Video games have saved Cherry Thompson’s life many times, from the 1980s Rainbow Islands, which were an escape from a difficult childhood, to Pokémon Red, which provided comfort when Thompson was a homeless teenager. Games were about community, therapy, adventure and passion.
More than six years ago, Thompson suffered a stroke leading to vestibular and cognitive disabilities at the age of 31, and was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that weakens joints, skin, blood vessels, and muscles. Thompson, using his / her / its pronouns, wanted to play games to cope with pain and surgery, but found many games impossible to play without severe migraines, motion sickness, hand pain, and other barriers.
“I really, really, really fought,” says Thompson, who is also autistic with concomitant dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder affecting how they process information and play games. “But as I slowly cope with my disabilities, it was revolutionary because I realized that the problem was with the games, not mine.”
Now, Thompson, a well-known accessibility specialist and developer in Vancouver, Canada, has recently been given the opportunity to try Gears 5, a game with a long list of accessibility features that more people can use to play it. With a stronger focus on inclusivity than ever before, The Coalition Studio developed the third-person shooter and latest installment in the Gears of War series released by Xbox Game Studios in September. The game has since been widely praised for its thoughtful accessibility.
Unlike Gears of War 4, Thompson can even play Gears 5 with a new option to disable “shake” or fast camera movement that causes dizziness, nausea, and headaches. You can customize an on-screen display of information to minimize distractions and sensory overload while playing. And though they hear well, enhanced subtitles in an adjustable text size help them process information.
“I’m looking forward to playing the game more,” says Thompson, holding the controller on a Friday after killing some monsters. “Accessibility really shows that game developers are interested in their audience and understand that their players include different types of people with different experiences.”
Rod Fergusson, studio director of the Coalition, photographed on November 22, 2019, in front of the Game Studio logo in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Dan DeLong)
The Vancouver-based coalition also wanted to make Gears 5 as accessible and accessible as possible, while appealing to its seasoned fan base.
“We have a very tough franchise with many fans wearing Gears tattoos,” says Rod Fergusson, head of the Coalition studio. “How can you build such a franchise and welcome new players? How can you remove obstacles and help them enjoy the experience? One of the ways was the integrative design and the principle “for one solve and for many extend”.
At the beginning of the development, Studio 2017 hosted a two-day design sprint, attended by Thompson and others with disabilities discussing their gaming challenges, workarounds, and passions. During the Sprint, many Gears 5 accessibility ideas were rooted, including the message that the subtitles in the series had to be improved to better serve gamers who were deaf or hard of hearing.
“There were a lot of lightbulbs in our team,” says Otto Ottosson, senior multiplayer producer and Accessibility Manager at Gears 5. He was the one who brought the team members to a Microsoft bootcamp for games and accessibility where they worked with the Gaming for Everyone team and hit more disabled players.
“The players explained why they love games, and the same reasons why I love games, except that they were limited in their ability to play,” says Ottosson. “That really impressed me. I remember thinking, “That’s not good enough. We have to do better. “It was definitely the starting point for us to understand and be inspired to turn accessibility into something we took seriously.
In the past, game developers sometimes saw accessibility features only for niche audiences, Fergusson says. Good subtitles, for example, require more work, time and resources, but also appeal to many people who are not only hearing impaired. These include parents who want to play quietly while their baby is sleeping nearby, or players who play in a public space such as an airport.
Chris Robinson plays a game. (Photo courtesy of Robinson)
For Chris Robinson, a deaf-born Chicago player, the subtitles in Gears 5 are a huge improvement over many other games. Robinson has been a player since earliest childhood and encounters numerous obstacles: no subtitles, tiny text or any other player throwing him out of the team because he uses American sign language and no microphone for communication.
After watching a subtitle cutscene several years ago, he launched DeafGamersTV, a streaming channel on Twitch, to alleviate his depression and become more inclusive in games. “I felt like I could not just be mad at the screen, I had to do something,” he says.
He now enjoys the fact that the subtitles in Gears 5 contain the name of the speaker, regardless of whether a character speaks on the radio or not, the emotional context, the main sound effects and the background panel for the contrast. He appreciates that he can magnify the text and that the subtitles tell him when the music gets louder after a fight with action and calm.
“I love the way they try to” balance “the action with sound and visuals,” says Robinson, who has a tactile audio system – a vibrating vest – that lets him “feel” the action while playing. “If you want to hear something, you are aware of it and can see and feel it.”
Barrier-free features in Gears 5 have also helped Antonio Martínez, a gamer, Game Reviewer and Accessibility Advocate in Spain, who suffers from muscular atrophy of the spine. With the diagnosis of a progressive, muscle-weakening disease at the age of 3 years, he began at 15 with wheelchair access, got scoliosis and was in both hands only limited mobility. Playing can be painful and exhausting, but he loves to get in touch with friends and immerse himself in stories that make him feel like climbing mountains, jumping between rooftops and feeling free.
When Gears 5 came out, a button had to be pressed to aim a weapon, which was difficult for Martínez. “I could only play for 30 minutes until I was exhausted,” he says.
After the disability community highlighted the game’s lack of goal to switch to social media, Ottosson quickly asked an engineer to create the feature. It appeared in the game a few weeks later and allowed Martínez to play for three hours with his friend, who is visually impaired.
Antonio Martínez in front of Gears 5. (Photo courtesy of Martínez)
“It makes us so happy to enjoy a game together,” he says. “I can help with what he can not see and he can help to shoot people I can not defeat, our disability is always part of our identity, but at that moment it was not a barrier.”
Martínez was also happy to be able to re-allocate his keyboard to take into account his limited mobility, and to turn off camera shake to prevent travel sickness.
“I understand that it’s an investment for companies to ensure accessibility, but hearing my friend’s voice when he plays is amazing,” he says. “You would not believe how happy he is, if there are no accessibility features for a game, you can feel it in our voice, you can feel our hearts sinking, because the game tells us,” You can not do that. “Not because you are not capable, but because I will not let you.”
Other Gears 5 accessibility features include fully reassigning the controller, fully supporting the Xbox Adaptive Controller, moving with a single stick, turning off controller vibration, holding down a button instead of touching it quickly, and supporting color-blind People. To bring new players to the game, The Coalition also developed Jack, a playable flying support robot, and a combat training mode called Bootcamp. And there are five more game modes for all player levels.
The hard work and features contributed to a successful debut. Gears 5 attracted more than 3 million players in its launch week, making it the most-played Xbox Game Studio title in its first week since Halo 4 in 2012. Gears 5 was also the first AAA game to score a perfect score in a hard-of-hearing and to receive deaf review on the accessibility resource page. Can I play this? The site also noted the lack of destination switching; After Gears 5 added the feature, the site’s mobility rating increased its score to 9.9 (out of 10).
