I’m Bad at Video Games: Why You Should Care
Video game accessibility can be a pretty hot topic, and I can understand why. Difficulty and skill are sacred to the gaming community. In-game achievements and collectibles act as trophies for players to show off to their friends. So, when I say that games need options to tone down the obstacles some players face, people often get defensive. After all, wouldn’t that just undermine their hard work, their accomplishments? Well, no. Because it’s not about making games easier, it’s about making them more accessible. There are many reasons a person might struggle with video games, and it’s not fair to hold everyone to the same standards for something they can’t help. With the growth of the gaming industry, the benefits games can provide, and the potential health risks that come with inaccessible games, we need to start looking at the bigger picture. We need to start making video games accessible to everyone.
I love to play video games. Ever since I was young, my life has revolved around Pokémon Diamond on my DSi, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on my Wii, Skyrim on my Xbox 360, Stardew Valley on my laptop, the list goes on and on. Yet, somehow after all the time I’ve invested in playing video games, I am not very good at them.
I remember the first time I played Hollow Knight back in 2020 and I had to sink in hours just trying to kill the Crystal Guardian all for that sweet, sweet bench save point. Luckily for me, I’m stubborn, and so through lots of sweat and tears, I managed to beat the game… and I loved it. After raving about it to my close friends, they found they couldn’t get into it; it was too difficult and confusing. It was disheartening to hear. These people that loved stories and video games couldn’t experience what I thought was the ultimate culmination of both.
This whole experience got me thinking: what makes a video game difficult in the first place? And when does a game become too difficult? To answer these questions, I needed a framework for what interaction with video games was and what that meant for the player. In other words, I had to break it down to the very basics.
Video games, as computer technology, fall within the category of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), or the study of computer technology design and its interaction with humans. There’s an important concept in HCI known as affordances. In their article, Theorizing Affordances: From Request to Refuse, Jenny L. Davis and James B. Chouinard describe affordances as the process in how a technology’s features affect the outcomes of its use. As a basic example, chairs afford rest by allowing someone to sit on them.
Now, let’s talk about affordances in video games. Thankfully, Pippin Barr helps break this down in his thesis on video game play as HCI. In a study Barr conducted, he found that game controls and user interface (UI) define possible input and mediate the player’s perception and response (basically, how they choose to play). Games “were not neutral in their presentation of possibilities for interaction,” which “dictated particular goals for players.” In other words, there was “a powerful sense of what the player is ‘meant to do.’” This might seem obvious. Games have limitations, so you can’t just do anything you want, and they’ll try to communicate this to the player. That’s a good thing, right? Well, yes, but how games communicate this is really important. And it’s also where a lot of games unfortunately fall short. Participants in Barr’s study said that controls were often similar across many different games, and that their history of play has made controller-use an automatic response. Just how automatic their reactions were was directly related to their skill in play. Because of this, we can see that video games encourage and sometimes even demand this level of response.
Okay, philosophy lesson out of the way, you might be asking, why is this important? As we’ve outlined above, video games can be biased in their communication. They expect experience from the player. Barr’s study only covered participants that had this experience–they’ve all played games extensively before the study began. But what about people who have never played games before? Or have little experience playing games? What happens when they try to play?
As it turns out, somebody else has already been asking these same questions. YouTuber Razbuten made this awesome video (seriously, go watch it if you have the time) where he watches what happens when his wife, who does not play video games, plays a handful of video games. As you might’ve guessed, she struggled… a lot. Too many times was she expected to know how to control the game without being explicitly told. On top of that, cues that should’ve guided her in the right direction went right over her head. Razbuten suggests that these are all examples of a common video game language that has been reiterated over the years. And I agree. I find that, for most games, I can figure out the basic controls and goals with just the game’s genre. But I know this because I’ve played so many video games. The same cannot be said for everyone.
So, there’s clearly a disconnect here between video game developers’ assumptions and any given player’s capabilities. This doesn’t just affect new players, but disabled players too. How can someone with one left hand be expected to use the A button on an Xbox controller? How can someone with color blindness pick out the yellow go here! cues? How can someone with ADHD-related inattention or memory issues remember important text or layouts? How can someone with sensory issues, such as those with Autism, play despite the sickness-inducing camera movement? Too often the answer is a simple, well, they can’t. That brings us to a pretty heavy implication: video games are inaccessible.
Now, I know that might’ve gotten some of you to raise your torches and pitchforks. The push for game accessibility is often made out to seem like we want to water down your favorite games and restrict their creative freedom. I get it, to a certain extent. There can be a lot of narrative value in the way a game plays or how difficult it feels to the player. However, it’s important to note that, as we’ve seen above, difficulty scales differently for everyone, and often for things they can’t control. There are workarounds we can implement to maintain a game’s vision while also keeping it accessible. Before we get into these, though, we need to talk about why we need them in the first place. It’s time for the big question then: why is accessibility so important?
The video game industry continues to grow and the ongoing pandemic has only boosted it even more. With an estimated population of about 2.8 billion people, the video game audience is already large, and a PopCap study found that one in five gamers have some kind of disability. This is a lot of people we’re talking about here, not just some minuscule minority we can afford to ignore. Accessible games means opening up the medium to this even wider audience.
An obvious conclusion to come to from this is the ripe potential for game developers to make greater profits. Some may argue that implementing accessibility features in games could be costly, but accessibility advocate Ian Hamilton found that implementations made early in development were actually cheap. So, as long as developers are proactive and thinking ahead (hopefully a practice they’re already used to), they could stand to make a lot more money with their games.
But the financial aspect is not the only thing we should consider. Studies have shown that video games can provide a number of benefits for gamers. Researcher Isabela Granic reviewed video game studies, finding that shooter games have been found to “strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception.” Games in other genres, such as Role-Playing Games (RPGs), can enhance problem-solving skills and creativity as well, Granic found. These are just some of the cognitive benefits, though. Video games have also been shown to improve mental health in gamers. Researchers studied the emotional effects of commercial video games and found that popular titles such as Minecraft, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and even Mario Kart can reduce symptoms of depression and promote emotional regulation skills. Other games were found to alleviate anxiety symptoms. Games can provide social benefits too. Over 70% of players play games socially. Those that do fostered social bonds, practiced social skills, and gained more confidence. We can clearly see here that games act as an outlet for so many people. They’re a reliable hobby that offer joy, relaxation, and connection–especially in these uncertain times.
This becomes especially significant when you consider that disabled people suffer from mental illness and social isolation disproportionately. Researchers found that “adults with disabilities report experiencing more mental distress than those without disabilities,” with about one-third of them suffering symptoms regularly. Other studies show that disabled people suffer from loneliness more than their abled peers. This makes sense. There’s an unfortunate load of unique stress that comes with being disabled, such as concerns for medical well-being, cost of medications and procedures, limited public access (think wheelchair ramps), social barriers, and more. Video games can alleviate these stresses from the comfort of your own home, where disabled people can find themselves too often. If games can help to ease that mental load, even if only by a little, then disabled people are just as entitled to their hobby, if not more so.
This all demonstrates the benefits we’re losing out on by making inaccessible games, but what about the actual dangers of inaccessibility? That’s right, inaccessible games can potentially pose health risks for those who play them. Effects like motion blur, head bobbing (common in first-person point of view), and screen shake can cause motion sickness in some players. Combinations of visual effects as well as overlapping sounds can cause sensory overload in those with ADHD, Autism, or anxiety disorders, which can lead to irritability, extreme stress, physical sensitivities, or even insomnia. The dangers don’t stop there, however. Kelley over at Can I Play That? highlights several ways common visual effects such as flashing or strobing lights, high contrast or bright colors, and glitch-like effects, can all hurt photosensitive gamers. These effects can have consequences ranging from mild pain to migraines to seizures.
Even so, games still release without proper, descriptive warnings. In recent news, Cyberpunk 2077 came under fire for its failure to warn gamers of the many epileptic triggers it has. Liana Ruppert, who initially reported on this, risked seizures (even suffering one), just to create a dedicated, detailed report of photosensitivity warnings in the game so that other gamers may play it safely. To me, this is unacceptable. Why is the responsibility of creating and managing a safe, healthy gaming environment put on at-risk players? Why aren’t we protecting our community members in need?
The good news is that we can. As I mentioned earlier, there are workarounds we can implement to make gaming a more accessible experience. So, what are they, then? Every gamer is unique and has different needs, so how can we cater to them all? It’s actually easier than you might think, and it’s precisely because everyone has unique preferences. The simple yet effective answer is just to include settings. That’s it. This way, players can adjust the gameplay to their preferences, whether that’s by changing the difficulty, turning off or changing the measure of visual effects, adding subtitles, remapping controls to different buttons, and more. To take this a step further, we can also implement detailed tutorial systems to get everyone on the same page. There are so many resources too that can help developers implement changes like these, such as the Game Accessibility Guidelines website, reviews on Can I Play That?, and resources made available by the AbleGamers Charity.
Changes like these can help everyone, not just disabled players. Players like Razbuten’s wife might have enjoyed Portal more if it explained its controls, or players like my friends might have enjoyed Hollow Knight more if they could have scaled back the difficulty.
I hope by now you can see why video game accessibility is so important. There are so many gamers out there that could benefit from accessible video games, and it’s only fair that we give everyone a chance to play.
