De ce jocurile au nevoie de o scenă prosperă de accesibilitate terță parte

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Pe măsură ce vestea a apărut Microsoft ar bloca o serie nespecificată de dispozitive terțe de pe consolele Xbox la sfârșitul anului 2023, a devenit rapid clar că decizia va afecta în mod disproporționat jucătorii cu dizabilități. În ciuda beneficiului timpului, amploarea reală a schimbării rămâne incertă, chiar dacă dispozitivele de la terțe părți continuă să fie blocate unilateral.

“It’s certainly not an unprecedented move,” says Laura Kate Dale, un critic de accesibilitate și consultant, “it’s basically already the case on Nintendo and PlayStation consoles, but it will undoubtedly reduce the number of options available to players.”

Acest lucru a fost subliniat când vestea a apărut Sony a blocat în liniște Cronus Zen să se conecteze la consolele PlayStation 5 într-o nouă actualizare săptămâna aceasta. It’s a device many disabled players use to connect more accessible input devices to their consoles, many of whom are left in limbo on both Sony and Microsoft consoles. It means that setups dependent on unlicensed devices are now rendered useless and investment wasted by unfocussed and unfair bans on anything Microsoft and Sony deem unauthorised.

“There are fifteen of them just within arm’s reach of where I’m sitting now,” Kelly Marine, amantă de accesibilitate pentru Haunted Bees Productions, îmi spune când a fost întrebat câte dispozitive terță parte folosește.

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you the total cost,” she continues. “All but two of the things I’ve mentioned are not licensed for use with the newest Xbox, so I’ve been using adapter dongles, all from the same line, all affected by the new lockout policy.”

Imagine de copertă pentru videoclipul YouTube — Trailerul PlayStation Access Controller.

Microsoft has been quick to point out that devices connecting to the Xbox Adaptive Controller are unaffected. Though, this places the onus on a device that is only helpful in specific use-cases. Without a robust selection of third-party solutions to fill the gaps and offer more affordable alternatives, its effect – and that of Sony’s Access controller – is specific, dar oarecum ambiguu și, pentru mulți jucători, minim.

“Sometimes an unusually shaped controller might be just the right shape for someone to grip one handed,” Dale says. “Maybe the way a disabled gamer needs to grip their controller in use leads to it getting damaged, and cheap controllers are better financially in the long run.”

A more diverse landscape offers affordable and, often, simpler options that can cover the cracks that form due to the consolidating of accessibility around specific solutions – as both Microsoft and Sony continue to do with these bans.

The third-party devices that make up a more diverse landscape create a more accessible route into gaming for disabled players. It’s a route with more information, more options, and more potential for players to be able to play. By centralising accessibility around expensive proprietary devices, however, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo (which licences the Hori Flex) instead erect a paywall around accessibility that limits the potential for innovation.

“Decentralising is good, competition is good,” says Caleb Kraft, Fondator al Proiectul Controllerului. Competition, Kraft suggests, fuels interesting results. “In the realm of accessibility, we have tons and tons of happy little accidents!”

Aparatele auditive Forza Horizon 5 în personalizarea caracterelor — Jocuri precum Forza Horizon 5 sunt din ce în ce mai bune în ceea ce privește accesibilitatea și reprezentarea dizabilităților, dar controlerele rămân o mare parte a puzzle-ului pentru mulți jucători. | Imagine de credit: Jocuri Teren de joacă

Aceste accidente fac unele dintre soluțiile de accesibilitate mai organice și inventive: produse secundare ale fabricării de controlere drăguțe, mici, mai mari sau ciudate care se întâmplă să funcționeze pentru jucătorii cu dizabilități. Subminând intervenția terților, acele accidente dispar, perspectivele de abordare a accesibilității devin mai restrânse, iar jocurile încep să devină mai puțin accesibile.

It shouldn’t need to be said again, but we are not monolithic in our needs. It can be tempting, certainly when ignorant of accessibility, to envision a singular, holistic device that solves every disability need in every context. Consider, however, the wide spectrum of disability, in which even those with the same diagnoses can have wildly different requirements – all of which need to be applied to a vast array of games – and it should be clear just how vital a robust and diverse selection of accessible solutions becomes, something a prominent third-party response maintains.

“The diversity of manufacturers, the diversity of makers, the diversity of viewpoints can only result in a better product [and] better product options for the community,” Kraft says.

To block that – to limit it – and to do so without clarifying why feels gratuitous. “I think it’s really just anti-gamer,” Robert Dale Smith, founder of ControllerAdapter.com says. “There really isn’t any good reason the Xbox doesn’t support any USB controller just like a Windows PC does.”

Whatever the move’s intent, players feel justifiably betrayed by the decision and the response from Microsoft in which representatives have refused to communicate any meaningful reason for the change. Eurogamer reached out for comment and, like so many others, received an uninformative response:

“In order to maintain the performance, security and safety of Xbox consoles (Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S) players may receive a pop-up warning when attempting to connect an unauthorised accessory to their Xbox console,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We work to ensure minimal impact on current player setups so long as accessories are authorised, designed, and manufactured to our quality standards and do not compromise the gaming experience. If you do not receive an error code, then your accessory will not be impacted. In some cases, the unauthorised accessory will be blocked from use to preserve the console gaming experience.”

Pressed on whether Microsoft might finally want to elaborate, its spokesperson did not respond. Nor did Sony respond to requests for comment on the platform holder’s own reaction towards third-party accessibility and whether third-party devices form a part of future accessibility plans.

Jucătorii sunt, în schimb, lăsați în limbo, amândoi incapabili să folosească setările existente până când nu sunt dezvoltate noi soluții și paranoici că mai multe dispozitive ar putea deveni inutilizabile în viitor. Acest sentiment este accentuat doar ca urmare a mai multor interdicții în 2024.

All of which casts doubt on what has hitherto been a remarkable dedication to accessibility by Microsoft. “It actually hurts more to have them talk about caring and then screwing me over like this,” Marine says. “Rather than just being indifferent and letting me use my own solutions.”

The irony is, for all the effort of Microsoft and Sony, the effects are temporary. While, as previously reported, Cronus does not know when it will have a fix for Sony’s new update – though players can skip the update to retain use of the Cronus Zen – the manufacturer has a track record of quickly finding solutions to Sony’s bans. Similarly, Smith has already been creating USB controller adapters for two years and has already developed a solution that bypasses Xbox’s authentication process. “It was relatively easy,” he says. He tells me the adapter cost $30 in parts and took two days of work. Part of his aim was to let his daughter use a Fisher Price controller on Xbox, but he also wants “to push back against controller authentication in general and show that if anyone really wanted to, they could easily circumvent these bans.”

It makes the question of why Microsoft and Sony persist in these blocks more pertinent. There were always going to be ways to get around these bans and the damage was always going to be primarily to the disabled community, so what’s the point? Is it simply to drum up good press in a subset of uninformed gamers who might celebrate the implications on cheating in specific, online games? Is it designed to consolidate accessibility around adaptive controllers that work for only a fraction of disabled players? We don’t know, because neither Sony, Microsoft, nor Nintendo will justify these decisions.

Accessibility is commanding more mainstream attention than ever before and to see the field of hardware options for disabled gamers shrink in the service of what appears a monopolisation of accessibility feels cruel. It’s not a new problem, but with these bans Microsoft and Sony have only thrown into sharp focus the hostility the game industry has against non-proprietary accessibility solutions.

It’s a focus that raises the question of how dedicated to accessibility Sony and Microsoft are, as they revel in the positive press around devices like the Access Controller and greater accessibility in their games, all while obfuscating decisions that will force one of the poorest communities to incur further costs, will push them towards proprietary devices they may not be able to use, and will drive some players from consoles altogether. All to retain absolute authority over what we use to play games. It feels remarkably callous.

Through 2023 and heading into 2024, we’ve lost so much from the gaming industry. Now, it’s hard to view these bans and the hostility towards third-party accessible devices they demonstrate as anything but something that will turn disabled players away from a pursuit that is vital to their wellbeing. Something Sony and Microsoft, despite being told how damaging it is to the disabled community, continue to pursue. All in service of controlling what we put in a USB port.