How Accessible Were This Year's Games?

Every year, I like to take a moment to check
in with the games biz, and see how things

are going in terms of accessibility.

That’s the art of making a game playable
for a wider group of people - by employing

options and design decisions that can help
remove the barriers that get in the way of

the fun.

For example - if someone struggles to hear
the dialogue, subtitles can give you the same

information in text form.

If someone can’t distinguish between two
colours, they can be made more distinct with

symbols or a custom colour palette.

And if someone’s just struggling to get
through a game, they can get a helping hand

through an assist mode.

So, how did the games of 2021 fare in this
regard?

Well, I’m Mark Brown, and this is Game Maker’s
Toolkit.

So, I started with the blockbusters.

I picked 25 of the most noteworthy, best-selling,
triple A games released in the last 12 months

- from Halo Infinite to Ratchet and Clank,
from Deathloop to Metroid Dread, from Battlefield

2042 to Age of Empires - and then I assessed
the accessibility options on show.

Here’s what I found.

Let’s start with controls.

As ever, a really important option is the
ability to change what the buttons do - and

of the games I played this year, a whopping
70 percent of them offer full remapping.

That is awesome - that number just keeps on
growing.

And a few more offer presets, which is better
than nothing.

A stand-out game for controls is Ratchet & Clank:
Rift Apart.

You can fully remap the controls, and put
shortcuts to specific inputs on the d-pad.

Plus, for pretty much every button that you
need to hold down - you can instead make it

toggle that action on and off.

There’s also a really strong aim assist,
and you can even turn that into a lock-on.

You can automatically rotate the camera behind
your character.

You can simplify all traversal down to a single
button.

And more - it’s great.

Another stand-out game is Far Cry 6 - it divides
every button on the controller into three

different actions - press, hold, and double
tap - and can freely map any action between

any of those slots.

There’s also a quick “no stick presses
mode” to instantly remove all inputs related

to clicking in the analogue sticks.

Also worth celebrating is Battlefield 2042
for its enormous array of options regarding

controller sensitivity, right down to the
different sized scopes.

And Riders Republic, which lets you set unique
control schemes for its endless methods of transport.

I’m also a fan of games that let you bypass
button-bashing QTEs, which includes It Takes

Two, Guardians of the Galaxy, and House of
Ashes.

As for games that need to see me after class
- well, I’m definitely not a fan of all

these games with sluggish, Destiny-inspired
virtual cursors on their menus - including

Deathloop and Outriders.

They can be a nightmare for accessibility.

And they’re just horrible in general, yuck.

Thankfully, Far Cry 6 and Pokemon Snap, which
also have these cursors, let you click through

the menus with the d-pad, as well.

But the worst offender of the year?

Well, I asked my Twitter followers to name
games with poor accessibility and was hit

with a wave of tweets all mentioning the same
game: Metroid Dread.

And, I’ve got to agree: its full of bizarre
moves that require multiple buttons to be

held down, there are plenty of bits that require
very granular movements of the analogue stick,

and there are absolutely no controller options
in the menu.

Big fat F right there.

Next up, audio.

A big deal here is subtitles.

As ever we’re looking for subtitles that
are large.

That contrast well against the background.

And that show you the speaker’s name.

And if you can change any of those settings
in the options, it’s even better.

Again, about 70 percent of the games in my
sample provided subtitle options… beyond

“on and off”.

So, Guardians of the Galaxy is a good one
to look at - turn on all the settings and

you can get big clear text, on a black background,
with speaker names.

And you can even increase the letting spacing
and turn on closed captions to get subtitles

for sound effects.

Other stand-out games include Hitman 3, which
can show a speech bubble over a character’s

head, to show exactly who is speaking.

And Far Cry 6, which continues the series’
tradition of providing captions for nearby

audio sources - complete with an arrow and
distance.

But there are still games that mess this up.

Outriders has too much text per line, and
the words are way too small.

Battlefield forgot to provide subtitles for
its intro cutscene.

Resident Evil Village has no way of expressing
its excellent audio design to a player who

is hard of hearing.

And Tales of Arise has acceptable subtitles
in its cutscenes, pretty good dialogue windows

when chatting to characters, but microscopic
words during gameplay and combat.

Also worth noting is just how many games provide
a screen reader for menu narration.

Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empires IV, It Takes
Two, Far Cry 6, Riders Republic, Battlefield,

and Back 4 Blood all include this powerful
feature.

Over to visuals, now.

I’m looking for options to make it easier
to see or read the key elements in the game

world, the heads up display, and the text
in the menus.

Some games do this by default with nice clear
fonts and chunky UI elements - but other games

would do well to provide options.

So Age of Empires lets you crank up the size
of the game’s UI.

Life is Strange: True Colours lets you drop
the handwritten text in favour of a clean font.

And House of Ashes lets you increase the text
size.

Far Cry 6 goes further by letting you highlight
enemies and pick-ups with a coloured outline

of your choice.

And Ratchet goes further still, allowing you
to desaturate the background entirely - and

then turn enemies, pick-ups, and more into
big, easy-to-read blobs of colour.

Colourblind settings are also super important.

Far Cry 6 wins again, here - you can independently
choose the colours of pretty much everything

in the game.

Battlefield’s got good options here, too.

Many other games go for full screen filters,
which… are still pretty iffy in terms of

effectiveness.

As for misses: Outriders has painfully small
text at times, and an option to turn on large

fonts doesn’t do much at all.

I had to check I had actually turned it on.

And Deathloop has this absurd font in its
menus, and no way to change it.

In general, this is still the feature that
most games neglect, and that sucks.

Finally, there’s the ever-contentious category
of difficulty.

Now, with no FromSoftware game released this
year, I thought we might just skip the tiresome

“should Dark Souls have an easy mode”
debate in 2021 - but, alas, other games

took up the mantel, instead.

Notably Metroid Dread, Returnal, and Deathloop
all spawned countless articles and Twitter arguments.

But I’ve got no interest in digging that
up again - so, instead, let’s just look

at some games that chose to let players dictate
their own difficulty level this year.

Forza Horizon has always been good at this,
and game number 5 is no exception: you can

choose just how much you want you car to take
care of steering and braking, you can decide

how aggressive your rival racers will be,
and you can even slow down the entire game

to increase reaction times.

Ratchet also provides slow-mo - but, here,
it can be turned on and off with a button

press so you’re not having to move through
molasses at all times.

Psychnonauts 2 lets you get rid of fall damage,
make Raz more powerful, or even turn on invincibility.

And Guardians of the Galaxy lets you tweak
a ridiculously large array of options to build

your own custom difficulty mode.

A little overwhelming, perhaps, but nice to
see - especially alongside some more standard,

designer-curated difficulty settings.

So those are the main features you’re going
to see in games - alongside a few other standards

like screen shake and camera bob for motion
sickness, and discrete volume knobs to help

players isolate the key sounds.

But there are some cool extra features, in
specific games, worth noting, too - like these

optional pop-ups in Life is Strange, which
can warn you about upcoming increases in volume

or brightness.

I also like this Dead Space-style navigation
line in Outriders for helping players find

their way to the waypoint.

And I love how both Forza Horizon 5 and Halo
Infinite have added prosthetics to their character creators.

Now, while it’s great for these features
to be there on launch day, I think it would

be wrong to ignore older games that got updated
with new accessibility features in 2021.

For example, Sea of Thieves is constantly
adding new accessibility options in pretty

much every update.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice added stuff
like controller remapping and colourblind settings.

Amnesia: Rebirth received a horror-free Adventure
Mode, similar to SOMA’s Safe Mode.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut added full voice
acting to the whole game.

And even that dodgy GTA remake added some
new accessibility options to the old games.

So, who is really driving this push for accessibility?

As in, which companies are doing the best
work in this field?

Well, Microsoft has absolutely ran with it
in 2021.

It updated its Xbox Accessibility Guidelines,
and now lets developers on the platform submit

their games for evaluation and feedback.

It released a free, four hour accessibility
training course.

It added accessibility tags to the Microsoft
Store.

And introduced new console features like Night
Mode, quick settings, and colour filters.

And we see this ripple out into the publisher’s
games, with a huge number of features across

Age of Empires, Halo Infinite, and Forza Horizon
5.

That last one is really interesting: creative
director Mike Brown - no relation - explained

that the studio made accessibility a core
pillar of the game’s design.

Which meant it would feed into every system
in the game, and would not get cut to meet deadlines.

An absolute power move.

Sony also does good work - for example, there’s
now a PlayStation Store page with accessible games.

But it seems like it’s more down to individual
studios to figure this stuff out.

Like Insomniac, which is another developer
that really puts accessibility at the centre

of its game design.

Insomniac is also a really good example of
how accessibility options can be re-used across

games, as many of the smart choices in Ratchet
and Clank are actually just ripped straight

out of last year’s Miles Morales.

Likewise, over at Ubisoft - another studio
that does strong work in this space - many

of the features in Far Cry 6 are lifted from
previous entries.

EA also has strong accessibility initiatives,
and this year it released five accessibility

patents from its legal grasp - including the
fab ping system in Apex Legends.

And Square Enix has some good stuff going
on - you’ll see smart accessibility options

all throughout Life is Strange and Guardians
of the Galaxy.

But as for disappointing outliers?

Well… as usual, it’s the games made in
Japan.

Titles like Shin Megami Tensei, Persona 5
Strikers, Guilty Gear and Resident Evil are

missing plenty of options that have become
almost industry standard in the west.

Like, remember those stats about 70 percent
of games having controller remapping and 70

percent having options for subtitles?

Well, remove the Japanese games and that rises
to 80 and 100 percent.

There are some exceptions - Monster Hunter
Rise has a surprising number of features,

and New Pokemon Snap isn’t too shabby - but,
on the whole, Japan is bringing the biz down.

But that’s just the world of big blockbuster
games.

You know, for my main assessment, I feel like
it’s only fare to hold those with multi-million

dollar budgets to account.

But, still, indie games are absolutely packed
with clever, useful and thoughtful accessibility options.

Here’s just a few:

Boyfriend Dungeon has a content warning for
its challenging themes - and also lets you

turn off a feature where your mum calls you
up with advice, in case that makes certain

players uncomfortable.

Boomerang X has great contrast options, like
letting you highlight key enemies with a colour

of your choice.

Chicory lets you fiddle with endless settings
- letting you turn off everything from flashing

effects to moist sound effects. Ew.

Loop Hero’s got a retro aesthetic, but you
can increase readability by turning off the

CRT effect and switching the pixel font to
a standard one.

Toodee and Topdee’s got an assist mode with
game speed and infinite lives.

The new Outer Wilds DLC lets you turn off
spooky jump scares.

And we saw some excellent audio-only games
that can be played without sight, like action

adventure The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, and
reckless driving game Blind Drive, which is

about using the incredible audio design to
know when to swerve into another lane.

*Car sounds*

*Horn* *Crash* *Broken Glass*

So - on the whole - I’m impressed.

Almost every game I sampled has some option
intended to make the game playable to those

with specific needs.

More than half of the games feature a dedicated
accessibility or assist menu.

And many have these options available as soon
as the game loads up for the first time, or

have a screen reader turned on by default.

But here’s the thing.

All of this is, almost exactly what I said
in last year’s video.

You know, key features like subtitles and
controller remapping are in the majority of games.

Indie devs, and companies like Microsoft,
EA, and Ubisoft are doing great.

And Japan is sadly lagging behind.

So I feel like we’re now at a point where
accessibility is just… a given in games.

Which is excellent!

And a huge change.

Like, if we look, at say, Eurogamer in 2011
- there wasn’t a single article that mentioned

accessibility or disability.

Ten years later, there are dozens of reports
on features, and players, and company initiatives,

and so on.

Accessibility is just here, and it’s here
to stay.

But now… it’s time to make this stuff
work… properly.

You see, as awesome as it is to see these
features in the menu - they’re not, always,

perfect in execution.

Those excellent subtitles in Guardians of
the Galaxy?

Great… until they glitch out like this.

Deathloop lets you toggle on running - but
not aiming, and Hitman 3 lets you toggle on

aiming - but not running.

Far Cry 6’s captions just says “animal
noise”, whether that’s a harmless bird

or a killer crocodile.

And Battlefield’s menu narrator mispronounces
the first two words it has to say.

NARRATOR: “Menu Narration ‘Die-sable’.

Menu Narration ‘Innable’.

Menu Narration ‘Die-sable’.

Menu Narration ‘Innable’.”

What is this, a GMTK episode?

So, at this point, I can safely say “yes,
lots of games have lots of accessibility options”.

Now the question is - “are they any good?”

It’s no longer that noteworthy for a game
to have these features - now, they need to

be robust and reliable.

And I think we’ll get there, as devs hire
more consultants, and bake this stuff into

their games engines, and share their knowledge,
and iterate based on feedback and telemetry.

But that’s going to be difficult for me
to ascertain.

I don’t live with a disability, so I don’t
need to rely on these options and, I don’t

have to judge their effectiveness every time
I play.

Thankfully, there are sites like CanIPlayThat
and DAGER, who are putting in the hard work

to thoroughly review these games from an accessibility
perspective - using gamers with disabilities

as their reviewers.

There’s also the Taming Gaming database
- and, any indie devs watching can get their

game listed by DMing the site over on Twitter.

But, ultimately, I think this means I need
to cover accessibility in a different way.

So, this is probably the last annual wrap-up
of this type.

But don’t worry - accessibility is not going
anywhere.

It’s one of the key values for how I run
GMTK - whether I’m using it as a lens to

analyse game design, or putting full subtitles
on every video on this channel.

So perhaps there are just better ways for me to
talk about it going forward.

That starts with me putting accessibility
options in my own work, over in my game dev

series Developing.

More on that soon.

And I’ll continue to think about how I can
cover this topic in 2022.

Until then, thanks so much for watching.

And thanks to the gamers and consultants who
helped out on this video.

See you soon.