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[Chris Koźmik]

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.

Impossible technically, if you allow mods then you will quickly see a mod that grants all achievements with one click of a button This would simply make achievement system meaningless.

[ianhamilton_]

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.

Yes, being excluded because the game is not suited to you is not a problem. What's a problem is when you're excluded unnecessarily. So fair enough, the point of it is to be hard.. but is the point of it to be a test of your ability to see fine details or subtle differences in contrast? your ability to distinguish red and green? your ability to hear?

That's what it's about, being able to properly identify what your core mechanic and challenges are, and making sure you aren't making arbitrary design decisions outside of that that unnecessarily exclude people.

And yes absolutely, as far as how well integrated accessibility features are when planned in advance or added at the end, guess which one out of these two efforts to be colorblind friendly was planned in advance, and which was added after launch:

Toy Mania -
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/toy-mania-650.png

Flow Free -
https://lh6.ggpht.com/IcARaU13nUW8VNA-gbnbXSJuhHBgwYXfd_mR4Tvcc4fcbEl7dzVNXMLaMPMasQpYLb4=h900

[Squidly]

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.

Impossible technically, if you allow mods then you will quickly see a mod that grants all achievements with one click of a button This would simply make achievement system meaningless.

Not impossible. If they want to cheat to get all the achievements, then so be it.

Most of us, however, just want to add in Princess Bubblegum vs Hitler, or the RED Mod Pack, or the extremely well done 'civics rebalancing' from Civ V Vanilla.


As for Spelunky, like I said, some people enjoy another difficulty setting. What's 10 tries for one person is 100 for another.

It's the 5th graders in a professional MMA fight, you get your ass handed to you in 10 seconds, and did you learn anything? No.

For some, that jump is literally way too fast for your coordination, this is not something you can 'get good at' in a reasonable amount of time, or at all.

[amushel]

As for Spelunky, like I said, some people enjoy another difficulty setting. What's 10 tries for one person is 100 for another.

It's the 5th graders in a professional MMA fight, you get your ass handed to you in 10 seconds, and did you learn anything? No.

For some, that jump is literally way too fast for your coordination, this is not something you can 'get good at' in a reasonable amount of time, or at all.

Except that what you're suggesting is like saying the MMA fighters should modify their rules and expectations for said fifth graders, to make the sport more accessible to people that aren't MMA fighters. Some people can't reasonably get good at Spelunky, just as there are many activities that people can't participate in or can't participate in to a functional level. But here's the thing: the platformer genre is extremely varied. There are plenty of games with a different focus that would work fine for them. The roguelike genre has a related appeal, but lacks a focus on reflexes and control. Some games aren't designed to have difficulty levels. Not all games have to be appeal to entry level players (regardless of the specific situation). The fundamental appeal of Spelunky is its finely tuned sense of difficulty. If you don't want to or can't handle that kind of experience, there are tons of other games that's CORE APPEAL is not that kind of experience. Lack of accessibility is not an inherent flaw. I'm all for accessibility in a general sense, and I appreciate games that incorporate it in an intelligent manner, but your argument for precision games like Spelunky is just fallacious. There is a difference between difficulty accommodations in a game like Uncharted and similar potential considerations in a game like Dark Souls. They are fundamentally different. They have fundamentally different goals. Suggesting that a single standard for difficulty accessibility can reasonably be applied to any experience is a flawed premise.

Not impossible. If they want to cheat to get all the achievements, then so be it.

That entirely defeats the purpose and economy of achievements to begin with, regardless of individual opinions on the value of such systems. No. People should not be able to cheat to get all of the achievements.

[Squidly]

Whether or not you have an achievement in Civ V means absolutely nothing to anyone else.

In addition, the amount that would cheat would be a very low number, since, as you said, that takes all the fun out of it. What's the point in shelling out 20 (I paid 50) for a game then getting no fun out of it? But if I want to get my Diplomatic victory as Lord Sauron then damn right I should be rewarded for it. We can't underestimate the amount of thought about balance that's been put into these.

Anyways, as for the fifth graders I'm trying to say that fifth graders get trained to fight, and when they are in MMA they are ready but only because they started slow and got there. However, if they don't get trained and instead get wailed on, then that teaches nothing.

Similarly, if Spelunky was so well designed, then a difficulty option wouldn't be impossible. Do the arrows have to do half your life's worth in damage? Do spikes have to be literally everywhere and kill instantly?

Either way, I think Spelunky is a well built game, but its extreme difficulty is wrongly attributed to good game design. Instead, it's, well, random level generation.

Spelunky doesn't even support seeds, even that would be a step up.

As for Dark Souls, it's a beautiful game. Why do I have to suffer to enjoy its scenery and plot? We never consider that not everyone gets sold on the challenge, and difficulty options in this day and age should pretty much be common practice. I mean, really, lighter hitting enemies, this is literally just a multiplier, if you can't put that into your game then I'm worried about how your engine is actually built in the first place. Or your stubbornness. I'm not sure which one is more worrying.

[Eadow]

As for Dark Souls, it's a beautiful game. Why do I have to suffer to enjoy its scenery and plot? We never consider that not everyone gets sold on the challenge, and difficulty options in this day and age should pretty much be common practice. I mean, really, lighter hitting enemies, this is literally just a multiplier, if you can't put that into your game then I'm worried about how your engine is actually built in the first place. Or your stubbornness. I'm not sure which one is more worrying.

As I said before, you're not supposed to play every game that comes out. Dark Souls is supposed to be hard, that's it's main feature. Dark Souls doesn't have difficulty options because it doesn't target people that aren't looking for a challenge. Some games try to appeal to a very large audience and only a few can pull that off, on the other hand if you aim at a niche market you have bigger chances to succeed, but that comes with the disadvantage of not everyone being able to like your game.
I still agree with you that games should have more accessibility options, but altering the difficulty in Spelunky or Dark Souls would remove the only point that sets them apart from other games.

[Squidly]

But here's the thing - is it really the only point?

Like the Readme I posted in the very beginning said:

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.

It wouldn't be the end of the whole game if it had a difficulty slider, I mean, it really, really, would not be the end of the game at all.

[amushel]

Yes. It is. If the designers have a specific experience in mind for THEIR creation, they are not in the wrong for not fucking around with their game's balance for people that don't enjoy CORE ELEMENTS OF THE EXPERIENCE. It would be like going through a book someone wrote, censoring all perceived profanity and modifying the sentence structure and word choice so it's easier to read for people with poor language skills. That would not be OK. And that's not something it would be acceptable to tell an author they should do. It is not as simple as "just a multiplier" if the game was designed with a very specific balance in mind and for a specific audience. You don't "have to suffer to enjoy its scenery and plot," because you can play a different game or you can watch someone else play it. It is NOT reasonable to just dismissively expect someone to cater their creation to your specific expectations, because that's what YOU want out of the game. What the guys at From Software wanted out of those games is what shipped and, as it turns out, that's what the dedicated fans of the Souls games want too. You continue to speak of challenge as if it's an option part of all games that can be turned off. I would agree with the assertion that not all games need to be challenging. What I don't agree with is that idea that a developer wanting to make a game challenging in a specific way and not catering to someone who doesn't like or isn't capable of surmounting that challenge is "stubbornness." No. That would be like me playing a Madden game and then complaining that it has too much FOOTBALL in it. I mean, how can I be expected to follow that game if I don't have a functional knowledge of the rules of the sport nor any inclination to learn them? CLEARLY, they should have a mode that eliminates this problem for me. No. It's not a crime to have a specific target audience.

Going back to Spelunky. That game was be boring as hell if it was easier. Yes, the random generation is a large part of the challenge because it forces you to understand how the level mechanics WORK instead of allowing for memorization through repetition. It expects you to pay attention to a consistent set of hazards and the move deliberately through each area. Beyond the well honed sense of difficulty, it would not be an interesting game and given that the difficulty is CLEARLY the foundation of the entire game, making reasonably well-balanced difficulty would not be anywhere near as simple as you seem to think it would be.

And achievements... Again, your argument seems to be decidedly self-centered. Achievements are based on a sense of community competition in games. Their merit is ENTIRELY based on comparison to others, much like the well worn practice of leaderboards. Just because some people don't care about those specific challenges or the static rules and constraints that accompany them doesn't mean that it would be acceptable to just break or bend those rules at will. It's the same reason that people who care about sports get so upset about performance enhancing drugs: the enjoyment of competition is based on a sense of mastery given the same tools and constraints. When you change those parameters, it is no longer the same playing field.

[Squidly]

Honest to god, though, okay, Spelunky could at least use a seed system. Or a checkpoint System.

I think you underestimate people, I would personally not consider throwing the switch on 'restart area with different level but same items' until, let's say, my 100th hour.

I think you need to understand a very core concept here: Video games are not books, video games are not movies, and video games are not painted art. Video games have an interaction segment.

While books can teach you big words which you can overcome with a dictionary, even the biggest words can be fell by a dictionary. You could also look at part of speech, context, etc. to solve that but you HAVE A CHOICE.

Some people prefer to do it the hard way. Some people prefer to get past 'enervating' with a good dictionary and just read the damn book. Why do you think the classics such as Moby Dick can still be read by people alive today, despite that book using vocabulary that hasn't been used since the early 20th century?

There seems to really be two kinds of artists: Those who want you to deal with it, and those who want you to see their art.

You're trying to tell me that somehow, just somehow, adding a difficulty setting to Dark Souls would absolutely destroy the game. Absolutely. It would be completely unbalancedly obliterated. You have to lose 1/3 of your lifebar to one false move, you just have to. There's no other way. The game loses its meaning completely.

Do you know how silly that sounds?

If you paint the Mono Lisa then the meaning isn't lost if you see a picture of it. What you're saying is as if the Louvre said 'absolutely no one can take a picture in this museum, if you want to see the best France has to offer, go book yourself a $1000 ticket and find the time in your schedule to come here yourself!"

I won't deny seeing David was a much better experience then looking at the pictures I had seen before, but people seeing David in a picture does not make Michelangelo stir in his sleep.

[Squidly]

It certainly didn't break XCOM.

[Leon Fook]

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.'

Remember you can key in konami code in contra and still suck with it? Remember despite having full resource, ability to watch every single move of your enemy, and create unit with a single click in starcraft and warcraft3, but still getting annihilated in like, minute? I do.

Cheat code is, despite some bad example, an option to ease the game difficulty, just like going to the option menu and messing with stuff, or get into .ini file and messing with number and code. Like your original post, turning off hitbox is count as cheat.

[Ant]

People seem to be fixating on Dark Souls and Spelunky, but think about all the casual games that you could enjoy if they had a hard mode. How amazing would Journey be if it had the option of having challenging gameplay.

[Schoq]

That'd require a lot of additional design though, unlike easymodes, which are mostly subtractions or small adjustments. (hardmodes that just make you punch all enemies twice as much are stupid)

[s0]

i wouldnt want to play casual games on hard mode. i play casual management games on my phone and im glad theyre easy.

[s0]

I won't deny seeing David was a much better experience then looking at the pictures I had seen before, but people seeing David in a picture does not make Michelangelo stir in his sleep.

then why do you object to cheat codes? those are basically the same thing.

As for Dark Souls, it's a beautiful game. Why do I have to suffer to enjoy its scenery and plot? We never consider that not everyone gets sold on the challenge, and difficulty options in this day and age should pretty much be common practice.

we never consider that not everyone gets sold on graphics/story. why should i have to get bored with a trivially easy game like journey just so i can see some pretty pictures and be "emotionally affected" by it? there is literally no reason not to include a hardcore mode in this day and age.*

*i don't actually believe this, i think games should be as hard/easy as they need to be.

[Squidly]

Guys, we're literally talking about subtracting from health bars and damage inputs. I am NOT favoring easy design, I am favoring a good game that can be adjusted AFTER the fact.

Please, please, please, refer to the .pdf by AbleGamers, along with their site.

[Sik]

Huh, that still won't be enough unless you design that to be the only challenging thing in the game. I recall somebody on Gamasutra once saying he was having trouble in a section where he was playing in hard and he'd keep falling into a pit, and after losing so many times the game decided to switch the difficulty to easy, despite the fact that only affected battles (so the difficult section kept being just as difficult). It felt outright insulting to him.

You can't say that an "easy" difficulty is just a matter of substracting because then you're guaranteed to get it wrong, for the same reason that a "hard" difficulty is not a matter of just adding.

[Squidly]

I said that at the minimum. The better would be to change the level design.

The most extreme case of THAT would be Hero Core, where there are 3 different maps, world maps, for the 3 different difficulty settings.

[Lee]

You seem to be arguing a lot of changes specifically to make the lives of disabled gamers easier, but you also seem to be dismissing how such changes affect non-disabled gamers. I don't want to sound like an asshole as it truly is a tragedy that one man could be born blind and another with perfectly good vision, or that some people get debilitating illnesses in their lives... And I do actually agree with the sentiment that games should be accessible and as inclusive as possible. But unfortunately the only way to do it perfectly would be to make a partly unique experience for all groups (for more complex reasons than simply inclusion). And that is not really feasible.

You give a lot of examples like toggle cheats, difficulty levels, and such but many are actually detrimental to the game for other groups. It's not really feasible to say "okay you have some such disability so you can have this slightly tailored experience whilst others have the non-tailored experience".

That isn't to say that we should dismiss all inclusive elements. There is a lot more that developers should be aware of and take into account during development. For instance colour blindness, the article you linked had a very good little bit about that in fact:

"in Star Wars: The Old Republic. There, "Portals" that you can go in are GREEN, but those you cannot are RED. To the red/green colorblind gamer, these both look the same, and navigation is a mystery."

This could easily be fixed to be more inclusive... However the problem itself wouldn't exist in this situation with good visual design and contextual information, stuff like visual priorities (dim/bright, low/high contrast, transparent/opaque, different movement speed of particles and or animated effects), and audio cue changes (with closed captions of course).

And there are many different types of visual impairments and a few subsets of colour blindness, you can't really cater every aspect of every game to account for such things. Simpler puzzle games have such liberties but expansive 3D games can only really cover important GUI and game elements to an extent. At a point as a designer you have to be able to say that you want a specific look and realize you can't cater to everyone.

One thing I really do not understand is the lack of customizable controls, it helps people from all demographics, even if it's just a preference thing. It's just not acceptable for a "AAA game" to not have it.

With gameplay mechanics it's a lot more difficult to be inclusive.

As mentioned "difficulty" modes are mostly a crock of shit, given a choice nobody would choose the simple multiplication of health and or damage, they would instead be in favour of real gameplay difficulty changes. Most implementations of difficulty are just a cop out to avoid having to do any real design, but the alternative is more dev time and more expenses.

Also as I mentioned there's more complex psychological issues with a difficulty selection. You claim it's not an issue because it would be inclusive and allow people to play at their leisure and whatever, but you underestimate how weak many peoples desire is to keep pushing on and challenging themselves before admitting defeat. Simply having that option there means that many people won't properly challenge themselves and will just power through the harder sections and they won't get that final satisfaction of overcoming a big challenge. Games like Spelunky (and many others) say "no" to difficulty levels, you face the challenge as designed and the reward is you overcoming that through skill. At which point it's not about exclusion but about the core experience/"vision" the developer has in mind.

You see the problem now is that if you accommodate one group you can harm another. That is why I believe a developer should have the right to dictate such things that they consider core to their game. After all "hardcore" games like Spelunky are just one small section of gaming as a whole.

To give a proper example of making a Spelunky "easy mode" in a way that I think would be acceptable: a slightly higher chance of common items, with a reduction or possibly complete removal of some rarer items, double the ghost time limit, slightly increase the value of gold but also slightly decrease the value of gems and rarer treasures, have all damage (except spikes) be only 1 heart, and finally have it end earlier then the normal mode (it encourages you to play normal mode to have the complete experience, and what you've learned should act as good introduction to the more difficult mode). Hell if there was a standard "easy mode" in Spelunky I'm sure even I would try it just because it's there and the game is so bloody difficult. So in my mind there has to be drawbacks and reasons to go on to try the normal mode. And if this type of easy mode was implemented it would allow players to take the game more leisurely, just at a cost (not the full complete experience)... But as you can see that would be quite a lot of work to do right.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i like that .pdf a lot, but i think you guys may be underestimating just how difficult it is to make an 'easy mode' for a game. in rpgs where you can just halve health bars, sure, that's not hard (although it may break game balance if it's done so linearly). however, what about platformers -- how do you make an "easy mode" for super mario brothers? make him jump higher? certain types of gameplay do not lend themselves to an easy mode at all, particularly when the challenge is in the level design, not how much health a boss has

another issue is puzzles; some games have truly dastardly puzzles. but you can't just make a puzzle 'easier' in a simple way. how would you do that -- add more clues? have a hint system? that isn't really the same thing as just reducing enemy hp. it's not trivial to make an easy mode for a game that has 100 puzzles, because then you'd need to figure out a way to make each of those 100 puzzles easier. and the result would be that easy mode and normal/hard mode are almost completely different games

and what about games that don't have death at all, and the challenge comes from something else? like text adventure games, where the challenge is in figuring out what items to use where, or in reading carefully to find clues about what to do next (typing out the right verb). not everyone's reading comprehension is as good, not everyone is as good at figuring stuff out

so basically, *generally*, i think following the rules in that pdf are a good idea. but following them *religiously* is idiotic -- like, every game can have re-mappable controls, but not every type of game can have an easy mode