Summary
Sony Santa Monicawriter and former journalist Alanah Pearce has recently (and unjustly) come under fire for a video she made titled ‘Elden Ringdlc is “TOO HARD” (it’s not)’. A clip from this video was posted onTwitterwhere she talks about disabilities and cites the lack of a pause option as a hindrance to people who have children and might need to put the game down to tend to them, as parents should be doing.
Our own Ben Sledge saidexactly thiswhen Elden Ring, and his daughter, were released two years ago.
People were pointing and laughing at how she seemed to be saying that having children is a disability, despite the fact that she was referring to a specific thing called asituational disability, which,as she later explained in a tweet, is a term used in software and game development to refer to a non-permanent situation that could stop someone from progressing. These people are ignoring the larger point she was making in the video, which is that Elden Ring, especially in the DLC, gives you tools to make gameplay easier, and using them isn’t cheating. However, despite this adjustment, it still lacks other simple accessibility tools that would make it easier for certain types of people to play it without affecting the current gameplay in any way.
If You Think Accessibility Options Are Cheats, Don’t Use Them
One point she made in the full video felt especially relevant: people with disabilities want to be able to play really hard games as well. These people aren’t asking for an easy mode that would allow them to steamroll the game, they just want a couple of simple options, like a pause button, that would make it possible for them to play. The inclusion of those options won’t hurt the experience for other players, because they can opt to use them or not, just like they can choose to use summons or Scadutree fragments. Even just a pause button could do so much – it could allow disabled people to rest their hands if they’re cramping, or for people with issues processing information quickly to stop and think.
The main source of backlash to accessibility options, especially in the case of games like Elden Ring where the brutal difficulty is the point, comes from a feeling of needing to gatekeep. Even without these options, players feel the need to position themselves as superior for playing without any of the mechanics placed in the game to make their lives easier. All power to them, but telling other people they ‘didn’t really finish the game’ if they used summons comes from a place of ego. It’s just a video game. You should feel proud of yourself for completing it the way you want to, but if you’re dunking on people for making their lives easier, I recommend touching grass.
Every Modern Accessibility Option Is A Win
I’ve seen some similar sentiment aboutDragon Age: The Veilguard’sdifficulty options, though obviously to a much smaller degree as Dragon Age is an RPG, rather than a game where the central gameplay loop requires dying hundreds of times. There are the typical difficulty settings: Storyteller, which makes combat easier for people more interested in the story, Adventurer, which balances both combat and story, Nightmare,the hardest difficulty mode that can’t be toggled out of once selected, and Unbound, which is fully customisable so players can fine tune options the way they prefer.
But The Veilguard also has accessibility options that we rarely see in other games, especially triple-As. You can adjust combat timing, enemy damage, your damage, enemy pressure, which are all things we’ve seen before, but there’s also a no-death option. Some responses to this news said that the game basically plays itself at that point, or that you might as well just watch a walkthrough, the usual stuff.
Booooo, I’m throwing tomatoes at you. More options for gamers is a good thing, and there are plenty of reasons why someone might want a no-death option. Maybe they have poor mobility in their hands, and struggle to keep up with action-style combat. Maybe it’s the first video game they’re ever playing, and they don’t really know how to use a controller yet. Maybe they just don’t like dying because they want to feel like a god. It’s really none of your business, because what other people do in a single-player game has no bearing on your experience. Play on Nightmare mode and put those Twitter fingers away.
I’d go so far as to say that most games should have accessibility options like this, especially in the RPG genre. A lot of people love this genre because of its strong storytelling, but are locked out because they don’t want to, or aren’t able, to get through combat. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is inviting all kinds of players to the game, even those who might not otherwise be able to play video games. That’s a beautiful thing. And you know what? I hope that one day, those players get to kill stuff in Elden Ring, even if it makes other people mad.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
WHERE TO PLAY
Shadow of the Erdtree is the first and only DLC expansion for FromSoftware’s groundbreaking Elden Ring. It takes players to a whole new region, the Land of Shadow, where a new story awaits the Tarnished.
