Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game.
I don’t think it would cost developers ANY amount of money or any significant development time to add a “Reboot game” button (or toggle) every time the player presses the quit button, or give the player a prompt every time they change a setting that requires a game restart (like in both PC versions of GTA V).
I also think ANY game should have a “full potato” mode capable of running in older computers with NONE of the fancy graphics stuff that we have access to today, despite having a decent computer now.
I have to disagree with this. Difficulty settings are at best a bandaid solution to accessibility. The vast vast majority of difficulty settings change the overall gameplay experience, games are far too complex for ‘just make it easier’ to be an appropriate approach to accessibility.
Just reducing enemy health, simplifying enemy ai, etc. can only make a game more accessible as a side effect, it doesn’t address the actual accessibility issues people might have.
I also don’t think games should have hard modes. They should have exactly 1 difficulty the developers balance around.
There absolutely should be accessibility options that have the side effect of making the game easier but making the game easier is the wrong approach to make it accessible.
My suggestion would be stuff like tuning response windows to the results of a reaction time test, aim assist options, visual cues for sound effects, etc. Those make the game easier but do it by addressing a single specific issue, or combination of issues, someone’s dealing with instead of just slapping on a one size fits all solution.