#behavior interactive

Before getting into it all, a couple of quick things to note: a. This is a long post, and b. a lot of it is stuff I said elsewhere (namely Instagram). I also broke this up into a couple of sections to (hopefully) make it more easily digestible than a wall of text.

About Those Filters...

Now, I have some tweets of my own to post. For context, Hens went on from that first tweet to discuss his findings a bit, and asked if people wanted him to make a video addressing the subject. After most people said they wanted to see a video, he agreed.

Now, here is my quote tweet and short thread.

I want what I said in that first tweet to sink in. This game first launched in 2016. The colorblind filters available in the game weren't added until 2021.

It took Behavior five (5) years to implement a feature that would allow people with colorblindness to play as anyone else could. This was a feature that should have been available all along, yet there was a need to ask for this to be added. And it still took them half a decade to do it.

If that wasn't terrible enough, there are many colorblind people in the community for whom the available filters do not work. At least not as well as they should. Which means that there are many players using third party filters to simply be able to see the game.

The Usual, Disappointing Response...

But there are some players that use them to have an unfair advantage. So they should be banned... According to far too many people. And if you are one of them, I ask you to consider this:

If you are more concerned about the people who don't need it, you are ignoring the people who do. If you are more concerned about the people that don't need it, respectfully, please take a step back and think about why that is.

Because we see these things said constantly, about features we use just to be able to play like anyone else can do. When disabled people see and hear the comments about how these features should be banned, or how "unfair" they are, what we hear is, "Yeah, but I want to win, so…"

No matter how many times we explain why it wouldn't be good if these things got banned or changed, it doesn't seem to matter. No matter how many more people that use these things need it than don't, it never matters.

My Personal Struggles...

In the second tweet of my thread, I said, "BHVR shouldn't ban their use. They should do better by the disabled people that need better options. This is a general statement, not exclusive to colorblindness."

When I said that, I had a very specific thing in mind, although I'm sure there are other examples of which I'm not even aware.

I'm not colorblind, though I have other disabilities that affect how I experience video games. Though I'm neither deaf, nor hard of hearing, I do have an issue perceiving sounds. Particularly in video games.

For DBD, when I play killer, I can't always find survivors by listening for them because I often have trouble figuring out the right direction that it's coming from. I frequently run into situations where the sound seems to be coming from one direction, but then it sounds like it's actually the opposite, even when it isn't possible that they could have run that way because I would have seen them.

When I play survivor, I frequently can't tell how close the killer is when going by the terror radius because it often sounds a bit further away than it really is. Before I realized that it was a "me" issue, I used to get so pissed because I'd get grabbed off of generators even though it sounded to me like I had a little bit more time before I had to run.

In regards to that, I was once discussing how I wish they hadn't changed Spine Chill back to the way it was because watching the red dial fill and regress helped me far better than the new heartbeat does. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to properly gauge the distance. I should mention that I have several learning disabilities, as well, which definitely contributes to this. And I'm frustrated because it seems so straight forward, and I can understand it in DBD Mobile, but not core for some reason.

During that discussion, while I was explaining all of this, I had someone outright say to me, "They can't put in too many accessibility options because then people who don't need them will cheat with them."

And several people chimed in with, "Yeah, but it also tipped off survivors to stealth killers."

Um... I main Ghost Face. Yet, my point still stands. And now the heartbeat is the only option available, so I'm still struggling a bit.

People with disabilities shouldn't have to settle for "it's better than nothing," but we do. Time and time again.

In Closing...

That, "I know you need it, but what about the people who don't?" argument is a truly sad and messed up way of thinking. And half of the problem is the fact that there are many people who don't even realize that. The person who said that to me clearly didn't understand that, perhaps, that isn't something you should say to someone explaining why they need it. They weren't trying to be an asshole. They thought they were just having a conversation. Obviously there are those who just don't care, but I do believe that there are more people that just don't realize what it is they're really saying when we see this stuff. Nor why it's so fucked up.

I can personally tell you that it's exhausting to have to defend things, over and over, that make me able to enjoy this hobby that I've been doing for 30+ years. Making room for everyone to be able to play is more important than winning.