With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
Is it not fair for the game developers’ artistic vision to not be accessible to all? Accessibility is nice, expands the potential audience, but if it compromises my artistic vision and I’m ok with giving up reach and money to preserve it, that doesn’t make my game bad or my vision invalid.
It would be ridiculous to call up the bar or the ama and complain to them that becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not accessible to all.
One last addition, adding control remapping, color options, and text to speech are true accessibility. Easy mode is fake accessibility
Easy mode is not fake accessibility. Celeste has the correct idea in allowing players adjust the difficulty for accessibility purposes.
Not everyone has the same reaction speed, same cognitive abilities, same eyesight. There are people who can only use one hand and that automatically makes reacting to attacks many times harder, should they be excluded from being able to enjoy the game because they are not physically capable enough for the boss fights?
And boss fights are probably 5% of the game anyway!
I agree with making accessible controllers with special layouts and allowing custom control bindings to accommodate those who are differently abled.
Those can be accommodated without meaningfully altering the game. Changing the gameplay is different however. Not that adding more difficulty options is a bad thing, I don’t mean to disparage anyone by calling it fake accessibility, just that I don’t think it’s the same as other options because it fundamentally changes the experience compared to other options that I considered “real”
No, I think if something can be done to allow more people to enjoy the game, then it should not be considered a bad thing to do it. You can not make it accessible to everyone in the world, but if there are time and resources to add accessibility, it should not be neglected.
And I don’t agree with the use of artistic intent as an excuse to not include specific accessibility options: take closed captions for example, they are made to allow deaf and hard of hearing people enjoy the content even when they can’t hear the sound. A lot of media is built on sound being a cornerstone of the experience, and people who will use closed captions will have no notion of it, but does it mean that they should be excluded completely?
Just because people who use the accessibility options will not experience everything in a way the author intended does not mean they should not be experience it at all, and in this day no one really complains about game including captions or colourblind options, but anything that might affect difficulty is, for some reason, out of the question and is only subject to the artist’s vision of it.
Is it not fair for the game developers’ artistic vision to not be accessible to all? Accessibility is nice, expands the potential audience, but if it compromises my artistic vision and I’m ok with giving up reach and money to preserve it, that doesn’t make my game bad or my vision invalid.
It would be ridiculous to call up the bar or the ama and complain to them that becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not accessible to all.
One last addition, adding control remapping, color options, and text to speech are true accessibility. Easy mode is fake accessibility
Easy mode is not fake accessibility. Celeste has the correct idea in allowing players adjust the difficulty for accessibility purposes. Not everyone has the same reaction speed, same cognitive abilities, same eyesight. There are people who can only use one hand and that automatically makes reacting to attacks many times harder, should they be excluded from being able to enjoy the game because they are not physically capable enough for the boss fights? And boss fights are probably 5% of the game anyway!
I agree with making accessible controllers with special layouts and allowing custom control bindings to accommodate those who are differently abled.
Those can be accommodated without meaningfully altering the game. Changing the gameplay is different however. Not that adding more difficulty options is a bad thing, I don’t mean to disparage anyone by calling it fake accessibility, just that I don’t think it’s the same as other options because it fundamentally changes the experience compared to other options that I considered “real”
That’s an interesting take. You think game developers should not make games that require hands, vision, hearing, etc to enjoy them?
No, I think if something can be done to allow more people to enjoy the game, then it should not be considered a bad thing to do it. You can not make it accessible to everyone in the world, but if there are time and resources to add accessibility, it should not be neglected.
And I don’t agree with the use of artistic intent as an excuse to not include specific accessibility options: take closed captions for example, they are made to allow deaf and hard of hearing people enjoy the content even when they can’t hear the sound. A lot of media is built on sound being a cornerstone of the experience, and people who will use closed captions will have no notion of it, but does it mean that they should be excluded completely?
Just because people who use the accessibility options will not experience everything in a way the author intended does not mean they should not be experience it at all, and in this day no one really complains about game including captions or colourblind options, but anything that might affect difficulty is, for some reason, out of the question and is only subject to the artist’s vision of it.