Innes

@aliengeo

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I'm a writer, artist, and game developer. Currently working on Unknown Station Echo, a translation-based mystery.
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Innes @aliengeo8/20/2024, 9:20 PM

I wish I could play Outer Wilds to completion, because it's right up my alley in many regards, but I keep running into a physical execution barrier.

The devs made the game they wanted to make, and that's fine, it's just frustrating that the game they wanted to make expects more from my motor function than I can provide.

I know I can reset and try again. But after a certain number of retries, it gets demoralizing to put all this time into something and make no progress. Especially when the reactions I can expect from Gamers™ if I admit that range from condescending pity to open contempt.

But I don't want to watch someone else play, either—I want to accomplish it myself. I'm aware that finding things out for yourself is the point. I just can't use the tools the game has provided to do that because my hands don't work right. I started to dread playing it because of that.

So if I ever complete that game, I'm going to have to buy the PC version and play with mods. Not some kind of "instantly unlock everything" mod, just... stuff that lowers the barrier from impassable to passable.

In many video game communities, this is tantamount to admitting defeat and a sign of moral cowardice. But I'm not a fucking speedrunner. I'm not an esports pro. I am running the game on damaged equipment (me) and this is the only way I can play.

It's not the first game I've had to give up on like that because for my situation there just wasn't a way forward.

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in reply to @aliengeo's post:

ma mun @ma-mun8/20/2024, 10:15 PM

im so sorry to hear that!! outer wilds is probably my single favorite game ever made and its truly a shame if something that is not at all necessary for the experience stops you from seeing it all for yourself. i hope there are mods to help with the difficulty and i hope you find a way to experience this beautiful game too, everyone should get to.

Innes @aliengeo8/20/2024, 10:31 PM

Appreciate it :) I'm going to have to wait for a sale, obvs, but it seems like there are some good "tweak" mods out there that, like, make navigation a little easier, strengthen tractors, that sort of thing. Which is what I'm looking for, haha: less spoon-fed, more... giving me some accessible utensil grips to feed myself.

Honestly it's one of the things I keep in mind with my own game development: my plan for my current game involves trying to design the world such that I'm not "testing" the player on something that isn't the goal of the game, such as how quickly and accurately they can press a button. Ideally, once I'm done, if it takes you ten minutes to produce a valid game input, you'll get the same result as if it took you ten seconds.

But like I said, I don't blame the devs. I know the world of Outer Wilds is intended to be realistic space exploration and real space exploration is Hard.

ma mun @ma-mun8/21/2024, 9:55 PM

yeah altho im not in video game development atm this is deffo something i like to keep in mind. i think the challenging parts of outer wilds (like tight platforming or timed stuff or whatnot) were a lot of fun for me and deffo elevated the experience but theyre also not at all core to what a game is about so they should stop anyone from experiencing the rest of the game!

i noticed a lot of rpgs and similar games have "story" difficulties where it makes the gameplay basically unlosable for anyone who just wants to see how the game goes or the story and characters and whatnot, and i dont get why i never hear of any other types of game having the same kinda feature. it would be great, both for people who physically cant do what the game is asking of them no matter how gud they git, and for people who dont have a lot of gaming experience or dont want to put in the time to get better at it because its not what theyre coming to the game for, which is like totally reasonable, no matter what Gamers (not to be confused with gamers) have to say lol. id love to show outer wilds to my space loving friend who dosent play video games but hed have a really hard time with a lot of it just cus he dosent play that kinda stuff.

Innes @aliengeo8/21/2024, 11:24 PM

For real, like... it's fine to me if there are things like Dark Souls where the draw is that it's a physical feat to accomplish. I know that's what some people get out of gaming—heck, it's why the speedrunning community exists. But I feel like "gaming™" as a whole ends up being really insular and proud of it in a way that isn't sustainable.

To your point about unfamiliarity with video games, a lot of games, for instance, don't tutorialize the basics of how to interact with the controller, because from the perspective of a developer or someone who'd sign up to test a game, it's obvious.

But I tried to get my mom to play Gone Home, hoping an untimed walking sim would help her learn the basics without stressing about meeting a goal, and I realized... she doesn't even know how to HOLD the controller. She eventually gave up and made me do it for her because she felt like she couldn't figure it out and didn't want to keep trying. We don't think about controller function being a skill you have to learn, but evidently for her it was.

It's funny too because plenty of successful devs don't actually agree with the "you have to make everything as hard as possible" angle. It's a fandom invention.

ma mun @ma-mun8/22/2024, 10:24 AM

totally. i think video games hold some of the most beautiful experiences you could find anywhere and its a shame that so many people just wont get to play them. making accessibility both for disabled people and for people who just dont play video games the standard would go a long way to both making video games a better understood and enjoyed medium and to eventually leave behind a community that prides itself on being inaccessible