Kwalee’s Game Designer Ege Sirman attended Mobidictum Business Conference and talked about the importance of accessibility in hyper-casual game design. He shared tips on how to improve on the topic with a different perspective.
Sirman opened up his solo session by giving an accessibility example from his own firm. He mentioned a colleague named Jet, who’s colorblind, and stated that his colleague is the inspiration for this session.
Although hyper-casual titles are made for everyone to access and play effortlessly, Sirman stated that of 3.24 billion gamers worldwide, 2.5% (81 million) are colorblind, and approximately 1% (23 million) are partially or fully blind. He argued that these gamers need accessibility solutions to play comfortably, along with others suffering from deafness, dyslexia, and epilepsy.
Sirman underlined while blue-red or white-red cause no contrast issues, color duos like red-black form challenges for colorblind players. If a hyper-casual title’s gameplay or hints focus on colors, these colors need to be selected with great attention.
While talking about the difficulty of reading in-game text for people living with eye disorders or partial blindness, he emphasized that contrast and haptic feedback are also essential. Stating that sounds are often ignored while making hyper-casual games, Sirman noted that using the right visuals and haptic feedback for people with hearing problems is invaluable in terms of accessibility.
Sirman underlined that the critical point for accessing players with motor diseases such as dyslexia is to use the correct font and text size. He shared that constant flashing images and high-brightness visuals should be avoided to access gamers suffering from epilepsy.
Sirman stated that although hyper-casual is a fast-developed and launched game type, developers should still make time to find solutions that can be quickly applied to new titles. He added that Kwalee has already started implementing accessibility options on two of its games. You can reach the complete session along with more relevant content by clicking the button below.
