How Accessible Were 2020's Biggest Games?

Hi, I'm Mark Brown and this is Game Maker's Toolkit. One of the things I talk about a lot on this channel is accessibility - which is all about adding options to a game, to make it comfortable or playable to a wider range of people. That's typically those with disabilities, but ultimately anyone who has specific requirements, whether thats colourblindness, motion sickness, joint pain, or just inexperience with games or even a small TV.

Over the last few years, accessibility has become a huge part of games. And that's why I dedicate one video each year to check out the current state of accessibility in the industry. Basically, I played more than 50 of the most noteworthy games released in 2020, in order to check out the options available in categories like controls, subtitles, and difficulty. To try and sample the entire games biz, I looked at massive AAA blockbusters, tiny indie gems, console launch titles, yearly instalments, Japanese imports, and more.

I also talked to dozens of gamers living with disabilities, and checked out articles from sites that review games from an accessibility standpoint. And so this is what I learned about the state of video game accessibility in 2020. First, though: 2020 wasn't just about new games - because we also saw the release of two brand new consoles: the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X. And I'm pleased to report that both are made with accessibility in mind.

Both devices feature a raft of useful options - including high contrast mode, closed captions, and console-wide controller remapping. The PS5 lets you set the text size and colour profile of the entire system, while the Xbox Series X has a great magnifier that you can invoke, even while playing games. And, amazingly, both start up with a screen reader turned on, so even those with visual disabilities can get started.

But it's the controllers that are most important here. The PlayStation 5's Dualsense pad has a couple nifty features: a highly detailed rumble, and shoulder buttons that can resist your movement to mimic something like crushing a glass orb. They're both highly innovative - but can be inaccessible. Thankfully, Sony lets you turn them both off, on a system-wide level. Unfortunately, one oversight is that the PS5 doesn't support PS4 controllers in new games.

So any custom-made, accessible PS4 controllers might not work. That's one of the many things Microsoft gets right: the Series X doesn't care if you're using its brand new pad or an old Xbox One controller. And, of course, it also supports the excellent Adaptive Controller. But best of all is the Xbox's Copilot system where two controllers can be used for one input - like a driving instructor's car with two sets of pedals.

This is great for those who require someone else's assistance to get through games or to split controls across two devices for certain unconventional set-ups. Oh, and we can't forget the Nintendo Switch in all of this - in 2020, the console took inspiration from Xbox and PlayStation when it received system-wide button remapping. And here's why that's a big deal. One of the most important accessibility features is the ability to completely reconfigure a game's controls. This allows players to move actions to different buttons, depending on what they find comfortable or possible.

And this year, loads of games feature full controller remapping - including Crash Bandicoot 4, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Marvel's Avengers, Hades, and plenty others. In fact, of all the games I looked at which let you play with a controller - more than half of them let you change the button mapping. That's a huge step in the right direction. Because while it's cool that all three consoles now have system-wide remapping, developers shouldn't rely on it. It's tedious to change the buttons between games, and it doesn't account for games that have different layouts for different modes - like being on-foot, driving, playing Mahjong, being a Marauder, playing in defence, and so on.

Unfortunately, remapping isn't enough to make games accessible for many of those with motor-related needs, because plenty of other things can prove difficult - like repeatedly hitting a button, pressing multiple buttons at once, and holding buttons down. But many games saw fit to provide options to address these issues: Ghost of Tsushima is just one game that lets you avoid those button-bashy QTE moments. And many games let you decide whether you want to hold a button, or just toggle its effects on and off with a single press.

Other nifty features in this regard include auto-drive in Watch Dogs, heavy aim assistance in DOOM Eternal, and the ability to swap the left and right sticks in a number of games. I want to give an extra nod to Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which has a pair of shortcut buttons on the left and right d-pad which let you get instant access to some particularly tricky inputs - including ones that need two buttons. And to FIFA 21, which offers a control scheme that drastically reduces the game down to just one button, and uses some smart design to predict what you'll want your footballer to do.

Just like with controller remapping, it's now more common to see a game with good subtitles than one with shockingly bad ones. I mean, those still exist - like Maneater with its ridiculously small text, and Mafia: Definitive Edition which somehow has smaller subtitles than the 18 year old game its remaking. In general we're looking for subtitles that are large, that contrast well against the background, and ideally include the speaker's name.

And it's even better when the player gets to choose how these subtitles appear. It's unfortunately still somewhat common for games to avoid showing subtitles in certain circumstances: In Valhalla, Eivor's inner monologue isn't captioned, and neither are the mid-combat barks in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Subtitles are of course incredibly valuable to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. And those same people may need help if information in a game is only communicated through sound: such as certain bugs in Animal Crossing, or things happening off screen like an enemy spotting you in a stealth game.

Thankfully, we're seeing more games that account for this. Most games have off screen indicators by default. Ghost of Tsushima lets you turn on an icon to highlight incoming ranged attacks. And both Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassin's Creed have a captioning system - using tech borrowed from last year's Far Cry New Dawn - that reveals the location of noises. However, according to the reviews I read, neither are perfect.

One of the most common issues that games still run into it, is having text that's too small to read. Take the menus in Final Fantasy 7, which are tough to parse even with perfect vision if you're using a smaller TV. Some games do let you change the font size, but they're rare. Take Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where the text rarely fills up these boxes - but there's no way to increase the size of the font. Others feature UI scaling options, but they sometimes have issues like text overlapping or buttons going off screen.

It's good to see games that let you turn handwritten notes into basic easy-to-read fonts. And a bunch of games, including Paradise Killer and Tell Me Why, offer fonts designed for those with dyslexia. Another important consideration is visual noise. Hades is an example of a game where there's so many projectiles, attacks, enemies, and traps that it can be tough to know what's going on. So it's good to see games that let you increase the visibility of critical pop-ups and information, like the size of the hacking cursor in Watch Dogs, the opacity of the UI in Dirt 5, the brightness of loot in DOOM Eternal, and the colour of the crosshairs in Valorant.

Spider-Man and Last of Us deserve special props for amazing shader modes that can wash out the background and highlight the important characters with bright colourful overlays. Best of all, you get some choice over what those colours are. Because colourblindness is something that all game designers should be thinking about. One of the best solutions I saw this year was for Call of Duty: Cold War where you can build a custom colour palette to discern between different people on your mini map.

Other games with good colourblind support include Gears Tactics, Total War: Troy, and Minecraft: Dungeons. The indie game Lair of the Clockwork God has a couple puzzles that rely on colour, so there's an option to disable that aspect. One more visual aspect to consider is flashing lights and colours, which can be dangerous for those with epilepsy. This is something Cyberpunk 2077 ran into, when a journalist reported that she suffered a major seizure during the game.

That was thanks to a sequence where the player puts on a headset and is bombarded by a rapid flurry of blinking LEDs. The developer has added a warning, and is now exploring more permanent solutions. Other games, like Paradise Killer, let you turn off flashing lights from the options. While all of these features are pretty uncontentious, there remains one accessibility feature that's very much open to debate: the ability to reduce a game's difficulty.

Being able to pick an easy mode with slower combat, less pressure, and more opportunities to make mistakes, can be incredibly helpful for people with certain disabilities. As well as those who are young, or old, or completely new to games. And, well, okay, it's not a debate among most games this year which provide difficulty settings that range from super easy to crushingly hard. Plus, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla lets you independently change the difficulty of exploration, fighting, and sneaking.

Resident Evil 3 has an assisted game mode with regenerating health. And Hades has a God Mode where you get stronger every time you die. And plenty of games go further and let the player manipulate various aspects of the game. Crash Bandicoot 4 and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are two platformers that let you turn off lives altogether, so you can make as many mistakes as you like. In Dirt 5, you can let the computer take control of the car, and in sports games like NBA and FIFA, you can nerf your opponent's skills.

But this was also the year of a new Souls game: a flashy remake of the very first one, Demon's Souls, for PlayStation 5. As always, this is a punishingly difficult game - with features that can make the game harder, the worse you perform. And in series tradition, it offers no formal options to change the difficulty. So, a quick refresher of the debate: Souls games use their extreme difficulty to create a really strong emotion of bleak, isolating hopelessness - which then, after some perseverance, translates into an equally strong emotion of triumphant reward.

And this basically repeats for each area in the game. Unfortunately, some players aren't able to overcome that challenge, which means they only get hopelessness, never reward. So, there's been requests for a completely optional mode that reduces the difficulty to something they still find challenging, but not impossible. However, this runs the risk of perfectly capable players using this mode - perhaps after a few boss fight rage quits - which would make the game too easy, and mean they feel neither hopelessness nor reward as they effortlessly saunter through the world.

And I get that. It would suck. But ultimately, I don't think this is a good enough reason to make a game so inaccessible. And we've seen games that offer these features in a way that helps players understand which option they should be picking. Though, with that being said, it's worth noting that while Demon's Souls doesn't have specific difficulty modes, there are ways to modify the challenge in game - specifically the ability to summon players to fight alongside you, or grind for a while to boost your stats.

Plus, developer BluePoint said they actually did consider an easy mode - but the fact that this was a remake of someone else's game, stopped them from doing it. When it comes to PlayStation games, Demon's Souls is something of an outlier. Because this year, Sony cemented its position as an industry leader when it comes to accessibility. And that's mostly down to The Last of Us Part II, which features an astounding array of features - putting it far beyond any other game released this year.

There's more than 60 different accessibility options, ranging from lock-on aiming, to enemy indicators, to motion sickness settings, to an incredible system that lets you play the game without sight. Seriously - the blind fighting game player SightlessKombat says he finished the game without assistance. That's down to things like a library of unique audio cues, the ability to point Ellie towards her goal, ledge assistance that stops you falling to your death, and how swiping up on the touchpad gives you a read-out of your current information.

SCREEN READER: "You are crouched. Health: 59. Bolt action rifle: equipped. 6: ammo loaded. 0: reserved. Crafting available." It's not just The Last of Us, though: Spider-Man Miles Morales is packed with accessibility features and improves on a lot of oversights in the original Spider-Man game. But the same can't be said for everything to come out of a Sony studio: Ghost of Tsushima has some neat options but also some inaccessible issues like the gorgeous guiding wind system which can't be remapped away from the touchpad, and can be difficult to see when placed against certain environments.

Of course, Sony isn't the only big studio to be using its powers for good. Ubisoft is also doing strong work, with dozens of accessibility options across Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, and Immortals. And Microsoft continues to be a triumphant supporter of accessibility, with many thoughtful options in both Minecraft: Dungeons and Gears Tactics. But I shouldn't suggest that you need a big budget to provide accessibility.

And, in fact, many indie games do a pretty incredible job in this regard. Lair of the Clockwork God has customisable subtitles, a dyslexic font, and even the ability to stop speech from automatically progressing so you get more time to read it. The racing game Inertial Drift is noteworthy for an audio page where you can independently tweak the volume of almost every sound source. Ikenfell has content warnings and the ability to just skip any fight.

The stealth game Wildfire is packed with intelligent options like one-handed play, auto jump and a simple colourblind mode that pops red enemies off of green backgrounds. And the game Hyperdot was nominated alongside Sony and Ubisoft games in the new accessibility category of The Game Awards, for providing options like eye-tracking. And just to prove the point that accessibility doesn't necessarily need a big budget, Valorant is the new game from League of Legends developer Riot - annual revenue: a few billion dollars. Valorant doesn't have subtitles, which is the absolute barebones baseline of accessibility support.

Don't be like Riot - be like these cool indie devs. But if there's one really strong predicator of a game having poor accessibility, it's if that game was made in Japan. That'll probably get me in trouble, but I think the evidence holds out. Eight of the games I looked at this year came from Japan - that's Animal Crossing, Dragon Ball Z, Final Fantasy 7, Hyrule Warriors, Paper Mario, Resident Evil 3, Mario 3D All-Stars, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

And they all fail at accessibility in some big way. Yakuza is the only one of them with controller remapping. Mario Galaxy either has forced touchscreen controls or forced motion controls. None of these games feature options for the subtitles, leading to issues like poor contrast or hard-to-read fonts. There are no options for things like contrast or colourblind settings, outside of picking the reticle colour in Resident Evil 3.

And Animal Crossing doesn't even have an options menu - let alone an accessibility menu. Japan just hasn't got the memo on this stuff, leading to these games being unnecessarily restrictive. I talked to a gamer who had to get a refund on Resident Evil 3 because you need to hold the shoulder button to aim - meanwhile almost every shooter made in the west gives you the option to toggle aiming on with a single press. Come on Japan, get it together.

However, all is not lost. One of the good things about patches and updates is that game developers can continue to add accessibility features - often in response to player feedback and requests. So after 2018's Among Us blew up this year, and players started complaining about tasks that rely on colour perception, Innersloth was able to patch in symbols to make it possible for colourblind players to complete those tasks.

Meanwhile, Control received a new Assist mode which allows you to change everything from damage output to reload time. Remedy says "It's important to us that as many people as possible get to experience Control the way they want." And in last year's video I picked on Jedi Fallen Order for not letting you turn off those button-bashy QTEs: but now you can, thanks to a new patch. Overall, I'm really impressed by the strides that games have taken to be more accessible in 2020.

Almost every single game I checked out offered at least one option that could be considered an accessibility feature. And many games provided a full range of different options. All three consoles feature smart accessibility options. The Last of Us Part II is probably the most accessible big budget game ever made. And indie devs aren't fazed by the challenge of adding extra options. And I doubt there's anyone watching who hasn't benefited in some way from this sort of inclusive design. Personally speaking, I changed the controls in Hades to make reloading more comfortable, I turned off the QTEs in Spider-Man to save my wrists from hurting, I boosted the text size in Ghost of Tsushima, made movement more comfortable in Half Life: Alyx, turned off lives in Sackboy to play with my partner, and turned off auto-run in Spelunky 2.

Ultimately, few games can be made accessible to every single person. It's not possible or feasible. Every disability is unique. Every game is unique. But that shouldn't stop developers from trying to make their games more inclusive. For every feature they add, a few more people get to join in, a few more get to have fun, and a few more get to be part of a community. Gaming can be an incredible hobby - we've all discovered that in 2020.

So I praise the developers who are using their time, effort, and budget to make their games accessible to as many people as possible. Indie game recommendation time: and it's for Paradise Killer which is an open world detective game (with loads of great accessibility options). Imagine Danganronpa with the open structure of Breath of the Wild and you'll be close to describing this weird and imaginative game. The detective mechanics aren't too complex - so don't expect Obra Dinn - but its a good time nevertheless. It's on PC and Switch.