What are some things that just get under your skin about games?
For me, it’s games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don’t all work. If I can’t rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.
And on console, where I can’t refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can’t play.
You are failing to see that people with some sort of disability are already against impossible odds, not only in the game but in life. They already know that feeling you talk about, why not let them partake in this piece of art? It will still be a challenge.
If your worry is that normies would exploit this and not “earn” their victory, it also does not affect your experience of the game at all. Just like nobody is going to force you to do a SL1 run - that’s a choice-, why not have that the other way arround? :)
That is just opening up a whole other can of worms. Would you argue sim racing games should cater to people with disabilities? Should puzzle games cater to people who don’t have the capacity to solve puzzles?
I love how you instantly assume the kind of person I am. Yeah, it would be my choice to do a SL1 run, the game isn’t designed around doing SL1 runs. The game is designed around evoking a specific emotion that requires people to be challenged enough to feel like they’re overcoming a challenge. How do you feel like you’ve overcome a challenge when you just turn off the challenge when it gets too tough?
Not everything is for everyone, of course. But I argue that everything, any game genre should be accesible for anyone who wants to try, and like with anything else, people will filter themselves out if it’s not for them.
I love soulslikes, I love the struggle. but I also happen to be intimately familiar with disability, and I know that disabilities and people with disabilities are all different. A blanket accesibility solution like difficulty opions would just level the barrier of entry for some people with a disability. That’s what I’m arguing should exist. So more people get to experience this piece of art. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ that’s just my take.
Also, I’m not assuming you to be any kind of person, it’s just the most used argument against difficulty options I’ve seen.
I don’t think difficulty is on the same level of accessibility as say being able to turn off epilepsy inducing lights. Difficulty is more of a soft accessibility option because people can learn to overcome difficulty. It’s very rare to have difficulty that is simply impossible not to overcome. I get the people with disabilities angle but I also think they should be treated like people and as people I’d like them to experience art as it is. When it comes to something like Dark Souls, where the difficulty and hardship is so intertwined with the story, world and the metaphors about life itself, I think the piece of art would become less if the difficulty was reduced. I want people to experience Dark Souls like I did because it literally changed my life. I let the difficulty beat me so down that I changed as a person and I know that if I had had the option to turn on easy mode I would’ve 100% turned it on and rob myself from the chance to grow as a person. This is why I’m so adamant that difficulty options are not for every game because sometimes you can find something profound only after you’ve been pushed out of your comfort zone.
Message is not comming through to you sug, so no point in continuing this back and forth any further, have a nice day.
Right. So explain with real world examples of how higher difficulty actually prevents people with disability from playing a game. Make me understand because so far you’ve done nothing but say general statements and dismiss me.