Summary
It’s good for a game’s playerbase, community, and place in the industry if more people get the chance to actually play it. Giving that chance to people who might otherwise be excluded is exactly what developers like Whitethorn Games, the team behindBeasts of Maravilla Island, designthe user experienceto address. But not all games are equal in this regard, and not all gamers want them to be.
This creates a serious tension around just who should be allowed to play some of the most popular games. That’s a tension thatWhitethorn Games’ CEO Matthew White takes a firm stance on, as he explained to Game Rant’s Joshua Duckworth at Gamescom LATAM in June.
The ‘Some Games Aren’t for Everyone’ Debate
A common response to players struggling with a given title is that not every game is for everyone. That’s a true statement, as some people preferthe grueling difficulty of Soulslikes,while others prefer the rich narratives of sprawling JRPGs or look for the tranquility of a cozy title after a hectic day.
But that isn’t a matter of accessibility, it’s a matter of taste. The idea that certain genres are more suited to differing personal taste doesn’t hold up when looking at whether someone can even play the game to begin with. It can be hard to determine if something is enjoyable to a gamer if they can’t even give it a proper chance.
The Mona Lisa isn’t for everybody, right? There are people who will see it, and say, “Okay, that’s a painting of some lady, I’m not impressed.” It might not be for them. But they still were able to see it, though, and then chose that it’s not for them. When we talk about accessibility, they can’t see it in the first place, so they don’t even have the ability to choose that it’s not for them … We owe it to players to give them the right to choose whether it’s for them or not.
White says the more accurate comparison isn’t whether a person likes the Mona Lisa, but the accurate analogy is if someone can complete aNinja Warrior-style obstacle courseto even get to the Mona Lisa. A person can’t make a determination on if the Mona Lisa, orElden RingandStarfieldfor that matter, is for them if they can’t actually experience it to begin with.
That would seem to make the argument for accessibility features self-evident, and to a lot of developers, it is. White cited the way Xbox has shifted its branding from being the platform of the gaming elite to a more broad-net approach, acknowledging the benefits of the “when everybody plays we all win” viewpoint for accessibility awareness. That also helps business, he pointed out, by broadening the base of prospective Xbox players from what he called the “hardcore, get good” gamers.
Of course, that kind of shift is far from uncontroversial, especially with the self-styled elite gamers who White identifies as the largest opponents of letting others play the same game.
A Skill Issue
As White was talking with Game Rant, the conversation was being illustrated by players ofThe Last of Us 2 Remastered, who took issue with the game’s accessibility features making the roguelikeNo Return mode too easy. Accessibility was seen as a threat to measurement of player skill, and the tension between people being able to play and people being able to feel the competitive edge of a game asserted itself.
That isn’t to say Naughty Dog couldn’t have approached the problem differently, but that the tension itself often means players like the visually impaired or those with motor control issues are criticized. And in those moments, White comes down hard on the side of accessibility. In his opinion, issues like those withThe Last of Us 2 Remasterednever justify excluding people in his opinion.
Leaving out other gamers willfully, be it on the basis of disability or any ofthe other common prejudices of the gaming community, White says, is more than just not caring, more than just casual cruelty, but straight-up malevolence.
If you grew up in the 90s, if you were a gamer, you were a weirdo, right? You were ostracized. Your friends were in sports, and you were playingPokemonand the like, and you were not at the cool kids table. So what manner of evil must you be to know what that feels like, and then create a place to do it to somebody else? What’s wrong with you? I don’t know, I find that gatekeeping thing really nasty. I mean, we were the weirdos who played video games instead of playing sports. We’re the weirdos who had a crush on the boy in hermit mode. We were weird people. To willfully exclude others seems counter to the people we ought to be.
He’s also aware that many studios don’t have the kind of resources to ensure a game is accessible to everyone. Each hurdle a developer leaps over to help gamer with disabilities or other roadblocks costs money, and that money can be very hard for a small studio to come by. EvenTekken 8couldn’t resolve all the issues that gamers had(and it created new ones). Still, White has no patience for triple-A studios that don’t put forth the effort. Going that extra mile is always worthwhile, he says, as he’s seen it with his own work.
We get so much gratitude. That’s probably honestly the most important thing. This is my selfish justification. We get so much gratitude from folks that are like, “Oh, my God, I couldn’t play this, thank you for thinking of me.” That is such a pleasant change from the usual kind of gamer discourse, and I think it’s been very rewarding for us as a company, as well to kind of just get into that space, because everybody seems just thrilled that you even thought about them. Which is tragic. I mean, it’s a video game, everyone should be able to pick it up and play it.
He’s baked this philosophy into the DNA of Whitethorn, where an internal accessibility specialist works with developers to identify roadblocks for potential players. These include those who speak English as a second language, are colorblind or otherwise visually impaired, are deaf, or are dyslexic so that their team can take steps from the very beginning to help mitigate those issues. That skill is one a lot of companies already have and use in other ways, he says, like preparing in advance for large localization projects. It’s just a matter of applying those skills to inclusivity. That’s a skill in whichNaughty Dog happened to excel, and something that other developers will hopefully learn from.
