I recently went to a family gathering where 90% of the adults over 40 had vision issues that would impede gaming, because they had to use bigger than standard fonts on their phones to be able to use them. Many games do not even allow adjusting font size, and the standard size is often so small or situationally low-contrast that it's become a meme at this point. Karen Stevens says so in the talk and I concur: Accessibility isn't niche.
A really nice talk with many important things and understandable examples, thanks so much for this. Still I can't fail to see the irony in having an accessibility video uploaded without proper (non-auto-generated) subtitles/captions. 😅
I've been getting a bit more into game development starting from last year, and the part about optional haptic feedback resonates strangely with me. Why? Because I had a friend help me build a software on the background of other games, made especially to vibrate my DualShock 3 device while inputting any given button. That's how much I wanted this feature to be on a lot of games (I'm mostly playing on PC so it's not frequent for haptic feedback to be a thing). Other than that, great talk to contribute to the notion of accessibility, it permits an ideal of inclusion. Accessibility as a concept can go against some design choices, like the competitive aspect of a game. But I like the idea that games are also a medium that permits a unique experience.
Great talk! I don't have any menus just yet but have big plans for accessibility. I *think* it can be played with three buttons. I'll be watching the comments for more feedback.
I am completely pro accessibility and understand it lets more people experience games but i feel like it makes too much of a variance between experiences to the point of them not playing the same game which could make a massive disconnect in discussions about said game. And I just wish there was a way to remedy that.
I see where you're coming from, but those differences can be integrated into discussion. It's likely those who had drastically different experiences may not have been able to play and discuss at all without accessibility options.
It's like she says "Games are about experiences", at least mostly. Why else would you take time with someone's software and challenge yourself to beat what they built?
Yeah, i feel most games are about the *developer's* intended experiences, they put so much effort into planning and sculpting an artful and often *challenging* experience and i wish changing *certain* aspects too much didn't defeat the purpose of creating an intended experience at all.
Nhl 22 needs deke controls that are one button. Like madden for example how spin is the B button on xbox. I Can't do the one hand tuck. In nhl 22 or other hard dekes. I use two button mode. I just want to feel cool faking out the goalie Thank you loved the talk just wanted to pass along what would help me.
She completely left out 100% keyboard remapping. I use KB/M and can barely feel anything with my left hand middle to pinky fingers so I use the arrow keys instead of WASD(I can feel where there's no keys so know where the keys I need are)... most games have keys that cannot be rebound from WASD setups and if they use arrow keys for another function then those get locked down. 100% keyboard remapping is a must have basic feature. And she also ignores the need for text chat. Deaf players play games too and voice chat is useless for them but so many games have voice chat and/or emotes only. Emotes are fine in games that don't need much in the way for communication, but a game with any social hub or component needs text chat. And Discord or any other third party text chat isn't the solution, how does someone tell a deaf person what chat they are using and how to get to them to the proper channel and/or server so they can communicate, How do you tell them your Steam ID? You can't.
I wholeheartedly agree with 100% key remapping and I've been guilty of doing this: The extra logic management required to make sure the player doesn't accidentally lock themselves out of the game completely is often enough to convince developers to not bother. Excuses like "limited time and budget", "it's just an extra thing thing to manage that nobody will use" come to mind. But it is important. One sollution I've seen in the indiesphere is to always save the key mappings to a text file, so if something goes wrong and the player locks themselves out of the game, the user can just edit or delete the text config file and start over. It's not a great "user experience", and it requires technical knowledge from the player, but it's better than the devs just locking it down. I'm glad some consoles are doing this on the System level, I know Playstation and Switch support this (but is it Every button? I don't remember) but it should still be configurable in-game.
@@stealcase Programming a remap all system that will remap all functions that uses the same key and a key swap system would go a long way to prevent losing key binds. WASD for moving and Arrow keys for a base build menu navigation in your game, Player Picks Forward movement W and swaps it to Up Arrow then menu Up becomes W before the player ever gets to the section of the options the menu should be in. E does multiple functions that is scattered throughout the options, remap the first E (usually Use) in the options and all of the rest get swapped too. And a keymap ini file should always be included in the My Games \"Game Title" folder along with saves and the other settings ini files. Manually change it in notepad before ever starting the game if that's your preference or the game writes to it if you remap in the menu. The ini should be all functions while the option menu can still have multiple functions bound to the same key. Advanced users would like to have complete control and an ini file is not a bad way of having the control. But another benefit to it, if a player uninstalls the game or has to reinstall for whatever reason they wont need to redo the keymap. If you mess up the keymap then you delete the ini and the game will replace it the next time it starts. Thats makes it impossible to complete break the game and players wont need to always make the ini file. They can be shared online. What's a more terrible experience than an ini file? Not having the ability to remap keys and get stuck with keys that does not work for you or learning how to make an AutoHotKey script and remembering that little used function is not the same as the prompt in the game. The first one makes players not play the game after getting frustrated and then they probably won't ever buy one of your games ever again.
I recently went to a family gathering where 90% of the adults over 40 had vision issues that would impede gaming, because they had to use bigger than standard fonts on their phones to be able to use them.
Many games do not even allow adjusting font size, and the standard size is often so small or situationally low-contrast that it's become a meme at this point.
Karen Stevens says so in the talk and I concur: Accessibility isn't niche.
A really nice talk with many important things and understandable examples, thanks so much for this.
Still I can't fail to see the irony in having an accessibility video uploaded without proper (non-auto-generated) subtitles/captions. 😅
I've been getting a bit more into game development starting from last year, and the part about optional haptic feedback resonates strangely with me. Why? Because I had a friend help me build a software on the background of other games, made especially to vibrate my DualShock 3 device while inputting any given button. That's how much I wanted this feature to be on a lot of games (I'm mostly playing on PC so it's not frequent for haptic feedback to be a thing).
Other than that, great talk to contribute to the notion of accessibility, it permits an ideal of inclusion. Accessibility as a concept can go against some design choices, like the competitive aspect of a game. But I like the idea that games are also a medium that permits a unique experience.
Great talk! I don't have any menus just yet but have big plans for accessibility. I *think* it can be played with three buttons. I'll be watching the comments for more feedback.
I am completely pro accessibility and understand it lets more people experience games but i feel like it makes too much of a variance between experiences to the point of them not playing the same game which could make a massive disconnect in discussions about said game. And I just wish there was a way to remedy that.
I see where you're coming from, but those differences can be integrated into discussion. It's likely those who had drastically different experiences may not have been able to play and discuss at all without accessibility options.
Thanks for posting!
It's like she says "Games are about experiences", at least mostly. Why else would you take time with someone's software and challenge yourself to beat what they built?
Yeah, i feel most games are about the *developer's* intended experiences, they put so much effort into planning and sculpting an artful and often *challenging* experience and i wish changing *certain* aspects too much didn't defeat the purpose of creating an intended experience at all.
Nhl 22 needs deke controls that are one button. Like madden for example how spin is the B button on xbox.
I Can't do the one hand tuck. In nhl 22 or other hard dekes. I use two button mode. I just want to feel cool faking out the goalie
Thank you loved the talk just wanted to pass along what would help me.
She completely left out 100% keyboard remapping. I use KB/M and can barely feel anything with my left hand middle to pinky fingers so I use the arrow keys instead of WASD(I can feel where there's no keys so know where the keys I need are)... most games have keys that cannot be rebound from WASD setups and if they use arrow keys for another function then those get locked down. 100% keyboard remapping is a must have basic feature.
And she also ignores the need for text chat. Deaf players play games too and voice chat is useless for them but so many games have voice chat and/or emotes only. Emotes are fine in games that don't need much in the way for communication, but a game with any social hub or component needs text chat. And Discord or any other third party text chat isn't the solution, how does someone tell a deaf person what chat they are using and how to get to them to the proper channel and/or server so they can communicate, How do you tell them your Steam ID? You can't.
I wholeheartedly agree with 100% key remapping and I've been guilty of doing this: The extra logic management required to make sure the player doesn't accidentally lock themselves out of the game completely is often enough to convince developers to not bother. Excuses like "limited time and budget", "it's just an extra thing thing to manage that nobody will use" come to mind. But it is important.
One sollution I've seen in the indiesphere is to always save the key mappings to a text file, so if something goes wrong and the player locks themselves out of the game, the user can just edit or delete the text config file and start over. It's not a great "user experience", and it requires technical knowledge from the player, but it's better than the devs just locking it down.
I'm glad some consoles are doing this on the System level, I know Playstation and Switch support this (but is it Every button? I don't remember) but it should still be configurable in-game.
@@stealcase Programming a remap all system that will remap all functions that uses the same key and a key swap system would go a long way to prevent losing key binds.
WASD for moving and Arrow keys for a base build menu navigation in your game, Player Picks Forward movement W and swaps it to Up Arrow then menu Up becomes W before the player ever gets to the section of the options the menu should be in.
E does multiple functions that is scattered throughout the options, remap the first E (usually Use) in the options and all of the rest get swapped too.
And a keymap ini file should always be included in the My Games \"Game Title" folder along with saves and the other settings ini files. Manually change it in notepad before ever starting the game if that's your preference or the game writes to it if you remap in the menu. The ini should be all functions while the option menu can still have multiple functions bound to the same key. Advanced users would like to have complete control and an ini file is not a bad way of having the control. But another benefit to it, if a player uninstalls the game or has to reinstall for whatever reason they wont need to redo the keymap. If you mess up the keymap then you delete the ini and the game will replace it the next time it starts. Thats makes it impossible to complete break the game and players wont need to always make the ini file. They can be shared online.
What's a more terrible experience than an ini file? Not having the ability to remap keys and get stuck with keys that does not work for you or learning how to make an AutoHotKey script and remembering that little used function is not the same as the prompt in the game. The first one makes players not play the game after getting frustrated and then they probably won't ever buy one of your games ever again.