Accessibility Isn't Easy: What 'Easy Mode' Debates Miss About Bringing Games to Everyone

ign.com:

The discussion around difficulty and accessibility in games is often reduced to two opposing ideals. One side argues against the inclusion of varying difficulty modes in games like From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or Sloclap’s Sifu, often citing artistic direction and developer’s goal to create a punishing experience, in which adding other difficulty modes would “ruin”. Conversely, many believe more options, which are often boiled down in online discourse to the addition of an ‘Easy Mode,’ will open games to a wider audience, allowing disabled people to effectively play and enjoy challenging games. But the reduction of the accessibility discussion to ‘Easy Mode’ obscures what many are actually advocating for, which is much much broader than just adding a single, easier difficulty setting. A wholesale approach to accessible game design should be taken to better let players of all disabilities and skill levels more easily play games, and it can be done without preventing players who want that challenge from experiencing any given game as they wish.

Accessibility is uniquely personal, and what works for one disabled player may not be applicable to another. Despite featuring more common options like full control remapping, subtitle sizing, and varying colorblind modes than ever before, modern games may still contain numerous unintentional barriers that create a challenge developers did not mean to implement. So as the launch of From Software's Elden Ring approaches and the discourse around accessibility will arise once again, let’s break down what players and advocates are often looking for when saying these particularly punishing games need more options to let more players enjoy them.

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