How Accessible Were 2020's Biggest Games?

It's time for my annual investigation into the accessibility of the year's biggest games. From Cyberpunk to Demon's Souls, and from Miles Morales to Valhalla, let's look at how these games do in terms of controller remapping, subtitles, colourblind settings, and more.

Disclosure

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Cold War, Crash Bandicoot 4, Demon’s Souls, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Immortals Fenyx Rising, The Last of Us Part II, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, and Watch_Dogs Legion game codes provided by the relevant publishers. Xbox Series X console provided by Microsoft. I was a game design consultant on Sackboy: A Big Adventure. I'm friends with a voice actor on Paradise Killer.

Sources

[1] PS5's Lack of PS4 Controller Support Is a Problem | LauraKBuzz

[2] David Tisserand | Twitter

[3] Assassin’s Creed Valhalla — Can I Play That Deaf/Hard of Hearing Review | Can I Play That?

[4] Cyberpunk 2077 Epileptic PSA | Game Informer

[5] Cyberpunk 2077 | Twitter

[6] Demon's Souls PS5 Easy Mode Was Considered by Bluepoint, But Felt It 'Wasn't Our Place' | Push Square

[7] The Last Of Us Part II: Accessibility Review | SightlessKombat

[8] Ghost of Tsushima Accessibility Impressions — Just Barely Misses the Bullseye | Can I Play That?

[9] Innovation in Accessibility | The Game Awards

[10] The Future of Among Us | Innersloth

[11] Control's free August update lets you turn off dying | Destructoid

[12] Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Free Content Update | EA

Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance)

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)
DOOM Eternal (2020)
The Last of Us Part II (2020)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Maneater (2020)
Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020)
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020)
Desperados III (2020)
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (2020)
Ghostrunner (2020)
Hades (2020)
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Disc Room (2020)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (2020)
FIFA 21 (2020)
Marvel's Avengers (2020)
Spelunky 2 (2020)
Star Wars: Squadrons (2020)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (2020)
XCOM: Chimera Squad (2020)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020)
Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Astro's Playroom (2020)
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020)
Dirt 5 (2020)
Spiritfarer (2020)
Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020)
Watch Dogs: Legion (2020)
NBA 2K21 (2020)
Mafia: Definitive Edition (2020)
Mafia (2002)
Tell Me Why (2020)
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)
Far Cry New Dawn (2019)
Crusader Kings III (2020)
Amnesia: Rebirth (2020)
Paradise Killer (2020)
Demon's Souls (2020)
Valorant (2020)
Grounded (2022)
Gears Tactics (2020)
A Total War Saga: Troy (2020)
Minecraft Dungeons (2020)
Lair of the Clockwork God (2020)
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)
Streets of Rage 4 (2020)
Haven (2020)
Inertial Drift (2020)
Ikenfell (2020)
Wildfire (2020)
HyperDot (2020)
Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020)
Super Mario 3D All-Stars (2020)
Among Us (2018)
Control (2019)
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)
Half-Life: Alyx (2020)

Music used in this episode

[rich_in_paradise]

I have no disability, but come on devs, please let us resize the UI and subtitles. EVERYONE needs this.

[metfanl]

It's good to remember that It's easy to shrug these kinds of issues off when you're not affected but to some people one little extra option can really make all the difference in the world.

[OSW]

More than graphics or controllers, accessibility has been the biggest progress the last few years. Small mercies like optional visual cues, and holding a button rather than button-mashing is HUGE!

[barryherbers]

I have perfectly fine vision, but I still boost the text size in *every single game* I play. This stuff is just good for everyone.

[laragallahue]

As someone who is disabled thank you for talking about this and not dismissing this like others do.

[Spiderboydk]

Subtitles are also very valuable to non-native English speakers.

[ligadaaoscabos]

I usually don't get touched by this things, but just hearing that a blind guy could play tlou2 almost brought me to tears. My mom has problems in her vision, so listen to things like this is always nice for me, even though she do not play any kind of videogame.

[marenjones]

Of all the Japanese games, Animal Crossing needs accessibility options the most, because everyone is the target audience.

[hemangchauhan]

For developers reading the comments, THANK YOU for providing accessibility options ❤

[videoket]

This isn't about accessibility per se, but I love how Hades provides a pop-up definition for every game mechanic, anytime it comes into play. Those sidebars aren't intrusive but they're so necessary for a game with so many potentially overlapping mechanics, especially for new players.

[jaydenpaulus]

One great step this year was the Game Awards new category "Innovation in Accessibility" which brings more attention to these issues and to the games that are trying to solve them.

[biseinerheult]

Accessibility has been a huge topic the last three years. I work for a big AAA developer and we have people in the Studio actively championing accessibility, we have special “accessibility” bug categories in our bug tracking software. We’ve also had talks by disabled gamers and workshops with them.

I’ve sat down an hour with a disabled spokesperson for accessibility who played my in development stuff and commented on it. It was really eye opening to see what troubles she had and I immediately agreed to change things. It was quite interesting because it also made me question my own design decisions; I included some controls and button mappings because „that’s what you do” but never considered that they might actually cause physical discomfort to some people. It forced me to rethink old habits.

I think that over all this push for accessibility is a great thing for the industry and for us designers because we have to rethink and relearn a lot of what we have taken for granted and if almost two decades in this industry have taught me one thing it’s that we must never become complacent and always change and adapt. I think once you stop doing that you might as well leave the industry.

[TheOriginalDogLP]

I am a young, experienced gamer without disabilities, but it just makes me happy, that this topic gets more relevant from year to year and more game developers are caring about options to include all kind of gamers. Thank you a lot for you annual status report and your work on the visibilty of this problems! :)

[Alfrd_F]

I do not consider myself "disabled" as I only have mild colorblindness. I usually can play without the colorblind mode on. That being said, I always have trouble with Animal Crossing. They have a huge amount of items, which come in different colors, and I always have to stare at the screen to see if that new pair of glasses is the same color than the ones I have or a new one. I have bought several duplicate items just because I could not tell that it was the same color as another. And to make it even worse, the only place you can actually see which color the game identifies an item as is in the Catalog. So good luck figuring out if something is black, blue or purple.

I wish Mark made a while video about how the lack of accessibility options affect Animal Crossing players, there's more than enough material for a full video.

[averagechapstick]

HE'S SAYING "HI, I'M MARK BROWN" AGAIN! REJOICE!

[amandanw]

One easy thing that every game-maker can do to make their game accessible to lots of people who have disabilities that cause hearing or sensory symptoms is to let us turn off the music -- not just to turn off all sound, because of course we can play with the sound off, but what we need is to turn off just the music and keep the sounds that are important to game play, like Animal Crossing's balloons, fish bites, bugs, etc. Are you listening, Animal Crossing?! We can turn off music inside of our own house, but not when we're in villagers' houses or outdoors where most game play happens. Animal Crossing players have been begging for an option to turn off all music, but so far we've been ignored about that.

[X]

You should add the current year to the title of this video in case someone watches in the future.

[ProbablyBarney]

you should totally give a shoutout to Terry Cavanagh and his ongoing quest to give Dicey Dungeons translation options for literally every language on the planet

[AzraNoxx]

As always, I find this series a yearly standard of excellence for accessibility. There are probably many other reasons that developers adopt accessibility options, but I can't think of a more comprehensive and well presented format in games journalism and games criticism. Game Maker's Toolkit's yearly accessibility videos deserve an award for contributing to the gaming community as a whole.

[biseinerheult]

Important accessibility option for visually impaired gamers: non looping menus! Apparently if a menu doesn’t loop and also gives you an audio cue if you hit the last option in it, that allows visually impaired people to easily navigate them from memory. But if a menu loops back to the top if you reach the bottom and doesn’t give you an audio cue for it, it makes navigating them very cumbersome, as you need to leave the menu and re-enter it (kinda like having to start a pin or password new if you make on mistake while typing)