-
Hi, I'm Mark Brown and this
is Game Maker's Toolkit.
-
One of the things I talk about a lot on this
channel is accessibility - which is all about
-
adding options to a game, to make it comfortable
or playable to a wider range of people.
-
That's typically those with disabilities, but
ultimately anyone who has specific requirements,
-
whether thats colourblindness, motion sickness,
-
joint pain, or just inexperience
with games or even a small TV.
-
Over the last few years, accessibility
has become a huge part of games.
-
And that's why I dedicate one video each year to
-
check out the current state of
accessibility in the industry.
-
Basically, I played more than 50 of the most
noteworthy games released in 2020, in order to
-
check out the options available in categories
like controls, subtitles, and difficulty.
-
To try and sample the entire games biz, I looked
at massive AAA blockbusters, tiny indie gems,
-
console launch titles, yearly
instalments, Japanese imports, and more.
-
I also talked to dozens of
gamers living with disabilities,
-
and checked out articles from sites that
review games from an accessibility standpoint.
-
And so this is what I learned about the
state of video game accessibility in 2020.
-
First, though: 2020 wasn't just about
new games - because we also saw the
-
release of two brand new consoles: the
PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X.
-
And I'm pleased to report that both
are made with accessibility in mind.
-
Both devices feature a raft of useful
options - including high contrast mode,
-
closed captions, and console-wide
controller remapping.
-
The PS5 lets you set the text size and
colour profile of the entire system,
-
while the Xbox Series X has a great magnifier
that you can invoke, even while playing games.
-
And, amazingly, both start up
with a screen reader turned on,
-
so even those with visual
disabilities can get started.
-
But it's the controllers
that are most important here.
-
The PlayStation 5's Dualsense pad has a couple
nifty features: a highly detailed rumble,
-
and shoulder buttons that can resist your movement
to mimic something like crushing a glass orb.
-
They're both highly innovative
- but can be inaccessible.
-
Thankfully, Sony lets you turn them
both off, on a system-wide level.
-
Unfortunately, one oversight is that the PS5
doesn't support PS4 controllers in new games.
-
So any custom-made, accessible
PS4 controllers might not work.
-
That's one of the many things Microsoft
gets right: the Series X doesn't care if
-
you're using its brand new pad
or an old Xbox One controller.
-
And, of course, it also supports
the excellent Adaptive Controller.
-
But best of all is the Xbox's Copilot
system where two controllers can
-
be used for one input - like a driving
instructor's car with two sets of pedals.
-
This is great for those who require someone
else's assistance to get through games
-
or to split controls across two devices
for certain unconventional set-ups.
-
Oh, and we can't forget the Nintendo
Switch in all of this - in 2020,
-
the console took inspiration from
Xbox and PlayStation when it received
-
system-wide button remapping.
And here's why that's a big deal.
-
One of the most important accessibility
features is the ability to completely
-
reconfigure a game's controls.
This allows players to move
-
actions to different buttons, depending on
what they find comfortable or possible.
-
And this year, loads of games feature
full controller remapping - including
-
Crash Bandicoot 4, Sackboy: A Big Adventure,
Marvel's Avengers, Hades, and plenty others.
-
In fact, of all the games I looked at which
let you play with a controller - more than half
-
of them let you change the button mapping.
That's a huge step in the right direction.
-
Because while it's cool that all three
consoles now have system-wide remapping,
-
developers shouldn't rely on it.
It's tedious to change the buttons between games,
-
and it doesn't account for games that have
different layouts for different modes - like
-
being on-foot, driving, playing Mahjong, being
a Marauder, playing in defence, and so on.
-
Unfortunately, remapping isn't enough to
make games accessible for many of those
-
with motor-related needs, because plenty
of other things can prove difficult - like
-
repeatedly hitting a button, pressing multiple
buttons at once, and holding buttons down.
-
But many games saw fit to provide
options to address these issues:
-
Ghost of Tsushima is just one game that lets
you avoid those button-bashy QTE moments.
-
And many games let you decide whether you
-
want to hold a button, or just toggle its
effects on and off with a single press.
-
Other nifty features in this regard include
auto-drive in Watch Dogs, heavy aim assistance
-
in DOOM Eternal, and the ability to swap the
left and right sticks in a number of games.
-
I want to give an extra nod
to Spider-Man: Miles Morales,
-
which has a pair of shortcut buttons on
the left and right d-pad which let you
-
get instant access to some particularly tricky
inputs - including ones that need two buttons.
-
And to FIFA 21, which offers a control
scheme that drastically reduces the game down
-
to just one button, and uses some smart design to
predict what you'll want your footballer to do.
-
Just like with controller remapping,
-
it's now more common to see a game with good
subtitles than one with shockingly bad ones.
-
I mean, those still exist - like Maneater
with its ridiculously small text, and Mafia:
-
Definitive Edition which somehow has smaller
subtitles than the 18 year old game its remaking.
-
In general we're looking for
subtitles that are large,
-
that contrast well against the background,
and ideally include the speaker's name.
-
And it's even better when the
player gets to choose how these
-
subtitles appear.
-
It's unfortunately still somewhat common
for games to avoid showing subtitles
-
in certain circumstances: In Valhalla,
Eivor's inner monologue isn't captioned,
-
and neither are the mid-combat
barks in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
-
Subtitles are of course incredibly valuable
to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
-
And those same people may need
help if information in a game
-
is only communicated through sound:
such as certain bugs in Animal Crossing,
-
or things happening off screen like an
enemy spotting you in a stealth game.
-
Thankfully, we're seeing more
games that account for this.
-
Most games have off screen indicators by default.
-
Ghost of Tsushima lets you turn on an
icon to highlight incoming ranged attacks.
-
And both Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin's
Creed have a captioning system - using
-
tech borrowed from last year's Far Cry New
Dawn - that reveals the location of noises.
-
However, according to the reviews
I read, neither are perfect.
-
One of the most common issues that
games still run into it, is having
-
text that's too small to read.
Take the menus in Final Fantasy 7,
-
which are tough to parse even with perfect
vision if you're using a smaller TV.
-
Some games do let you change
the font size, but they're rare.
-
Take Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the text
rarely fills up these boxes - but there's no
-
way to increase the size of the font.
Others feature UI scaling options,
-
but they sometimes have issues like text
overlapping or buttons going off screen.
-
It's good to see games that let you turn
handwritten notes into basic easy-to-read fonts.
-
And a bunch of games, including
Paradise Killer and Tell Me Why,
-
offer fonts designed for those with dyslexia.
-
Another important consideration is visual noise.
Hades is an example of a game where there's so
-
many projectiles, attacks, enemies, and traps
that it can be tough to know what's going on.
-
So it's good to see games that let you
increase the visibility of critical pop-ups and
-
information, like the size of the hacking cursor
in Watch Dogs, the opacity of the UI in Dirt 5,
-
the brightness of loot in DOOM Eternal, and
the colour of the crosshairs in Valorant.
-
Spider-Man and Last of Us deserve special props
for amazing shader modes that can wash out
-
the background and highlight the important
characters with bright colourful overlays.
-
Best of all, you get some choice
over what those colours are.
-
Because colourblindness is something that
all game designers should be thinking about.
-
One of the best solutions I saw this
year was for Call of Duty: Cold War
-
where you can build a custom colour palette to
discern between different people on your mini map.
-
Other games with good colourblind
support include Gears Tactics,
-
Total War: Troy, and Minecraft: Dungeons.
The indie game Lair of the Clockwork God
-
has a couple puzzles that rely on colour,
so there's an option to disable that aspect.
-
One more visual aspect to consider
is flashing lights and colours,
-
which can be dangerous for those with epilepsy.
This is something Cyberpunk 2077 ran into,
-
when a journalist reported that she
suffered a major seizure during the game.
-
That was thanks to a sequence where
the player puts on a headset and
-
is bombarded by a rapid flurry of blinking LEDs.
-
The developer has added a warning, and is
now exploring more permanent solutions.
-
Other games, like Paradise Killer, let you
turn off flashing lights from the options.
-
While all of these features are pretty
uncontentious, there remains one
-
accessibility feature that's very much open to
debate: the ability to reduce a game's difficulty.
-
Being able to pick an easy mode with slower
combat, less pressure, and more opportunities
-
to make mistakes, can be incredibly helpful
for people with certain disabilities.
-
As well as those who are young, or
old, or completely new to games.
-
And, well, okay, it's not a debate among most
games this year which provide difficulty settings
-
that range from super easy to crushingly hard.
Plus, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla lets you
-
independently change the difficulty of
exploration, fighting, and sneaking.
-
Resident Evil 3 has an assisted
game mode with regenerating health.
-
And Hades has a God Mode where you
get stronger every time you die.
-
And plenty of games go further and let the
player manipulate various aspects of the game.
-
Crash Bandicoot 4 and Sackboy: A Big
Adventure are two platformers that let
-
you turn off lives altogether, so you
can make as many mistakes as you like.
-
In Dirt 5, you can let the computer take control
of the car, and in sports games like NBA and FIFA,
-
you can nerf your opponent's skills.
-
But this was also the year of a new Souls
game: a flashy remake of the very first one,
-
Demon's Souls, for PlayStation 5.
-
As always, this is a punishingly
difficult game - with features that
-
can make the game harder, the worse you perform.
-
And in series tradition, it offers no
formal options to change the difficulty.
-
So, a quick refresher of the debate: Souls
games use their extreme difficulty to create
-
a really strong emotion of bleak,
isolating hopelessness - which then,
-
after some perseverance, translates into an
equally strong emotion of triumphant reward.
-
And this basically repeats
for each area in the game.
-
Unfortunately, some players aren't
able to overcome that challenge,
-
which means they only get
hopelessness, never reward.
-
So, there's been requests for
a completely optional mode that
-
reduces the difficulty to something they
still find challenging, but not impossible.
-
However, this runs the risk
of perfectly capable players
-
using this mode - perhaps after a few boss fight
rage quits - which would make the game too easy,
-
and mean they feel neither hopelessness nor reward
as they effortlessly saunter through the world.
-
And I get that.
It would suck.
-
But ultimately, I don't think this is a good
enough reason to make a game so inaccessible.
-
And we've seen games that offer these features in
-
a way that helps players understand
which option they should be picking.
-
Though, with that being said, it's worth noting
that while Demon's Souls doesn't have specific
-
difficulty modes, there are ways to modify the
challenge in game - specifically the ability
-
to summon players to fight alongside you,
or grind for a while to boost your stats.
-
Plus, developer BluePoint said they actually
did consider an easy mode - but the fact that
-
this was a remake of someone else's
game, stopped them from doing it.
-
When it comes to PlayStation games,
Demon's Souls is something of an outlier.
-
Because this year, Sony cemented its position as
an industry leader when it comes to accessibility.
-
And that's mostly down to The Last of Us
Part II, which features an astounding array
-
of features - putting it far beyond
any other game released this year.
-
There's more than 60 different accessibility
options, ranging from lock-on aiming,
-
to enemy indicators, to motion sickness settings,
-
to an incredible system that lets
you play the game without sight.
-
Seriously - the blind fighting
game player SightlessKombat
-
says he finished the game without assistance.
That's down to things like a library of unique
-
audio cues, the ability to point Ellie towards
her goal, ledge assistance that stops you falling
-
to your death, and how swiping up on the touchpad
gives you a read-out of your current information.
-
SCREEN READER: "You are crouched.
Health: 59.
-
Bolt action rifle: equipped.
6: ammo loaded.
-
0: reserved.
Crafting available."
-
It's not just The Last of Us, though:
Spider-Man Miles Morales is packed with
-
accessibility features and improves on a lot
of oversights in the original Spider-Man game.
-
But the same can't be said for
everything to come out of a Sony studio:
-
Ghost of Tsushima has some neat options
but also some inaccessible issues like
-
the gorgeous guiding wind system which
can't be remapped away from the touchpad,
-
and can be difficult to see when
placed against certain environments.
-
Of course, Sony isn't the only big
studio to be using its powers for good.
-
Ubisoft is also doing strong work, with dozens
of accessibility options across Watch Dogs,
-
Assassin's Creed, and Immortals.
-
And Microsoft continues to be a
triumphant supporter of accessibility,
-
with many thoughtful options in both
Minecraft: Dungeons and Gears Tactics.
-
But I shouldn't suggest that you need
a big budget to provide accessibility.
-
And, in fact, many indie games do a
pretty incredible job in this regard.
-
Lair of the Clockwork God has customisable
subtitles, a dyslexic font, and even the
-
ability to stop speech from automatically
progressing so you get more time to read it.
-
The racing game Inertial Drift
is noteworthy for an audio page
-
where you can independently tweak the
volume of almost every sound source.
-
Ikenfell has content warnings and
the ability to just skip any fight.
-
The stealth game Wildfire is packed with
intelligent options like one-handed play,
-
auto jump and a simple colourblind mode that
pops red enemies off of green backgrounds.
-
And the game Hyperdot was nominated
alongside Sony and Ubisoft games
-
in the new accessibility category of The Game
Awards, for providing options like eye-tracking.
-
And just to prove the point that accessibility
doesn't necessarily need a big budget,
-
Valorant is the new game from League
of Legends developer Riot - annual
-
revenue: a few billion dollars.
Valorant doesn't have subtitles,
-
which is the absolute barebones
baseline of accessibility support.
-
Don't be like Riot - be
like these cool indie devs.
-
But if there's one really strong predicator
of a game having poor accessibility,
-
it's if that game was made in Japan.
-
That'll probably get me in trouble,
but I think the evidence holds out.
-
Eight of the games I looked at this year
came from Japan - that's Animal Crossing,
-
Dragon Ball Z, Final Fantasy 7, Hyrule
Warriors, Paper Mario, Resident Evil 3,
-
Mario 3D All-Stars, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
-
And they all fail at
accessibility in some big way.
-
Yakuza is the only one of them
with controller remapping.
-
Mario Galaxy either has forced touchscreen
controls or forced motion controls.
-
None of these games feature options for
the subtitles, leading to issues like
-
poor contrast or hard-to-read fonts.
There are no options for things like
-
contrast or colourblind settings, outside of
picking the reticle colour in Resident Evil 3.
-
And Animal Crossing doesn't even have an
options menu - let alone an accessibility menu.
-
Japan just hasn't got the memo on this stuff,
-
leading to these games being
unnecessarily restrictive.
-
I talked to a gamer who had to get a refund on
Resident Evil 3 because you need to hold the
-
shoulder button to aim - meanwhile almost every
shooter made in the west gives you the option to
-
toggle aiming on with a single press.
Come on Japan, get it together.
-
However, all is not lost.
One of the good things about
-
patches and updates is that game developers
can continue to add accessibility features
-
- often in response to player feedback and requests.
-
So after 2018's Among Us blew up this year, and
-
players started complaining about tasks that
rely on colour perception, Innersloth was able
-
to patch in symbols to make it possible for
colourblind players to complete those tasks.
-
Meanwhile, Control received a new
Assist mode which allows you to change
-
everything from damage output to reload time.
Remedy says "It's important to us that as many
-
people as possible get to experience Control
the way they want." And in last year's video
-
I picked on Jedi Fallen Order for not
letting you turn off those button-bashy QTEs:
-
but now you can, thanks to a new patch.
-
Overall, I'm really impressed by the strides that
games have taken to be more accessible in 2020.
-
Almost every single game I checked
out offered at least one option
-
that could be considered an accessibility feature.
-
And many games provided a full
range of different options.
-
All three consoles feature
smart accessibility options.
-
The Last of Us Part II is probably the
most accessible big budget game ever made.
-
And indie devs aren't fazed by the
challenge of adding extra options.
-
And I doubt there's anyone watching
who hasn't benefited in some way
-
from this sort of inclusive design.
Personally speaking,
-
I changed the controls in Hades to
make reloading more comfortable,
-
I turned off the QTEs in Spider-Man
to save my wrists from hurting,
-
I boosted the text size in Ghost of Tsushima,
made movement more comfortable in Half Life: Alyx,
-
turned off lives in Sackboy to play with my
partner, and turned off auto-run in Spelunky 2.
-
Ultimately, few games can be made
accessible to every single person.
-
It's not possible or feasible.
Every disability is unique.
-
Every game is unique.
-
But that shouldn't stop developers from
trying to make their games more inclusive.
-
For every feature they add, a few more people
get to join in, a few more get to have fun,
-
and a few more get to be part of a community.
-
Gaming can be an incredible hobby -
we've all discovered that in 2020.
-
So I praise the developers who are
using their time, effort, and budget
-
to make their games accessible
to as many people as possible.
-
Indie game recommendation time: and it's for
Paradise Killer which is an open world detective
-
game (with loads of great accessibility options).
Imagine Danganronpa with the open structure of
-
Breath of the Wild and you'll be close to
describing this weird and imaginative game.
-
The detective mechanics aren't too complex
- so don't expect Obra Dinn - but its a
-
good time nevertheless.
It's on PC and Switch.