i will never understand the insane takes against having games be more accessible
“does every game NEED to be accessible to disabled people? 🤨” yeah, actually
also the pissing and shitting over difficulty settings. just play the game on the normal difficulty dumbass it’s not for you
Same with stuff like screen shake, particle effects, flashing/lightning effects: “But the game would look terrible without them!”
Then Just.... Don’t turn them off then, dickface...
Meanwhile, *having the option to turn them off* would greatly increase the number of people able to play the game.
For all the problems with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, their accessibility options are some of the best I have ever seen in a game. In game text, HUD, and icon size is highly customizable. They have multiple options for different kinds of colorblindness.
The only other really good one I can think of is Minecraft? funnily enough
Both of them are the only games I've ever played with optional menu narration and closed captions. I've never used the menu narration so I can't attest to how well either is handled but I have to say that Minecraft's in game closed captions are way better than Valhalla's and I wish that all games had it as an option. It's literally just a small box in the corner of the screen that says what the sound is and where it's coming from so I don't know why more games don't implement it? It's such a simple feature but it transforms my game experience. I find it really hard to parse out similar sounds and to figure out where they're coming from so having them on allows me to effectively play and they don't get in the way of the experience. Valhalla's captions are vague, low contrast, in the middle of the screen, and they have a free arrow instead of a 4-directional one so every time you move the camera arrow wobbles and its useless at finding anything.
Every game has features that are integral to the function and tuning that I understand would be really difficult or impossible to make accessible for everyone, but so many accessibility options are just about removing barriers that make a game unplayable. It doesn't matter if a camera shake or a quick time event adds an aesthetic element to a game if the inability to get around it makes the game unplayable for someone. Accessibility options exist so that everyone can share in an experience. If you don't need it, great! But it being there means that someone who does need it can share the experience of the game with you.
It honestly reminds me of the people I get at work who complain about us adding ramps to our historic buildings because it's not "historically accurate" but that's a can of worms for another post.
