Breaking Down Accessibility: Design Hostility and You

We were bound to get here eventually, and strangely Elden Ring’s release last week was the perfect catalyst for it. I often read various takes on games such as Elden Ring because I want to see what both veterans and newcomers think about these sorts of divisive games. One such article discussed similar ideas to Keiran’s review, but said (paraphrased) that “FromSoftware’s reputation of design hostility still shows in Elden Ring”

I got to thinking about that concept and realized that design hostility can be a barrier to accessibility, not just in terms of difficulty, but in terms of overall gameplay. Though there isn’t a singular definition to the term of design hostility, the name itself gives you an idea. Design hostility refers to aspects of the design that are intentionally created to be an impediment to the player.

This may not be done maliciously, for example, one of my favorite franchises and one of my favorite games, Dragon Age: Inquisition, took the chance to eliminate healing spells entirely. Granted, this was meant to encourage you to use barrier and limit your access to healing. However, for a lot of people, this caused a sort of dissonance because people less used to the tactical way of playing found that not being able to heal as frequently ratcheted the difficulty up a bit.

Alternately, you could take Control’s map as a hostile design choice. There is no way to mark things on the map, and to be quite honest, the map itself is mostly a joke. It gives you a general idea of where you are, but there’s no way to pinpoint your exact location or mark places to return to later.

In terms of FromSoftware games, I could probably talk for hours about the design hostility woven into their gaming experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I have watched YouTube playthroughs of all of the FromSoftware games since I can’t play them myself. I know the ins and outs of various mechanics, but some of them are just downright obtuse.

The fact that by Keiran’s own admission, he missed the tutorial dungeon in Elden Ring because the game didn’t make it clear that there even was a tutorial dungeon, is the definition of design hostility. Not signposting (in even a subtle way) that you can learn about the game by not going toward the door ahead of you is basically just expecting people to figure it out themselves. It is entitlement on the developer’s part and the part of people who just expect you to psychically understand “the developer’s vision.” Get real.

There are large aspects of the FromSoftware formula (such as weapon scaling) that, to my knowledge, never really get explained. They’re just learned from trial and error, and while that may be fine for some people, players who have limited time (or stamina) to play may find that to be inaccessible. I shouldn’t have to take a master class in a video game to be able to understand its basic mechanics and functions.

To break away from the FromSoftware train, let’s talk about another beloved franchise here. The Shenmue games are absolutely full of design hostility, in the form of things that waste your time. For one, Shenmue doesn’t allow you to skip time forward, and there are plenty of things that require you to be in a specific place at a specific time. If I remember correctly the third game fixed this, but there are plenty of other mechanics (such as poorly explained “quests”) that cause you to lose a lot of time.

Then there are games with purposefully obtuse controls or games such as Sifu that will not allow you to even see the true ending/optimal path of the game without finishing it once. Accessibility does matter in cases of your time being wasted. A lot of disabled people have limited time, stamina, or pain threshold to play games. Never mind the fact that if you have certain disabilities, you may not be able to play certain games at all due to flashing lights or demanding button presses.

Having to learn boss patterns is one thing (back to FromSoftware), but if your reflexes have to be perfect in order to counter those boss patterns, that’s a serious barrier to accessibility. This is why difficulty levels are requested and suggested. As we get older, we become less capable of doing things as quickly. Even if you aren’t disabled or don’t have muscle weakness, one day you may not be able to play the games you loved as a younger person.

Also, developers can try to justify certain choices based on their “design principles” or based on their goals for the game. However, if your design limits who can play your game, then perhaps you should consider if there are ways to get the spirit of what you had in mind, without reducing the enjoyment of players in some way.

I could also talk for hours on how games full of microtransactions and things like Battle Passes are the epitome of hostile design, trying to prey on people’s wallets. However, that’s less of an accessibility problem and more of a greed problem. Overall, game design is a tricky thing but recognizing that certain elements are less about the player experience and more about forcing a player to play a certain way, is an important step.

Some of the best games I’ve ever played took hostile design elements and figured out how to make them more palatable. Other games (like Breath of the Wild) took a hostile design element (weapon durability) and wrapped it up in so many other great things that people just ignored it. It is important that we still notice those things and call them out if only so other developers learn that people dislike certain things and can maybe improve on them.