How Accessible Were This Year's Games?

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.