[games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8

Wed Jun 20 13:57:40 EDT 2012

Linking in with this, I've just been trying out Rockstar's first Xbox 360 game (a table-tennis game). On the easiest setting, I've barely won a point yet. It's stupidly hard on easy. This is where a lot of mainstream developers get it so wrong. Many just can't see beyond a very narrow range of difficulty level adjustment. Some are seeing the light as you say, Lynsey, which is positive. Not enough though.

Perhaps our mantra should be there's no such thing as too easy (for many players).

And just in defence of Atari, I think at their best, they really did take difficulty levels into account. The VCS version of Ms. Pac-Man allowed you to choose how many ghosts you went up against from one to four (simple, but so effective). This was one of their games with a "Special Feature" accessibility option. Missile Command allowed you to play the game slowed right down. Most games had easier versions, and a way to tweak things to make play fairer. The simple controls helped a lot too of course. Even in the arcade I think they did some great things, such as Marble Madness having 60/90 seconds to play no matter how bad you were at it, and skipping you forward a little bit when you struggled too much at times (maybe that's my imagination).

Something that may make developers think, is that for some players, using emulators with pirated versions of their games, are the only way to play them at a more bearable tempo/difficulty level. MAME is brilliant using the Cheats to make play easier.

Barrie

From: Lynsey Graham 
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 4:44 PM
To: 'IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List' 
Subject: Re: [games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8

It's very difficult to get right - for a lot of action games, the sliding scale from easy to hard is normally:

Easy: Player has lots of health, enemies have low health, player hits hard, enemies hit soft

Medium: Player has less health, enemies have more, enemies take less damage from player attacks, enemies hit harder

Hard: Player has low health, enemies have high health, enemies require a lot damage from the player, player has to evade enemy attacks

This goes some level towards addressing difficulty level, but is a very basic way of doing it. For example, God of War (like Devil May Cry) would automatically lower the difficulty if you died a certain number of times, so the enemies would be easier.  Which was fine... if you kept on dying to enemies.  However, if you were good at the combat but stuck on the infernal spiked rotating pillars for two hours, it didn't really help much.

There are a few games that have taken a better approach - Street Fighter has always been pretty good with the adjustable speeds, handicaps and difficulties, but the recent versions have also included a simple mode to allow players to perform moves that would normally require complex button combinations. Silent Hill 2 allowed you to change the puzzle and combat difficulties separately.  World of Warcraft has three different raid difficulties where the boss tactics and abilities differ.  

I think developers are coming around to the idea of making their cater to a wider audience, such as Warcraft having different levels of raiding complexity, Jennifer Hepler from Bioware saying that she wishes there was a method of skipping combat sections so she could focus on the narrative/RPG parts of the game, just as many games allow people who are only interested in combat to skip cutscenes, and LA Noire having skippable action sections, etc.

It's interesting about the Xploder systems - the modern ones aren't cheats as such, but game saves, so although they'll allow you to access any previously unlocked content they won't actually alter the difficulty.  As it says on their site:

Q: I bought the Xploder Cheat Saves for XBOX 360, but I cannot find any cheats.
A: This is software designed to manage Game Saves (Cheat Saves) not Cheat Codes. Some of the game saves do have 'cheat-like' features. For example, you may start the game with all weapons, have all levels unlocked etc.

So it's not so much 'cheating' in that it's not altering the mechanics of the game experience itself - rather, it's essentially the same as getting someone else to play the game through for you. It only makes it easier to play if the game has been designed to allow a second play on the same difficulty through with any unlocked items.  Which is different from the older generation Xploder systems that would let you change the game experience itself by providing infinite health/time/ammo, or altering the speed.  :(  

From: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Sandra Uhling
Sent: 20 June 2012 15:52
To: 'IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8

Hi,

we need a new design point of view: Design for all from the beginning, including accessibility of course.

I really looooove the idea to make a game unbelieveable easy to unbelieveable difficult.

That would also be amazing for hardcore gamers J

Best regards,

Sandra

Von: games_access-bounces at igda.org [mailto:games_access-bounces at igda.org] Im Auftrag von Ian Hamilton
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. Juni 2012 16:48
An: games_access at igda.org
Betreff: Re: [games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8

Yep totally agree. If you skip back 20 years or so to old Atari and Nintendo games it was all about brutal fixed difficultly, three lives then you're out, and as a result there was very high demand for people to hack away and find out the developers' back doors that they had put in for testing purposes. 

Since then developers have gradually started to realise that having to give up due to impossible barriers is not what makes a game fun, so now you often have check-points, choice of difficultly levels etc.. Although it's by no means there yet, at least that's one area that there has been some progress in!

> From: games_access-request at igda.org
> Subject: games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8
> To: games_access at igda.org
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:00:06 -0400
> 
> Send games_access mailing list submissions to
> games_access at igda.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> games_access-request at igda.org
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> games_access-owner at igda.org
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of games_access digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
> 1. cheating also for consoles? (Sandra Uhling)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:05:30 +0200
> From: "Sandra Uhling" <sandra_uhling at web.de>
> Subject: [games_access] cheating also for consoles?
> To: "IGDA GA-SIG Emailliste" <games_access at igda.org>
> Message-ID: <003a01cd4ec3$d8ace090$8a06a1b0$@de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I learnt that there are also cheating-stuff for consoles.
> http://www.spieletipps.de/help/display/id/20/topicid/2/
> 
> Well I would say this shows that there is a need for Design for all....
> 
> Also there are some more people who use cheats:
> tester, PR guys, journalists, age rating, etc ...
> 
> Why not make Design for all from the beginning? ;-)
> 
> 
> With kind regards,
> Sandra
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> games_access mailing list
> games_access at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
> 
> End of games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 8
> ********************************************

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
games_access mailing list
games_access at igda.org
http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist7.pair.net/pipermail/games_access/attachments/20120620/e11eb2a0/attachment.htm>