When it comes to games, do you know the difference between difficulty and accessibility?
The two words are used when talking about games, but they mean different things.
And those meanings are often misunderstood by designers, developers, and players.
In his Difficulty vs. Accessibility lightning talk from the GAconf USA 2021 online conference, Ian Hamilton delves into the meanings:
Games don’t have difficulty.
What games actually have is barriers.
Hamilton goes on to share three definitions:
- Difficulty is what a player experiences due to their own personal capabilities: capability vs. barrier
- Disability is due to a mismatched interaction between capability and barrier
- Accessibility is avoiding unnecessary mismatch between capability and barrier
While difficulty and accessibility have different meanings, they are related, says Hamilton.
Designers and developers can get a better understanding of accessibility and difficulty by watching Hamilton’s six-minute captioned YouTube video.
My thanks to Glenda Sims for sharing a tweet about Hamilton’s presentation.
