...... Okay, we get it. Now more releases GoG. Let's move it along. Already depressed no Dawn of War today. Maybe tomorrow....

what the fuck is a stardew valley screenshot doing in a post about accessibility. the dev refused to patch in manual saving anytime, deliberately wasting players' time, forcing them to either lose progress or let the dictate when they stop playing. the complete opposite of accessible.

So people with which disability are disadvantaged by the saving system?

Craft the World (yes, I know it's an old one...) can be played entirely with the mouse. Though there is the left CTRL keyboard key to access the secondary row of UI on-screen buttons for object placement. But dragging the currently needed object (for placement) from the craft menu to the default row of on-screen buttons can/will achieve the same thing...

I believe it's called "working as a game journalist".

Accessibility Rule No 1 for me: given the minimum or recommended System Requirements and the Game Options available, I'm able to (confortably) play the game on my home PC(laptop). I hate it when all that is covered, options are set to potato PC and yet a power-hungry game boosts Video or CPU fans to max(accessibility broken: noise tolerance) for no obvious reason.

I'd say it handily violates the 2nd and 3rd "F" in the article (if you've read it).

Not very forgiving when you have to reach a checkpoint to save your game and having to replay stuff/lose progress due to the saving system is generally not fun.

As someone with a disability: Why do I need one to have the "right" to ask for accessibility? Manual at-will saving is one of the best accessibility features ever, and its lack is actually one of the main reasons for me to skip a game.

Especially in difficult videogames where it's easy to fail and get a game over like Stardew Valley
You don't need one, that's why I wasn't asking whether you need rights to anything, but which disability is the most affected.

Sounds like you've never played Stardew Valley. You can't fail in Stardew Valley, and you can pretty much save any time you want (not where though). The game saves when you sleep in a bed, which you can do at any time. You can craft/buy/find a consumable warp totem that teleports you back to your home, and later in the game there is an item you can by that does it without the need to craft/buy warp totems.

You will get exhausted and pass out if you run out of energy or you're not in bed by 2am. Energy can be restored by food or drink. If you don't make it to your home by 2am, you pass out and wake up in your bed the next day. You will lose 10% of your money or 1000g, whichever is less. You will have a note in your mailbox from a random person saying they found you and carried you home and a reason for the missing money.

If your health reaches zero, you don't die. One of several random things happen, like a villager waking you up, or waking up in the clinic, and like passing out you lose some gold. Dying in a dungeon causes you to lose up to 5000g, and there is a chance of losing an item, which you can pay to have recovered.

Stardew Valley isn't the type of game you'd play briefly and quit anyway. A game day is ~15 minutes, so if for some reason you had to quit without saving, you won't lose much time.

Oh boy where to start with this one. When it comes to accessibility in games the thing that bothers me the most in when developers get lazy and just throw in cheats and call them "accessible" no they're just cheats.
Examples include: Psychonauts 2, Tunic and Boomerang x.

The problem with this type of approach is that it easily ruins the psychology of the game design. Games such as Dark Souls aren't just about a hard challenge. The brutal win all or lose all design is supposed to make you stressed and on the edge of your seat. Knowing that at any time you can change this (even if you don't) destroys the psychology at play. It's like playing Poker with pretend money, it's just not the same.

There are plenty of people with disabilities that want this experiences, and there are plenty of people who just want to cheat and make excuses because they just don't get it.

In my opinion the best way to tackle disabilities, would be from the hardware side as much as possible. Game designers can do things like make subtitles easier to read but when it comes to physical disabilities, it stand to reason that the solution should also be a physical one such as special type of keyboard or game controller.


One final point I wish to make is the subject of diversity. Both Steam and GOG have a massive catalog full of games. Rather than try to make every game more divers, I think it makes the most sense to make the catalog divers.

For example in the article they mentioned that they liked Dishonored because if you suck at stealth you can take an action approach. But personally I don't think Dishonored does Stealth or action particularly well. I would say get a game that focuses on one, and does it well. There are just so many games that if for some reason you can't or don't want to play a it; whether it's related to taste or accessibility, there will be something in the catalog that suits you.

The main reason Dishonored is accessible isn't "you can choose stealth vs vs action", it's the fact enemy alert states are portrayed visually (the 3 lightning bolt bars above enemies heads) in addition to audibly, ie, one of the few stealth games actually playable by deaf / hard of hearing gamers. Stardew Valley probably wasn't the best example of a "game-breaker", but if someone is limited to short gaming time-periods, checkpoint-only save systems with checkpoints placed 10-30mins apart can be significantly anti-accessible. In many cases forcing replays over & over is done less for any "challenge" and more for cheap padding (a 12hr game with quicksaves usually = 12hr actual content whilst 12hr checkpoint-only can easily be 9-10hr game padded out via forced replays) or consolization ("we designed solely around game controllers but ran out of buttons for F5/F9 so checkpoints for everyone"). For the same reason, so many games on Steam also have people begging in the discussion area to add simple things like rebindable keys (because the devs didn't bother play-testing keyboard + mouse once even for 5mins).

Edit: If you're asking for a list of disabilities that could mean limited play-time there are literally hundreds where fatigue / concentration are primary or secondary symptoms from the obvious Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia to various Acquired Brain Injuries, Anaemia, auto-immune disorders, diabetes to Cancer treatment (it turns out that being hammered with chemo doesn't exactly leave you brimming with energy...)

I've seen games with no checkpoints for longer than that.

* One part in Arc the Lad 2 took me close to 2 hours with no place to save. What's especially infuriating is that the dungeon does have at least one spot that heals you fully, but doesn't let you save there. (Essentially, to get through that part I had to leave the console on.)

* In classic Mega Man, you can get password saves, but once you reach the endgame (when you enter the main villain's castle), there are no more saves (any password you get will take you back to the start of the castle). This isn't too bad in Mega Man 2 and 3, but in 4-6, there are more castle stages, enough for a typical player to not be able to finish in a reasonable length playing session. If you game over, you can continue from the level you game overed on, so why not let the player save then? (Note that Mega Man 1 has no save feature at all.)

Final Fantasy 3 is also a huge offender. In order to beat the game from the last possible save point, you have to:
* Climb through a rather lengthy dungeon.
* Defeat the boss at the end of the dungeon, who, I believe, is harder than any optional boss in the game (not counting the 3D remake's Iron Giant).
* Sit through a bunch of cutscenes, and lose a battle that's scripted to be impossible to win. After this, you get fully restored, but again don't get the chance to save.
* Go through yet *another* dungeon, that you can't leave. Here, there are 4 bosses to kill, each of which is harder than the one you just fought. (Also, if you want more ribbons, you have to fight more optional fights, but those aren't that hard.)
* Then, you can fight the final boss, after a pre-final boss cutscene.
* And, of course, after you beat the boss, there's still the ending cutscene.


Or by players who prefer to play with the sound off, or are playing the game in a noisy environment.