Earlier this week it was revealed that the upcoming Psychonauts 2 will include an optional invincibility mode. I was going to do a write up on why including a mode like that is a good thing for accessibility. But then I thought that would probably be redundant as it’s pretty self explanatory how a mode that makes a game more accessible for more types of gamers to experience it would be a good thing. I underestimated how reasonable the online gaming community could be. It didn’t take long for the bad takes to come pouring in and it didn’t take long for those bad takes to be surpassed by even worse takes. So in honor of all the gatekeepers and quite frankly, assholes who seem to have a personal stake in how complete strangers play single player games, this is no longer a write up, it is a rant.
It seems every once in a while in the gaming world, the discourse of difficulty options and accessibility rears it’s head again and each time it does it’s always the same two sides with the positions, locked in an everlasting battle. On one side you have the rational people who see accessibility options as a good thing and on the other side who have the assholes who live in their own personal bubbles and don’t care about anyone other than themselves and who probably get off by sniffing their own farts. You see while their are many issues in the world that have good points on both sides and can’t be determined which is right and which isn’t easily, this isn’t one of them and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot who wasn’t hugged enough as a child.
This shouldn’t even be a debate, when a game includes options that make it more accessible to more people then more people get to enjoy it. If you are a gamer, isn’t that what you want, for more people to enjoy what you enjoy so there’s more people you can about gaming with. Gaming use to be seen as something for children, losers and for a brief time in the 90s, Satanists. Gaming is now the most popular form of entertainment in the world because those losers and outcasts accepted more and people to join them in. Gaming wouldn’t even exist anymore if in 1985 Nintendo didn’t create a game that everyone and their Grandmother could play. Could you imagine if Nintendo made the original Super Mario Bros with the notion that only people who could beat Pac-Man with only one quarter could play it.
Gaming now is way more accessible than it’s ever been. Games today have options so that every type of gamer can play games the way they like. If you don’t want to play on easy mode, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to play with subtitles on, you don’t have . If you don’t want to be the human equivalent of a hemorrhoid then you don’t have to. Unfortunately it seems that many in the gaming community enjoy being walking talking anal fissures because time and time again they come out in droves to publicly complain about accessibility options in games. Options that they don’t have to use. These options are not being forced on them like their idiotic opinions are being forced on the rest of us.
I could understand being upset at a game giving options for players to perform better in a competitive multiplayer game but that rarely if ever happens. These options are for single player games and if you legitimately care how other people choose to play a single player game, then I weep for you because you must live a truly miserable existence that’s filled with no joy, no fulfillment and no self-worth. But please stop taking that out on normal people by blessing us with gaming opinions that are so stupid Patrick Star would call you a dumbass. Instead, consider going to therapy instead.
I’m not writing this to change these people’s minds. The truth is, their minds can’t be changed. They aren’t rational and they aren’t smart enough to understand logic. They are less mature and empathetic than preschoolers and they need to grow the fuck up. They won’t though. These are adults, who believe that gaming being more accessible is a personal attack on them. They believe that the way that someone else chooses to play a single player game will affect their experience playing that single player game. They believe that if a complete stranger is given options to play a game more easily, it takes away from their personal accomplishment of not using those options because they have nothing else of worth in their life other than beating games on normal or above. They don’t want or care if someone “gits gud” all they want is to be able to feel superior to others because on the inside they feel very small.
I do not personally know any of these people and I never hope to personally know them because they are not good human beings. I don’t know what happened in their life to make them this dumb and pathetic and I don’t care because they continue to spew their bile into the world instead of seeing a psychiatrist. Based on their opinions on accessibility in gaming that they are always so eager to send out to the world I know enough about them. I know that they are sad, pathetic, small human beings who have no sense of self worth, who find trivial ways to make themselves feel superior to others because they don’t love themselves enough, who need to touch grass, who weren’t loved enough as children and because of that have turned into people who aren’t lovable. Their entire persona is based on telling others to git gud because their personality is as scintillating as a dial tone. They are a pock mark on the gaming community and they probably smell worse than Ron Jeremy’s mustache after a hard day of work.
Rongo 