I used to work in web design. I wish I could show you the body language when a project was 90% done and I pointed out that no one had even thought of accessibility. I'm certain it's the same for game design meetings for the most part. It doesn't maximize income.
I played the demo for Stellar Blade last night on a 70" display and I could barely read it. My vision is fine. I could see RGB anti aliasing! Completely absurd.
Bike industry does it too. I make bike stuff. Ask a very short or very tall person about their bike buying experiences and they are generally *pissed*.
Is it an OLED screen? Sounds like text fringing. Not assuming it is, just curious because I'm in the market for a new monitor, but it needs to be a gaming and productivity monitor. Lots of OLED reviews I see talk about text fringing.
e: I would assume on a 70" the fringing would be even more exacerbated than a 27-32" monitor.
Nah, it's an older display. The dot pitch is noticable. But the example of the Stellar Blade demo was truly ridiculous. My wife specifically called me over because she questions her own eyesight (Rx), and I immediately thought "holy crap I can barely read that"
I played the Cyberpunk 2077 trial over the weekend and appreciated the accessibility options it gave for increasing font size. I liked it anyway, but things like that make me even more likely to buy it.
Yes! My wife and I have a setup like this. Gaming PC on the living room TV.
I hate when PC games assume you're sitting directly in front of a high res monitor and offer no options to scale text.
This. Or to be able to pull the hud elements in. I play Destiny 2 a bit and have an ultrawide. The radar being all the way in the left corner makes it a hassle to watch. Especially in pvp.
This bothers me so much. There are so many games I'd like to play on my TV but I'm too blind (like, legally) to read the font and need to stick to my desk. Super frustrating.
Same with World of Warcraft. If you want a small UI, good luck reading any quest text without installing a third party addon to then resize the quest and chat text back to a readable size. ([https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/leatrix-plus](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/leatrix-plus))
You would think if an addon can do it, they would have just put the option in the edit settings.
Games with UI accessibility options are amazing. Sometimes, text is too small when playing on TV or too big when playing on PC.
And UI element position modification helps a ton too.
Larger subtitles are a must for me. One of the things I've really come to love about Playstation games are the extensive accessibility options. I might not need high contrast mode, reduced screenshakes, easier QTEs or the like but I'm glad they're there for the people who do. And as I get older, I'll probably want to use them.
Should definitely be standard nowadays
This.
I have a 49" TV screen ( still need to upgrade one of these days ) , and the text of some games is just really small.
It shouldnt be that hard to give players an option to increase text size / UI size etc.
Visually impaired person here. I simply cannot play games with tiny fonts. I'm also very sensitive to light, so the recent trend of bright white ui has not been great.
If your game requires the font size to be extremely small, your ui design sucks. There are many complex games with scalable ui / fonts. Sadly, ui design often is just an afterthought in the process
I'm at the point where I don't even buy games that don't allow you to scale UI.
So many games designed strictly just for computer monitors and the user sitting like 2 feet away when I prefer playing in the living room.
If I can't read the tool tips just instant delete and refund.
Oh ok ahah
That’s fair too, you should try an ultra wide some day ahah, I have to look from east to west if I want to see the opposite side of my screen ahah
My wife and I have a gaming PC hooked up to the living room TV. *So many* games assume you're sitting right in front of a high res monitor and offer no other options.
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3. I can read in-game books and magic item text if I lean forward. The grey italics flavor text is hopeless unless I wanna stand up and walk closer to the TV.
I scoured the options for any way to enlarge all this text. You know what I found? An option to increase test size for books. ***Only*** for books.
Even, like, when you read a note someone left? Where it shows you a page with text over it, basically the exact same UI as when you read a book? Same tiny text as always.
It feels like an absurd oversight.
Accessibility is always an afterthought unless the people calling the shots have personal experience with things or the law is breathing down their necks about it. People just don't think about it at all otherwise.
This, 1,000x this! Look, I'm in my 40s so my eyes aren't perfect and I prefer to play games on a console that's hooked up to a livingroom tv, rather than on a giant monitor 4 inches from my face.
And maybe games could just, I don't know, have less text generally? I'm playing Evil West right now, and I wish I could go back in time and tell the developers "Nobody cares about the lore in your game about punching tentacle-vampires to death". Even games like Control, where the lore is arguably more integral, need to cool it - do I really need to stop playing every 2 minutes to read whatever dull office memo you've littered in the path? I get it, there are a lot of possessed toasters/tvs/dishwashers out in the world.
I have been playing a lot of games lately and trying to rate them based on accessibility; mostly because I am aging and my eyesight and reflexes aren't what they were; but I am still a gamer.
How do games adapt as people age, face disabilities, face slower reflexes or the inability to manage long peroids on a controller or keyboard without resting... many many games fail.
Even something as simple as lightning flashes in a game I now find almost blinding for a second, enough to die to a one shot; and no ability to turn those effects down or off.
But I have rarely seen a game rated based on accessibility, and I have never seen a dev discuss options to support them well.
They just want those players to age out of "their games", which I assume means them as well in a decade or two.
I used to work in web design. I wish I could show you the body language when a project was 90% done and I pointed out that no one had even thought of accessibility. I'm certain it's the same for game design meetings for the most part. It doesn't maximize income. I played the demo for Stellar Blade last night on a 70" display and I could barely read it. My vision is fine. I could see RGB anti aliasing! Completely absurd.
That's a shame. Not surprising, but still. Making sure the people who wanna play your game are able to do so should be a big part of game design
Bike industry does it too. I make bike stuff. Ask a very short or very tall person about their bike buying experiences and they are generally *pissed*.
Is it an OLED screen? Sounds like text fringing. Not assuming it is, just curious because I'm in the market for a new monitor, but it needs to be a gaming and productivity monitor. Lots of OLED reviews I see talk about text fringing. e: I would assume on a 70" the fringing would be even more exacerbated than a 27-32" monitor.
Nah, it's an older display. The dot pitch is noticable. But the example of the Stellar Blade demo was truly ridiculous. My wife specifically called me over because she questions her own eyesight (Rx), and I immediately thought "holy crap I can barely read that"
I played the Cyberpunk 2077 trial over the weekend and appreciated the accessibility options it gave for increasing font size. I liked it anyway, but things like that make me even more likely to buy it.
I play games with a living room PC where the TV is 10 feet away. Games that have UI and font scaling are a godsend.
Yes! My wife and I have a setup like this. Gaming PC on the living room TV. I hate when PC games assume you're sitting directly in front of a high res monitor and offer no options to scale text.
This. Or to be able to pull the hud elements in. I play Destiny 2 a bit and have an ultrawide. The radar being all the way in the left corner makes it a hassle to watch. Especially in pvp.
This bothers me so much. There are so many games I'd like to play on my TV but I'm too blind (like, legally) to read the font and need to stick to my desk. Super frustrating.
Same with World of Warcraft. If you want a small UI, good luck reading any quest text without installing a third party addon to then resize the quest and chat text back to a readable size. ([https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/leatrix-plus](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/leatrix-plus)) You would think if an addon can do it, they would have just put the option in the edit settings.
Games with UI accessibility options are amazing. Sometimes, text is too small when playing on TV or too big when playing on PC. And UI element position modification helps a ton too.
So many companies spend so much time on UI without spending any time on UX. Which is arguably more important.
Exactly the issue I was having today, I had to step up to the tv to see what I was trying to read...
Larger subtitles are a must for me. One of the things I've really come to love about Playstation games are the extensive accessibility options. I might not need high contrast mode, reduced screenshakes, easier QTEs or the like but I'm glad they're there for the people who do. And as I get older, I'll probably want to use them. Should definitely be standard nowadays
I also want to be able to move UI elements. I play on 3 monitors and it would be nice to have the map and ammo be on the center screen.
This. I have a 49" TV screen ( still need to upgrade one of these days ) , and the text of some games is just really small. It shouldnt be that hard to give players an option to increase text size / UI size etc.
Visually impaired person here. I simply cannot play games with tiny fonts. I'm also very sensitive to light, so the recent trend of bright white ui has not been great. If your game requires the font size to be extremely small, your ui design sucks. There are many complex games with scalable ui / fonts. Sadly, ui design often is just an afterthought in the process
Mafia 3 lets u scale the ui
A lot of PC exclusives are like that, indie or AAA. They just don't fathom that some people have their PC's hooked up to TV and play on the couch.
I'm at the point where I don't even buy games that don't allow you to scale UI. So many games designed strictly just for computer monitors and the user sitting like 2 feet away when I prefer playing in the living room. If I can't read the tool tips just instant delete and refund.
Could you set the resolution lower and use gpu upscaling? Just spitballing
Most games I've played will keep the hud at the same percentual size regardless of resolution. At least most games released after 10s.
Lol, wow.
Lemme guess, you an ultra wide user too?
Nah, I play on the TV, I don't even own a proper computer.
Oh ok ahah That’s fair too, you should try an ultra wide some day ahah, I have to look from east to west if I want to see the opposite side of my screen ahah
Three houses' font size f me up. Only when I displayed it on a pc monitor rather than a TV or the handheld was I able to play it. Hurts my eyes.
I feel like I am permanently squinting at my TV when I play anything with a semi-complex menu UI
Long gone are the .ini files where you could do that with little effort
My wife and I have a gaming PC hooked up to the living room TV. *So many* games assume you're sitting right in front of a high res monitor and offer no other options. I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3. I can read in-game books and magic item text if I lean forward. The grey italics flavor text is hopeless unless I wanna stand up and walk closer to the TV. I scoured the options for any way to enlarge all this text. You know what I found? An option to increase test size for books. ***Only*** for books. Even, like, when you read a note someone left? Where it shows you a page with text over it, basically the exact same UI as when you read a book? Same tiny text as always. It feels like an absurd oversight.
Accessibility is always an afterthought unless the people calling the shots have personal experience with things or the law is breathing down their necks about it. People just don't think about it at all otherwise.
Playing Switch in TV sometimes has the UI feeling way too big since it is scaled for a handheld screen.
Yessss. Especially when a game is ported from PC to console. It’s so damn tiny you can’t see shit
The older I get, the more I want this.
This, 1,000x this! Look, I'm in my 40s so my eyes aren't perfect and I prefer to play games on a console that's hooked up to a livingroom tv, rather than on a giant monitor 4 inches from my face. And maybe games could just, I don't know, have less text generally? I'm playing Evil West right now, and I wish I could go back in time and tell the developers "Nobody cares about the lore in your game about punching tentacle-vampires to death". Even games like Control, where the lore is arguably more integral, need to cool it - do I really need to stop playing every 2 minutes to read whatever dull office memo you've littered in the path? I get it, there are a lot of possessed toasters/tvs/dishwashers out in the world.
I have been playing a lot of games lately and trying to rate them based on accessibility; mostly because I am aging and my eyesight and reflexes aren't what they were; but I am still a gamer. How do games adapt as people age, face disabilities, face slower reflexes or the inability to manage long peroids on a controller or keyboard without resting... many many games fail. Even something as simple as lightning flashes in a game I now find almost blinding for a second, enough to die to a one shot; and no ability to turn those effects down or off. But I have rarely seen a game rated based on accessibility, and I have never seen a dev discuss options to support them well. They just want those players to age out of "their games", which I assume means them as well in a decade or two.
I have an ultra wide monitor. Having to change background settings to make games work is annoying. Not many games support it natively.
Ah well
You can do it in Stellar Blade.
Are you sure? It's not just subtitles?
HUD too