‘God of War Ragnarok’ is being praised for being playable by gamers with low vision.
Player Ben, who goes by the handle SightlessKombat previously relied on audio titles in the early days of his gaming, and until ‘Ragnarok’, Ben could not enjoy non-audio based games “without constant sighted assistance”.
After footage of Ben’s streams on how he was trying to play, Sony’s Santa Monica Studio asked him to give the team demonstrations of how he played and advise them on features that would make it more accessible.
Options that were added included motor accessibility settings, which automate tasks to reduce fatigue and the complexity of button inputs as well as visual accessibility settings that can change camera angles and increase colour contrasts to make characters and prompts stand out, as well as the option to remap the controller.
Ben told Sky News: “All of these combined mean that, aside from puzzles and some menu navigation that require sighted assistance, or other workarounds, I can play large stretches of the game without any need for secondary input.
“It’s a brilliantly freeing experience.”
Ben now hopes his role as accessible gaming officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People will help him raise more awareness about how the industry can go further to cater for those with his disability.
He added: “There is still much to be done… having never had any sight whatsoever, I started out unaware of how games or any related tech worked.
“When I say I’m a gamer without sight, I use the term as ‘legal blindness’, often just shortened to being ‘blind’.
“But it can and often does include usable and/or residual vision, which I’ve never had.”
