Making Games Better for Players with Motor Disabilities | Designing for Disability

Okay, so imagine this. You’re playing the new Spider-Man game, and you’re swinging about, beating up bad guys, and generally feeling like a super hero. And then Spidey has to save these people who are trapped under some rubble and… you can’t. The game’s asking you to press the square button really fast, but for whatever reason - maybe you’ve got arthritis, or tendinitis, or Parkinson’s, or repetitive strain injury, or muscular dystrophy - whatever the case, you can’t hammer that square button fast enough.

So much for feeling like a super hero. Video games are heavily based on physical interaction, and so gamers with motor impairments - those that impact the use of their fingers, hands, or arms - may find it extremely difficult to enjoy certain titles. Especially those that test your precision, timing, strength, and endurance. Thankfully, there are awesome accessible controllers out there, such as tailor made set-ups from places like Special Effect and AbleGamers, as well as Microsoft’s awesome new Adaptive Controller that hooks up to the Xbox One and PC.

But that’s not the end of the story - because getting past hardware barriers can often meaning finding more barriers in the games themselves. So there’s lots that game designers can do to make their games more accessible. And that’s what we’re going to look at in episode three of designing for disability. Here are some options and design choices to make games better for those with motor disabilities. The first step that designers should take, is to allow players to modify the way they control the game.

This will see them playing the exact same game as everyone else, but you just control it in a slightly different fashion. That starts, naturally, with remappable controls, which allow players to move functions around the input device - to a place that they can reach more comfortably. For example if bending a finger around to pull a trigger is difficult, painful, or impossible - being able to move fire or accelerate or whatever to a face button can be a massive help.

Now this is almost always found in PC games, where it’s expected that you can map every action onto any key on the keyboard, or any mouse button. But it’s very rare to find on console. Some games, like Overwatch, Titanfall 2, and Nier Automata do let you remap controls in their console versions, but most games do not. Some control presets, including one for left-handed gamers, are better than nothing - but full remapping on controllers is one of the most requested accessibility options around.

And, yes, it’s true that some consoles - like the Xbox One and PS4 - have system-level controller remapping. But devs shouldn’t rely on this. These options are not super robust - and don’t account for things like a different control scheme for different modes, or different characters. And gamers may need to change the entire system’s controls every time they want to play a different game, and that’s no fun at all. It’s also good to allow players to use different input methods.

Nintendo has been a bit rubbish with this as of late, forcing gamers to use motion controls in games like Twilight Princess and Donkey Kong on Wii, and Super Mario Odyssey on Switch. Because if you can’t shake the device - or can’t stop shaking the device - those games just aren’t going to work. They should look to their own Splatoon for inspiration, which lets you pick between gyro-controlled aiming, or typical analogue stick aiming.

Or London Heist on PlayStation VR, which supports both the PS Move waggle wand and a more traditional pad. PC developers can do the most, here. Keyboard shortcuts in games like XCOM save you needing to move the mouse all over the screen. Controller support is great for those who can’t use keyboard and mouse, though it should still be remappable. Allowing external devices, by not blocking input from other applications, lets players with disabilities use their own hardware.

And a windowed mode, that doesn’t lock your mouse to the game, lets players use the onscreen keyboard inside Windows, instead a physical keyboard. And any time you have an input that requires fine motor movement, like a mouse, an analogue stick, or a gyrometer, it’s great to let players futz with the sensitivity. Titanfall 2 is a good example here, letting you go right in and mess with the response curve, dead zone, and ramp-up time when aiming.

But for most games, a sensitivity meter, which simply dictates how fast your cursor moves when you wiggle the stick, is a great option. Options to customise the controls are terrific, and will help many players enjoy games just like everyone else. But some games go a step further and let you reduce the complexity of the input type to make it easier to control the events on screen. For example: can you make the game playable with just one analogue stick, instead of two?

Well, in the most recent Uncharted games, you can turn on a camera assist to make the camera always follow behind your character - meaning you can control both movement and looking with the same analogue stick. And if you also flip the sticks while aiming, you can aim your gun with the same stick you use to move Chloe around. Uncharted can also automatically target enemies, if you’re struggling with the fine grain aiming controls.

And if you’re on PC, can the game be controlled with just the mouse or just the keyboard, instead of both? A good example of this is The Witness on PC, which has both traditional mouse and keyboard controls, or a more accessible click to move system akin to old school adventure games. This allows the entire game to work with just one hand. Another avenue is to reduce the number of buttons needed. In Bayonetta 2, an automatic mode lets you pull off advanced fighting moves and crazy combos with a single button.

And Nier Automata lets you install chips that automate certain actions, provided you’re playing on easy mode. My favourite is the one that makes your pod automatically shoot, saving you from holding down a button all the time. That’s because forcing a player to hold down a button can make a game completely inaccessible to those with certain disabilities. Thankfully, many games let you change that to a toggle - so in Battlefield 4 you can press the left shoulder button once to aim down sights, and then press it again to go back to a normal view.

And in Mario Kart 8, you can just make the karts drive forward by themselves, instead of having to hold down accelerate for the entire race. A big brick wall for gamers with disabilities are these tiny micro-games that pop up from time to time, that randomly require precise or vigorous button pressing - like bits where you need to wiggle a stick, or bash a button, or press a button with perfect timing, or manipulate the controller in some weirdly specific way.

These often put a greater demand on a motor ability than regular gameplay. Luckily, this is something that developers are finally figuring out, and giving players lots of options to make this stuff easier, or just completely skippable. So that bit in Spider-Man, from the start? You can actually turn on an accessibility option so you just need to hold the button down. As someone who suffers from repetitive strain injury, this option is a god send.

Spider-Man also lets you auto-skip these tricky quick time events, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider won’t force you to rotate the analogue stick when turning cranks if that’s going to hurt your hand. Don’t be like Detroit: Become Human, though. This game has you tilt the right analogue stick in a very specific way to interact with things, which can be very challenging to certain gamers. But while you can swap that for a simplified control scheme, it also makes the actual difficulty of the game easier - with fewer chances to lose a character.

What does having a motor disability have to do with your ability to make decisions or solve puzzles? Now, that being said, difficulty modes can be great. Players struggling with input may find life easier if they can simply relax the challenge level of the game, to give themselves a bit more leeway in combat encounters, or a bit more time to wrangle the controller. But one-size fits all difficulty modes are not the only way to go.

The recently released Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a nice example, as it lets you independently change the combat, exploration, and puzzle difficulties. If you want to make the fiddly fights easier, but still want to test your logic skills without Lara just giving away the answer, you can do that. Some games also offer options that sit a bit outside what you may normally think of as difficulty. Celeste’s Assist Mode, which lets you completely change the speed of the game, is really great - and helpful for those with many types of disability.

And Fallout’s VATS option - which suddenly turns a frantic first person shooter into a measured turn-based game - is a good example of how normal gameplay systems can do double duty as accessibility options. One more thing to consider, is rumble. It can be great feedback or a fun puzzle solution, and it can even be used for accessibility as a way to communicate information to people who have difficulty seeing or hearing.

But it can also be a painful shudder or something that causes your controller to slip out of your hand. Let players turn rumble off, or reduce its intensity, and don’t have anything in the game be expressed exclusively through controller rumbles. And finally, pausing. Most games let you pause no problem, but titles like Dark Souls - that don’t let you pause proceedings even while playing singleplayer - can be challenging for those who need to rest their hands, or are having a flare up.

Making games accessible to players with motor disabilities is a humongous challenge, and even titles I’ve praised in this video haven’t got everything right. Spider-Man doesn’t have controller remapping, and many important commands require holding down buttons or pressing two buttons at once. And XCOM can be controlled by the keyboard alone - but not the mouse alone. But it’s not impossible. The basics are straightforward: offer flexible controls and avoid unnecessary complexity both in general controls and of specific interactions.

But beyond that, go get feedback from disabled gamers - or work with consultancy groups like DAGERS. Do that, and you can make a really big difference to a lot of people’s enjoyment of your game. Thanks for watching! And thanks to Stephen of AbleGamers, halfcoordinated, Ian from Game Accessibility Guidelines, the Merc with One Arm, and more gamers who helped with this episode. There are two more episodes of Designing for Disability that you might want to watch, on audio and visual disabilities.

And a fourth episode on cognitive disabilities will be out before the year’s end.