BHVR should take notes from Naughty Dog when it comes to accessibility.
So I know Naughty Dog isn’t the best company when it comes to work practices, but I do want to give them credit when it comes to accessibility options. With TLOU 2 Naughty Dog is set to release one of the most accessible friendly games ever made with options that include custom controls, visual aids for the visually impaired, audio clues for the audio impaired, navigation and traversal options, and more. These are features that might not make a difference to you, but for others can be what allows them to play the game or not. Read this article for in-depth details of what Naughty Dog is doing:
One paragraph that particular stands out to me is this one:
“...the studio received a letter from a player who managed to get near the end of Uncharted 2, but got stuck at a point where they had to rapidly press a button during a quick time event. “They were able to play all the way to that point and then they were blocked from finishing the game,””
Naughty Dog realized back in 2009 (after receiving ONE letter from a disabled fan) that mandatory button mashing was not good game design, and they have since added the OPTION to hold the button down instead in all of their subsequent games. Meanwhile, BHVR still refuses to remove mandatory button mashing in 2020 even after receiving hundreds of complaints from players and fans alike. People have also been asking for colorblind support for how long? And it still hasn’t been prioritized at all. Im not asking BVHR to go to the lengths Naughty Dog has gone, and I wouldn’t expect it considering that they are not a AAA studio back by a massive publisher, but it would just be nice to see BHVR do at least the bare minimum.
At the end of the day I think the following quote sums up perfectly how all games designers should be thinking when it comes to creating game mechanics.
“Accessibility is about removing barriers that are keeping players from completing a game. It’s not about dumbing down a game or making a game easy. What do our players need in order to play the game in parity with everyone else?” - Emilia Schatz
Comments
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Complete agree. accessability options should be added to all games, with developers who can well, add them in that is.
A colorblind shader wouldn't go amiss and would be pretty easy to add (and im 99% sure devs commented at some point saying they wanted to add it but it wasn't a priorty? i may be completely wrong so don't qoute me on this.) Quickie version is just having an rgb filter in game with preset options to change colors to those people with limited colorblindness can see, but overwatch took a seperate approach after release if im remembering correctly due to the outspoken nature of one of their best bastion players who was colorblind (Kolorblind on youtube.) They further updated their colorblind features after release to be even more functional to the sightly imparied. that being said i don't think dbd has as gigantic a color pallete and whilst im not visually impaired i think they wouldn't need as prescise a system to give colorblind players a better more usabley accessible experience. Rgb filters for colorblind players would be a great addition.
that being said i would also like to see auditory additions too (similar to dbd mobile) which give visual indicators to players who can't hear or have limited hearing. things like the glowing heart in the survivor indicating the killers terror radius, and hit marker style notifcations identifying last known direction (for if a player were to use their camera and gain line of sight) would be amazing additions (hell i would use them just because i like to listen to music whilst gaming and dbd's music and sounds overpower that.) Could be seen as a buff to killers though, revealing survivors they wouldn't normally hear, but i don't think so, everyones hearing is different and simply adding the option to turn down the music or disable it for both sides would balance out this change.
controller accessability is also a huge thing as well. making the game have a default control scheme for the xbox adaptive controller would not go amiss for a lot of people i bet. plus there are a lot of people who can't spam keys as fast so having options to disable quick time events like on hook would go very far towards making the game more accessible to a lot of people. The ability to change the skillcheck notification size would also help and whilst they can't really remove it (or change the effect it has on gameplay) having ways of customizing it so that even accessability deprived players could hit them would be a neat thing to add. Plus i kinda broke my spacebar on my old keyboard from pressing space too much during the struggle phase.... so having an option to make that a keyhold would be nice.
All in all in the mean time i urge people who want to play this game (or those who wish to help people get into this game) to find control solutions that work for them (im pretty sure the xbox accessability contoller is mappable.) there are a lot of controllers out there built for one handed gamers, for both left and right, and i urge colorblind players to look into programs like visolve which helps adjust colors to suit your needs.
That being said i can absolutely understand it not being a priority.. a majority isin't suffering from accessability issues, but that doesn't mean those players don't exist, or couldn't exist in our playerbase. with the game growing so large and so fast as it has in the recent year alone however, i think the devs might want to reconsider their position on this fact however.
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