Simple considerations or design decisions that apply to most game mechanics. Not every guideline will apply to your game, but those that do will benefit large numbers of gamers, and are easy to implement if thought about early enough.
Much of this section is derived directly from the Game Accessibility Guidelines website and the GMTK’s series on accessibility in games. If you want more in-depth information on this topic, we strongly suggest you check out those resources along with the resources listed at the bottom of the article(s).
General Guidelines #
In addition to the specific areas of concern listed above, here are some general guidelines to follow when it comes to accessibility of your game.
Provide details of accessibility features on packaging and/or website #
Buying a game only to find out that you can’t play it is a real issue, easily solved by just letting people know what features are in a game. Without that, the work on those features may well go to waste.
Mentioning key accessibility features online also gets you extra search engine traffic, for example from people searching Google for colour-blind friendly games, and greater visibility of your efforts with the press. Including just a single bullet point on colourblind mode in their presskit resulted in Hue’s colourblind mode being picked up on and praised in around 20 reviews, bumping their metacritic score into the green.
A standardised symbol has been developed to indicate that accessibility information is present. Use of this will aid recognition.
Provide details of accessibility features in-game #
Accessibility features are not yet a standard expectation, players often do not know to go looking for them. Without signposting, some of the work on those features can go to waste.
Several techniques are possible. Showing the menu itself before the game starts. Building them in to the intial tutorial, as is sometimes done for features such as stick inversion. Highlighting features on initial and interstitial loading screens. Even prompting players about them if it looks like they might be having difficulty.
Solicit accessibility feedback #
While including people with disabilities in playtesting and user research is the most effective way of getting precise and detailed observations, simply asking for feedback online is a cheap and effective way to gather a wide range of input.
This can be through specific accessibility questions in surveys and beta test questionnaires, dedicated accessibility surveys, putting calls out on social media, asking on your own game’s forums or in disability specific online communities. Setting up a dedicated accessibility feedback email address. Approaching a studio about accessibility issue that affects you can be intimidating, so make people feel comfortable giving feedback, and that their input is welcome and wanted.
Getting input as early as possible is critical, as this allows you to put any findings into action for minimal cost. In particular if your game is part of a series, input can be gathered before any work starts, based on people’s experiences with earlier games.
Allow difficulty level to be altered during gameplay, either through settings or adaptive difficulty #
Related: Adaptive Difficulty →
The decision on which difficulty level is most appropriate is often as a result of trying to play the game on the default setting. Allowing a choice during gameplay or upon death means being able choose to play at an appropriate level without having to lose your progress so far. This can also be achieved through adaptive difficulty – dynamically adjusting the difficulty level according to the performance of the player.
Include some people with impairments amongst play-testing participants #
Guidelines provide a very useful base checklist but are a one size fits all. Playtesting with disabled gamers is always enlightening, and gives insights specific to your individual game.
Testing as early as possible is critical, as this allows you to put any findings into action for minimal cost.
If you are in a large studio who use recruitment profiles for recruitment, add some disability related criteria to the recruitment profile – it shouldn’t cost much, if anything, to do so. If in a smaller studio, good sources of participants are local gaming groups, local and online disability related communities outside of gaming, and large local communities with a central point of contact for disabled members, such as colleges.
Ideally provide both manual save and autosave #
Manual Save #
Lack of manual save, for example allowing progress to be saved only at checkpoints, can exclude gamers who are physically only able to to play for short bursts of time, or who may have to stop playing suddenly without warning.
It can also mean the difference between being able to play and not being able to play for gamers with more profound impairments who find each individual task a lengthy challenge.
AutoSave #
Players often do not know that a section will be problematic for their particular impairment (such as a quick time event) until they come across it, meaning a quick death and having to replay without a recent manual save in place – a particular issue if you have a motor impairment that already makes play lengthy and difficult.
It can also be useful for conditions such as ADD that affect likelihood of remembering to save.
Offer a means to bypass gameplay elements that aren’t part of the core mechanic, via settings or in-game skip option #
Additional skill requirements are often added in for variety, for example a puzzle sequence in a first person shooter or a button mashing round in a quiz game. These can add interest, but also exclude unnecessarily. A good solution is to make these challenges that sit outside the core mechanic optional, either through a contextual skip option, settings, or as part of a difficulty level choice.
Include assist modes such as auto-aim and assisted steering #
Assist modes are optional settings to compensate for lack of speed or precision, allowing gamers with difficulties in these areas to take part on a level playing field. They also have strong benefits for people who are simply less proficient at the game, allowing them to still experience the same progression and enjoyment.
They can be partial, for example requiring less accuracy for aiming, or full, for example carrying out all braking and gear changes completely automatically.
An obvious area of concern is the impact that this has on competitive multi-player, giving players a way to gain an unfair competitive advantage, but this is easily addressed through matchmaking preferences.
Allow a preference to be set for playing online multiplayer with/without others who are using accessibility features that could give a competitive advantage #
Features such as assists can be abused by unscrupulous players as a means to gain an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer games. However, excluding these features means excluding players who rely on them.
A good solution is to offer a matchmaking preference to play with or without other players who use these features.