For the vast majority of gamers, playing any game you want is an uncomplicated process, and something that we probably take for granted. For some players, though, this process isn’t as straightforward.
Due to a lack of accessibility features to help impaired and disabled individuals play games, developers now prioritise research into accessibility implementation during their development cycles, and make conscious decisions to highlight more disabled people within gaming as a whole.
Victor Branco, editor for the Game Accessibility Nexus, suffers from a visual impediment called Retinitis Pigmentosa and Degenerative Myopia.
“I started gaming when I was five, at that time my mom was a single mother of five kids. She decided to buy an Atari to keep us busy at home – making sure that we didn’t go off-road. At that time, I had 20/20 vision and I’d faced no barriers playing any game I wanted. As a teenager I couldn’t stop playing Metal Gear Solid, I thought it was the best game ever, and was everything I had ever dreamt a game could be.
I kept losing vision – and it became severe at 15. I played less games than I used to as I’d continued to see less and less. Today I have around 5-10% vision, and filtering through what I want to play, and what I can play is very hard.”
Many times, a scarcity of assists or options that can usually make a game more accessible, can make some simply impossible to play.
Despite the obstacles, Victor hasn’t allowed his impairment to stop him from playing what he loves, and often advocates on social media to make gaming a more welcoming space for everyone.
“Features like screen readers, larger text, audio and visual cues, and high contrast modes – have made gaming much fairer. Gaming becomes more enjoyable every year because of this, and that’s something to celebrate.”
Founder, EIC and Mobility Editor of the Game Accessibility Nexus, Antonio Martínez, said that “despite their differences and despite their rivalries, games companies are all doing the same thing for the same reason – for the better cause”.
Several are harsher in their criticisms, as certain companies are still content remaining in last place.
“In my opinion, Konami (publisher of Victor’s favourite franchise, Metal Gear) doesn’t even invest in polishing their games enough, and often rush their game developments so they can profit more. I don’t think I would’ve been able to play them at all had I never played them before”, said Victor.
Konami is worth over 1 trillion JPY. MGSV: The Phantom Pain, had an $80m+ development cost – making it one of the most expensive games ever made.
Funding and investment isn’t quintessential – as Victor highlights: “Lots of indie studios have done a lot to make their games more inclusive and accessible. Some do such an amazing job that sometimes it’s hard to believe they are such a small studio.”
Unfortunately, many still only do the bare minimum that they need to, just to look good from a PR perspective.
Chris Goodyear, from UK-based accessibility developer Many Cats Studios, detailed that “for a game to be truly accessible it would be ground-breaking”, and “to account for every disability is a very tall order, but not impossible”. “It’s more common now for AAA developers to have an in-house accessibility designer, that shows there’s a real weight to accessibility – they wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t a sound business freedom behind it.
That’s more than just PR – it’s everything…” The battle isn’t just about physically being able to play the games. As many within the community equally strive for more representation within the sphere.
Mollie Evans, also known as @LittleMoTAC, is a disabled gaming content creator with a condition called EDS – a connective tissue disorder. Her five- years-worth of content spans across Twitch, YouTube and TikTok, and she prides herself on being a diversity and inclusion advocate.
“I would say that disabled people are still a big afterthought.” Mollie detailed her experience as a disabled gamer, specifically in the content creator space.
“The majority of my friends are people who I’ve met online – and usually I’ve met them through being like You’re disabled? I’m disabled too, that’s really cool! When I’m invited to person there – it’s a big push at the moment in gaming for accessibility options and hardware, but less so in actually including disabled people.
It’s incredible to allow more disabled people to play your games – but when we’re not included in your marketing, advertisements, campaigns, or represented as characters in games… it feels a bit empty. It’s like companies are only taking it for the money side – cause if more people can physically play your games, the more people are going to buy them.”
Mollie concluded that she’s grateful that, even if companies are making games more accessible simply for money, it at least means that disabled people can play more games.
“But, it’s that lack of care – it’s still money over people.”
Accessibility is too big a task for just one developer to tackle alone, and with the numerous types of disabilities and impairments out there – it’s clear that only by sharing their knowledge and state-of-the-art technology with each other, developers could potentially make games playable for everybody one day.