What else does the gaming industry need to do to meet the needs of gamers with disabilities?

With technological developments and awareness, have video games become more friendly to gamers with disabilities than they used to?

On March 13, 2022, a special game award completed its second time through webcasting, the Video Game Accessibility Awards of the Year. The award's jury, made up of gamers with disabilities, aims to express appreciation and encouragement to games that consciously improve and integrate accessibility options.

In the live event of the second annual Game Accessibility Awards, the jury set up eight specific awards based on visual aids and training grounds, and selected seven winning games. Halo: Infinity won two awards, as did the popular formass: Horizon 5 and Duo.

Through this award, we can see the progress made by many well-known game production companies in assistive technology, and the importance they attach to all kinds of players. In recent years, more and more game developers have paid more attention to the barrier-free guidance of games, actively carried out more in-depth development of game assistance and player guidance, and made good results.

On December 3, 2021, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, overseas research firm Opinium Research conducted a survey of 1,000 U.S. gamers over the age of 18, more than a third (373 of whom) suffer from a long-term physical or mental disorder, illness or disability. Of this group of players, only about 42 percent believe that game developers have put enough effort into adapting to the needs of players with disabilities. In addition, most disabled gamers believe that they are still the most affected group of online trolls.

According to gamers with disabilities, many games lack sufficient accessibility options, which greatly affects their playing experience. Disabled gamers who participated in the survey mentioned that some games do not have subtitles, do not allow adjustments to the operation method, or the contrast setting of the screen. Some games have too dazzling opening screens that can cause seizures, and games that don't allow players to adjust accessibility settings before starting to play, or even don't offer subtitle options at all. In addition, some games that only support a first-person perspective may also cause motion sickness.

Many disabled gamers believe they are more vulnerable to cyber troll attacks than able-bodied players. More than half (54 percent) of female gamers with disabilities said they were regularly harassed or abused by other players while playing the game — 47 percent of able-bodied female gamers. In addition, 49 percent of female gamers with disabilities said they had been "said inappropriately by men" when playing games.

Still, people with disabilities see playing games as a positive pastime. In the survey, more than two-thirds (69 percent) of people with disabilities said playing games keeps their brains active; 58 percent of people with disabilities said playing games help them "get rid of the worries of everyday life."

According to the survey results, video games have a number of positive impacts on gamers with disabilities:

68% of gamers with disabilities believe that playing games helps improve mental health;

56% of people with disabilities see games as a source of entertainment;

47% of gamers with disabilities say that the game brings them joy;

35% of gamers with disabilities say video games have helped them through a particularly mentally difficult pandemic.

It is worth mentioning that many players with disabilities appreciate Ubisoft's efforts to improve game accessibility. Of those who have played Assassin's Creed: Temple of Heroes, 85% were impressed by the game's accessibility options, including subtitles, navigation, custom controls, and screen settings.

Ande Milinyte, research manager at Opinium, noted that gamers with disabilities are a "very valuable" part of the gaming community, but there is still a lot of work to be done in the gaming industry to meet the needs of the community of people with disabilities. "Because many games lack sufficient accessibility options, players with disabilities are often unable to play, and female players with disabilities are often harassed and abused... From raising awareness among other players to designing games that take the needs of players with disabilities in mind, the gaming industry has the opportunity to build a leading edge in this area and set an example for other industries. ”

Although it is difficult for developers to control the network trolls in the interaction between people, even after all the chat channels are closed, there will always be some nasty people who use disgusting methods to disgust others. But in terms of the functionality of the game, there has indeed been a lot of change and progress over the years.

For example, in Nintendo's "Jet Warrior", this uses 4V4 methods to fight, with various colors as the main means of offensive assistance, the game also added a color blind mode, when the mode is opened, you can set the paint of both teams to prevent the color blind players from being too close to the color of the two teams. In addition to this kind of game that relies heavily on the need to distinguish colors, many games have set up color blindness mode, including "League of Legends", "Peace Elite", etc. These very confrontational competitive games for color-deficient and colorblind players, this mode is a good solution to the problems faced by the visually impaired people.

Similarly, for people with hearing impairments, many games have also made some changes, such as increasing the subtitles of the game's plot, increasing the footsteps close to the prompts, increasing the preset voice function, switching between voice and text, etc. The changes in this aspect of the game are not only for the hearing impaired, but also to make the game appear more humane.

The Last of Us 2, which made the 2020 game scene a sensation, prepared for the player's accessible game experience, and Naughty Dog took the game's auxiliary design to a new level. The game's combat and stealth sessions, which originally relied heavily on observation and reaction, were completed even by blind players with the help of well-designed sound tools. Many other big-name manufacturers, such as Ubisoft, Blizzard and other industry giants, have increased their investment in barrier-free experience.

Not only are big manufacturers working hard in the field of game assistance, but some game studios are also actively exploring. Motion Twin, the developer of the well-known side-panel action game Dead Cell, has begun to consider improving the game's accessibility options and is asking players for advice on the online community. The recently enthusiastic action game "Master" has attracted many players to complain about the high difficulty of the level, and now the developers are also trying to add more auxiliary setting options to provide the same good game experience for player groups with different needs.

But, at the end of the day, the most game friendly to gamers with disabilities has to be a feature game. Tencent Games has released two visually impaired people care games, namely "See" and "Long Sky Shadow", "See" is to simulate the visual and tactile feelings of visually impaired people, so that ordinary players can experience the daily life and travel without light; "Long Sky Shadow" is a product designed for the visually impaired group, players can judge the position of missiles and enemy aircraft through listening to the voice and position and then operate the game.

These two "invisible" games have invariably received high praise from players, although this kind of game may not be particularly interesting for people with disabilities, but this kind of game can make normal people feel the daily life of the visually impaired group and let normal players empathize with the game.

Previously, the University of Chinese of Hong Kong (CUHK), together with Google, the Japanese Consortium and Kansai Gakuin University, officially launched the world's first multilingual online game "Sign Language Village" that combines artificial intelligence and sign language theory, it is reported that "Sign Language Village" integrates interesting scenes and vivid designs, players need to complete various daily life tasks through computer and network cameras in a fictional town with sign language as the main language, such as "preparing objects for travel" and "finding hotels to stay". It can be seen that more groups are now paying attention to people with disabilities and using games to bring each other's lives closer.

The gaming industry's emphasis on accessible gaming experiences and accessibility features is not just the result of the spontaneous formation of game manufacturers. The ever-expanding player base, and the more demand that comes with it, was also an important factor in the birth of this phenomenon. The emergence and activity of the annual video game accessibility award is a clear example, it represents a considerable number of players' demands, while speaking out for these disabled players, but also emphasizing to the game manufacturers a fact: to provide more perfect game accessibility functions, maintain the game experience of all kinds of players, naturally will be appreciated and recognized by players.

Although there are some games on the market that are specifically aimed at people with disabilities, more often than not, they are willing to try and experience mainstream games, because in these mainstream games, they can easily gain self-confidence and feel equal. Whether it's adding more features to the game to solve the problems of people with disabilities, or designing some peripherals outside the game that are convenient for people with disabilities, compared with a few years ago, the current game has made great progress, although it has not yet reached a completely equal situation, but in the visible progress, these details can better reflect the beauty of the game world.