INTERVIEW WITH MARIJN RONGEN OF CANIPLAYTHAT.COM

I FOUND MARIJN RONGEN WHILE PERUSING CANIPLAYTHAT.COM, A fantastic resource regarding accessibility in video games. Marijn is an autistic, self-employed web developer and accessibility advocate who prefers to work behind the scenes. They have played games since the 1980s, “a great escape from everyday life that’s often affected by childhood cancer,” they explained to me. I had an email exchange with Marijn in July 2021, and this is an edited version of that conversation.

QUESTION: What is CanIPlayThat?

MARIJN: CanIPlayThat? at its core is a website that reviews games for their accessibility, in particular for aspects where games intersect with the disabilities of the reviewers themselves. This is to inform gamers if they would be able to play the game, or if they should save their money for something else they can play. We also feature articles on how games positively affect the lives of disabled gamers.

Aside from disabled gamers, a large part of our audience consists of developers. They take our criticism seriously because we not only say what is wrong, but also why, and how it may be improved. Through this we have built valuable relationships with many developers and have become an important voice in the accessibility community. Recently we also started giving workshops to studios to help them make accessibility a core consideration in their productions and marketing.

My involvement at CanIPlayThat? started with an offer to Courtney Craven, one of the website’s founders, to provide the site with a better dark mode. At the time, the site used a so-called accessibility overlay to provide a dark mode, as it was a requested feature. An overlay was the only way to achieve it without technical knowledge, but, as is often the case, easy solutions often introduce other issues. The paradox of such overlays being that they often make websites less accessible. Since that relatively little change, I kept working on improving the site, and that evolved into me being in charge of website operations. This involves translating our ideas to website functionality, optimizing the site for speed and compatibility, and ensuring everything we do is as accessible as possible.

QUESTION: Has accessible design improved in video games in recent years? If so, how?

MARIJN: It definitely has. Game development increasingly considers accessibility from the start of development, and often the first few patches include accessibility improvements when it turns out things were overlooked. More and more dedicated accessibility positions and even teams are being created now, while in the past studios may have only had a few people championing accessibility internally. Disabled players are being invited to participate in the design process when they would have been forgotten before. This is very visible during GaConf, a conference dedicated to games accessibility where developers, advocates, and players all come together to share their knowledge and experiences.

We are not the only website dedicated to accessibility, although I do think we have a leading role. Mainstream outlets have been more likely to report on accessibility as well. Studios start releasing information related to accessibility before launch, sometimes even before we ask them about it! This all shows accessibility has become a big factor in games, from development to marketing and postlaunch support. And it’s worth noting this is not the exclusive domain of AAA developers with huge budgets, as some of the most accessible games are indie developments.

A recent trend we see developing is features being specifically designed to be accessible, removing the need for feature-specific accessibility options. You are now much more likely to find a game that supports different types of inputs, UI fine tuning, colorblind options, sound designed specifically to aid blind players, and customizable captions and other visual cues. Subtle hints and reminders, clear objectives, and options to remove time restrictions help players with cognitive issues from getting stuck in certain games. Even the hotly debated difficulty is increasingly a gameplay aspect you can fine-tune to both your preferences and abilities.

QUESTION: What are some of the biggest mistakes in games that make them inaccessible to players, especially to players of varying abilities?

MARIJN: I think one of the biggest mistakes is the assumptions people have about players’ abilities, situations, and experiences. It often seems that mistakes are made when different experiences aren’t considered. A common example of this is very small or incomplete captions. Hearing developers sitting close to big screens don’t have trouble reading those, and probably won’t notice missing captions because they were able to hear the sounds. This very literally doesn’t translate to a d/Deaf gamer sitting on their couch multiple feet away from a moderately sized screen. Another is unnecessarily complicated control schemes. A developer with full use of their hands won’t have problems with actions that involve tapping in quick succession or those that require holding a button for extended periods. In the real world, controls like these exclude many players from playing comfortably or at all.

In terms of experience, often it’s wrongly assumed the player will know how to control a game and what the intended objective is. Any game is potentially the first game in a genre for a player, or their first game at all. So onboarding through hints and clear tutorials is still very important but often overlooked. A now-famous example is a controversial playthrough of Cuphead where the reporter got stuck in the start of the tutorial for a few minutes. Many ridiculed the reporter because of it, but it demonstrated the instructions weren’t clear enough because it was assumed the player would know to combine two different actions.

Another mistake is pointing to the availability of system-level accessibility features such as button remapping and then saying games themselves don’t need them. [Note: system-level features refer to options managed by the game console instead of by the game.] As Microsoft’s Bryce Johnson likes to describe them, system-level features are a safety net. They are good to have for when things go wrong, but it would be better if things didn’t go wrong at all.

QUESTION: If you could make all video games include at least one accessibility feature, what would it be?

MARIJN: My default answer here is always button remapping. Even for games with the simplest control schemes, like a one-button game, it is important to give the player the freedom to set that control to a button or other input method they can comfortably interact with. It’s almost incredible to see games still release with no or partial remapping options. Remapping is not always easy, especially when the control scheme is complicated, and remapping hasn’t been considered from the start. Bungie has proven with Destiny 2 (Bungie, 2017) that even then it is possible. Their remapping out of necessity includes the option to map in-game actions to inputs like single taps, double taps, holds, and even chords (pressing multiple buttons). This way you can use a limited set of controls for multiple actions. If I can give a piece of advice here, it is for games to keep the essential control scheme as simple as possible and include remapping from the start of development.