God of War Designer on Building Accessible Games

Santa Monica studio shared a new post with a presentation by Mila Pavlin, their Lead UX Designer, that discusses accessibility and dealing with barriers in games.

The designer believes that games should be about inclusive design. “I have heard many discussions on the subject over years of working in experience design. With the support of community advocates who tirelessly give their time to build awareness, the industry is listening,” wrote Pavlin. “I joined the God of War team late in the development cycle, assisting with New Game Plus, and examining implemented features. As part of the process, we worked as a team to look at the development process and the accessibility efforts in God of War.”

Check out the full presentation below:

The team uses a practice of self-examination and reflection at the end of their projects. The slides show a post mortem review they conducted to find out where the team made improvements in accessibility. The wanted to know what could have been better, and the changes that could be made to the internal process to improve accessibility.

“We acknowledge the impact of community feedback on features as the team worked to address controller layouts, text-size, subtitle readability, and mini-game accessibility,” states the designer. “We also reviewed the unintended accessibility barriers when working with a no-cut camera style. In closing, we consider the forward thinking for accessibility, and how we, as a studio, can better embrace accessible design.|

There’s still a long way ahead, but the slides show how one team can cooperate to build a better design that can minimize barriers for the players. Games should be about exploring landscapes, learning about different cultures, communicating — not about facing challenging design decisions that spoil the whole experience.

Make sure to study the slides and discuss them in the comments.