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Table of Contents

Hi! Please refer to this post to navigate my blog. :)

How I Define Disability Representation

Physical vs Mental Disabilities in Gaming

Current State of Disability Representation in Gaming

Disability Representation Survey Results

Types of Representation:

The Bad - Joshua Washington, Until Dawn The Mid - Nero, Devil May Cry 5 The Good - Joshua Graham - Fallout: New Vegas

The Fallacy of "Git Gud"

Why Does Disability Representation in Video Games Matter?

Games with Positive Disability Representation

My Sources! (This brings you to a Google Doc)

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Games with Positive Disability Representation

While there is no one definitive way to portray disability in gaming, with the aid of friends, research, and my survey results, I have compiled a list of games with overall positive disability representation. I would advise looking up the games before playing them, as some may have potential triggers/warnings.

Devil May Cry 5

What Remains of Edith Finch

Fallout: New Vegas, “Honest Hearts” DLC

No real disability rep in base-game, sadly 🙁

Borderlands 2

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves 

Xenoblade Chronicles

Watchdogs 2

Coral Island

Hogwarts Legacy

Night in the Woods

Neopets

Senua’s Saga series

Stardew Valley

The Sims

Eliza

Cozy Grove

Spiritfarer

Side note: If you want to look at more example of accessible gaming, this Palaestra article by Marco Santana details an accessible controller made by Aaron Cedan.

There is also the website AbleGamers.org, which is made by disabled gamer for disabled gamers. You can find a lot of helpful resources about accessibility and gaming. :)

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Why Does Disability Representation in Video Games Matter?

Disability representation in video games matters because many people do not have regular contact with disabled people in their real lives. For some, their only meaningful exposure is through popular culture/media, such as games. Better, more respectful representation in gaming will lead to more empathy for disabled people in real life.

Considering people with disabilities as a serious audience for video games will also make way for better accessibility options. While this blog mainly focuses on the representation part of disability and gaming, accessibility is also a huge concern. In his Polygon article, Joe Parlock discusses this topic:

“It’s much more common to talk about whether or not games are playable by those with disabilities than what the content in the games themselves say or imply about disabled individuals. But both conversations are just as important.”

People also want to play games that reflect reality--and reality is filled with disabled people. Therefore, disabled people need to be a part of the game development process. Karina Sturm touches on the importance of this in her article for ABILITY Magazine. We will continue to get hit-or-miss disability representation until we begin to listen to authentic voices.

By being critical consumers, we can help send the signal to game developers that we want to see people with disabilities portrayed well in gaming. It also shows them that disabled characters won’t hurt a game’s profit, which is an excuse people use against diversity in gaming

Disabled people aren't going anywhere, and neither are video games. It's about time that we get proper representation of disability in our games.

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The Fallacy of "Git Gud"

The phrase "Get Good" (often stylized in a patronizing way as "git gud") is well-known in the gaming community. When struggling on a level, many are told that it's a skill issue and that they simply need to get good--putting the blame on the player rather than looking critically at the game/level design itself.

This idea is addressed by Amy Truong's article in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Truong discusses how there is no stream-lined accessibility feature across games. It is up to the individual companies to decide what accessibility features they include--if any. This ties into the "git gud" fallacy, as many games aren't designed with the needs of people with disabilities. This puts up an unnecessary barrier to playing many video games for non able-bodied people.

Disabled writer Allyssa Capri also expresses discontent with the current state of accessibility in video games. Since Capri has a visual disability, accessibility options such as text size/color/font/etc. adjustments and colorblind-friendly settings in particular are discussed in her article. The toxic nature of the “get good” mentality that plagues the gaming community is also touched upon. The lack of standardized gaming accessibility functions alienates disabled gamers. This alienation then leads to a decreased focus on them as an audience by game developers, leading to lower quality disability representation in video games--creating a nasty cycle.

Despite being overlooked by developers, disabled people are sometimes subjected to unnecessary comments from their fellow gamers. In a Journal of Youth Studies article by David Wästerfors and Kristofer Hansson, they explore young disabled people and gaming in a non-habilitation light. Many studies on disability and gaming focus on using video games as a type of therapy, but this study looks at how disabled youths engage with gaming casually. One teen girl interviewed, Aina, discusses the patronization she faces in gaming spaces when she discloses the fact that she has autism. On this topic, the text states:

“Her disability, then, was constantly on display and explicitly drawn into the game's interaction.”

Due to there being a low amount of disability representation in gaming—as discussed in Dr. Shell’s study in a previous post—other players felt the need to remark on Aina’s autism and give her “helpful” advice. If disability was better represented in video games, then disabilities such as autism would be better accepted in such spaces. 

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Types of Representation - The Good

Joshua Graham, Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

Fallout: New Vegas (FNV) is one of the most beloved installments in the Fallout franchise. This role-playing game focuses on player agency, allowing the post-post-nuclear apocalypse Mojave Desert to act as their playground. There is, unfortunately, no notable disability representation in the base game. But, in its second DLC titled “Honest Hearts,” there is physical disability representation in the form of Joshua Graham. 

Joshua Graham is a Mormon missionary from modern-day Utah. Joshua acted as a translator for medic Edward Sallow before quickly being swept up by Sallow’s Ancient Rome-inspired faction called “The Legion.” Sallow, now calling himself Caesar, promoted Joshua to legate after seeing his promise in battlefield tactics. Several years before the events of the FNV, the Legion failed to secure the Hoover Dam. Embarrassed by such a defeat, Caesar orders Joshua to be covered in pitch, set ablaze, and thrown down the Grand Canyon where he falls for a mile.

Most people wouldn’t walk away from such an injury; but Joshua Graham isn’t most people. Through his faith in God (or video game logic, if you ask me), Joshua survived to fight another day. Though his body is now covered from head-to-toe in burns, causing him to live with chronic pain. Ashamed of how he conducted his life with the Legion, Joshua takes on the role of protector of a local tribe in Zion, which is where the player character meets him at the start of “Honest Hearts.” 

Joshua’s physical disability *informs* his character rather than *becoming* his character. Many disabled characters are portrayed in one of three ways: evil, saint-like, or they’re simply killed or cured by the story's conclusion. Both Josh Washington (Until Dawn) and Nero (Devil May Cry 5) fall into the killed or cured camp. Joshua Graham, however, ends the DLC still disabled and is portrayed as morally grey–so much so that even fifteen years later people are still debating if he is a good guy or not. 

Being disabled colors Joshua’s world view. He is resilient in the face of hardships, choosing to see his disability as a new lease of life. A life that he will spend doing good this time around. Joshua is also a potential companion for the player character, and is no pushover when it comes to damage output. He is a capable fighter *and* disabled, not a capable fighter *despite* being disabled.

FNV’s Joshua Graham is an example of good disability representation in gaming because he is allowed to be both disabled and morally complex–an exciting concept, yes. When the player meets him, he is a bible-quoting missionary who is fighting for the little guy. Yet, this doesn’t undo his past as a legate of the enslaving, pillaging Legion. No, Joshua spends the DLC lamenting his past self and trying to live up to his God’s preachings. He views his new, physically disabled reality as an opportunity for personal growth rather than a cosmic death sentence. This is a refreshing change of pace when compared to many stories that include a disabled character, as they often view their disability as a negative, rather than a positive.

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Types of Representation - The Mid

Nero, Devil May Cry 5 (2019)

Devil May Cry (DMC) is a pioneer of the hack-and-slash genre. With its focus on Super Sexy Stylish combos, it’s no surprise that Devil May Cry 5 makes disability look cool. While there are two playable characters in the 2019 installment of the DMC series with disabilities, we will be focusing on Nero in this post. 

We first meet Nero in the previous game, DMC 4, as an angry teenage boy. Notably, he has two fleshy arms. The opening of DMC 5 introduces us to a new Nero who is older, slightly calmer, and down an arm. Nero starts the game fighting the series’ staple demons with only his left arm, as his right arm is still a fresh wound. His mechanic friend, Nico, later supplies Nero with devil breakers that act as prosthetics. They serve combat/gameplay purposes with their various abilities, but they also serve a narrative purpose when it comes to Nero’s disability journey: they don’t act identical to his original arm. 

Devil breakers are undeniably fun to use as the player, but they also act as a reminder to Nero that the game’s antagonist, Vergil, brutally amputated his arm to access the Yamato sword. The devil breakers… well, break, unlike Nero’s original arm. We also see Nero have quiet moments where his boisterous personality fades to leave a scared young man who just experienced a traumatic, life-changing injury. Through progressing the game, Nero begins to gain confidence with his prosthetics and comes to terms with being physically disabled.  You may be thinking, “This sounds like pretty good disability representation! Why is this the “mid” section?” Unfortunately, DMC 5 falls short of the “SSS” rank of disability representation in gaming when the conclusion sees Nero grow back his arm through sheer familial love. Oh, and demonic powers or whatever.

Like with Josh Washington, Nero falls into the “kill or be cured” stereotype when it comes to people with disabilities in the media. He is cured of his physical disability when his arm grows back, literally shattering his devil breaker to reveal a new, fleshy arm underneath it. While Nero experiences emotional growth, his character ends the game the same way that fans remembered him from DMC 4: able-bodied. 

The reason why Nero is my example for mid, or middling, representation is because DMC 5 portrays Nero’s disability great up until they trip at the finish line by curing him. He doesn’t nicely fit into good representation, but isn’t able to be written off entirely as bad, either. It is also important to note that showing such a cool character continue to be a badass while being physically disabled is amazing when it comes to how the general public views the disabled community. DMC is the pinnacle of cool–especially if you’re a teenaged boy–which makes the game including not one but two cool, disabled protagonists monumental when it comes to improving the state of disability representation in gaming. 

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Types of Representation - The Bad

Joshua Washington - Until Dawn (2015)

Until Dawn is an interactive survival horror game that plays off of traditional teen-slasher cliches. We will be focusing on the original 2015 release of the game, but its recent 2024 remake will be briefly addressed. 

Joshua “Josh” Washington is the son of a wealthy horror film director and invites his friends over to his cabin in the Canadian wilderness to reconnect after not speaking for a year. What caused such a rift between these young friends? A prank the year prior indirectly resulted in Josh’s twin sisters, Beth and Hannah, becoming lost in the harsh winter landscape and presumably dying. Yikes.

After some awkward greetings, they split off into smaller groups and scatter across the cabin and surrounding mountain for various reasons. The friends quickly realize that they are being hunted by a killer, called “Psycho” or “Psychopath,” after Josh gets brutally murdered. The real twist comes when the group discovers that Josh never died–no, he’s the Psycho. He’s put on an elaborate “prank” as revenge for his sisters’ death. Soon after this revelation, the young adults realize that the real danger is the wendigos that reside around the cabin, one of which is Hannah Washington.

Through successfully evading capture while controlling the character of Sam, players can discover that Josh has a history of depression, having been on and off medications since the age of 11. At the time of the game’s events, he’d been recently discharged from a stay at a mental health facility after a suicide attempt.

The game frames Josh’s mental disability as the reason why he felt that tormenting his friends was a good idea. The hallucinations, speech difficulties, and other behaviors are assumed to be due to him being off of his medication, Phenelzine. This lines up with the potential side-effects of Phenelzine withdrawal in real life. While this is the canon explanation of Josh’s disability, some players speculate that Josh actually has another diagnosis, like schizophrenia. His behavior could be due to a misdiagnosed mental disability and not getting the proper treatment for it.

The reason why Josh is an example of bad disability representation is because he unfortunately falls into many harmful stereotypes. In the original game, Josh fit into the “kill or be cured” stereotype through being the only playable character that cannot survive “until dawn.” He’d either die at the hands of his sister or become a wendigo, himself. This is framed by the game as a fitting punishment for his crime of being a mentally ill 20-year-old. Luckily, the 2024 remake allows for an ending where Josh lives. But this ending is exceedingly difficult to achieve when compared to his other endings, and there is no clear decision to make that results in his safety. 

Josh also has a nebulous, indeterminate mental illness. While the game does state that he is diagnosed with depression and on medication, this is optional information that is cut off from players who fail to evade capture while playing as Sam in chapter 5. The general fan consensus is that Josh is schizophrenic, which shows how Until Dawn fumbled his portrayal as a mentally disabled character. Not to mention that his slasher-persona is literally called “The Psycho.” No one will be accusing Until Dawn of subtlety for that one.

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Disability Representation Survey Results

As I mentioned in my last post about Dr. Shell's academic study on disability and gaming, I decided to take a stab at conducting a survey of my own.

The majority of the 73 respondents (at the time of analysis) are college students. As we can see, most of the cite playing an hour or less of games in a given week. But, there is a fair spread across all categories, making for a diverse range of gamers.

Majority of respondents also claimed to engage with gaming fandom spaces online. To me, this was an important question to ask as social media plays a large role in shaping people's opinions.

The next question I asked was about people's exposure to disabled characters in gaming. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most people, at about 50%, had played a game in the past 12 months with a disabled character. This is higher than I initially thought--which is great!

There was a follow up question to the disabled character question, where I wanted to know the type of disability the character had. Most characters were cited to have a physical disability, which aligned with my original thinking that I discussed in the Mental vs Physical Disability post.

What surprised me was the 17% of people who said that they weren't sure about the type of disability the character has. I assume this could be due to iffy representation, unclear symptoms/behavior, the game's refusal to commit to a disability, or any other reason. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this!

The final multiple choice question I asked was about if respondents felt that disabilities were properly represented in video games. A resounding 3/4 said no.

The last question on my survey asked respondents to tell me any games with really good/bad representation, games that had no disabled characters but should have, or anything else they felt like sharing. I won't be sharing these responses out of respect for people's privacy--as this was an anonymous survey. But, there are a few themes I noticed.

Many expressed dissatisfaction with character creation screens not having many (if any) disability options. The Sims in particular was brought up as both an example of good disability representation and as not doing enough.

As touched on previously, the horror genre was mentioned multiple times as portraying disabilities poorly--especially mental disabilities.

A lot of respondents mentioned games that didn't have disabled characters, but did have good accessibility controls. If you want to learn more about accessible gaming, I recommend checking out the r/disabledgamers subreddit. They were a huge help for this blog and very nice!

There were also quite a few responses that mentioned having no experience with disability and gaming. One of my goals with this blog is to make people think more critically about their gaming habits and point them to games with good representation :)

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Current State of Disability Representation in Gaming

Dr. Jethro Shell of De Montfort University looked at video game trailers and surveyed self-identified gamers in 2021 to try to get a gauge on the current state of disability representation in video games.

Dr. Shell found that out of the 108 video game trailers surveyed, only 18.52% showed a disabled character and an even lower 0.99% showed a playable disabled character. This isn't data from the days of yore--this was published just 4 years ago!

Another part of this study that I found interesting was that most of both the disabled and non-disabled gamers surveyed reported never having played a game with a disabled character. Disability representation in gaming is not something on the forefront of many gamers’ minds. To make the gaming community for inclusive (for all gamers, not just disabled gamers!), people need to be more critical consumers.

Dr. Shell's findings inspired me to conduct my own, informal survey of people's views on disability and gaming. We'll look at the results from said survey in my next post.

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Physical vs Mental Disabilities in Gaming

Before I began researching this topic, I assumed that physical disabilities would be more commonly depicted in games than mental disabilities. Just from my personal experience as an avid gamer, I can point to more instances in my gaming library of physically disabled characters than mentally disabled characters.

It seems to be easier for game developers to slap a prosthetic onto a character model and call it a day--checking off the "disability representation" box. Often times there is a gameplay-narrative disconnect where a character may be stated or visually shown to be disabled in cutscenes, but not when playing as the character.

When it comes to mental disabilities, the most common form is a nebulous schizophrenia-like mental illness. There is an apprehension to commit to an official diagnosis. This is mainly due to a lack of education on mental disabilities and mental health. Developers don't want to spend the time to learn about how to respectfully portray mental disabilities; rather, they want to lean into stereotypes to tell their story.

In the academic journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, a 2022 article by Jozef Buday and others discusses the topic of mental disabilities in gaming. In it, it found that 75% of mental illnesses in gaming is portrayed in harmful, stereotypical ways. This is unacceptable, but not surprising. Especially for my fellow horror fans, as that genre seems to be the worst culprit of this. We will actually looking closer at an example of a horror game fumbling a mental disability when we discuss Until Dawn.

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How I Define Disability Representation

Before we get into the state of disability representation in video games, it is important to define what disability representation even is.

There are many ways to define representation, but for the purposes of this blog, my definition is:

The character must be named and be able to be interacted with in some form. This includes both playable and non-playable characters.

Now, I understand that not everyone may agree with this definition. One such opponent may be Jef Rouner in their 2016 article Houston Press article about playable disabled characters. In it, Rouner states:

“The defining characteristic I’m looking at here is playability.”

While I--of course--agree that we need more playable disabled characters in video games, I think that this is a bit too narrow of a definition. I think that there are a lot of disabled characters who are non-playable and still examples of great representation.

Rouner's article inspired my definition of disability representation, but I opened it to also include non-playable characters.