I can get the rush of my little successes.

Sure, you could just let the player choose. But I feel like it would be an effort in the wrong direction. Like an author using a poorer vocabulary, or a painter painting only recognizable objects because many people don't get more conceptual stuff.

I'd say the decision is yours: would you rather change the game you want to make, or take the risk to reach less players?

[Squidly]

Also, there isn't a whole lot of guidance about what sort of medical issues we should be looking for. I'd like to think game devs are a kinder lot, but sometimes when you're making games in your basement apartment you're not thinking about people with epilepsy or other disabilities...frankly you'd be happy if your mother even bothered to play the game. I mean, there's a couple things going on here- what are the disabilities we need to look for, how do we solve those problems, and how am I going to find such a person to test those features?

I think the major (adressable) issues are this:

Epilepsy - allow all spastic light effects to be turned off, easily done with a simple global data variable and an if statement to ask if it's on

Deaf/Hard of Hearing - allow for full captions, only really needed for 3D games, addressable by putting subtitles at bottom that are also fed by monster/action sounds

Muscle Problems - auto complete quick time events, ability to slow down the game if needed, a very, very, very, simple and questonable fix is to just slow down your frame rate. Ideally you wouldn't.

Low Skill (hey, it's a thing) - Difficulty options, turn off death at its most extreme but some people want that level of costumizability, you can also disable/enable checkpoints, again simple using an if statement that checks for a global variable.

Entirely dependent on your engine and your game concept, but I think any reasonably coded game can be modified in such a way. To do this IN GAME just have an options menu. XCOM allows you to turn on 'extra options' like ironman mode, permanent saves, super difficulty, etc.

I think there are two very different subjects here, accessibility and difficulty.

In terms of accessibility, no question about that, we should try to include as many people as possible. Sure we may not know every problem our players may have, but internet is there to provide us with answers.

On the question of difficulty, it's a totally different matter. Most of the pleasure we have when we play comes from "grokking" the game. If we have nothing to learn from it (no obstacles to overcome), where is the pleasure? Sure, for heavily narrative games, it's a valid option. But an arcady shooter with more of a pretext than a story? What would you get from it without any challenges?

The difficulty in games like Spelunky and Dark Soul are part of what define them. It is an integral part of their personality. I'm completely rubbish at those games, but I still play them so I can get the rush of my little successes.

Sure, you could just let the player choose. But I feel like it would be an effort in the wrong direction. Like an author using a poorer vocabulary, or a painter painting only recognizable objects because many people don't get more conceptual stuff.

I'd say the decision is yours: would you rather change the game you want to make, or take the risk to reach less players?

The key word is optional.

The thing is, you don't HAVE to limit your idea by the accessibility. A simple thing like increasing your hitpoints, making random encounters less common (Bravely Default lets you turn them off entirely, or just limit your percent chance) is not game breaking and will not prevent anyone from playing your game.

Essentially, design your game first, allow modifications second. It's not a matter of changing your abstract art, it's a matter of letting poor eyesighted folks get a closer look at it.

The core idea is that challenging for some can be downright impossible for others. The simple, optional, things can fix that.

[SirNiko]

There are ways to make difficulty both accessible and rewarding in the same game. For example, reserving bonuses (achievements, for example) only for players who challenge themselves by playing higher difficulties. If your game is designed to be very hard (for example, Spelunky or Dark Souls) you may consider designing a series of escalating difficulties that allows the player to learn the game and gradually challenge themselves more. Add in some unlockable costumes or achievements to push the player to turn up the challenge and make the game harder.

[Schoq]

In my mind the problem of including new and less skilled players in genres where experienced players derive their enjoyment from the challenge has been a solved one for a very long time: Just put in cheatcodes.
No reason not to really. it used to be standard in PC games at least (certain genres).
Typing in codes for godmode and infinite ammo etc. is so much cleaner than weird "adaptive difficulty" bs.

Everyone knows what's going on and that they're not getting the "intended" experience or whatever but can have fun messing about just the same. Needing no tricky extra incentives to play "as intended" or algorithms trying to guess the optimal enjoyment difficulty for arbitrary play styles and skill levels.

[Squidly]

There are ways to make difficulty both accessible and rewarding in the same game. For example, reserving bonuses (achievements, for example) only for players who challenge themselves by playing higher difficulties. If your game is designed to be very hard (for example, Spelunky or Dark Souls) you may consider designing a series of escalating difficulties that allows the player to learn the game and gradually challenge themselves more. Add in some unlockable costumes or achievements to push the player to turn up the challenge and make the game harder.

The problem with this is that your discounting people who CAN'T get good at Spelunky because of things such as reduced motor ability. For example, I can't play fighting games because my fingers simply aren't fast enough to do hold back triangle motion forward triple punch in the .3 seconds you're expected to do it in. Would it kill fighting game developers to let the commands be a little nicer, give more time to do them, for example? It's not a game breaker if you actually let people do their Shoryuken instead of fumbling.

Disabling achievements is forgetting one key thing - achievements have no intrinsic value. Maybe on the 360 they do, which is a problem in itself, but on every other system, they have no value at all. It's just that - achievements. So who cares how you got them? They are an achievement to you, and like I said, challenging to some is physically downright impossible to others.

Are we really supposed to, at an art convention, give a gold star to the art critic with 20/20 vision because they didn't have to get close to make out the painting? And everyone else, from the -.5 in one eye only to the near sighted, gets nothing at all because they don't deserve it?

The problem with cheat codes is that they're just that - cheat codes. You're telling people that this is not the way you're supposed to play it, you're cheating. It's like going to a person who's on a wheelchair and saying 'that's not the way you're supposed to move, you're cheating.'

You are also forgetting the other half - the epilepsy, the full captions (which, again, most games won't need.)

This isn't all that hard to implement.

We're focusing on the means, NOT the results. We should allow multiple means for the same result, THAT'S how you broaden your audience.

Imagine if we set up a sight of games with handicap accessible options, then redirected gamers to them? Boom. Immediate untapped audience.

[Schoq]

The problem with cheat codes is that they're just that - cheat codes. You're telling people that this is not the way you're supposed to play it, you're cheating. It's like going to a person who's on a wheelchair and saying 'that's not the way you're supposed to move, you're cheating.'

Being twelve and playing Quake etc. with godmode I didn't feel like a cripple being told to try harder*. I was just having fun. Knowing that I was really "supposed" to play it differently didn't mar it. I don't think this is an appropriate analogy at all.

*(Neither did another, actually disabled, person I know who played those games like that, I'm pretty sure, but I don't want to speak for other people).

[mks]

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO GAME ACCESSIBILITY

http://www.includification.com/AbleGamers_Includification.pdf

Perhaps someone is interested...

[Sik]

The problem with cheat codes is that they're just that - cheat codes. You're telling people that this is not the way you're supposed to play it, you're cheating. It's like going to a person who's on a wheelchair and saying 'that's not the way you're supposed to move, you're cheating.'

The same could be argued about any sort of settings though - the default settings are how you're supposed to play, if you change them you're not going by the correct rules.

Also remember you could also go both ways. You could have cheats that make the game harder. If you have those then you skew the perception of cheats in general in the game. Nobody will tell you that you're cheating if you make the game harder, even though technically you are.

[amushel]

There are some really faulty arguments in this threat.

The problem with this is that your discounting people who CAN'T get good at Spelunky because of things such as reduced motor ability. For example, I can't play fighting games because my fingers simply aren't fast enough to do hold back triangle motion forward triple punch in the .3 seconds you're expected to do it in. Would it kill fighting game developers to let the commands be a little nicer, give more time to do them, for example? It's not a game breaker if you actually let people do their Shoryuken instead of fumbling.

Yes, it is. Fighting games are an inherently skill-oriented genre. Precision mechanics, combo memorization, and high skill expectations are the standards of the genre and the people that enjoy it the most expect these things from it. I say this as someone who is neither good at fighting games nor enjoys them. No, they should not loosen their mechanics to be nicer for people with shitty reflexes or bad memory. That's not the point of the games. Spelunky is the same way. Its PRIMARY appeal is skill development in the context of randomized challenges. If you eliminated that challenge for people that aren't good enough, it would be a far less interesting game. If people aren't good enough to get through the it (I haven't as of yet), they can play something that's more for them. Many people don't get death metal. Should death metal bands abandon that vocal style for the sake of accessibility? (The answer is no) Certain people are highly sensitive to specific frequencies of sound. Should all music be mastered to accommodate for that? (No)

Disabling achievements is forgetting one key thing - achievements have no intrinsic value. Maybe on the 360 they do, which is a problem in itself, but on every other system, they have no value at all. It's just that - achievements. So who cares how you got them? They are an achievement to you, and like I said, challenging to some is physically downright impossible to others.

Pretty much nothing has any intrinsic value. What's your point? Achievements serve to reinforce the inherent challenge of the majority of videogames. They have as much value as any other challenge in a videogame does. If you circumvent that challenge and undermine the mechanical balance of the game(which is really what you seem to think developers should fully accommodate), you have failed to achieve those goals based on the original gameplay constraints. You have broken the rules (something that GAMES have). You have CHEATED, regardless of your potentially inability to do so otherwise.

Are we really supposed to, at an art convention, give a gold star to the art critic with 20/20 vision because they didn't have to get close to make out the painting? And everyone else, from the -.5 in one eye only to the near sighted, gets nothing at all because they don't deserve it?

What? That hypothetical scenario isn't even REMOTELY analogous to what you're taking about. At all. Mechanics are as much a part of the art of games as the visuals, the sound, or the story. Visual art has no mechanics. They have no element of skill development (aside from the skill of the creator). The comparison to a critic is complete and utter nonsense. The act of critiquing a painting has very is not a core element of why the painting itself is art. Do you think, then, that all painters should paint on ludicrously large canvases and only in colors that are friendly to the color blind? That is a lot more along that lines of what you're talking about.

The problem with cheat codes is that they're just that - cheat codes. You're telling people that this is not the way you're supposed to play it, you're cheating. It's like going to a person who's on a wheelchair and saying 'that's not the way you're supposed to move, you're cheating.'

A person in a wheel chair is just not going to be playing football (either variety). Would you suggest that the expectations of that game be reduced to accommodate a minority of people that can't experience it as it was designed? That is a ridiculous notion. If you swapped out the field for a wheel-chair friendly court, it would no longer be football and the challenges and accomplishments associated with it would no longer exist. Some games are about PROWESS. Dilution of that is not an inherent good simply because some people aren't capable.

[Squidly]

I don't think you get it, Amushel.

Here's the thing:

You're forgetting these are toggle-able.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the PS1 had adjustable input speed, nobody died.

However, Street Fighter x Tekken made a gem, a game critical asset, that you can switch to simple controls. So it's essentially recognizing that the controls are impossible and you should also be at a major disadvantage (one gem less) if you want to play.

Would it kill them to just make that a toggle option? Do you want to play with easy inputs, yes or no? We don't need to kill people to make them know we're hardcore.

That's the thing, you have this mindset that games have to be these rigid structures that everyone should play exactly the same to get the exact same experience.

Yet you fail to realize what I keep on saying: Challenging for some is downright impossible for others. We let people adjust their mouse sensitivity, allow them to change their difficulty, but really - it's deeper then that. It's not just how many enemies are on screen, it's the fact that there are things, such as QTE, that are physically impossible to go through.

Are you really trying to tell me that an epiliptec does not have the right to turn off that one minor spot in Gaucamelee that is pretty much guarenteed to induce a seizure (it hurts your eyes normally too.) You're also trying to tell me that subtitles are removing from your experience, that controls should not be adjustable, and that fighting games should be completely 100% inacessable to about 95% of the population?

Here's a flash: This isn't SKILL, this is DISABILITY. It's not a SKILL to jam the X button reaptedly. It's not a SKILL to look at something flashing ridiculously fast. It's not a SKILL to be able to wrestle with unforgiving controls.

In fact, all of these things shouldn't even exist. But if you really, really, want to put in that mash X sequence, it's imperative that you know exactly how it is to pry a door open, then by all means put it - just let everyone be able to pass it.

Do you get how ridiculous this sounds? That you spend 10 bucks on a game, or 60, or whatever, or it's free and you put in a 1 hour, 3 hour commitment and then boom - epileptic segment, mash X repeatedly, this skill requires you to practice for five hours just to USE it, not learn when to use it, just to be able to use it when you INTEND to use it.

This is ridiculous, why is there even a counter argument to inclusivity? It's really not even that hard to implement at all. Get with the times.

And for the cheat codes shtick, if you're gonna go through the effort to put in godmode, why not give the option to just toggle it? What is the value of having some secret word people don't learn about until they hack the game or buy the guide?

[amushel]

That's the thing, you have this mindset that games have to be these rigid structures that everyone should play exactly the same to get the exact same experience.

Well, that's a pretty blatant straw man, considering that I neither said nor implied any such thing. You would think, it had "this mind set" that I would be aware of it before you told me and would also agree with "this mind set" as you have described it.

Yet you fail to realize what I keep on saying

I'm glad SOMEONE can keep me up-to-date on my own thought-process. It's so much work to do it myself.

You're making some seriously false equivalencies here. Epilepsy and deafness are not even close to the same thing as lacking the manual dexterity or patience to learn a game that's primary appeal is in skill development. I never argued against the former two, though since you can't seem to see the distinction, I suppose I can see how you would have gotten that impression (and then built your entire argument around it). I'm not arguing against accessibility or inclusiveness in general either. What you're presenting is a false dichotomy. I'm arguing against your blanket generalization that all potential audience shortcomings should always be accommodated, regardless of whether or not it undermines the intent of the work to begin with. There are some games that some people just won't be able to play. If someone can't beat Spelunky, FEZ exists, a game that does NOT have a focus on mechanical mastery. If someone can't deal with Street Fighter, Smash Bros is a lot more forgiving. Demanding that all games be accommodating is not a matter of "getting with the times." It's a matter of telling developers that the game they want to make has to appeal to everyone, regardless of the game they actually want to make. Accessibility is great, but it is not and never should be a requirement in any art form.

Are you really trying to tell me that an epiliptec does not have the right to turn off that one minor spot in Gaucamelee that is pretty much guarenteed to induce a seizure (it hurts your eyes normally too.) You're also trying to tell me that subtitles are removing from your experience, that controls should not be adjustable, and that fighting games should be completely 100% inacessable to about 95% of the population?

Nope. I'm not.

Here's a flash: This isn't SKILL, this is DISABILITY. It's not a SKILL to jam the X button reaptedly. It's not a SKILL to look at something flashing ridiculously fast.

Here's a news flash: Your reading comprehension could using some work. I addressed this above. I did not say that performing QTEs or "not having epilepsy" were skills. QTEs are, however, awful game design, so I suppose they impact my ability to enjoy games as well. The ability to skip those would be a benefit to all.

It's not a SKILL to be able to wrestle with unforgiving controls.

Yes. Yes, it is. If physical disability prevents it, that's a shame, but that doesn't make mastery of precise and demanding controls any less of a skill. I suppose you think that tone deafness is a disability that music should accommodate as well.

[Squidly]

Look, as far as motor deficincies go, I'm not saying make your game a one button simple-fest. No, I'm just saying that it really wouldn't kill you to put in .5 seconds more so you can put in that button input, just like they USED TO DO.

Everything else is bonus, and the more things you put in the marrier.

I have had friends, including myself, thrown in the ICU and you know what I've learned to be the most popular hospital games? RPGs... and The Legend of Zelda. The first one I get, the second one, well, it's a popular franchise. But those two lend themselves well to low-dexterity gaming, I honestly think that outside of the sometimes devious dungeon design, Zelda is a fine balanced game where it's definitely not too easy and usually not too hard. It escalates.

Am I saying that Spelunky is the ideal game for a bed ridden person? Hell no. What I AM saying is that Spelunky CAN be an acceptable game, you literally just have to tone down the brutality as an OPTION. A checkpoint system, or at least a 'one more attempt' option would go a long way towards accessibility.

It's like playing a sport, you play within your league, and for a 5th grade Soccer team the other 5th grade soccer team is ample challenge. However, things like Spelunky put the 5th graders against the Professional League, and though the Professional Team vs other Professional Team are evenly matched, the 5th graders would get massacred.

So we build them up, and we put limits at the beginning. Full nelsons are illegal in High School Wrestling, Suplexes are illegal in Collegiate Wrestling, but once you're in UFC or the Olympics, it's no holds barred. But if we put beginner wrestlers in the UFC, they would literally break their necks (which is why the full nelson is banned, suplex for that reason plus many, many, others.) And some people, such as myself, stopped at high school and only do recreational wrestling. Why? Because collegiate wrestling is a whole nother league, it's a LOT of effort (HS is too) and it consumes all of your free time, there's a reason why college athletes get scholarships which are very lenient in the grades department. I, as many others including several captains, just can't do it.

We like fighting games, we like Spelunky, but we don't want to devote our lives to it. We can't keep optimizing games for tourney players and then forget entirely about everyone else. This is why Street Fighter x Tekken was a colossal failure, you know. It's also the reason why nobody in Spelunky makes it past the 2nd zone, and like hell they'll make it past the 3rd, and they're definitely not finishing the game, and getting through hell is reserved for twitch players. And that's just ridiculous.

[Gatlink]

I think this way of thinking (make the game easier for everyone to enjoy) was the way big publisher were thinking (and maybe still are) those past few years. That's what spawned regenerating health for example.

What's the result? Dark Soul, Spelunky, and other really hard title gaining a fanatic crowd of fans, elevating those games to the status of masterpieces (I'm not even exaggerating, I know someone who bought a console just to play Dark Soul, who owns 3 copies of it, etc.).

If those games don't suit you, I don't think it's the role of the developers to pander to your demands and spend time and money to tone down their games.Moreover, I think From Software or Derek Yu know perfectly that their games won't please to every gamer out there, and it didn't keep them from making them the way they are. It's a niche market.

You say just because you bought a game you should be able to get to the end. It sounds ridiculous to me, even more in those day and age where you can learn everything there is to know about a game before buying it. Nowadays, the offer in terms of games is so huge, I'm sure there's another title that could suit you better.

[Squidly]

No, this is not what I'm saying at all.

Okay, let this be very clear: I love Spelunky. I love its brutal difficulty.

But its far from perfect.

It has no difficulty options, it's too long for what it is (four levels per zone is unecessary) and you get absolute zero costumization options. The original had mod support, the HD version is a massive locked gate.

Spelunky does not have difficulty settings, the most basic of accessibility concepts.

It's not a devs duty to make things easier for everyone, but we can stop pretending now that it'd be impossible to include things that are more friendly.

The thing is, if you can't hold a regular controller, these games are literally impossible. Not challenging, not something you can get used to, they are IMPOSSIBLE.

There have been people who have overcome amazing hurdles, there was one girl who beat Ocarina of Time blind, getting assistance from a live chat.

However, it doesn't HAVE to be this way. We can't cater to everyone, but make a bit of effort to cater to at least someone out of your way.

This does not mean make the game easy.

But I keep saying this.

CHALLENGING for SOME, is IMPOSSIBLE for OTHERS.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO GAME ACCESSIBILITY

http://www.includification.com/AbleGamers_Includification.pdf

Perhaps someone is interested...

Please just read this, and then we can get back to a real conversation.

If you absolutely will not, under any circumstances, cater to anyone except those who have ten fingers/toes, regular/insane reflexes, and is able to hear, see with all colors and without any blurriness, and is also mentally sound and/or a fast learner.

Then that's your problem. Not ours.

Meanwhile the rest of us will be developing great, challenging, games, then letting people modify it their way.

[Gatlink]

It's a real good read.

I realize I may have sounded disdainful, I'm sorry. I don't want you to think that I don't care about disabled people. I must say reading this thread and the document linked before, I discovered some disabilities I didn't know, and now I have a better idea why difficulty can be a problem.

I never thought we shouldn't allow the player to modify the difficulty in our games. I just want to defend the right of some developers to make difficult games, because hard games are a niche, and there's a market for it. And as it is a niche, it can be difficult to get the budget to add more and more layer of customization to allow for different level of difficulties (Spelunky HD was made by what, 2 people?).

[Sik]

On the topic of fighting games, in my experience you can play them just fine even if you're stuck with the basic control set (even a subset of it). You'll be screwed if you play against a pro player, but there's nothing you can do about that (unless it's an error in a matchmaking algorithm, if you play against random players).

And for the cheat codes shtick, if you're gonna go through the effort to put in godmode, why not give the option to just toggle it? What is the value of having some secret word people don't learn about until they hack the game or buy the guide?

Just put it in the manual (yes, even downloadable games can come with a manual - HTML or help files, anyone?). Heck, early Windows games did exactly that.

The main reason to put those as cheat codes is that they affect the gameplay in rather extreme ways and so it'd be desirable to mark them apart, otherwise you'll have lots of non-disabled people complaining that you're ruining the game (and yes, this is going to hurt you). Somebody who's disabled cares more about being able to play than about the method used to make the game accessible.

Of course it should only be used for extreme gameplay changes. For example, god mode would make sense as a cheat code (it completely changes the game design), but disabling superfluous (and potentially dangerous) details should be a normal setting.

Look, as far as motor deficincies go, I'm not saying make your game a one button simple-fest. No, I'm just saying that it really wouldn't kill you to put in .5 seconds more so you can put in that button input, just like they USED TO DO.

My game is a platformer with all four directions and jumping and it still has an one-switch mode, so I wouldn't say that making a game one-switch would require making it simpler (I did add a game speed setting though, because even though I can play just fine in 100% speed one-switch mode, I know most players that need it can't).

[ianhamilton_]

Also, there isn't a whole lot of guidance about what sort of medical issues we should be looking for. I'd like to think game devs are a kinder lot, but sometimes when you're making games in your basement apartment you're not thinking about people with epilepsy or other disabilities...frankly you'd be happy if your mother even bothered to play the game. I mean, there's a couple things going on here- what are the disabilities we need to look for, how do we solve those problems, and how am I going to find such a person to test those features?

Yes absolutely, coming from experience of other industries, game devs are in general far more likely to be in it for the right reasons, wanting to share their creative vision with as many people as possible.

It's actually important not to think about medical conditions, and instead to think about barriers that they face. one single unnecessary barrier in a game may well be a showstopper for several different medical conditions and a bit of an annoyance to all players, so you can often do a great deal for very little.

There are five broad types of impairment & barrier:

- Motor
- Hearing
- Cognitive
- Vision
- Speech

So just spending a little bit of time thinking about these at the outset can make a huge difference. Thinking about what barriers there are in your concept, and if those would mean difficulties for any of those 5 groups, and then whether those barriers are in fact an essential part, of if there's something you can do to avoid or reduce the issue.

Some examples of ways to avoid unnecessary barriers are:

- Simple configurable controls
- Not relying on colour alone to convey information (8% of males are colourblind, usually red/green)
- Allowing as much time as people need to read textual information instead of putting it on timers(14% of adults have a reading age of 11 years or younger)
- Avoiding flickering/flashing across large portions of the screen
- Subtitles (not just for permanent hearing impairments, but temporary/situational too, such as playing in a noisy environment, on public transport without headphones, english not being first language, playing on mute because baby is asleep etc)

More examples available here:

http://www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com

Twitter is a good source of testing participants, as are local disability groups in your area. There are community sites you can call on too.

If you were to take it as far as you can and go for full blind accessibility (which can actually sometimes be surprisingly easy, particularly if your game is based on navigating interfaces rather than environments, or also fighting games.. injustice and skullgirls both made efforts toe be completely blind-accessible), the blind gamer community is amazing to work with and very loyal advocates for anyone who works with them. Good ways to reach the blind gaming community are the applevis forums, audiogames forums, and the audyssey mailing list.

There's a reason why may accessibility improvements are made aftermarket- there's really no guarantee of success that anyone would actually even play your game. The amount of time required to research and graft on such customizations could be considerable- in a one man shop it could be the difference between spending the day implementing actual gameplay functionality and that.

That's a fatal mistake. If you think about it after the event, you have to spend a decent chunk of time and money on retrofitting, which often makes it simply not feasible. The same considerations when taken at the outset can be much cheaper, sometimes even free. For example, it costs nothing at all to decide to use blue instead of green for some of your assets. However, changing them to blue after they have already been made as green does cost you.

The majority of accessibility work comes down to just two key principles:

- Allowing some flexibility in play style (choice of difficultly, configurable controls etc)
- Communicating information in more than one way (icon as well as colour, subtitles, etc).

Those two principles aren't niche considerations that benefit a small group, they're just good general game design, so if you think about it early enough it really should just be a baked in part of how you design the game, rather than a separate expensive bolt-on.

Something really important to bear in mind is that accessibility is not some bar to be measured against, instead it's about optimising, avoiding the barriers that happen to be unnecessary for your particular game.

Every game must have some kind of challenge, or it would be a toy or interactive narrative. And any challenge will exclude someone. So you can't have an 'accessible' game, you can just make it as accessible as you can, allow as many people as possible to play.

Whatever you do, you can't mess with your core mechanic, that thing that makes the game fun, or you've made that core mechanic inaccessible to everyone, defeating the point.

But it is absolutely worth thinking hard about what that core mechanic is. For example Bayonetta. Many devs would consider that the core mechanic is stringing together complex combos.. but it's not. Bayonetta's devs abstracted it out a little, and realised that the fun of the game isn't actually stringing combos togheter, the fun of the game is pushing your motor skills to the absolute limit in exchange for visually impressive combo animations.

So their difficultly levels go all the way down to a single button mode. She runs around automatically, and all you have to do is hit a single button at the right time and she executes an impressive combo.

Which may not sound like fun for extreme examples of gamers like us, but for some people, even executing one well timed button press would be a punishing task. So they're actually having an equivalent experience, doing the same kind of challenge, going through the same kind of emotions, receiving the same kind of rewards.. able to experience the same kind of enjoyment, even though they aren't as capable with a controller.

More info if you're interested:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020205/Accessibility-Lessons-Learned-from-Designing

[Eadow]

Too many designers here protecting their games like if it was their baby. Player options like those is not something you should add after you finished the game and want to make the game more accessible, they will ruin the gameplay for everyone and make the game less fun. Options like those need to be planned in advance, preferably before you even start to make the game, so that the gameplay adjusts to them and they don't seem like a quick fix. I completely agree that they are necessary, and that game option menus should let you change just about every facet of the game so that the player can adjust it to his preferences.

On the other hand, I feel that games like Darks Souls or Spelunky are aimed at another audience, and if you can't play them because they're too hard, you should be playing something else. You aren't required to play every game, and I think that these games do a very good job at warning a potential customer that this is a hard game.