Accessibility is a hot button issue in the world of video games right now, and it has come such a long way from the origins of the medium several decades ago.
Where once we were lucky to get some boilerplate legal text about various health issues at the start of each game and nothing more, now games with big and small budgets ship with all sorts of toggles designed to make them more playable by a wider variety of people. Elaborate difficulty tweaks, control customizations, colorblind modes, audio narration, and UI scaling and subtitle options are now considered normal in modern games. Sony and Microsoft both also produce special accessibility controllers designed to allow those with different physical capabilities to better enjoy their favorite gaming content, which is really cool.
However, there’s one thing that sometimes still gets overlooked, and which also frustrates me personally: strobing/intense lighting effects. So many games feature prominent narrative sequences set in a full on rain storm with thunder and lightning which turns my room into an 80’s night club rave strobe festival. Magical spells often make use of huge screen-filling particle effects or intense environmental lights that can cover up the very thing I’m trying to target…
