#Accessibility in Games

[deramin2]

I'll say this for Daggerheart:

I didn't even make it through character creation before the physicality of the game inspired me to imagine the sort of Character Sheet Contraption that I would truly love playing it with. What would feel like a customizable instrument for playing the game?

I gathered simple materials and spent yesterday taping it all onto a cut of paper grocery bag. Got through several bouts of "This is so stupid; why am I doing this?" Actually finished a physical prototype, which I've never done so fast. Spent hours today gathering even more materials and reworking a particular system. I've done a lot of it through feel, using origami measurement folds for measuring and closing my eyes to feel how it would work during play as much as how it would look. There's sheet holders with various loading configurations, card holders, many abacus-like trackers, and hard surfaces all in a thing I can fold into a binder at the end of the game with very little to set back up or put away. Like a steamer trunk where all your things are tucked into neat little compartments. The mechanical button cockpit of my dreams for flying the game.

Something like this has been lurking in my mind taking root for the quarter century I've been playing TTRPGs, but everything's been so book-and-memory oriented that it never quite fully formed.

Things I've tried before to varying success:

Papers on table with a stack of books.

Lots of tabs in the books.

Storage clipboard.

Advanced Excel auto-leveling character sheets other people designed.

Advanced Excel auto-leveling character sheet I designed.

"Character Manual" where I copy over all relevant rules from every book into a single document and create combined leveling tables and detail every single thing I took when and how I calculated every number and put it in a binder. (This is what the Daggerheart cards effectively construct for you.)

Digital toolset platforms that conceptually do what I want but are confusing and buggy to use in practice.

Back to the Character Manual version 2.0.

Counting tokens.

Rotating dice as counting tokens.

[I've considered an abacus many times but never actually committed.]

Item and spell cards in the binder.

I've considered an abacus or abacus-like tracker many times but never actually committed. I accidentally taught myself how to count on my fingers similar to an abacus as a kid based on bastardized ASL. It is significantly harder to lose count when physically holding the numbers. Plus being able to count on my fingers up to 110 or 1023 depending on number system used is very handy. Counting to 10 rapidly outgrows its usefulness.

None of them have fully worked because the games themselves have not been designed for them to really work. I've been fighting the system every time. Mostly I've come out of it feeling bad about myself and that I was too incompetent at memorization, record keeping, and character building to play.

But Daggerheart is explicitly made to accommodate poor memories, minimal math, attention/comprehension gaps, rapidly getting assistance with the rules, arranging your own physically engaging space, and creating enough generalized scaffolding to fit the system into your ideas instead of trying to fit your ideas into the system.

Looking forward to trying it out in play with my other neurodivergent and disabled friends to see how it feels in play. But just being able to intuitively imagine and feel out the physical space of play is huge. Analogue interaction that would let me do things with my eyes closed accurately and not lose my place. Even if it ends up not being my preferred system, it's already taught me how I really want to be playing.

I really hope I'll keep pushing myself to complete this contraption and have a working, repeatable pattern. I would love to make + sell something like this, and/or make a pattern and instruction zine to sell.

[ineffectualdemon]

I would just like to say I appreciate how accessible Cult of the Lamb is

You have easy mode

You can do the cooking, fishing, etc on automatic

You can pause time while out on crusades to make managing your cult easier

They have options for dyslexia friendly fonts and contrast and a dark mode for the menu screen

Like I am bad at these types of video games but I am having all the fun so far because the game is being incredibly generous to me so I can experience it

[cy-cyborg]

I love bg3 but i cant be the only one who thinks the subtites in the game...need work, right? It's mainly the floating subtitles, the type the game uses while you're out exploring, where the dialogue appears over a character's heads. Every time my party starts talking, I have to stop dead in my tracks because otherwise they will wander off screen and I won't be able to understand them. This is especially frustrating when dialogue starts while navigating multi-level environments where some of the party members take a while to catch up.

Like don't get me wrong, I appreciate that we can add the background to the text and make it bigger so it's easier to read but that doesn't help when the character speaking decides to wander off (or just lags behind the player chatacter enough that they are no longer on screen).

Game devs, please just put them at the bottom of the screen and add the character's name to the front if you're worried about confusion. This floating subtitle method is harder to implement and is far less accessible. It's literally more work for a less accessible option.

Also, just because someone is singing doesn't mean you can stop captioning. My Tav helped alphira write that song, I want to know what she's saying.

[brennacedria]

I'll admit, I don't have a lot of needs for accessibility. But the sheet volume of options is impressive and I really hope it helps as many people as possible.

[phoenix-reburned]

I know it might sound crazy to praise fortnite of all games on its accessibility, but god the audio wheel allows me to actually hear in the game. I can actually "hear" the smaller sounds I normally can't. I can not only hear them but know where they're coming from and play the game the same way my friends without any hearing problems do. I'm not left frustrated over not knowing someone was right next to me and I couldn't hear them because of my hearing impairment. I just wish more games had this kind of audio setting for hearing impaired folks because the shift from actually having fun and being decent at fortnite to not being able to discern where people are in the finals is so drastic it's not even funny. I unfortunately don't have a proper diagnosis or any sort of help for my hearing yet so this is the only way I can help myself play these games. I wish more games would consider disabilities other than color blindness when making their accessibility menu.

[soft-lily]

idk what kind of special pride it is about dark souls players, but the idea that you can make it easier to beat the game if you want, infuriates them. i always run into someone saying the classic "git gud" or that "art doesn't need to be experienced by everyone" and i have to roll my eyes like i have >75% weight in the souls games

another classic thing that fans of the series point to is extreme niche exception where someone who has a disability or is missing limbs beat the game while blindfolded. "yep you got me. this means everyone ever with an issue/lack of privilege/or limited time+patience/etc can beat the game if they try"

the depths of ableism people have is impressive

i will never understand the insane takes against having games be more accessible

[captaingimpy]

The Evolution of Challenge: A Reflection on Monster Hunter, Dark Souls, and the Myth of “True Difficulty”

I came back to Monster Hunter after years away. My last real experience with the franchise was back in the handheld era, playing unofficial fan translations of the early PSP games—long before World brought the series into the mainstream. Back then, Monster Hunter was brutal, unforgiving, and utterly uninterested in explaining itself to you. I didn’t play Rise, didn’t play World, and skipped…

[ferociousmilfpope]

Diablo 4 has some good accessibility options prompted at the very beginning of the game.

[prokopetz]

Survival horror game with a "no jumpscares" accessibility feature whereby every time there's a cutscene that involves a monster jumping out, you get an alternative cutscene where the monster just casually slides into view somewhere the player character can't see it but the player can before going "BLARGH".

[banrionceallach]

Unpopular opinion: All games should have the option to enable pausing.

And to save almost everywhere.

Yes even in soulslike games.

I am an adult who has a full time job and responsibilities. I get to play maybe an hour a week. I do not want to lose that hour of progress because devs decided 'pause' was not allowed in their game and I had sudden unexpected things come up that meant I had to quit the game without saving/leave it playing and hope enemies wouldn't respawn.

Also it would massively increase accessability. I have fully working non-injured hands and they still need a break after a tough boss fight. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for people with joint pain, arthritis, etc, etc.

[mintaii]

so all i've been doing is playing hades 2

[inkedberries]

if any one of you missed me it's because i've been playing hades game nonstop since a month ago and there have been shown no signs of stopping as of yet i love my silly boys

[lornaka]

Dad

[flowercrowncrip]

Disabled people who want to and can work deserve to be able to access fair, good quality employment without discrimination.

Disabled people who are unable to work deserve to be able to afford to live a good quality life without facing discrimination

[simstichy]

🎵SIMSTER STARTER SET🎵

This set includes 4 new items all base game compatible with custom thumbnails and English and Spanish titles and descriptions

🎶Record Player with Speakers

New Functional Stereo

8 swatches

758 polys

🎶Record Player

New Functional Stereo

9 swatches

650 polys

🎶Vinyl Wall Display

New Wall sculpture

39 swatches

64 polys

🎶Pile of Vinyls

New clutter item

10 swatches

Stackable

90 polys

🎶Single Vinyl

New wall sculpture

13 swatches

30 polys

💡You can find all my CC by typing ‘EstenzoLarra’ into the search bar💡

Made with S4S + Blender

🔽Download & Screenshots under the cut 🔽

—-TERMS OF USE—- Please avoid redistributing or upload my CC elsewhere. Contact me if you want to publish any recolors of it If you use it, kindly tag me so I can reblog it. 💙Thank you so much for your support!💙 —————————————————-

I have checked and my sim file share account hasn't been hacked or anything but there's always the link to the download on mod the sims just in case.

DOWNLOAD -> MERGED(SFS) | SFS FOLDER | MODTHESIMS

Additional Screenshots: