Nowadays, video games provide a variety of options - adjustable graphics, keyboard mapping, or audio settings are not an innovation anymore. For some of the players, this is just additional facilitation, but for others, an essential requirement to be able to play. What is accessibility in games, and how can it affect players with disabilities?We decided to partner up with gaming experts on that matter –
Can I Play That?, a versatile platform of all sorts of information regarding accessibility in video games, and created a special
Collection of Accessible Games. And during our
Winter Sale their accessibility is even better!
We believe that education and spreading awareness about integration and inclusiveness in gaming is very important, we also realize that some of you might’ve never heard of, or even considered such aspects of video games. You might be wondering, what does it even mean, in what ways can games be accessible for people with all sorts of disabilities?
Well, we’re here to dispel all your doubts – with help of no one else, but
Joshua Straub; Editor-in-Chief of
DAGERSystem, the partner company of
Can I Play That?DAGERSystem, as well as Can I Play That? is
the source of information about accessibility in games – their mission being to empower, inform, and provide educational and charitable services to disabled persons and their support structures regarding the accessibility of video games; focusing on education and advocacy of issues. Can I Play That? is a wing of their journalism initiative, working together to create the largest resource for game-accessibility information!
Without further ado, we asked Joshua:
what makes a game accessible?
That’s a question that I’ve been asked hundreds of times over the last 10 years and it's been my privilege to try and answer it. Whether its developers working on a new title, journalists trying to understand one of the fastest growing markets in gaming, or parents trying to find a hobby for a child with limited options, most of my career has been answering that question in its various forms. It’s not an easy question. Accessibility should support a developer’s vision, rather than override it. After all, gaming by definition includes challenges, and any challenging activity will exclude some people. And so that is why the definition of accessibility that I use is giving the highest number of people possible the best opportunity of enjoying the game. In my own personal gaming habit, this means that I love the old Assassin’s Creed games despite the fact that the main gameplay was usually pretty inaccessible for me. I should probably mention that I have cerebral palsy, and have been confined to a wheelchair since I was 3. I have limited strength and reflexes in my hands which can make a lot of video games unplayable if they require rapid movements or precise timing.Despite this, I spent hundreds of hours on multiplayer matches, even when the main Assassin’s Creed campaign was inaccessible, because accessibility ultimately boils down to enjoyability rather than a set list of features or a certain level of completion.Once I realized this, it was relatively easy to boil down all accessibility into three overarching principles which I call the three F’s of accessibility: Flexibility, Forgiving Nature, and Fun.Flexibility is when a game allows players to approach challenges from multiple angles to best suit their needs. For me, this was perfectly illustrated by the original Dishonored, a game which lets you live out the assassin fantasy through any number of unique approaches. Whether it was going in guns blazing or sneaking around in the shadows, my time as Corvo was incredibly fun and accessible. The flexibility meant that I could attempt to accomplish a mission in one way, and if I was unsuccessful, for example at stealth, I didn’t automatically lose. I could pivot between multiple play styles depending on what I was physically capable of doing. In fact, it was primarily this flexibility that earned Dishonored a nomination to the Dagersystem Diamond Award, which is given out every year to the best accessible game.
Forgiving Nature is even easier to define. You see, players with physical challenges will reach a fail-state when playing video games more often than players that are not disabled. The most accessible games out there are the ones that don’t punish players by making them replay large portions of the game when they do fail. Clei Studio’s turn-based spy game, Invisible Inc. is one of my favorite indie titles because it allows me to set different levels of challenge for each run through, so some games I feel like playing on iron man where my squad of spies are on a tight time table and I don’t have any rewinds to compensate for mistakes, other playthroughs I can give myself unlimited rewinds and make the game just as forgiving as I want. It’s completely up to me and how capable I’m feeling during any given run through. This kind of forgiving nature is why I will routinely point people to this game as one of the most accessible PC titles ever made.
The final overarching principle behind accessibility is completely subjective and that is fun. Disabled gamers are an incredibly diverse group. They’re as diverse as any other gaming population, some enjoy Stardew Valley, while others want Dark Souls. It's because of this diversity that I get really frustrated when people try to say that an accessible game always has an easy mode. The overarching issue is not whether or not you can succeed, but if you have fun while you are playing. Therefore, quality should be the first thing that any game developer strives for in order to make accessibility matter. The way that I say it when I’m speaking to developers is that “the only thing worse than a good game you can’t play, is a bad game you can.” That’s because as a disabled gamer, I want to have the freedom to choose the experience that best suits me. I don’t want to be shunted off to the side into a subset of “accessible games'' that were built specifically for me. I would rather struggle against a game that all of my friends are excited about rather than an obscure title that I can platinum but is a slog to get through. It's for this reason that I have over 200 hours in Firax’s squad-based alien shooter, XCOM 2. For my money, that game is not only incredibly easy for my hands to handle, but it also is incredibly fun and, in my case, a little bit addictive. The reality is, though, that turn-based games aren’t for everyone, and so I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s the most accessible game ever, full stop, because accessibility is as unique as a player’s individual tastes, and everybody should have the right to find a game they enjoy.It’s been my pleasure to collaborate with GOG on a collection of high-quality, highly accessible games. The CIPT team has played each of these titles and can vouch for how much we enjoyed playing them and how accessible they were.
If you would like to learn more about accessibility and CIPT mission, make sure to visit their site. We would like to thank Joshua for this incredible dose of knowledge and sharing with us his personal experience. We believe that gaming should be for everyone, with no exceptions and strongly support the mission of bringing accessibility of the games into the spotlight. Should you be interested in accessible titles, make sure to see our Collection created in cooperation with Can I Play That? 