Making Games Better for Gamers with Colourblindness & Low Vision | Designing for Disability
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
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Video games are for everyone. But disabled people can be left out if developers don’t consider their needs. In this series of videos, I’ll be sharing guidelines and best practices for making games more accessible to a wide range of disabilities. This time, I’m looking at design choices and menu options that will affect those who are colourblind or have low vision.
Resources
Game accessibility guidelines
gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
Color Oracle
colororacle.org
Sim Daltonism
michelf.ca/projects/sim-dalto...
Colourblind Simulator - Unity
www.alanzucconi.com/2015/12/1...
Colourblind Simulator - Game Maker
marketplace.yoyogames.com/ass...
Guidelines for Building Blind-Accessible Computer Games
www.blindcomputergames.com/gui...
Screenreader support on Xbox One (video)
channel9.msdn.com/Events/GDC/...
Accessibility on iOS
developer.apple.com/library/a...
Accessibility on Android
material.io/design/usability/...
Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004)
Hue (Fiddlesticks Games, 2016)
God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2018)
Cuphead (Studio MDHR, 2017)
BioShock 2 (2K Marin, 2010)
DOOM (id Software, 2016)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft Montreal, 2015)
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Sora, 2014)
Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017)
ReCore (Armature Studio, 2016)
ChromaGun (Pixel Maniacs, 2015)
Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018)
Battlefield 1 (EA DICE, 2016)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Infinity Ward, 2011)
The Spectrum Retreat (Dan Smith Studios, 2018)
Rocket League (Psyonix, 2015)
Pyre (Supergiant Games, 2017)
Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment, 2016)
Splatoon 2 (Nintendo, 2017)
Dead Rising (Capcom, 2006)
Kirby's Epic Yarn (Good-Feel, 2010)
Life Is Strange: Before the Storm (Deck Nine, 2017)
Yakuza 0 (Sega, 2017)
Invisible, Inc. (Klei Entertainment, 2015)
Monster Hunter: World (Capcom, 2018)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (Gearbox Software, 2014)
Assassin's Creed: Origins (Ubisoft Montreal, 2017)
Alien: Isolation (The Creative Assembly, 2014)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse Studios, 2018)
Gone Home (Fulbright, 2013)
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (Dontnod Entertainment, 2018)
Street Fighter IV (Capcom, 2008)
Shoot 1UP (Mommy’s Best Games, 2010)
Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015)
Injustice: Gods Among Us (NetherRealm Studios, 2013)
Killer Instinct (Double Helix Games, 2013)
Skullgirls (Reverge Labs, 2012)
Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment, 2014)
Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator (Game Grumps, 2017)
Semblance (Nyamakop, 2018)
Transformers: Devastation (Platinum Games, 2015)
Music used in this episode
Puzzle Pieces, Lee Rosevere
Substory Theme A (Yakuza 0)
Free Roam Theme (Life is Strange: Farewell)
Zen 4 (Life is Strange: Farewell)
Dynamic Theme Music (Life is Strange: Before the Storm)
k. Part 2 - 01 untitled 1, animeistrash
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/v/C3BE8/ 
Игры
Mark: "unless the game looked like this:" *screen transition that looks the same because I'm colorblind*
Me: "O..okay"
Yep, same reaction! xD
I had the same reaction! lol
mines slightly so I was so confused watching this. like the screen looks more washed out with this filter, but did it actually change ? XD
Me
Yes, they did indeed change when he did that.
Oh so that's why you have blue and orange portals in Portal
Now you're thinking with portals
Another reason to love Portal. And the rest of the textures are usually grey or black and white, which also don't cause difficulty.
@@Grayhome Call of Duty Ghosts was the first to use those tones in the Franchise.
what?
Blue and orange also have the benefit of being complimentary, so it's also just plain appealing to look at besides being a considerate visual indicator
I think a large part of what makes this series so important is that so many of these fixes for gamers with disability are really really easy and perhaps more importantly, a lot of them are just good advice for UI design anyway that devs should be doing already.
Love your channel Adam!
'Fully controllable using a single hand' might be impossible for a lot of games, but what about 'fully controllable using a single hand and a single foot'? How many people could benefit from being able to fully remap inputs over multiple controllers? It really shouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, especially for single player games that don't even need more than one controller, since any game/game engine that supports PCs by necessity has to support both remapping keys and accepting mouse and keyboard input at the same time already.
Nah, that's bullshit. Rebinding controls is a trivial exercise and I'm not going to just accept that game devs *just know better* when they just as easily overlook the possibility of screens being smaller than 40" and put money into *simulating* colourblindness. Even if spreading controls over multiple devices really is too much to ask, there's no good reason for the controls to be as locked down as they are.
Even if you do design a special controller (which is far more expensive than exposing software capabilities you *already have* and *will likely have to expose on other platforms anyway* ), there's no guarantee that it will make any sense at all in every game. So, really, you'd still want to be able to remap the controls anyway.
@@thepi4587 but you can easily remap controls on PS4, no problem
Sir Thepi You should look up the "Xbox Adaptive Controller", because even a big corporation like Microsoft agrees with you on all these point. They are planning to bring out a customizable controller set-up designed for people with disabilities, consisting of multiple parts and possible to use in combination with a normal controller. I don't particularly care for Microsoft, but I admire them for this very specific initiative.
I literally laughed out loud at what Doom 2016 did... I can't comprehend the thought process behind that at all.
My best guess was that it was originally a tool for testing what the game looked like to someone who was colorblind, with the idea that they would implement some changes to make it easier for colorblind people. Only, they actually forgot to do that (or maybe they did, but it's a change to the game for everyone instead of an option to enable), and left the colorblind testing mode in.
I've seen other devs make the same mistake simply by googling colourblind filters and not realising what they found was a simulator
I imagine some kind of communication breakdown happened, where something in the code was labelled "colourblind" and that ended up being put in a menu in the game
I've thought for years that the colourblind options did nothing in Doom because I'm red green colourblind. Good to find out now I guess 😂😂
They took the "colourblind mode" literally.
Doom's coloblind mode is just added difficulty for non-colorblind people, clearly.
"Balance it so colorblind folks can enjoy in the same way as others."
... and they did.
@@radekbumbalek7956 just make so the others have the same difficulty, easier
I hate those complete filters. Ughh.... When I played Doom, I was like "Yes, Colorblind options!" Oh no....
Doom actually implemented colourblind simulators. Turning deuteranopia mode on adds a filter that shows the player how it looks like to people who are deuteranopic. Hoping they'll do better in Eternal!
+Ian Hamilton But that's what's wrong. They didn't fix the issue, they just said, now ANYONE can have this issue too!
I think that the Doom devs just saw the options to test out their game for different colorblind types and thought they were filters to improve it. They probably didn't have any colorblind folks in their testers, so they just assumed it was right.
Boy no kidding. When I first turned on the game I was so excited, and then confused as to why it didn’t seem to make a difference! This video actually finally put the mystery to bed. Fortunately I was able to make it through the game without the “help.”
Honest question, does colorblindness actually impact you in DOOM? The only visual cue I can think of in DOOM is the glory kill and that a) goes through three different colors in the effect and b) also has a grid-like pattern on the demon.
I had a teacher once with a very unique sight condition. She had just one type of cone, which sensed violet to ultraviolet color; RGB was in greyscale. She couldn't read for a very long time because books' pages tended to glare UV light at her, which nobody else could see, so her own teachers thought she actually had cognitive problems.
In adulthood people tended to obsess that she could discern the color pink, and gave her lots of pink things, which she found obnoxious.
One time I asked her for a green marker. She said I'd have to get it myself :P Oops.
Everybody gave my colorblind teacher pink stuff too. Except he could barely make it out.
IIRC UV and IR are actually visible with our RGB cones, the only reason we don't see them is because they're filtered out by the lenses in our eyes. Sounds like your teacher had broken filters
LAK132 I read that it was the cornea (outer covering of the eye) that filtered out UV, not the lens, but close enough.
o.O
holy crap Blind fighting game players? That is so badass
The creators of mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct have both been beaten at their own games by blind gamers
There's a fascinating video on here about a blind fighting game player. It's what got me interested in the accessibility stuff
The guy is a legend.
Shout out to Half Coordinated, a speedrunner who only uses one hand most of the time.
It really is cool. But... I have to admit, it also highlights one of the main reasons I don't care for most fighting games. If you can demonstrably compete at the highest levels without knowing what move the other player is winding up, is there really any strategy at all?
@@claiminglight that's not how it works. You can't play without knowing what move the other person is doing. Fighting games have really good sound design, every move has a unique sound. Blind gamers play by knowing precisely what move their opponent is performing, and also precisely where on the screen they are performing it, which they can hear via stereo separation.
I saw on Reddit there was a guy who was almost completely blind who played counterstrike. He played it before his vision deteriorated too badly so he knew how to play the game and he found some obscure settings that let him just barely see other players. Apparently there are a few other people who have done this
I believe you forgot to mention that some blind players use vibrations in their controllers to understand what's going on in some games, such as fighting games or racing games.
Some games vibrate if you get hit, if you hit the enemy, or sometimes both. Racing games can vibrate when you steer off-course or hit an obstacle.
Madden 18 and 19 have optional haptic cues added specifically for blind gamers
With more complex haptic feedback becoming a more prevalent thing, I can imagine how useful vibration-based game output would be.
With the added detail that the HD-rumble adds for the Switch, this kind of feedback could be used to a far greater extent.
With the added detail that the HD-rumble adds for the Switch, this kind of feedback could be used to a far greater extent.
Nexo
I love your Fusion profile picture.
I have a visual impairment. I have much worse vision than normal in my left eye, and legitimately just can't see out of my right. As someone who loves video games, thank you.
Alex G. It’s the same for me but reversed. I can’t even read if the book is pressed up to my right eye. I’m also shortsighted 🤦♂️
I have no big problems with vision, but ALL GAMES TEXT IS TOO SMALL NOW. Just because you CAN make text small doesn't mean you should... No idea why everyone's so afraid of big fonts for game information and menus.
With great power comes great responsibility
I was at Pax West last year, and I got to play Castle Story (made friends with the devs there, too). The problem I experienced is exactly as you said: the text was too small default. This combined with my nearsightedness (I didn't have my glasses with me) made me miss crucial information in the corners of the screen. I couldn't see the changes in information in the corners because I had to lean forward and squint at what was right in front of me. I have my glasses this year, but I still hope I won't have to lean forward that much.
It's like developers still haven't noticed that lots of living rooms have flatscreen TVs across the whole room from the couch now. Do they still expect us to sit in front of the TV like kids playing Super Nintendo after their saturday morning cartoons?
Xenoblade Chronicles X is especially bad in this regard. The text was so small and hard to read, given how much information is on there, that I had to look at the Gamepad just so I can read it.
Horizon Zero Dawn was difficult to read.
I am colourblind and I wanted to react to that very first clip of Cuphead before going on with the vid.
I use 2 monitors which are set differently : one with "normal" colours and one with over-saturated colours. I usually use "normal" one as a second monitor to have discord, watch vids, etc... and over-saturated one for games for a simple reason that this Cuphead clip showed off.
As I said, I was watching this vid on my "normal" monitor and I couldn't notice any difference before (0:45) and after (0:48) the filter applied : I couldn't distinguish blue punches from pink ones. I tried moving the vid to my saturated screen and there I saw the difference in color.
I can't even recall how many times I've missed things in RPG games, lost fights in FPS games or failed miserably in any game just because colours weren't standing out to me as they should. I only recently decided to boost the saturation of my main monitor and apart from the fact that some games looks ridiculously colourful now, I noticed I became better in many games having a better reaction time on spotting things on my screen (whether it's an item in a RPG or an enemy in a FPS).
Now, I think I'm gonna watch the vid on both my screens just for the fun of spotting the differences ! ^^
That was interesting to read! :-)
I'm not colorblind and after filter was applied at 0:48 I was like "Nope! Don't see the difference now! That can be a HUGE problem!"
Isn't there some kind of glasses like this ruclips.net/video/1vWM2N3GRjE/видео.html or is it fake?
I know the existence of 2 types of goggles :
- the ones that fake colourblind vision so that people that aren't colourblind can imagine what it feels like to have some type of colourblindness.
- the ones that correct colourblindness in some sort of way.
I don't know how any of these work (nor if they even work for that matter ^^').
I never tryed any and probably will never use any. I'm fine with my vision and so far, everytime I encountered something that could be an issue, I usually found a workaround pretty easily (except for that darn GameBoy Advance (and Advance SP) battery indicator that uses only one led (green for OK, red for low), the only workaround I found at the time was bugging my parents every so often to ask them for the color of the light :3). And even so, there's often a workaround already builtin : take the traffic light for example, even if you can't distinguish the color (which is my case 80% of the time), you know top is red (=stop), mid is orange (=meh), bottom is green (=go).
I agree.
Would it help if you applied the black and white filter in cuphead?
Maybe, I don't know, I never played Cuphead and I don't think I'll play it any time soon, it's not really my type of game.
Worth pointing out, Unity can do colour blindness simulation without third-party plug-ins now (Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia). They are available on the Post Process Debug component, using the Post Processing package (installed through the Package Manager). Alan Zucconi's stuff is still great though!
Thanks for this, Mark. I suffer from portanopia and I have trouble playing certain games because I can't see the enemies from afar or because I can't read colour coded cues correctly. Puzzles are the worst: I remember asking my mother to help me complete a puzzle that involved colour in one of the Uncharted games. The more we raise awareness, the more developers will be encouraged to put options in their games.
I'm definitely sharing this with my roommate. He's colorblind. He needed my help to spot all the pink objects while playing Cuphead. Still, after several days of playing, he managed to S rank everything on hard, and get a P on all the run and gun stages. He's certainly dedicated.
As a color blind game dev & web dev, I've always been fighting to add features to provide helps for colorblind users. I kinda hope everyone would do this, it's so easy to do and helps a ton
Have you ever experienced problems developing software for those who _can_ see the full spectrum?
The biggest issues I've got was when there was a full UI filled with different colored buttons & I was told to "fix the blue buttons". We got used to using Hex codes at work ever since.
One more free "tool" to add for testing: Phones with Android 5.0 or later have an option in the developer menu to pick a color blindness filter ("Hardware Accelerated Rendering" > "Simulate Color Space"). This way you can not only test your own mobile games, but you can also view images, videos, or just use the camera app to look at things such as your big screen.
Does the Simulated Colour Space have presets for colourblind modes or does it have options for any colour filter?
There are presets to pick from, monochromatic, both red/green variants, etc.
@@kalayleepop9227*build number, under "about phone"
Wow I didn't know that, thank you!!
this is a great tip
Great vid. Don't forget that adding accessibility options helps even the non-disabled folks. We can all have situational disabilities, whether that's harsh midday glare on the TV screen, playing in a very noisy environment, or you just can't find your reading glasses. You might have just put in eye drops and your vision is blurred, or you just came back from a concert and your ears are still ringing. All these accessibility features help EVERYONE, not just people with disabilities, which is an even stronger reason to add them in.
Microsoft has been pushing inclusive design a lot in the past few years and their new adaptive controller shows how awesome that can be. There's so many gamers out there who have figured out hacks to play with one hand or use foot pedals for low frequency/high value actions that it's about time game devs got on board. After all, the people buying their games are only going to keep getting older.
BackfallGenius While you're entirely on the right track with 99% of what you said, just a heads-up that "situational disability" isn't really a thing. I know you didn't mean it in any kind of malicious way, just wanted to point out that glare is a difficulty or inconvenience, but not a disability (even temporary). It's entirely semantics, but there are folks in the low vision community who'll get really up in arms over that sort of thing.
But your point that accessibly is for everyone? That's bang on. The best accessibly is when you don't even notice it's there - it just IS. I like pointing out certain accessible things to friends who didn't even realize how much it helps (door handles vs knobs, for example), and it's always great to see that sink in.
Another great accessibility video. I was most interested in this video, as I'm a legally blind gamer myself. Great tips. I can't count how many skill trees, inventory screens, or games that have lots of text and no spoken dialog that are difficult or tedious to play due to huge amounts of small text. Skullgirls screen reader support was amazing, and I wish this were available in way more games.
Especially when the skill tree descriptions are super wordy! And they decide they want light green text on medium green backing, what the heck?
Screen reader support is something I didn't even realize games had until this video, that's super cool.
Thank you so much for addressing CVD. I have Protanopia and it’s made some games almost impossible to play when developers don’t keep it in mind. Also thank you for calling out Overwatch’s awful filters. I was going to comment about how they don’t do anything to help me (some maps it just makes things worse) but then you mentioned it, lol.
I freelance as an indie game journalist and podcaster, and whether or not games are “CVD friendly” is usually one of the quickest things I will fault.
One thing I ran into recently was playing through Kingdom Hearts and how they color coded the health bars. I didn’t notice it until my friend pointed it out to me and I had to keep asking “how many health bars are left?” Because I couldn’t distinguish one from the other.
I’ve also found that more often than not, indie developers will offer better options for those with CVD than larger game studios. Which is something that I find both interesting and annoying.
Regarding Kingdom Hearts, that might be why future games moved on from making the healthbar change colors to having it be one color, and each "length" would instead be represented by another little "blip" underneath the health bar. The tougher the boss the more blips they had beneath the bar, representing just how many lengths of health you'd have to plow through- emptying one bar removed a blip beneath the meter until there was only one length left.
Then again, that change may have been less for the sake of disabled gamers and more for just basic clarity- it's WAY easier and immediate to see how many blips a boss has beneath the health meter, than see it have, like, a purple health meter that then turns to orange etc and basically just hope the player knows how much health that color represents.
Göran Isacson I don’t know why they made the change, but I am glad they went forth with it. I’d like to think it was to help people with CVD. Either way it was a great decision and I’ll take it since it’s made playing through the other games a better experience overall.
It's interesting that you mention Splatoon's 2 color lock. While it does apply to the main multiplayer modes of Turf War / Ranked, it does not apply to it's PvE mode, Salmon Run, where the Player Ink color will be Orange, Blue, or Pink and the enemy ink will always be green. In addition, the stages either have a pink or orange hue to it, making, what I assume is a nightmare for colorblind folks. Sort of a bizarre design decision by Nintendo.
Photobrick Studios Leave it to Nintendo to restrict your options in arbitrary ways like that. No idea why they don't let you, say, custom select colors, let alone for every mode separately if need be.
Grilac, that there is why I call the company 'NintenDon't' on many occasions. They just 'don't' want players to have as much freedom most of the time. Hopefully the gaming revolution helps break their traditions.
I legit can't tell the difference in in colors between the green and orange inks in salmon run
I have color lock on and the only ink color that our team has is blue
The gaming revolution doesn't involve NintenDon't changing the way they do things. Rather, they will decline, losing star employees. It's already begun. Industry experts are leaving the large gaming companies they've been with for decades in the hopes of finding more freedom to design outside of the box. With the way game design has been done for decades, many AAA developer teams and publishers have settled into a 'comfort zone' of sorts. It's the reason why so many AAA titles got stale over the years. Now, a revitalization is taking place. The creators of many beloved genres are going back to their roots, breaking off into smaller teams. They utilize their in-depth knowledge of the systems and patterns they've created to find new and interesting ways to break those systems and patterns. If you haven't heard of this yet (I'm assuming you haven't, based on your response), go search it up. There's a few articles and videos addressing Japan's gaming revolution. It's their non-indie 'indie' era, and it's an interesting read at least.
As someone who develops accessibility software as a day job, it's the whole focus of the company I work for, it's really nice to see how many things are being done in games. As an example it amazes me what blind people can do despite their lack of vision, I've heard people in podcasts talk about how they play, and it's both fascinating and inspiring. it has made me way more interested and aware of audio design, that's for sure.
What excites me quite a bit right now is all the audio spatialization software stacks that are being worked on and adopted/acquired by big players like Google, Facebook and Valve. I've seen at least one game based on audio only, where you are driving a car blind, navigating by the audio. As a VR-o-holic I'm of course thinking of what a single Vive Tracker + headphones could do for a blind player, they could walk around in a virtual audio environment, even interacting with invisible objects that emit sound... yeah, I'm digressing, but stuff like this makes me think.
Andreas Aronsson agreed. There is a good deal of progress being made in game accessibility. If you are interested in VR accessibility, you may be interested in my channel. I have several VR playlists on games, apps, and accessibility, including a presentation I gave last fall on VR accessibility for low vision.
Will definitely check it out, thanks!
There's an audio only game in both App Store and Play Store called "A Blind Legend".
I love the premise but as someone who has very bad hearing on my left ear, I can't get pass the part where I have to attack/defend the moving enemy as I can't identify their exact orientation.
I'd love to see more games like these that builds itself around a specific disability.
This is awesome, and should be considered obligatory viewing for anybody making video games.
I was actually reading a comment on Shoryuken (a fighting game website) the other day from a blind player who plays fighting games using nothing but sound cues. It was really fascinating, and something I hadn’t considered before.
Made me sit down and think about how, for example, games like Soul Calibur where you fight in a 3D space and can get knocked out of the “ring” really could benefit from optional sound cue options. For example, sounds that tell you when your back is close to a wall, a half wall, or a pit (and the same for your opponent). Different sounds for vertical attacks and horizontal attacks (since verticals can be sidestepped, but horizontals can’t). Small, optional things that could help visually impaired players navigate even within a 3D space.
I saw a video of a street fighter tourney where a blind guy completely destroyed his opponent.
I'm still trying to work out how a blind person could do that. Isn't walking silent? How could a blind person gauge the distance between himself and his opponent?
@@sageoftruth volume differences based on distance, and just footstep audio in general
Neat. I didn't realize fighting games had volume differences like those.
Sageoftruth Actually, that’s what made the comment I read on Shoryuken so interesting, because apparently not ALL fighting games does this. And some, I believe the example they used was Tekken 7, don’t even output all audio in stereo. Some aspects of Tekken 7’s sounds are apparently output in mono, making it impossible for the player to hear where the sound is coming from, effectively making it useless for spatial awareness.
Super fascinating stuff, and things most of us never notice because we don’t rely on them to be able to play and enjoy the game.
First thing I thought of when you brought up the visibility issue with text size was Dead Rising, and lo and behold, up pops Dead Rising on the screen. WHAT A PAIN THAT TEXT WAS. That game was so fricking restrictive. I already spent so much money for a 360 and the game, and then find out that unless you have a hi def TV, the text is basically UNREADABLE. I have 20/20 ish vision too, but it's just....it's a blurred mess and tiny. (made more excruciating by the fact that Otis is notorious for ringing you up every danged second.
Yep, Dead Rising is why I also got an HDTV shortly after I got an Xbox 360.
What I don't get is how God of War managed to make that mistake so many years after Dead Rising and other early 360/HD games. Those early games screwed up, everybody learned, and everybody stopped making such damn small text. Until God of War. What the fuck, God of War?!
@@mjc0961 simple; games aren't made on 40" screens ten feet away, they are made on 28" screens two feet away
That leads to more questions about the QA environment at the studio on a giant game like GOW rather than an answer to why the text is too small. There's a pipeline for these things and it got all the way through...... somehow.
I managed okay on a really old TV playing games like Halo 3 and other online shooters, and then Homefront came along and I couldn't see half of the UI elements at all. That's when I invested in a HD TV.
pikmin does colorblind very well
they use figure as a way a determining the pikmin types without requiring lots of hud changes
pink and rock are a little bit easier but red blue and yellow have small things to help distinct them
red has a big nose. yellow has big ears. blue has small gills but due to the size of the indicators for the other two you know which is the blue pikmin
dazzplays is a colorblind youtuber who can easily play all 3 pikmin games to completion and the games are very easy to pick up and play for newer players
Tf2 does it well too
Gonna check out those colorblind test tools.
My brother is a great man who struggles to read simple stuff because of dyslexia. Playing around with various tools helped me understand what he's going through and it was very eye opening. This might be another one of those experience
Great content, thank you so much!
I've heard of certain fonts that can be much easier to read for dyslexic individuals. Can't remember the names of them, but if you find them, maybe show your brother.
Great imput!
I definately will let him know aout it
HauntedShadowsLegacy Comic sans was specifically designed to be easier on dyslexia o: Calibri and Century Gothic too.
I always get really moved when I see people commit to understanding disability for someone else's sake
Very interesting episode! Thanks for all the input!
I am deaf in my left ear (unilateral hearing loss)which makes it nearly impossible for me to hear NPCs if im looking the wrong way. I hope mark brown will talk about this when he gets around to hearing impairments. There is no support as far as I can tell for people like me.
I don't know about consoles, but there should be an option on your PC to change sound output from 'stereo' (3D sound) to 'mono' (non-3D). That should make it so all sounds are played at equal volume through your speakers/headphones/what have you. That option might be on your consoles too? If you google something like, "how to set my sound to mono on [insert machine here]" you should get results. Hope this helps!
Wouldn't using mono audio instead of stereo fix this?
I agree, playing with headphones becomes a crucible if you are a Mono Human. Because one side gets totally silent, it literally mutes all NPCs on said side. Something that is totally retarded, especially on a "surround" headphone!
Mono Humans need to play with speakers, to negate the acoustic death zones that only exist in headphones....
Some games (e.g. Diablo 3) have a mono toggle. PC, Xbox and mobile phones all have mono toggles at operating system level.
Turning on mono at the OS level can sometimes make things worse in cases where there's a phase difference between the left and right channels for a particular sound (which might be done to give it a 3D effect) causing it to diminish or cancel out entirely when the two channels are mixed down to one. Whether that happens might depend on how the game's doing its audio output, though.
I have a friend with red-green color blindness and I'm going to share this video around as much as possible for his sake. There's really no reason why good colorblind options shouldn't be standard for all modern game design.
My field of vision is severely limited and my vision in general is way below normal. As a programmer and gamer, this series is brilliant. Waiting for the epilepsy episode since I got some form of that too...Thanks for the content!
Great series. Small changes can make a big difference to some players. BOTW highlighted important text in red making it almost impossible to see - made puzzle solving so much harder.
that Doom thing sounds like the devs were pulling a prank or something "you turned on colorblind mode? k, now you're colorblind!"
Great video coming from a gamer with very poor vision. I’ve struggled with many games due to menu text/subtitle size and low contrast/busy backgrounds. I remember buying Fallout 4 back in highschool and being so sad to find I couldn’t play simply because of the color scheme. And in contrast I adore the Last of Us thanks to their super brightly colored scenes and the option to read every note in plain text. Thank you for putting in the time to research and spread light on the topic.
Yes! Love all your videos, was actually just binging them as podcasts at work, so it's great to get a new one. Keep up the amazing work!
As a colorblind gamer, one of my favorites is pikmin. All of the different types of pikmin are designed to look distinct, even if they were in black and white.
Hi, I’m one of those people with a visual impairment and the *ultra rare* variant of colourblindness (Achromatopsia.)
I would just like to say a huge THANK YOU for making this video! As a disabled gamer, you have no idea how much I appreciate people taking the time and effort to learn about accessible design. I am personally partial to first-person games with good contrast, simple but engaging mechanics and brilliant voice-acting. The Portal games, The Stanley Parable and Superliminal are definitely some of my favourites!
Mark Brown needs to do a video about fast travel. I have mixed feelings myself. Fast travel does prevent the tedious task of going back and forth between the same locations in a large map. At the same time fast travel can undermine exploration. 2018’s God of War was a good example of fast travel done correctly. In that game fast traveling to various locations is gradually unlocked over the course of the game. It is after you have explored the world you can fast travel to and from anywhere. This makes sure you explore the gorgeous environment and it keeps you from getting bored by backtracking long distances through familiar environments.
Morrowind used the same approach back in the day
while off topic to the video haha Dragon's dogma did an interesting way to use fast travel, you could acquire crystals that you could plant on the map and use those as fast travel points - though it took a while to get them and you could only get about 5 so you would move them around to different points when you needed to explore new areas.
In that sense, Xenoblade Chronicles 1, X, and 2 handle fast travel very well because you need to discover the location before you can fast travel to there. BOTW uses the same approach as well, though fast travel is mainly for shrines and towers.
As somebody with color blindness this video was extremely interesting, my color blindness has never really affected my life all that much but seeing this makes me appreciate the games that I CAN see clearly even more.
As someone with low vision, you've hit the nail on the head. Major props to you, Mark!
Great work, Mark. You provide great perspective and insight for developers hoping to include a relatively underserved fan base. It's also great to see how some developers have already included options to allow anyone to better enjoy their games.
I suffer from a pretty rare condition retinitis pigmentosa which causes darker tones to be difficult to differentiate, imagine turning down the brightness in a horror game and that’s essentially how I see. Along with a sensitivity to light so in very bright games I get disoriented, for example in old rainbow six siege when you look out windows it was white washed.
Along with this my peripheral vision is much less and my field of view is significantly less than a normal person. About 80 degrees or so.
Altering screen size so I can see more of the game at once, and then having further brightness settings to prevent it from being to dark or to bright simultaneously would be fantastic for me.
I struggle to play FPS games, horror games or just night levels in games. (Turning up the brightness for those levels causes the day levels to be brighter and then causes further light sensitivity)
Does reducing contrast on your monitor help?
TanitAkavirius I’ve tried fiddling with the settings to make the screen bright in the dark and darker in the light, just tends to make the game look washed out and ugly. And the issue isn’t in every game, just some
TanitAkavirius I’ve tried fiddling with the settings to make the screen bright in the dark and darker in the light, just tends to make the game look washed out and ugly. And the issue isn’t in every game, just some
Then don't play Mirror's Edge then because that game has issues with its light and dark sections.
I'm colourblind and sometimes I have a hard time telling enemies from teammates in CSGO, especially when they are in darker areas. I assumed this was just because they were silhouettes but I wonder if people with normal vision are getting colour cues that I am not.
I also find the hud text hard to read in the new UI because it is so small.
I hope someone from Valve sees this video and fixes these things or at least gives us some of the options suggested here.
Really good video which I will be sharing wherever I can! Thanks!
This was exactly what I wanted to see! This series so far has been helping me out a lot. I'm already working on designing my game around accessibility.
This episode was awesome. Thank you for doing this series. I am visually impaired and the seemingly decreasing text size of newer games is very frustrating, especially lore-heavy games. I like the idea of adding an option to increase the font size for those of us who want or need it.
Yay a new upload. Was waiting eagerly.
>Complains about small text, has fast scrolling Patreon credits made for ants.
Tut-tut.
Haha, fair comment. I have too many Patrons!
What is this? A channel for ants???
If i become a patron i want my name to be complelty unintrusive
Ishygog is that a JoJoke reference
Deer War Veteran no
Please make this the game jam theme? Great way to boost the VISIBILITY (lol)and raise awareness of this topic!
I've always loved your channel, but this new series on disability is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites on RUclips. Keep up the good work!
Small texts eh? *remembers Xenoblade Chronicles X* That was a nightmare...I could only play that game on the gamepad to see any text.
And then it actually got worse during cutscenes, where the small font size worked hand in hand with the background music, that sometimes completely overshadowed the voice acting.
Using the colourblind modes in games is something I've completely given up on. The first games where I tried to turn it on, it just didn't change anything, and after I tried it in Fortnite I just completely gave up on it. Luckily my colourblindness isn't too severe, but I do have some trouble with it every now and then, so good colourblind modes would be nice.
Check out the mode in a puzzle platformer called Hue, that may change your mind. It is shown in this video.
@@ianhamilton_ If I had Hue, then I would. I don't think that game would be a huge problem for me though, since the colours seem to be very strong and distinct.
@@Mansion1of7 Google some screenshots and look for one that shows the colour wheel around the character, that shows the full spectrum that you need to be able to distinguish
@@ianhamilton_ The green and orange almost look the same. I guess I was wrong.
yeah exactly, it uses so many hues that there will always be some combination that's tricky no matter what kind of deficiency you have
I love this series and can't wait for the other two installments! It's so interesting learning about the simple ways to make your games accessible and really helps bring them to light for devs
Been loving this latest series so far, part of me is hopeful you'll touch on games and motion sickness.
You should probably give some attention to what Extra Credits calls the cut-corner effect: the possible benefits of accessibility options to non-disabled gamers. Like how visual accessibility options also help those with low-quality screens and audio options help those without access to audio equipment (or who just don't want to disturb those around them).
He did kind of reference the idea with the tiny text part. No need to be shortsighted to benefit from that after all
I love these videos. They don't shame people who don't have the time, money, or inclination to design to disabilities, but they give fantastic suggestions for those who want to go the extra mile with their options. Far too often talking about inclusivity devolves into blame games and moral posturing. You sidestep that quagmire elegantly. Great job.
I love how practical your advice is. As a hobbyist game maker these videos are amazing and offer solutions as well as identifying issues. Thanks for making this series.
Thanks Mark
Those tips and insights are really useful.
I'm planning on designing a game for people with visual impairment and it did help a lot.
“Unless the game looked like this”
*nothing changes*
(;-;)
the day you realize you're colorblind
Xenoblade Chronicles X has such a small text size that I often had to flip to the gamepad to read text. Which also sucked thanks to low resolution+small text. Beyond frustrating
TF2's art designer designed the silhouettes and backgrounds in black and white first to add visual clarity and then added color later. So even if they're monochromatic and can't see the red or blue teams, they can still tell them apart. The blue sides of maps tend to be more industrial then the red sides and that also makes it easier to tell which side the player's on
I love love love this video series.
Please keep making them and popping them out.
Super educational and helpful for designers, aspiring or not.
Yea, the anti colour blind filters really aren't that helpful. Trying to simulate normal colour vision just everything look weird. I'm not used to seeing the world like that, so why would making it look like it be helpful? It's definitely much much better to only change the colour of elements that could be mistaken, and leave everything else alone
Super Smash Bros is so bad regarding visual accessibility that it manages to make itself excruciating even when you perceive all colors correctly
Huh, it just dawned on that the Epic Battle Fantasy games are designed pretty well for colorblindness. Every variant enemy has a different silhouette in addition to different colors and every enemy and playable character has different animations for being healed, taking normal hits and taking critical hits, that way everyone can get an idea as to what's going on in battle.
Thank you for making these videos! I'm disabled (physically plus some brain stuff) and a lot of video games are hard for me to play because I have bad coordination and motor control. An easy platformer for an able-bodied person is like playing on the hardest difficulty for me. Same with shooters, particularly FPS. I just can't target well. I play a lot of story based games for this reason - which is fine, I love immersive storytelling - but I'd really like to be able to play popular games like Cuphead without getting frustrated and quitting (which I did with the first Bioshock and I'm still sad about).
I hope one day there'll be options for people like me, who want to play these games but just can't move right. I really think that there are interesting and creative ways to design around problems like this. Although I can't say that I've thought of any...I'm not a game designer, though!
Me: "I'm colorblind"
99% of people: *points to something* "WHAT COLOR IS THAT??"
1% of people: "Actually it's called color deficiency, if you really were color deficient you'd know that."
Door_Productions I know this struggle all too well.
Yeah and it varies wildly. I have no problem with bright “primary” type colors of red and green, but pinks and pastel greens and purples drive me crazy.
People saying that are asking as they're trying to visualise what being colourblind looks like. So just have a realtime simulator on your phone that will let them see an approximation of what colourblind vision looks like. Problem solved :)
The 99% don't bother me at all, it's a great icebreaker when meeting new people. It's the other 1% that get under my skin.
See, what bothers me is my colorblindness is extremely mild. I'm closest to Deuteranopia, but it's not as severe...I can see differences between all of the "Normal" ones on Mark's sliders and the Deuteranopia ones (closest is the orange). Something like Cuphead's bright blue/pink differences I can see just fine. But I've failed every colorblindness test I've taken (including multiple at optometrist offices), and subtle shades and some colors like maroon and non-neon pinks completely elude me. I've had people tell me I can't possibly be colorblind because I don't fall into any of the major types and that gets really frustrating. It's a toss up on whether or not I need a game's colorblind mode, but it's always nice to have the option if I do.
Not that I am color blind but I've never understood the "red/green opposites" like bad/good, go/stop, fire the missile or abort etc. Why green, especially for things like traffic lights. Seems like an odd one
0scar1994 the human eye is more sensitive to green than other colours. Green stands out more, and the spectrum is wider.
Red is the complementary colour of green.
bondeulv lol not for many of us!
0scar1994 This is something people ask me a lot but the green on normal traffic lights is usually a really light and minty fresh shade so it’s not hard to differentiate it from the red for me. The problem is more with less “minty” and more grass- or lime- greens, and oranges. I’m fairly mild colour blind so it’s obv different for others
I thought the protanopic mode in doom looked the same to me 😂 good to find out.
i don't have a visual imparement, nor am i colourblind, but i've got adhd and playing everything on colourblind settings makes thinks way easier to read, with a better set of contrasting colours, so a good colourblind mode ends up making my gaming way easier and more enjoyable. it's well appreciated from me, and i'd imagine a few other people too. also, this is just a really fascinating series to watch.
I have a friend, who uses some colorblind options in Overwatch just to make some colors less saturated. It's just too "heavy" on the eyes.
Me when the episode starts with Yakuza music 😁
this is so wholesome i love it
I think I watched all your episodes, thank you so much for making these! I really enjoy getting to know the behind the scenes of videogames!
It's always good to remember that makings games more accessible makes the more accessible for everyone. :)
This episode reminds me of the process my ongoing project went... as a prototype it was a clicker where picking actors with the same color would rack up more points, but then I tried to make it accessible for color vision deficiency. Since finding a palette that would work in any case with at least 8 colors was way too much trouble, I've decided to add symbols to the actors. Choosing symbols of the Western zodiac not only gave me 12 options instead of 8, but it also lead to a whole re-design of the game with a layer of fiction of a space battle.
...and then drawing symbols in a legible way made the ships too big to appear in a large enough number to make streak clicking viable, so the whole "click the same type of ship in a row to rack up points" was revised and now the zodiac factions are more of an aesthetic component. :P But the game did get a lot better. :V
"The gold standard is Battlefield 1"
Being colorblind myself i'll have to disagree, their system just doesn't work for me, the normal one has the obvious problem with Green and Red.
But since I have a hard time with the red color, even the one where Team is blue and Squad is Purple(?) I have trouble making out which person is a squadmate and which one is just regular team (Basically not seeing Red so easily, colors that depend on red to exist ,like Purple and Pink, just look like almost blue to me.
And don't even get me started on the setting with GREEN ENEMIES, that's just stupid. I refuse to use that.
But yeah, the option to choose your own colors makes it better, it didn't exist before BF1.
Huh.. So was your point that you don't like the viable option that you do have?
What about the custom option?
Yeah i know it sounded weird, its just that I started talking about how the basic options are stupid and then realised I had to mention the custom option and it came out horrible.
Kinda related question: Do you have trouble getting through forests in real life? If it wasn't for subtle color rocognition, I'd just stumble and fall every 2 meters.
Not really, because it's like, reds and greens of the same "brightness" (or whatever the word is) look more alike, which is mostly a problem in situations where you can't focus on the color, like something moving quickly. Very rarely you find a red and green that look almost the same to the point where I can't tell which is which.
Between things that are both green I can see just as well as any person. Also thanks to different textures/lighting we can tell that two things aren't just one.
I tried to design my game to work for people with disabilities but video game journalists still can't seem to get past the tutorial, any tips?
Wait is this a joke about cuphead journalists or a genuine comment trying not to get r/wooooshed
I think Mark Brown is going to cover cognitive disabilities in a future video, so maybe that will help.
Hilarious.
@@arnoudh6203 It has to be a cuphead joke
I see you everywhere, meme.
@Mark Brown As a student of Optometry I am very impressed and glad to see that you did research to use the correct terminology in this video.
Fantastic job, Mark! As a gamer with colorblindness, it’s so great to hear you are bringing this to light
These videos and the constant talk about accessibility in games makes me wonder if the game developers forgot they were actually making software which would be used by everyone - not just a form of art.
Imagine if you were using Photoshop or OBS and you couldn't adjust your brushes or output location, respectively.
Now, imagine it took over 20 years for their respective industries to even consider that was a problem to be addressed and would allow other users to not only use but become proficient at using their products.
This is a pretty great video! Just as a side thing, though, I might suggest avoiding the term “normal” to refer to people who don’t have disabilities.
In the words of the National Center on Disability and Journalism’s style guide, using “normal” in that context “implies that people living with disabilities are deviant or strange. ‘Typical’ is a better choice.” ncdj.org/style-guide/#abnormality
I don't know a lot about this but aren't Typical and Normal Synonims?
On the flip side people feel ostracized for being treated like they are going to break if you breath near them.
Ashley might have a more complete answer to your question, but just because words are synonyms doesn't mean they have the same connotation (emotional association). "Normal" very often has the connotation of "good," so if you compare disabled people to "normal" people it implies that disabled people are somehow bad (abnormal) in contrast. "Typical" doesn't have the same connotation; in fact, some disabled folks use "atypical" when identifying as disabled (such as nueroatypical).
I don't have a problem with it, but I'm just colourblind.
eladnarra nailed it. And just to offer another example, it’s because of this same reasoning that we don’t call straight people “normal.”
I'm so glad you're going out of your way to make these episodes. I think their very valuable for the gamedev community.
The part about playing games with absolutely no vision makes me think of Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii. For fun my friends and I tried playing it with our eyes closed and it's so well designed that if tutorials had voice acting added you could easily play the whole game blind, although with maybe a slightly higher learning curve.
4:33 too bad that's a fascist symbol (the black one) here in Italy lmao
That's the celtic cross, is the most renown fascist symbol here (Behind only the "Fascio Littorio", idk the english name). But i get that in other parts of the world nobody knows that, is a national thing i guess. I just found it funny, i don't really care that much
Assuming shooters and Celtic references haven't left Italy, that seems like a none issue.
lel, that's the first thing that came to mind. It's even funnier because I expected the full combined color to be white, instead they went with black. Murphy's law never changes
Ah, great... Another historic/religious symbol rebranded in the name of hate. :/ Why do fascists have to use religious symbols?
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 Maybe grow up and stop associating symbols just because a minority of the population uses these? What's next?You stop drinking milk because fascists also like to eat cheese?
Seriously we already do this with other symbols.Take communist or even the anti-fa symbols.Commies weren't any less authoritative or evil than the fashes (heck their crimes are more abhorrent ).Yet people don't get triggered over them(as they shouldnt).
6 minutes ago
These are the most important videos you've ever done. I hope some developers are able to be inspired and learn from these.
It's interesting that Blue and Orange are two colors that stand out most to any form of colorblindness because it is the go-to color palette for a lot of Hollywood movies and AAA games, it makes me wonder if even filmmakers have been implementing this for a while, or if maybe blue and orange just resonates with a wider audience because of the contrast.
"Games are for everyone" No. They aren't. You might be able to say "For every person, there's probably a game that could appeal to them." But games as a whole aren't for everybody. Even less for specific games. Even the most accessible game imaginable, or even possible, isn't for everyone.
No one said the disabled shouldn't have options. Especially the just generally good options like customizing your UI and keybindings, which is time (money) and energy spent towards something basically anyone can use.
I pointed out that the statement is incorrect, and not applicable.
Quite simply that games aren't for everyone. Specific games even more so. No matter how much they water down the platforming in Mario, it's not going to be a game that's for me. Nor would simplifying a Total War game make a CoD player want to play it. No the cutscenes you add to your game, it's not going to be a game for movie buffs. No matter what you do, your game probably won't appeal to a South African farmer after getting their land appropriated for their skin color.
No game can be for everyone, but every game could very easily be for more people without harming what makes it fun. Accessibility means avoiding unnecessary barriers.
You get it!
Unfortunately, many companies trying to 'appeal to a wider audience' don't.
SangoProductions213 Yes, no game will appeal to everyone, and despite designers better efforts there will always be a few gamers who still find the games inaccessible. The goal of a designer shouldn’t be that everyone should enjoy their game but that no one is incapable of enjoying their game due to certain disabilities they might possess, at least as much as possible. Most of the suggestions made in these series are pretty simple and should be implemented in most games.
This is such a good series, on a subject that I really hadn't heard a lot of coverage of elsewhere. Keep up the good work
I think a great example of design is Horizon zero dawn.
Hostile and friendly machines have different designs, and before an attack, a red circle indicating where they are will turn into a diamond shape with spikes out of it, and will flash yellow and red as it slowly increases in size.
Enemies also have very obvious animations that play before an attack, in case you miss the flashing diamond.
There's also a DLC called Frozen Wilds which introduces Daemonic machines, which can easily be told apart from normal ones, not because they're purple, but because there's also what looks like strings and fabric flowing around them.
The shape design in the game is amazing to me, even different elemental weapons and ammo are colored by rarity in differing contrasts and brightnesses, and elemental ammo has differently located as well as colored symbols denoting their element.
Potions in the game are a bit tricky, so their bottles are also differently shaped, colored, and have a symbol applied on them to tell them apart.
My only problem however is the freeze and shock potions, which have the same color, the labeling is small and the bottles look similar, so each one is tilted in a different direction in your HUD to tell the difference, tricky still
Great video series, I’ve given a talk about this topic at Devcom this year, it is so important.
There's an audio only game in both App Store and Play Store called "A Blind Legend".
I love the premise but as someone who has very bad hearing on my left ear, I can't get pass the part where I have to attack/defend the moving enemy as I can't identify their exact orientation.
I'd love to see more games like these that builds itself around a specific disability.
During my time in college, I worked on a mobile puzzle game called Dotflow that had you matching dots of the same color. For the colorblind mode, we also did it with symbols, and it seemed to work quite nicely for our incredibly simple game. Surprised there are so many larger games that forget/ignore this is a thing.
Undertale is a game that had a problem similar to the ones demonstrated in Cuphead and Bioshock 2 when it first launched. The creator learned after release that it was difficult for colorblind players to visually distinguish cyan attacks from white attacks, which was important gameplay information because different colors have different properties. A patch was released soon after that tweaked the hue slightly, and apparently it made them far easier to tell apart.
Fantastic analysis! As a legally blind gamer, accessibility can feel like a never ending uphill battle. Our community appreciates when others recognize our struggles and actively try to educate and make changes.
Thank you for this series. I have low vision and mild cerebral palsy, and it would be great if more developers accommodated people like me in their games.
GMT I’m floored at how good your content is, I love all of your videos and this is no exception.
I'm dyslexic and legally blind (and my dad is colorblind), so this kind of thing is hugely relevant to me. There have been multiple occasions where I've been put off from a game because its text was just too damn tiny for me to see comfortably. Got enough back problems already without poor vision and tiny text making them worse.
Good on you for making these and not treating disabled players like they're just lazy or bad at games. A lot of people will just say "git gud" and that will be the extent of the conversation, but it doesn't help when a lot of *games* are made to encourage that mentality. Playing any shooter without stereo sound and comms is asking to get dead, and it doesn't just suck for the people who are playing that way, but for their teams as well when they get dragged down by having those players on their side. Nice to see that getting treated as a design flaw instead of the fault of the deaf guy trying to play and have fun like everyone else.
Thank You for pointing out the problem with games that use a color system. I am red/green color defiant so when games have a thing we’re red = bad and green = good it makes it hard. So thanks for pointing this out
Your editing is getting better. Good job.
This video makes my heart swell with the examples you've given of what developers have done to make sure that their game can be played by people with disabilities (in this case color blindness and low vision) and it reminds me of a day that I woke up in the morning, had breakfast and went to the living room to play Dark Souls III on my PS4, but my uncle was sleeping in the couch, so I sat on a chair next to our dining table to play, but, as someone that is short-sighted but has no glasses yet, I could barely read most of the on-screen text, and since I was in a dark place (the part with the pitch-black cells in Irythill Dungeon) I couldn't see the enemies until they were close, so I relied heavily on sound cues to know where some enemies were, and it made me pay a lot more attention on the great sound design of the game, it was a relief when uncle woke up and I could sit at the couch and was able to see better what was going on
This is something I almost never hear people talk about but it’s so important. Thank you for making this video
Thank you for this series. I think people just assume that disabilities are wheelchair and mental. Full stop. It's hard for able bodied and neurotypical people to understand the difficulties that other people can face. I mentioned it in another comment thread, but I'm visually impaired. Just glasses, it's not even that severe. But a large swath of games have been completely unplayable for me because I can't read the menu, let alone any mission information. It's distressing to be unable to partake in a hobby I've had for over two decades.
It's incredibly comforting to be acknowledged by this series. I almost wish there was an ADA committee for entertainment. Not legally binding necessarily, but a committee that could put their stamp of approval on games if they pass design standards. It'd save me a good chunk of cash...