Games represent the largest entertainment industry by far, attracting interest in ensuring equal access to the medium. Effective accessibility for commercial, entertainment-focused games is best achieved through offering deep, nuanced configuration of the gameplay experience, allowing players to engage more closely to the game’s intended challenges. Many accessibility technologies have been developed and are shown to be effective, but players report these features are inconsistently incorporated into commercial games. Moreover, where features are available, configuration can be difficult as each game must be configured individually using bespoke menu systems. We give a snapshot of the specific features current mainstream games tend to provide. Further, we examine game configuration approaches, exploring the feasibility of a standardised configuration system.

From 110 popular games released in 2022 through 2024, we recorded available features based on menu system screenshots. Only 3.8% of the unique features tracked appeared in more than half of games. Volume sliders were most consistently-included, though many common features were input-related. Subtitle customisation appears highly inconsistent, despite ideal requirements being similar across different game styles; we suggest efforts to standardise subtitle implementation through middleware and game engine libraries.

Nine games from the initial study were used to develop requirements for a standardised external configuration tool. A wide variety of implementations were found, though graphics-related features tended to be externally configurable more often, and complex features like key rebinding were rarely configurable. We give recommendations both for development of an external game configuration system, and for developers looking to make their games more compatible with such a system.

This work aims to shed light on current trends in commercial games accessibility and explores improving standardisation in this field.

Team:

• Declan Carveth
• Dr Dale Grant
• A/Prof Jaime Garcia