[Muscular dystrophy patient Mary] doesn’t care if it’s “cheating” to call upon some kind of assist mode that would allow her to make the jumps a little more easily. For Mary, she just wants to play and enjoy the game -she has no desire to enter some videogame competition where that would make a difference.
Game design in the 1980s was necessarily challenge-oriented. The zenith of twitch gameplay was to be found in the arcades, an environment that made money by tempting the player to pay to play. Design elements like bosses evolved to provide reward (visually, and in terms of a significant post-boss score boost) while killing the player as often as possible. If a game were easy, skilled players would hog the machine on a single credit, and profits would be impacted.
The role of challenge in mainstream action games began to change when games became playable at home. Although home systems were available throughout the ’80s, the games released for them were heavily inspired by arcade games. As the ’90s progressed from SNES to PlayStation, elements other than challenge became part of the game designer’s remit -for instance, game environments post-1996, the year of Mario 64 (Nintendo), Resident Evil (Capcom), and Tomb Raider (Core Design), attempt to mimic the logic of real-world environments, as opposed to merely providing a game experience. Compare these kinds of games with classic side-scrolling games such as Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991), which features completely surreal worlds, for instance.
The 2000s brought a new spin, in the idea of games for non-gamers. Players who refer to themselves as gamers (the “hardcore”) generally require a certain degree of challenge, as they are adept at certain game forms -the are game literate and pick up new games very rapidly. New players -those who never played a Mario or a Sonic, let alone Strider (Capcom, 1989) or Cannon Dancer (Mitchell, 1996)- aren’t seeking challenge. Much of this book discusses this broadening of the role of videogames from challenge-oriented Hard Fun games to a multiplicity of roles suitable for different audience types.
Although it is natural to design games of a different style for new audiences, it also makes sense to maximize audience potential for existing game genres by the inclusion of player assistance. It should be noted that, although play-aids may allow players to enjoy games of a given form, they do actually alter the nature of the gameplay -using aids actually changes the game. But as I pointed out in Mary’s scenario -she doesn’t care, she just wants to play and enjoy the game even if she doesn’t play it in the exact same way others do. Should she be prevented from doing so because a small number of gamers are offended by providing the option to “cheat”?
– Michelle Hinn, “Include Players with Accessibility Issues” in “Beyond Game Design”