Disabled quadriplegic shows why Sekiro doesn't need an easy mode - Videos for the 97.4%

For the last time, souls has a handicap system that is the entire basis of the game with the phantom system. Just like celeste, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from using either handicaps to experience the full game, but its there if you need it. Devs can sit back and say their game is the most perfect vision ever, and I can sit back and point out glaring flaws in it's design.

Experiencing the full breadth of the games content is not the same as understanding it's artistic intent. Sit back and point out flaws in the design all you want; fact is, it was designed that way from the start, and for a reason.

You can't hide bad game design behind artistic intent. If I make a bike with square wheels, I cant sit back and say it's the user's fault that they don't understand why my invention is brilliant.

There's a difference between noticing flaws in a game's design and disagreeing with a game's design. I like the Borderlands games and most people would agree that the end game difficulties are poorly designed. Enemies take inordinate amounts of damage to kill and even VA full tram will struggle if they don't have optimal gear. That is a criticism of poor design. I would prefer if each gun manufacturer had 2 to 3 weapons in each weapon type rather than every weapon having pseudo random stats, but that would be a different game. That is a disagreement with the game's design.

You can't objectively label what artistic ambitions are bad game design. If you made a bike with square wheels, and the point was for the bike to have square wheels and not move, then anyone asking you to fix that bike would be missing the point. @Janus Vesta has a better post explaining why there's not much to say when it comes to disagreeing with design choices. My take on this is that you need to understand that the point of every game isnt to be accessible and fun.

when it comes to excluding people who phyiscaly are not able to play your game, there are are steps you should be adopting because to not do so is unethical. It's unethical to go "buy muh artistic intent" when other forms are art are just as subject to including disabled people because they are people just like you and me and deserve the dignity of being able to experience different forms of art. Whether it's ramps in a fancy building (~but the architecht's vision~), captioning for your movie (~it distracts from the visual art form~), audio-tours at art museums (~but the artist's vision, you can't see~), and including options that you don't have to use to be inclusive should be the standard.

No it isn't. Video games are not a public service, they cannot be compared to buildings in the public domain (a private home-owner is not legally required to install a wheelchair ramp), nor is this comparison even solid because those including audio-visual tours or captions are done as a decision by the creator of said medium when they are existent. There are plenty of museums and movies out there without either of those things. It is unreasonable to expect those who create entertainment to have to make concessions for the limitless amount of conditions that people would conceivably have. They are within their rights, even if you don't like it, to make their works arbitrarily inaccessible.

Movies are required to provide closed captioning. Museums are working very hard to become more inclusive, because surprise, not providing for people actively pushes them away and it makes more sense to be inclusive.

At a certain point, you simply can't make a game accessible to someone. Blind people will most likely never be able to access a games content, just as blind people probably cannot read books or deaf people listen to music. There are ways for people with these disabilities to enjoy the art. Blind people could enjoy the story via writing with brail, deaf people can enjoy music by feeling it in some cases. But books aren't written in brail first and foremost, and music isn't inherently bass-boosted to ensure it can be 'felt.' If there has to be a line drawn somewhere, why can't the line be drawn for artistic reasons? This line is drawn and applied to every other medium. To detract from an arthouse film so someone unversed in the subject could understand it would be a loss, why doesn't that same logic apply here? I'm actually so behind making games as accessible as they can be. But the minute it's a 'requirement' that can actively detract from the artistic integrity of the product in question; nah. You can't go around muddling with the artists vision.

Yes there are some phyiscal limits but Devs need to be doig everything in their power to make games accesible, simply going “but muh artistic vision” is not an argument. It ignores the reasons for accesability. It stagnates new ways of making games accesible. It’s in effect giving up. https://youtu.be/NInNVEHj_G4 Look at all those games RUINED by devs including options to make the games more accesible.

Movies played in a movie theatre (a public place) are required to support captioning. This is in the agreement you are bound to if you want to play your movie in a theatre. Movies that will be played in a public place are required to support captioning. Movies that are made as a totally private affair, distributed privately, are not. Vlogs and youtube videos do not require captioning. Yes, and that is a conscious decision to be more inclusive by the museum directors. They are not required to do it. That is my point. They can add more inclusivity if they want to. Other fields don't have to make concessions. Books are not legally required to have braille/audiobook versions. Movies (assuming they play by totally private enterprise) are not required to have captions. Repeating the same falsehood doesn't make it true.

You need to understand, there's not many games that would be ruined by being more accessible. By all means, I agree with you when you say Devs should do everything in their power to make games more accessible. But in the few, outlying cases where this isn't possible (IE: souls games) without compromising something the Devs deem important, then you need to be okay with that. Those exceptions need to be made because, otherwise, the medium will never grow to see it's full, mechanic-driven potential.

in the video that you literally linked it says that it breaks the games and their vision, it comes down to the decision of the dev if they do want cheats where the player can fine tune their experience, but they don't NEED or HAVE to do it.

As an addendum, anyone who is interpreting the point me and others are trying to make as "adding disability options always damages a game" are either not understanding fully or arguing deliberately in bad faith. For the former, this is the point as clear as possible; Accessibility options are not a bad thing, and it is up to the developers themselves to weigh up the addition of disability options to the conflict of their vision. In the cases of many games with difficulty settings, and in the case of Celeste, the devs thought the direct tweaking of gameplay elements to be more accessible to bring in a wider audience was worth the perceived "loss" of vision. FromSoftware does not think that. Their vision for Sekiro is extremely strict. Just as it is a dev's right to make their game arbitrarily accessible, that scale works both ways, it is also the dev's right to make their game arbitrarily inaccessible.

Obviously Souls is about the struggle and that's conveyed through gameplay. However and assist mode might be what someone needs to experience that struggle instead of a brick wall. Would you really have gone out of your way to turn on assist mode and remove the challenge? In reality where there is no assist mode in that game, you still knew you could use hacks to remove the the challenge and ride freely to victory, but you didn't. Why?

The devs themselves realized that it was better to be inclusive, and sometimes your “vision” isn’t everything. Like their direct quotes actually say that lol

Those devs believe they've made a good decision, other, uncompromising devs believe they've made a good decision. I just don't understand what the problem here is. It's great that the Celeste Devs found a compromise between their original vision and an accessible final product. It's great the Souls Devs have such a tight and consistent vision with Sekiro. Both of these games exist in todays market, and both mindsets obviously produce stellar games. I think, out of this whole discussion, this is the most relevant and succinct point: If you think this mindset is shitty - that's okay. But you can't go from critiquing that approach, to outright believing that approach shouldn't be allowed at all. I sympathize with everyone who believes games should be as accessible as possible, because on the most part, I do agree. I just disagree when it comes to actually restricting the developers in what they can and cannot do, in the name of accessibility. It's unacceptable in any art form. It's their product, their vision, and the market will decide whether or not their game/art is good/worthwhile, uncompromising approach to accessibility and all.

That's the next thing to fight about, isn't it. Are games art or mass entertainment? Should they be required to to be accessible, and if so, by how much? As it stands, games are in prevalent countires considered entertainment first and art second, and are subject to some regulations already, very topically the CVAA. Gameplay content or the artistry of it isn't yet forced to adhere to accessibility guidelines, but at this point the industry is expected to self-regulate to avoid such laws in the future.

I think accessibility and options are overall just going to be impossible to implement uniformly and some games really can't afford to compromise without re-designing how the core functions in a game work. For example like the whole rhythm game genre's enjoyment comes from the music and following the beats and melody. While it is possible to fully rely on visual cues alone, tactile feedback is only part of the experience and deaf people will only get part of the fun from that, especially in more intensive rhythm games (regardless of difficulty settings). If there should be a standard in accessibility, it should be in terms of freedom of how the players can remap to any sort of control scheme, adjust colors, audio and visual elements (that won't potentially give an unfair advantage in a multiplayer environment) and the creation of controllers like the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Cheat-like accessibility options are completely optional and up to the dev if they feel like it won't compromise the game's intended design.

Games are art. Like any artform, there is kitsch, mass produced entertainment. But games are art, yes.

I don't really have a strong take in either side and I can't say anything that hadn't already been said, I'm all for accessibility in games, the more people to share experiences with the better, but I understand some games are difficult to implement said options without compromising artistic intentions or even efficient accessibility. The only part I really don't like about this whole situation is why the discussion is happening. Iirc this whole debate started because a journalist said the game should have an easy mode because they couldn't beat it, and when people criticized them for not willing to put in the effort to get better (something that happens with a lot of games, not just difficult ones, Polygons DOOM video or the infamous Cuphead incident) instead of just admitting that the game isn't for them or that they're just not good at it, they doubled down and deflected the argument by saying "Oh but what about disabled people? You don't want an easy mode for them?" And the spotlight changed from a journalist not being good at a game to a loaded argument (I mean it's an uphill battle to argue disabled people shouldn't play a game) Another journalist even tried to capitalize on the situation by making an article about how he used Cheat Engine to beat the final boss because he had to, saying the finale boss was outright impossible and unfair to beat, so he was completely justified in using cheats. It doesn't feel like this argument is coming from a sincere standpoint and that's what bothers me.

it's more like having someone who isn't a good guitar player review guitars for their craftsmanship which is totally valid if they have the knowledge behind it

ramps, captioning, and audio interpretations are not comparable to gameplay design decisions. for one, buildings necessarily exist to provide a service first. captioning might muddy the visuals in a small way but they don't change core elements of the film, unless they're baked in. audio interpretations do much the same. adding options which modify the difficulty, in some cases, can change the core elements of a game, something much more heavy-handed than captioning or audio tours. i'm not against games having difficulty options, i'm not against games having subtitles or UI size and color tweaking. i think games having options like those are great if the designers and developers so choose, and i think there is more than enough room in games for some to not have difficulty options. i would always be against policies which can have a direct impact on gameplay design.

Their mechanical degree wouldn't mean shit if they'd slam the car in a wall in fifteen minutes. IMO Games should account for disability as far as they can without impeding on the games artistic vision. The darling example here; Dark Souls, for example wouldn't work at all with selectable easy modes. The games oppressive atmosphere and story would suffer immensely of the player could overcome any problems by just mashing attacks and diving headfirst into encounters. Not to mention when the Souls games have their own easy modes such as caster builds and summoning. But games should always have options for multiple input options and split input options, say with someone playing an FPS on PC substituting their keyboard for a controller and still using their mouse. Or someone having problems with some finnicky inputs having their friend help with those inputs with a second controller.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/740e7c81-9ea5-4332-9cb9-6115bf42ad58/image.png So instead of actual assistance features, it's literally just a renamed cheat menu. This is not what "disability options" looks like to me. I don't see how this is special or unique at all, or even remotely creative. We've seen cheat codes in games since ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A. People with difficulty playing games don't need a cheat menu, what they need is a better means of interacting with said game. Easier movement controls in an assist mode, UI, etc is how you do it. Obviously that's much harder to program than just renaming your cheat console to something different, but it fixes the issue of limited movement or reaction timing without ruining the game outright. Ok. How do we deal with assist mode in online games. So you have assist in dark souls that lets you have infinite stam and health How do you deal with the online features? The online is literally half of souls. It feels like better control and easier interaction would be a better better thing for assist mode, and there is nothing wrong with that. Why does it have to be a literal cheat menu.

Yeah calling that a "disability helper" is a fucking insult for reasons I've already linked to in this thread, though rex funnily enough ignored that charity.

It really is an insult tbh. Just because you have a disability doesn't mean you're incompetent and need "baby mode" to help you play. That is absolute shite. Adding a limitless cheat menu to souls so people with limited movement can play... isn't helping them play the game.

the inclusion of accessibility is itself creative expression, not an abridgment of it like, there is not some theoretical "pure" Celeste which the creators strayed away from. Celeste is the product of the creators' thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. One of those beliefs was "everyone should be able to play this game", and that belief is reflected in their game in the same way that "i like platformers" and "the main character's hair should be red" are. Creative expression has value because of the variation between creators. It isn't a science that can be done correctly or incorrectly. You can't refer back to an authority to instruct others on how it ought to be done.

What don't you understand about us(Me, the thread, and an industry leading charity for accessibility for disabled in games) saying these options are for the disabled is an insult to the disabled.

I have a friend who was partially paralyzed by a stroke. He doesn't need the same things that my colorblind friend needs to play a game. Yes, the idea that accessibility == cheat codes is insulting. The idea that the ability to make the game easier or less demanding in specific ways is a part of accessibility isn't.