Design Game design != accessibility ?

Neptune

Member
I don't like accessibility... I mean I like what it used to be.
But it feels like gamedev accessibility is changing from "make games lots of people can play" to "make games everyone likes to play"...

This includes the things and realms the term has slowly been oozing into... Like I've seen QoL and polish masked as "accessibility".
Or a platformer having hard bosses being considered not good accessibility.
Or leaving any space for in-game ambiguity is bad accessibility.

To me accessibility means controller support, color blind modes, left-hand mouse options, language localizations etc... Things that arent required by developers, but make the game more (you guessed it) accessible.
Lately, on social media, or Steam, or comments from players of my own game - I see use of the term like a disguise for people to justify their distaste of a game or mechanic or sneakily fortify a mere opinion as a fact 🤔

Agree/disagree? Any thoughts welcome!
 
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YellowAfterlife

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It depends on specific cases. As the examples in your post are semi-anecdotal,

Say, if your game requires constantly holding a key to crouch, that may hurt for players with muscle/tissue issues.

If your game has heavy reliance on icons in UI or gameplay (1-bit abstract icons come to mind) but never explains them (not even in the manual), that can be problematic for people from different cultural backgrounds that don't read these the same way.

If your game doesn't pose itself as hardcore by any means but then you arrive to a boss and start repeatedly dying while taking a few minutes to get back there between attempts, people might call this bad accessibility, though really you've just messed your difficulty curve (in comparison, Dark Souls series do this, but also make sure to punch you in the face immediately on game start to set expectations accordingly)

Things like coyote time and input buffering can be seen as either QoL or accessibility, and are a kind of feature that's implemented right if you never noticed it (but absolutely would if they weren't there).

There's a lot to "easy to learn, hard to master"
 

Mk.2

Member
I don't think it's changing. The word "accessibility" in a game context has been used to describe features like you mentioned, but it is also used in the same way art in general is often described as accessible or not. For example, an album may be described as inaccessible due to having bizarre vocals and a low production value. It's not necessarily a bad thing, since many will like that album for those exact reasons. It's down to what the artist hopes to achieve with their art.

inaccessible
(of language or an artistic work) difficult to understand or appreciate.
"‘High’ culture is largely inaccessible to the masses"
 
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woods

Member
disabled accessibly is where my mind goes first when you talk about accessibility..

like you said, color-blind mode, off hand mouse configuration, etc.. things that can enable someone who cant physically operate a computer very well, due to lack of mobility, poor vision, etc.. these are accessibility options

===

Or a platformer having hard bosses being considered not good accessibility.
Or leaving any space for in-game ambiguity is bad accessibility.


yeah.. welcome to the world of "everyone gets a trophy and the game plays itself for you"
the days of "get gud son" are pretty much over. if its difficult, it unfortunately translates to inaccessible

its a sad thing that if a game doesnt have a fully fleshed out wiki during alpha, it is considered dead and broken and should not have been released at all...


==
unrelated side note ;o)
why the hell is everyone so obsessed with teleporting EVERYWHERE.. isnt the journey as important as the destination?
 

YellowAfterlife

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yeah.. welcome to the world of "everyone gets a trophy and the game plays itself for you"
the days of "get gud son" are pretty much over. if its difficult, it unfortunately translates to inaccessible
So, would you say that existence of easier difficulty options diminishes your experience of playing the harder ones?

Did existence of both difficulty levels and cheat codes diminish Doom (1993), destroying the FPS genre at its roots?
It didn't. People choose what's fun for them
 
So, would you say that existence of easier difficulty options diminishes your experience of playing the harder ones?
If Mount Everest had an elevator open to you and the rest of the public, taking hundreds of tourists to the top every day, do you think you'd feel exactly the same about climbing it? Would the view feel as mysterious and magical to you, or would something be missing? If you think the climb and view would feel exactly the same to you, do you think you're in the majority there? I think they'd feel different.

There's nothing wrong with games having difficulty options if the developers want them. There's also nothing wrong with the developers skipping difficulty options if that's their vision. I'm getting really sick of people acting like not making a piece of art enjoyable or accessible to literally every single person on the entire planet is a moral failing rather than an artistic choice. (Not referring to you here, Yellow, just Twitter people in general...)

Artists should make what they want!
 

Cpaz

Member
Accessability for me was always related to assisting those who are disabled or offering ways to simplify the experience for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy it. That includes things like difficulty settings at least.

To use an extreme example, I'm currently working on a game that will feature a lot of elements inherently inaccessible. From elements requiring color coordination to excessive auditory white noise.
So these game play elements should be togglable. If someone is color blind, the developer should be able to compensate. If a player is misophonic to white noise, let them disable it.

I'm also a believer of content warnings as well. But people still haven't found a good way of handling them yet, unfortunately.

People often underutilized the power of player choice through the settings menu. Let them choose what their "right way" of experiencing your vision. After all, they're the one who's going to be paying for it at the end of the day.
 
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Neptune

Member
I think difficulty options are fine, as adding most anything is...
It's when it is decided to NOT be included, and becomes a player complaint focus, masked as factual "bad design" / "bad accessibility" that I have a problem.
Note: I think complaints alone are great and fine.

"Accessibility" just seems dogmatic lately. Like somehow further handing artistic-reins to players.
 

woods

Member
So, would you say that existence of easier difficulty options diminishes your experience of playing the harder ones?
kinda yeah.. not in EVERY case of course,


world of warcraft for example..
adding LFG chat was a good thing.. helps people to get groups together faster
adding teleport to dungeon/raid not so good in my opinion.. you loose the experience of going to the dungeon, fighting your way into the end game content.
and killing the boss turns into spamfest for DPS.. who is this guy? why are we killing him? ...shuddup and stay outta the purple, you'll be fine.. quick roll for loot

the classic diablo2 town portal..
has turned into portals at EVERY city, town, village, waypoint, dungeon there is..
yeah sure.. it makes sense to have a teleport at a few major hubs in a high fantasy setting.. but come on.. its getting ridiculous ;o)

i could go alot deeper into a rant.. but this is the general idea.


...all in the name of "accessibility"



just my personal opinion ;o)
i think there is a lil too much on the instant gratification side of things
 

Nocturne

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I've yet to see a game that forces you to use any of the options so far mentioned (difficulty levels, portals, skippable bosses, etc...). It's almost always a player CHOICE, so what's the problem? I work 8 hours a day, commute another hour, and have a family... This means I have very little time to play games, and when I do I want to enjoy them, not be frustrated by them or spend the entire time that I have trying to pass a single boss fight over and over... and so I play games that respect my time and permit me to skip the things that I don't enjoy, or change the difficulty mid game, or have options like aim assist, etc... and I don't play games that I know don't have these options or that are tailored to an audience that does like this kind of "hardcore" gameplay (like Dark Souls, or VVVVVVV, etc...). Giving the player the OPTION does not take away the CHOICE. You can choose to grind through a level and not use a portal. You can choose to restart when you die instead of going to a waypoint... and if you choose to use these things then feel bad about it and criticize the devs for respecting peoples time and talents then it's you that has the problem IMHO. People play games for a million different reasons, and adding in options that can expand the amount of people that enjoy your game should not affect those people that want to play the game on a hard-core "git gud" level (and honestly, that phrase is just so insulting).

I'll be honest, I suspect that most "git gudders" don't have long working hours - or even a job - nor a family or other obligations and I'd love to hear their opinion when they're in their 40's, have just put the kids to bed after helping them with their homework while also cooking and doing housework, after an 8 hour stint at work, and have a half-hour of time to kill playing something before exhaustion kicks in and they have to go to bed... 😅

And note, that what I've said above still all falls under the title of making a game "accesible", and it doesn't even begin to cover the people that have some form of physical or psychological disability and that can still enjoy many games for many different reasons. There is nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy the story more than the action - for example - or any other segment of a game over any other segment of a game.

I also have to ask the people that are against such features... do you get upset with skippable custscenes, or skippable dialogue, or having massive amounts of books to read but not being forced to read them, in your games? Being able to skip all those things (and more) are a staple in every modern game, and they are ACCESSIBILITY options added for those players that just want to get straight into the action. Yet you don't hear from people who love to read these things and enjoy the lore in a game saying "git gud" and BE FORCED TO READ ALL THE LORE AND DIALOGUE. No, because it's a choice that is put there by the developers to encourage a wider amount of people to play the games, and the "git gud" crowd don't notice or care about it because it doesn't play into their elitist fantasies, and yet it's an accessibility option that they benefit from. ;)
 
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Neptune

Member
I'm not against the features... I'm against them being forced.

Forced being "add them or else..."
Getting trashed by review savants, or people on twitter or whatever -- which is how developers are "forced" to do anything if they want to make money and actually get their game out to people.

@Nocturne My whole opinion and this topic was that accessibility != game design, so idk why you moved it over here now, other than you swinging your mod... opinion... around.
 
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Nocturne

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I'm not against the features... I'm against them being forced -- forced being "add them or else..."
Or else what? SOme people won't buy your game? So...? If you want those people to buy your game then you'll add the option, but that's up to you... I mean, I won't buy a Dark Souls because I don't like the type of gameplay that it has. Am I forcing them to add "easy" options to that gameplay by saying I won't buy their game? No, because those that DO like that gameplay will still buy the game. It's all about communication and ensuring that you market your game correctly and ensure that the buyer knows EXACTLY what they are getting before they even start playing.

You can make a hard game if you want. You can add accessibility features if you want. Noone is "forcing" you to do anything... There are PLENTY of hardcore games out there that don't have options like the ones being described, and most of them are unapologetic about it and don't get flack for it. Boss-rush games wouldn't be boss-rush games if they permitted you to skip the boss fights, for example! These options should only be added where it makes sense to add them, and where it doesn't compromise the general vision for a game... ALso note that there are multiple ways to improve accesibility due to customer feeback, and it isn't always the way that the customer feedback thinks they want the accessibility to be improved! Here's a good example:

This dev has been requested time and again that they add a navigable mini-map to their game, mostly for accessibility reasons. They won't. They point-blank refuse, because it would mean compromising on their vision, BUT they also recognize that there is an issue with navigating the world for some users and are going to work on making that better. This is still making their game ACCESSIBLE, but doing so in a way that doesn't compromise their vision. If they were being "forced" then they'd add a minimap and move on.
 

YellowAfterlife

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If Mount Everest had an elevator open to you and the rest of the public, taking hundreds of tourists to the top every day, do you think you'd feel exactly the same about climbing it? Would the view feel as mysterious and magical to you, or would something be missing? If you think the climb and view would feel exactly the same to you, do you think you're in the majority there? I think they'd feel different.
Mountains are a pretty good example because many do have ski lifts (or, for particularly tricky locations, elevators) but this doesn't stop people from scaling them by foot or on skis (depending on season) instead of taking a zero-effort ski lift. Many mountains also have further "options" in forms of routes

Say, there's mt. Hymba in Ukraine
Hora Hymba - Google Maps
It's not a very tall mountain - 1491m, with the nearby town cozily sitting between the hills at altitude of 600m or so. The northern slope is roughly 20-25 degrees at steepest points:

Still, there are many things to do with this mountain - you could scale it in an almost straight line (starting at around 48°39'32.2"N 23°16'44.8"E - you can see countless foot tracks on the satellite view), walk along the much milder-tilted vehicle track (seen to the east, passes by a few buildings), or take a ski lift and just sit still for 25 minutes or so.

Whatever choice you make, you arrive at a little plateau at altitude of about 1130m. There's a wonderful little teahouse/cafe and a slightly less wonderful "restaurant" there. And a beautiful view!
48.644465,23.2743681 - Google Maps

From here, you can either scale the remaining 350-ish vertical meters of the mountain yourself (again with two paths) or pay to get a ride in an all-terrain vehicle.

A very funny thing about this mountain is that in the picture above, you see what you might think is the mountain top, but that is not the mountain top - so, if you are scaling the mountain by foot at summer, you'll see unsuspecting tourists thinking that they only have few hundred meters scale after riding the ski lift and then go through a range of indescribable emotions as they arrive at that point and realize that they are now 1/3 between vehicle pickup and mountain top and they have to either admit defeat and go back or overcome themselves.

At the summit, there's quite a view and usually some people setting up paraglider equipment if the weather allows

With all that said, you could take plenty of effort or zero effort, and it is up to you to decide whether you've had fun or not. Whether it's about the challenge or the view. Same goes for games
As for me, I leisurely walked up this mountain in flip-flops while on a vacation and then got sunburnt due to deciding to take a ski lift back down.
 

Neptune

Member
I think it's interesting to see advocating for this kind of thing from some of the oldies, that come from a time where games had very few release requirements.

Difficulty level seems to be it's own thing, right on the border of what constitutes accessibility.
 
@YellowAfterlife: I asked you about Mount Everest, not mountains. You didn't answer my questions! :p

Yeah, some mountains have ski lifts. Some games have difficulty options. That's fine, and I already said that. That wasn't your point I was addressing in my last post. I'm glad you had fun hiking up a mountain that had a ski lift. I've done the same, and it was definitely still fun! I'm not denying that - I'm just positing that adding a ski lift to a mountain like Everest (where difficulty is half the draw!) would change the experience for many climbers. I think most people would agree with that.

tldr, my analogy isn't "games = mountains." It's "Dark Souls = Everest," hahah!

@Nocturne: Don't blame your shameful scrubbiness on having a job. I used to work 65 hours a week and it didn't change my opinion that difficulty is a valid part of game design. When I don't have time or energy to play hard games, I just don't play them. I don't go online complaining that artists are "ableist" for making the art they want to make. 😛❤

Speaking as a fellow scrub with no time for hard games, lol. I've never beaten a Dark Souls game. They're just not for me right now. And that's fine! Also speaking as a developer whose game is going to have difficulty options. Because my vision for my game doesn't include being tough as nails for anybody who doesn't want that. I don't think developers who feel difficulty is important to their game are morally inferior to me, though, hahah! =')

Sorry this post if this post sounds a little short/scattered. I shouldn't try doing long posts on a tablet. It's so slow and annoying, lol.

Edit: Also, beautiful mountain, YellowAfterlife. Looks like a nice hike. Thanks for the pictures! =)

Edit edit: Disregard the second half of this post, Nocturne. I missed your latest post in this thread and it seems we're mostly in agreement, oops. :x
 
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woods

Member
ive never been a part of the "get gud " crowd. most of them are well.. lets just say they arent compatible with my play style ;o)

ive just watched the gaming scene in general gravitate towards a more simplistic and instant gratification type environment.. i am not a die hard go go go rush max damage kind of gamer.. i like to take my time and enjoy the content.. the entire world the devs worked so hard to deliver the atmosphere of the scenario.


the masses want a quick paced, skip to the end, accomplished mission, next! thats what sells, so thats what devs create.. i get that.


if everyone has the way super epic iconic super sword... well, it kinda looses it epicness..
these things SHOULD BE hard to acquire.. thats what makes them so epic in the first place.
 

Alice

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My general take on that is: first, decide what is your core game experience, i.e. what is the thing you really want the player to experience.

If some things get in the way of accessing/enjoying this core game experience, then determine how integral *they* are to the core experience.
High difficulty level? Probably very relevant to the core experience.
Having to walk back and forth through the same areas? Probably something the player could do without.

It's also very game-dependent as well.
For example, if colour recognition isn't part of the core experience, then it's better to design a game in a way colour recognition isn't required to discern things clearly - e.g. in a puzzle game, mark pairs of keys and doors not only with different colours, but e.g. different symbols.
On the other hand, if the colour recognition is the core experience - e.g. arranging tiles into sequences of colours forming gradients of sorts - then trying to make the entire game appealing to people with colour blindness might be a lost cause.

Likewise, if the whole point of the game is to present super-difficult challenges to the players, then adding easier difficulty levels might compromise this. It's hard to expect from a game called World's Hardest Game to include an easy mode.
On the other hand, if the core experience includes other things - like enjoying the story or exploring the world - it might be helpful to provide ways to tweak the difficulty (be it via difficulty modes or other options).

In the end, it's up to the dev to decide what kind of core experience they want to convey, and what tools and options to implement (or refrain from implementing) to make the intended core experience more accessible/enjoyable without compromising it. If you expect that given a chance the players will optimise all the fun out of the game, don't give them the chance or reward the opposite.

If as a dev you believe adding instant teleports will ruin the core game experience, just don't add them. While you're at that, complete the game at least once without any dev teleports or other debug features - if you find the travels too repetitive, there's a good chance players will find them too repetitive too.
If as a player you believe using instant teleports will ruin your enjoyment of the game, just don't use them - make your own fun! If you end up using them still, consider why is that and whether it really is such a journey/exploration-runing thing or maybe more of a feature that prevents the fun-draining repetitive travel.
 

Neptune

Member
@Alice I kind of agree, but I don't like how this blends accessibility into design -- a complex topic.
IMO accessibility seems very black and white... And has nothing to to do with likes / dislikes or how laborious a task is, or how efficient something is, or how time consuming, or irritating or anything of that sort.

I guess I'll use difficulty as an example...
The hardest game in the world isnt stopping anyone from picking up a controller and getting their a$$ destroyed, assuming they have hands, and there is controller support 😉

Lack of difficulty modes, or a fancy minimap isn't stopping players from playing.
However, as you said, if your game revolves around text and colors... Which happens to be two sections of accessibility, then it makes a lot of sense to implement accessibility into the design.

Accessibility + design sounds and looks a lot like "quality of life" to me in the majority of cases, which I think is and should be a separate domain.
 

Alice

Darts addict
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As I see it:
Accessibility, in its strict sense - removing the barriers that make game pretty much unplayable for certain people
Quality of life, separately from accessibility - making an already functional gameplay smoother and more enjoyable
Game design - both of these and more

After all, how to implement a certain accessibility aspect - or whether to implement it at all - can hardly be decoupled from design. A game can be colour-blind friendly by adding a special mode toggled in menu, by making all core sprites distinguishable from each other even without colour vision, or it can be decided that the game concept is too reliant on colour differentiation to implement such feature - all of these are design decisions.
(not saying you think accessibility isn't a part of game design, just clarifying my take)

However, certain quality of life features - like portals, minimaps and whatnot - are probably* not adding to the accessibility in the strict sense, and if people complain about lack of such things as "bad accessibility" rather than "bad game design", then I can see how it can be annoying. Also, possibly a little dodgy, since someone might deliberately use word "accessibility" to create association with accessibility in the strict sense, and when questioned about it they could claim they meant accessibility in a broader sense all along (like the "accessible art" Mk.2 mentioned).

I just haven't seen (or didn't notice) too many people bringing up "accessibility" rather than game design/quality of life to justify implementing certain feature, not to the point of being annoyed by it.
Then there's also the fact that I've seen enough people speaking about not-so-obvious things in absolute terms and with an authoritative tone, so a few random people on the Internet doing that wouldn't impress me as much? Of course, if it's a broader trend - especially with major game reviewers doing that - then it's more problematic.

*It's technically possible that e.g. a game that relies on varied environment elements rather than a minimap - but these differences in environment aren't so obvious for colour-blind people - could be made more accessible by including a minimap. But then so would changing the graphics so that differences in environment are apparent even without colour vision.
 

Cpaz

Member
I think difficulty options are fine, as adding most anything is...
It's when it is decided to NOT be included, and becomes a player complaint focus, masked as factual "bad design" / "bad accessibility" that I have a problem.
Note: I think complaints alone are great and fine.

"Accessibility" just seems dogmatic lately. Like somehow further handing artistic-reins to players.
To circle back around to this: this will be a very subjective thing from person to person and game to game.
This also points to the general difficulty in discussing accessibility.

But I think what you're describing is more so something that exists in the AAA space more so than anything. And the only reason for that is due to the sheer amount of money being punped into those properties and trying to reach the largest audience possible to get the most in terms of returns.

I also think providing a few examples of what you're describing would help me understand, because whenever I see accessibility in games nowadays, it's literally only a net positive for most if not everyone.

But maybe I'm just not familiar with games that have actively compromised their vision in favor of accessibility. 9/10 that's from publisher meddling, results in a worse game, and is probably a different topic entirely anyway.
 
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But maybe I'm just not familiar with games that have actively compromised their vision in favor of accessibility.
There was an action RPG that was released recently, where the player is on a quest to stop a sort of disease that's slowly killing everyone they know. A major mechanic was that if you failed to meet certain objectives within a time limit, NPCs would start dying permanently. It was structured so that you couldn't save everyone, and if you took too long, you couldn't save anyone.

Fairly late in development, that mechanic was changed to be optional. Too many players were getting upset that characters they liked were dying because they didn't complete the challenges in time, or spent too long enjoying the scenery or reading flavor text. To me, this seemed to be exactly the artistic point - when people need you, you have an obligation to them, and failing to meet that obligation has serious consequences. Sometimes you can't save everyone.

I have no doubt that they got a lot more players because of that change. There was an article on Vice about how much more the author enjoyed the game without the time limit, and every player review seems to specify that they turned off the time limit. But that does come at a serious cost to the artistic message of the game itself, changing it from, "Helping others means putting their needs before your own desires," to "Just to whatever you want, it'll all work out!". The message might still be there in the text of the story, but when it's not a part of the game itself it doesn't resonate - Sonic the Hedgehog is a game about running real fast, nobody cares or even noticed that the story is an environmentalist rallying cry against industrialization.

I don't fault the developers for that change. We all have bills to pay, and it's even possible by the end of development that they really thought it would be better to bring more easy joy to more people than stick with their rather downer message about obligations and consequences. However, that change - making the time limit optional - really did change the core artistic message of the game.

Personally I think as developers, we just need to accept that with difficulty comes an automatic niche status. This is the case in every medium, if it's not easy to consume most people won't consume it, no matter how rewarding the experience is. The extreme minority of people who think difficulty is a moral failing on the part of the developer, rather than just something they personally aren't interested in, is just a consequence of the billions of people on the internet - if 0.001 percent of people think that way, that's still hundreds of thousands of loud dummies.

(there's also an unfortunate tendency in the world at large right now to equate "ease of consumption" with "quality" - see everyone who wrongly thinks Aliens is a better movie than Alien - but I think this is likely to pass, an overcorrection to a gatekeeping culture that's surrounded all the arts for so long)
 

Yal

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GMC Elder
This dev has been requested time and again that they add a navigable mini-map to their game, mostly for accessibility reasons. They won't. They point-blank refuse, because it would mean compromising on their vision, BUT they also recognize that there is an issue with navigating the world for some users and are going to work on making that better. This is still making their game ACCESSIBLE, but doing so in a way that doesn't compromise their vision. If they were being "forced" then they'd add a minimap and move on.
I'm all behind him on this, I've played several games that actively suffered from knowing they had a minimap, so the devs didn't feel the need to add recognizable landmarks or make it clear where you were supposed to go in any way, making navigation painful. (One of the worst offenders being Code Vein's Cathedral area, which is the most vertical area in the game, and the map is 2D and doesn't compensate for this in any way, which means that you can't tell if two paths are connected or one is a bridge miles above the other)

(Side note, Code Vein also uses 1-bit stylized icons for everything, and it makes the GUI really hard to read! I really prefer if things like elemental damage are represented with an appropriate color (on top of iconography) so you don't need to visually parse the symbol every time and adjacent/overlapping symbols don't bleed into each other visually - total colorblindness is rare and there's still partial benefits with consistent chromography for one-color-blind people, especially if you're aware what colors blend together for red/green colorblindness and pick ones that don't)


I think the confusion you mention stems from easier and less complex games being accessible to more people, though easiness and simplicity aren't necessarily accessibility features - having games accessible to more people isn't necessarily a bad thing (more sales, y'know) but sometimes you just have to accept that something isn't for everyone. Like, most people don't want to relax with a psychological horror game that tries to actively make you feel bad after work... that's what work is for! :p



(there's also an unfortunate tendency in the world at large right now to equate "ease of consumption" with "quality" - see everyone who wrongly thinks Aliens is a better movie than Alien - but I think this is likely to pass, an overcorrection to a gatekeeping culture that's surrounded all the arts for so long)
Also IMO they're at least correlated, outside of media that actively tries to make itself harder to understand as a gimmick/selling point (i.e., House of Leaves, Cruelty Squad, Memento). Many of the "best things ever" solve this by having multiple layers, so the popcorn crew gets a decent experience while there's still plenty for the hardcore fans to dig up on repeat consumptions - The Shining's foreshadowing and inconsistencies being more disturbing than the prior regular horror experience, Undertale's metanarrative and twist ending if you actively try to achieve everything there is in it (but you can still enjoy it just for the humor on a single regular playthrough), Fight Club's twist ending changing the meaning of basically every prior scene but most people just enjoy it for the violence, etc etc. Games especially has the hurdle that the player must expend effort to experience their content, while movies and books just require you to look at them, so making your game too buggy / difficult / punishing / obtuse / inconvenient means the players won't even realize how much depth there is.
 
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