Note: This is not a topic about making video games more accessible to players living with various disabilities. Video game accessibility is an interesting and important issue, but that's not what this particular topic is about. Much has been written about diversity in video games. Video games haven't always done a great job of representing the whole spectrum of humanity that could be the protagonists (or, to a lesser extent, the villains) of their stories. Game developers have made a little progress in this area, although they tend to focus on only certain dimensions of diversity. A lot of the time, game designers' response to this criticism has been to add more youthful female characters of European/East Asian origin, frequently with body proportions that shatter the limits of human anatomy and physiology. All too often, when critics lament the lack of diversity in video games, the focus is on the way characters look - gender, sometimes race/ethnicity. It's nice to be inclusive in the external dimensions of diversity, but changing the appearance of your characters won't affect the gameplay much, and it won't necessarily lead to stronger character development. I've always felt that disabled people are under-represented in video games. Among Americans, depending on your source, 10-20% of the population is living with some kind of disability. This figure is probably higher if you include certain chronic medical attentions. No matter how you slice it, that's a large group of people, and it encompasses quite a range of conditions. Including differently-abled people in prominent roles in video games doesn't just make your games more inclusive - it also introduces some innovative gameplay possibilities. In one of my jobs, I've helped college students with various disabilities. One thing I've noticed from this job is that tasks that are second nature to most people can be a struggle for the disabled, and solving these problems often requires creative thinking. Similarly, all video games impose a set of constraints upon the protagonists' powers - if there weren't any limits on what the player could do, you wouldn't have a game. Adding unique constraints is often a major part of what makes a game innovative and original, and some of these constraints could be based on disabilities and chronic medical conditions faced by people in real life. For example, I think an art game that portrays the world as seen by a visually-impaired person could be fascinating. With limited vision, you'd have to rely on sound effects and dialogue to navigate. This would be a hard game to make, but it could be amazing if done well. There are a lot of other disabilities and chronic medical conditions that could affect both gameplay and characters' interactions with one another. I'm not calling for diversity for the sake of diversity - attempts to increase diversity just because you "should" often feel contrived and artificial. It's also important to be sensitive in portraying handicapped people in games - video games are a medium especially vulnerable to stereotypes, which don't help anybody. While a disability could make for an interesting central gameplay mechanic, there's also a lot of value in including disabled characters who don't wear their handicaps on their sleeves - since, in many cases, a disability isn't immediately noticeable unless you know the person well. This is my Verbose Video Game Thought Piece for the day. Legend has it that I might be incorporating a few of these ideas into my own Career Fantasy as part of my strategy for filling the game with a diverse and nuanced cast of characters.

I think most people would rather play some kind of alien that can't see than play a blind human. It's the same effect, but the alien is cooler. When you think about it that way, characters with disabilities are used all the time; it's just that you don't see it as a disability, you just see it as a normal part of what the character can and can't do. So I don't think, from a game design standpoint, that looking to disabilities for inspiration is a particularly useful idea. I would also like to point out that if a game feels like it's only difficult because of the limitations of your character, that can be really frustrating. Think of Castlevania, for example. I know a lot of people love this game, but even the most hardcore Castlevania fan has to admit that the Medusa heads are just annoying. That's because Simon can only whip straight in front, and this limitation makes dealing with an enemy that goes in a sin-wave pattern very difficult in a way that feels unfair. The same sort of thing applies to enemies on the ground when you can't duck and shoot, moving platforms when you can't control yourself in the air, etc. So if you design a game where you can't see, you should design it in such a way that players don't [i]want[/i] to see, because they just don't think about the limitation.

Kenshi from Mortal Kombat is in fact completely blind. He is a master of the arts of Tai Chi, Judo, and Ninjutsu, and possess the power of psychokinesis. Granted, this doesn't exactly count from the player's perspective, since just by looking at the screen, they are able to see. I have found however, it is possible to play more recentMortal Kombat games with no screen, and nothing more than a pair of stereo headphones. It's not easy, but doable, if you can identify where the sounds are coming from. Attempting this in Mortal Kombat deception on PS2, I've successfully managed to lure my opponent into the death trap in hell's foundry with the screen turned off.... Granted, I would jump in it more often than I would manage this one.

It's funny you mentioned vision impairment, because in [b]Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain[/b] that was very nearly an extremely well-done gameplay element. Due to the brain damage suffered by the protagonist, Venom Snake, whenever you suffer a particularly severe injury, his vision becomes impaired - colours washout and change hue for a period of time. Just to make sure you get this, you are forced into suffering one of said injuries during the game's tutorial to see its effects. There's even a cassette tape where the characters talk about it. Neato neato, but then, in the part of the game that was unfinished, you're fighting a character in a bright red jumpsuit and gas mask, but at the same time, you don't want to kill him. There's a whole bunch of other guys in white jumpsuits and gas masks who [i]are[/i] bad running around. They're trying to capture red-suit-guy, and you're kinda trying to protect him sorta. Well, at one point, Snake gets bonked on the head. His left hand - which is normally bright red - is visibly colourless. Okay, so Snake can't see red anymore. Hey! Guys in white jumpsuits! Shoot 'em before they get to red-suit-guy! Bang! Bang! Bang- oh no! That WAS red-suit-guy! Why wasn't he wearing red- ohhhhhhhhhhh... This didn't make it into the game (partly due to time though probably also because red-suit-guy is technically a [i]child[/i]) but it's an effective example of using a disability in the medium to tell the story. (MGS3 also had a reference to Big Boss's inability to smell - [i]because the player can't.[/i]) Beyond that, I think Ace Attorney's generally done an alright job portraying various disabilities. Granted, they're always to make [i]murder cases[/i] more interesting, but how many games have a character with prosopagnosia? And force you to figure out that they have it using evidence? I think that's kinda cool. (Also, funnily enough, had a character that can't see red normally. What a coinkidink.) And then there's Rogue Legacy, which has stuff like colourblindess, near-sightedness (which blurs visibility farther away from the player), and whatnot as you continue down a hereditary chain. Mostly vision-related disabilities, I've noticed...

This is a bit off topic, but game accessibility has always been an interesting subject for me. While I'm not colorblind myself, approximately 8% of guys are colorblind in some shape or form. All too often, games rely solely on color to communicate important mechanics. So if you have deuteranopia, your puzzle game might be an [url=https://cdn.tutsplus.com/gamedev/authors/michael-james-williams/HoneyBeeMatch_Colorblind_UI.jpg]unplayable mess[/url]. Generally, there are two ways to fix this: good visual design and good sound design. For good visual design, it's as simple as differenciating things with more than color. Making a puzzle game? Make sure all of the pieces have different shapes. Making a platformer? Give those recolored enemies a slight design change. Even if your player isn't colorblind, these kinds of additions will go a long way towards improving clarity for the average player. In developing the GemSet tileset for Dwarf Fortress, I've had people thank me for being the only tileset that's playable for ageing eyes. You can also take the direct approach and add an explicit [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CavKxQG7WsA]color-blindness mode[/url] to your game. There are drag-and-drop shaders out there which handle all of that for you. Use them. As for good sound design, this applies more to 3D games. Surround sound and lots of audio ques can greatly improve a player's experience. A rather famous case is MegaTgarrett who, blind from birth, played through the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmmqarQRSSE]entirety of Ocarina of Time[/url] after months of practice. And again, my previous point still stands. Very few will *absolutely need* these features but everyone can benefit from them. I have perfect (albeit corrected) vision, but I love the sound design of Bioshock and the ability to hear enemies far before I see them. A bit more on-subject, I've always wanted to make a roguelike in which the player is utterly blind. Slow, turn-based games are a good fit for those without vision. The basic idea is that you're a vampire exploring a dark crypt. You have to navigate by feel and send out minions to scout out an area for you. You'd also get little "hints" about what's inside adjacent tiles, kind of like [url=http://osric.com/wumpus/]Hunt the Wumpus[/url]. I don't know if sighted players would have the patience to play through something like that, but you never know until you try!

As someone that has a disability myself, I have to say that I'm honestly kind of in the middle about this. I suffer from a visual impairment that prevents enough information passing from my eyes to my brain because my optic nerves didn't fully develop. When I try to explain what I see to people, I basically have to say that while they see the world in 1080p, I can only see it in 480p. I've also attended a camp for the visually impaired since I was young, and it's worth noting that I am on the much more sighted end of the spectrum. Here's the problem with using a visual disability in particular. VI comes with a much greater risk of cognitive disability, and I am very fortunate to have not suffered that fate since my disability does involve nerves connected to my brain. However, I have also seen many that ended up a lot worse than I. I have nothing against CD (Cognitively Disabled) people, but making them, and certain kinds of VI people the protagonists of games just doesn't make logical sense in both a lore and gameplay standpoint. Heck, if I wanted to make a game about my own disability, it would be a low resolution 3D game with the peripheral areas of the screen blurred. What use to the gameplay is that other than "Oh yeah the protagonist is disabled, how diverse!"? Personally, I think Overwatch is the best game when it comes to a cast of diverse characters, in both disabilities and ethnicity. Characters like Reinhardt, Torbjorn, and Ana all only have one eye (or working eye in Reinhardt's case), and are thus visually impaired for it. In fact, Symmetra is canonically autistic, as stated in the supplementary comics that Blizzard has put out. These disabilities don't influence gameplay, but they do influence the characters' personalities and development. Symmetra's autism is the reason why she's essentially a genius and obsessed with geometric perfection. While Torbjorn and Reinhardt don't mention their disabilities, Ana does. When confronted by Mercy at the beginning of a match about "procedures that could restore her eye," Ana retorts saying that she's comfortable with what happened and what she is now, imperfections and all. And I think the personalities of these characters speaks louder than any gameplay elements based around disabilities can. Don't forget that while games can be a way for people to experience a narrative themselves, they can also convey powerful emotion, evoke relation between the player and protagonist, and sympathy for the protagonist's situation through narrative rather than the gameplay as well.

A lot of people do live with disabilities in their daily lives, and I think having them be apart of a narrative removes the stigma that might be against that particular disability. It's interesting for the narrative for sure, especially from a gameplay standpoint. Of course you're right Vinny, to not place it there for the sake of being there. Placing a character with a kind of disability that hinders them through the narrative can really change the tone of a game depending on what you say or how you make the characters behave. In some lights it can be difficult to really place something without it being harmful or toxic by having it cross a line or boundary of some sort, depending on how severe the case is. Some disabilities can be more severe and even crippling, and tying it into a gameplay element can really get the creative juices going. Also, just because I can: Katawa Shoujo (a visual novel) is basically a game all about people with disabilities.

the first thing that comes to mind is lester the unlikely, a 16 bit game whose main character is an average joe with no special powers. he can't jump very high, can't fall from very high, dies from only a few hits, can only attack with limp physical attacks or by picking stuff up like rocks, and automatically runs from monsters which he thinks are too hard for him to handle. it's not a very fun game, but for me it really puts into perspective just how superhuman a lot of supposedly human video game characters are. for example, look at any fps protagonist with auto-regenerating health who can jump super high and sprint great distances without getting tired. my point is, perhaps before video games start focusing on main characters with disabilities they should explore the extent of regular human abilities, which lester the unlikely so boldly attempted to do in the 16-bit days.

Lester the Unlikely would've been interesting if it were designed well. But that's for another time. Most people who play video games don't want to feel gimped, they want to feel empowered. You could maybe make a few interesting games where the main character is blind or suffering from Parkinson's, but they'll be very niche. There's certainly room in the industry to make games like those, though, but I haven't seen them.

Isn't it that only every 4th person is mentally completely healthy? I wouldn't know as it might've been a bogus statistic (like most of them), but 10-20% sounds a bit low to me - I guess it depends on how severe it has to be before you count it. Cliax Codec has a fair share of people with disabilities (as in almost everyone), but it's neither done to enhance gameplay nor to add diversity. In fact, I hate forced in diversity. For instance, I don't like dark skin so there isn't a single black person in Cliax. The reason Cliax is full of disabilities is mainly because the cast was inspired by real-life people with those disabilities, plus I think it's a nice story element to see superheroes struggle with mental issues. That said, a game focusing entirely around the concept of disabilities sounds nice. Didn't Rogue Legacy or what it was called partially do that?

[quote="DJ Coco"]Cliax Codec has a fair share of people with disabilities (as in almost everyone), but it's neither done to enhance gameplay nor to add diversity. In fact, I hate forced in diversity. For instance, I don't like dark skin so there isn't a single black person in Cliax.[/quote] This is... quite the statement. Especially for it to be in a topic about disabilities. Nevermind that a character having dark skin should be incidental anyway.

Yeah, my point exactly. The point I'm framing is that this kind of stuff should be incidental rather than forced in for it to feel natural.

Is the implication here that dark skin is a handicap? That's kind of deep, in a way. Cause of racism and all.

[quote="DJ Coco"]For instance, I don't like dark skin[/quote] Uh... no offense but isn't this a [i]touch[/i] racist?

[quote="DJ Coco"][b]I don't like dark skin[/b] so there isn't a single black person in Cliax.[/quote] that's quite a statement you got there, coco

uh oh I don't think I have to say something about that lol

Personal preference =/= racism

it does actually

[quote="DJ Coco"]Personal preference =/= racism[/quote] No. You don't get to dismiss a statement as "personal preference" when at least 4 people found it offensive. I don't care if you're an administrator. Go on, explain to everyone--particularly Strikeforcer and other black MFGGers--why a statement of you not liking their skin color is just "personal preference" and not ignorant tactlessness at best.

I'm pretty sure Coco meant it along the lines of "I am not personally attracted to it" much like how I would say "I am not personally attracted to red hair" Everybody has a different opinion as to what is physically attractive, after all I will agree this was not the best topic to bring it up in and expecting people to [i]not[/i] take it as a racist remark was rather naive