With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
Disability, accessibility and gameplay accessibility are two different things and should be treated as such. There is also a very hard line between what is possible to help someone with a disability. Enjoy a medium that requires certain minimal physical traits.
The color blindness deafness rebindable controls as many things that can help the disabled and these should be expected whenever possible. Hell a lot of these are built directly into your operating system and don’t require any effort from a game developer. They just need to make sure not to get in the way of already existing tools.
But gameplay accessibility is an entirely different beast and even very minimal. Gameplay accessibility can create an entirely new gameplay experience to the point where it’s not the same game. If the developer wants to add those, it should be up to the developer and what they’re targeting, both as an audience and as an artist.
We should always demand disability accessibility. We should never demand gameplay accessibility.
Disability, accessibility and gameplay accessibility are two different things and should be treated as such. There is also a very hard line between what is possible to help someone with a disability. Enjoy a medium that requires certain minimal physical traits.
The color blindness deafness rebindable controls as many things that can help the disabled and these should be expected whenever possible. Hell a lot of these are built directly into your operating system and don’t require any effort from a game developer. They just need to make sure not to get in the way of already existing tools.
But gameplay accessibility is an entirely different beast and even very minimal. Gameplay accessibility can create an entirely new gameplay experience to the point where it’s not the same game. If the developer wants to add those, it should be up to the developer and what they’re targeting, both as an audience and as an artist.
We should always demand disability accessibility. We should never demand gameplay accessibility.