How do you speed up Scale X Fang?

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Scale X Fang tries to deny the player the ability to speed up the emulator. I've never heard of a more anti-player feature in my life outside of EA's best money-making schemes, but those are motivated by profit. This... This is narcissism.

This is like a movie that doesn't let deaf people turn subtitles on, or a book that doesn't let people with less free time read and a higher reading speed read at their own pace. It's a videogame that tries to deny you the ability to play at your own pace.

I don't have as much free time as I used to because of my busy life. The obligations of an adult are piling up, I've got real people counting on me, places to go, people to see. If I've only got so much free time per day that I can spend on gaming, I want to spend it on the worthwhile content in a game and decide for myself what would be skimmed over or skipped entirely if it was a book. "And then the hero spent twenty minutes grinding" is something best skipped, rather than described in excruciating detail in real time in most novels not trying to do something good for the plot, characters, message, tone, or themes with that filler content. Movies have training montages for this reason. If I happen to ruin a great game for myself by skipping two textboxes of Shakespearean writing when I meant to skip one, or I get distracted for a moment and speedrun past a gorgeous view in a revolutionarily well-designed world full of challenging battles with strategy that goes beyond "use strongest move known by strongest pokemon, switch when necessary" that's a risk I'm willing to take. That's not something emulators should let developers take away. Some people read books fast. Some people play games fast even if they weren't designed for that. If you've never used the speed up button in a Pokemon game, play a Pokemon game at 0.5x speed and you'll start to understand why people want to play it at over 1x speed. HP bars, slow text, the pause after every animation and text box, the weather animations and the pauses between them, the way text describing animations and game effects and the animations and any stat-up/stat-down animations all play separately, this tedium isn't artistically relevant in the way games like The Longing and Gris's dullest moments are.

I don't feel like getting into philosophical discussions on whether it is "moral" to use savestates and speedup for the sake of convenience when emulating games differently from how their developer intended, or whether disabled people are "harming the developer's original vision and literally playing wrong" by using controllers that change the game speed or automate inputs to make features they physically cannot perform easier on them than the developer intended, or whether people with ADHD like myself are "literally cheating" in a single-player game by wanting to lose less of my life to it. I'm not missing limbs, but I do have ADHD. And people counting on me IRL. People I can't let down. I can't do anything about my obligations and the people in my life and my low amount of free time without directly harming my life and my relationships with others. Does this game expect me to just turn my girl down when there is somewhere she wants to take me, or something she wants to talk to me about, or something she wants to cry on my shoulder over? Does it expect me to miss work? Does it expect me to finish a gaming session and say "That could have been better. Wish the speed up button worked, that would have made things more efficient and allowed me to see more of the game, but I respect the developer's desire to gatekeep content from people like me"? Scale X Fang isn't worth that, no matter how much it might want to be. l either play that game on my terms at my pace when I find the free time, or not at all.

So, what's the secret to getting around this anti-player feature? Besides the obvious option, which is "Just never play it". And do you think the reaction to this feature (from those who've heard of the game and felt like playing until they heard about the anti-speedup) will make the developer reconsider this anti-player choice in future versions of the game? Unless a fork of VBA is created to be the only thing that can play this game, people will find a way to get around speedup. And even if you go that far, someone with enough time to play the game will upload footage of it to youtube that can be watched at 2x speed, or more if you have a browser plugin installed for further acceleration (I do).

Edit: Upon further reflection on this topic, and after beating the game, I feel it is important to decouple ego from this discussion. This conversation isn't truly about the game, it's about the game design.

You might think it is justified to make a game grindier than it needs to be, with more filler content than is necessary, and try to take away the player's options to speed up the game or even just the grind. "It has to be done, otherwise people might miss unrepeatable information or ruin how the music sounds for them". You might think it is justified to say "The player has to play the game how I want them to, at my desired pace, otherwise they might ruin their experience with it and not spend enough time appreciating it before moving on to something else".

However, This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, it implies that players do not have the ability to make their own judgments about what they find enjoyable in a game. Everyone has different preferences, and what one person finds tedious, another may find enjoyable. Additionally, it suggests that players should be forced to engage in repetitive and grindy gameplay in order to fully appreciate the game, which is not a fair or reasonable expectation to place on players. Furthermore, taking away the player's options for speeding up the game and reducing grind is not a justifiable action. It limits players' freedom and autonomy and goes against the principle of player agency which is an important aspect of the game design. It is not morally justifiable to sacrifice player's agency and enjoyment for the sake of game's appreciation.

It is important to consider the fact that not all players have the same amount of free time or patience. People who have less free time due to their socioeconomic circumstances, such as those who work multiple jobs or have families to care for, may not have the luxury of spending hours grinding through repetitive content. Similarly, people with ADHD may have a shorter attention span and find it more difficult to engage in prolonged periods of repetitive gameplay.

For these players, the option to speed up the game and reduce grind is essential for them to be able to fully enjoy and engage with the game. Without this option, they may be excluded from the gaming experience altogether. It is not fair to these players to limit their ability to enjoy the game based on factors outside of their control. Providing players with the option to speed up the game and reduce grind is a way of accommodating a more inclusive and equitable gaming experience for all players, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances or whether they have ADHD or not.

The claim that taking away the player's ability to speed up the game is necessary to stop them from missing vital information or ruining the soundtrack is not a valid justification for limiting player agency. Firstly, it is not reasonable to assume that all players will automatically skip through important dialogue or ruin the soundtrack by speeding up the game. Players should be trusted to make their own decisions and use the option to speed up the game responsibly.

Additionally, there are other ways to ensure that players do not miss important information, such as providing summaries or recaps of important dialogue, or allowing players to replay cutscenes. For example, many games have implemented subtitles or closed captions for their cutscenes, so that players can still read the dialogue even if they speed up the cutscenes or miss something. Phoenix Wright is a game all about noticing things in dialogue (and noticing other things, it's a game about a mystery-solving lawyer) and it makes important dialogue repeatable.

As for the soundtrack, the developers could design it to be adaptable to different speeds, or they could give the player an option to turn off the speed up feature while listening to the music. This way the player can still benefit from the speed-up feature while progressing through the game, but still enjoy the soundtrack how it was intended to be.

It's important to remember that players should be given the agency to play the game in the way that they find most enjoyable, and that there are other ways to ensure that they don't miss important information or ruin the soundtrack without taking away that agency.

In summary, taking away the player's ability to speed up the game is not necessary to ensure that they do not miss important information or ruin the soundtrack. You could make important information repeatable, or put the soundtrack on Youtube/Bandcamp so players can enjoy it via a browser while they play the sped up game. There are other ways to achieve this goal while still allowing players the freedom to play the game in the way that they find most enjoyable.

 

[rwbonesy]

I support being able to use an emulator's native features to enhance a game. However, the way you are overreacting and formulating walls of text means you will never receive your desired result. You are better off finding another romhack to play.

Thanks a lot for making it so that I won't try this romhack because now the developer will never remove the anti-speedup code, though. Really a class act.

 

[manta]

It's incredibly telling that you want to boil a project which has received thousands of hours of development down into its "worthwhile content", which is just a highlight reel of pretty graphics and boss battles so you don't have to actually engage with the game and it's challenges.

Being dramatic and acting as if this game is stealing away your livelihood because you can't speed up to grind wild encounters is a pretty pathetic way of trying to guilt-trip. There's a save function implemented so that you can split your playthrough into multiple sessions, if you aren't able to finish the demo in one sitting.

The anti-speed up measures implemented have been a total success, and thus will never be removed. You are not going to own me by saying any variation of "you just lost a customer", because that is exactly the point. The anti-speed up feature has filtered out those brought out of the woodwork who don't actually care about critiquing the game itself, only that they can't use a feature outside of the game to blow through it and move onto their next piece of media to consume, dismissing the story and mechanics before even giving them an honest try. And it has been total catharsis for me to see.

 

[Anon822]

So, what's the secret to getting around this anti-player feature?

A solution to this was already posted in the hack's thread.
In mGBA go to Tools > Game Pak sensors... and select "Start time at" under the rtc settings. You will then be able to speed up the game.

 

[MrKyurem]

This is like a movie that doesn't let deaf people turn subtitles on, or a book that doesn't let people with less free time read and a higher reading speed read at their own pace. It's a videogame that tries to deny you the ability to play at your own pace.

Posts like this make me actively regret ever giving anything to this community. Please take even the slightest second to read what you're saying and actually think about your stance, the content of what it is you're saying, and the ideas you are equating. Externally modding a game with emulator tools to save time, in an artform where pacing is a key part of the artist's expression, is not at all equivalent to providing an alternative form of presentation for people with a perceptive loss that would otherwise completely negate a fundamantal part of the experience. The rest of this post goes into further depth on the decisions that go into choosing to include, or choosing to actively omit, certain features, but this inequality you have presented us with is something I want to draw particular attention to beforehand. Audiobooks (ie; books that don't let you read at your own pace) are not some grave injustice, and to equate them and emulator speedup tools to something as fundamental as subtitles speaks very loudly about the priorities of this community.

So, what's the secret to getting around this anti-player feature? Besides the obvious option, which is "Just never play it".

This is the intended result. Do not play the game. You are clearly trying to approach this from an accessibility point of view - something I have to this day never seen a dedicated pokemon fan be able to take an informed stance on - so I will approach it from the same lens in return out of respect, as this is something I have a particular interest in with my personal game development endeavours outside of Pokemon.

There exist two main conflicting ideas within the push for accessibility - the first, of course, is that experiences should be made as universally enjoyable as possible, and it can shine very poorly on an artist's capabilities if somebody is locked out of their work by an incapacity that is in no way related to the content of their work. The second, and more taboo but equally true, is that experiences by nature cannot be universal - every choice and option made influences the way the game is experienced, and it is an artist's inherent right to craft a specific experience. Both of these ideas can, and do, co-exist.

I will tie this concept back to the initial comparison to deaf players. As you have pointed out, it is now industry standard to provide subtitles with a movie, and a great deal of strict guidelines on how these subtitles are presented exist in order to ensure that these subtitles are as adequate as possible and provide as little interference with the experience and nature of the movie as possible. However, let us consider the case of a game with rhythm elements - perhaps a game like Mother 3, where the game offers a Sound Battle system to allow the player to score additional hits on opponents by timing button presses with the music. The music in this game is very carefully composed with this in mind - strange time signatures and breaks are frequently thrown into harder battles in order to increase the difficulty of following the music and scoring combos. This experience is arguably completely inaccessible for a completely deaf player - it requires an innate ability to follow the music and remember (and be thrown off by) its various twists and turns, something you simply cannot have if you cannot hear the music to begin with.

Now, one could attempt to make this system accessible to as many deaf players as possible - for example, adding a visual cue just before each beat, so that a player has a visual telegraph for when they need to input each button press. However, in the process, something is irrepairably lost - the experience has now shifted from something distinctly founded upon rhythm and memorisation, and turned into a basic reaction challenge. You would have more people playing the game, but they would not be playing the game you set out to make. Thus, it is in your complete right as an artist to choose not to offer any support on this front, and leave the game inaccessible on this front, because to do so otherwise would directly break your artistic vision.

The same can be applied to the concept of speedup. Pacing in any time-based media, from music to movies and to games, is a vital aspect of crafting the experience you are after. For some games, pacing isn't very important at all - you won't get a very different experience if you turn on speedup for Zork, for example. For some, it's actively imperative that pacing is left in the player's hands - games like Tetris fundamentally rely on the idea of the player letting themselves play faster and faster in order to get higher scores. And for some games, it is crucial to the point of the game that the pacing is dictated by the author - a game like The Stanley Parable would simply not be the same game if you could speed up the narrator's strange winding monologues, because their long-winded nature is fundamental to the point. If an artist dictates that time is a crucial and irreplaceable part of the experience - as seems to have been done for Scale & Fang - then it is in their full right to make this an inarguable and inescapable part of the experience, regardless of whether you agree with the decision or whether, in this unfortunate case, it makes the experience completely inaccessible to you.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Increasing the speed in a movie increases the chance of missing something important, but if the viewer misses something important, that's on the viewer. No film maker in the history of film making has ever tried to make the speed up function not work on his particular DVD under the belief that "There is only one correct speed to view this". No book writer has ever tried to remove the reader's ability to read at his own pace. When Stephanie Meyer's Twilight included multiple blank pages in a row to symbolize how blank the protagonist's mind is at that moment, the book could not do anything to people who skipped those blank pages instead of treating them like they're full of text as equally entitled to the reader's time as the rest. The entire visual novel genre is full of game text with speed you can adjust, or mash through without reading, even in games like Phoenix Wright where listening to what people say and knowing what to call BS on is part of the core gameplay.

Deaf players can still partake in countless rhythm games using visual cues. Mother 3's minor rhythm game element chooses not to include a visual indicator of the right moment to press, but deaf people don't have the option to roll with this as far as I'm aware. For them, the game as inaccessible as a bouldering wall is to a limbless person. Or as inaccessible as Spider Man for the PS4's Quick Time Events are for those with disabled hands, if you don't turn on optional accessibility features designed to make the game playable for them. These features exist for those who need them without harming the intended gameplay experience for those who have the option to engage with the experience as it is intended. I don't know why you're bringing this argument up, because it supports my position. The sound-based rhythm aspect of Mother 3 is as off limits to a deaf person as a book without a braille version/audiobook format is to a blind person, and it didn't have to be this way. That's not how you design a game to be accessible. Experiences by nature cannot be universal, yes, but this isn't one of those experiences. This isn't something fundamentally inherently off-limits to people with a disability. This is like a french movie maker designing his MP4 file to disable VLC player's subtitle function to deny viewers the ability to view his work with english subtitles because he demands his work must be viewed how he intended, uncaring of what that means for anyone else. You can compare your choice to make a game less accessible to something that is fundamentally impossible to make accessible like a purely musical challenge intentionally designed without visual cues, even though optional visual cues could be added and nothing would be lost for those who don't turn Deafness Accessibility Mode on to get the optional visual cues. I can't stop you from choosing to argue dishonestly. You had to go out of your way to design your game to not play nice with a basic function of the emulator every other game plays nice with.

Pokemon isn't something that is inherently exclusionary by design, like audio-based challenges. You chose to make your game play worse for people who value their time and need the speedup function. Can you explain why, without insulting me for not liking an exclusionary anti-consumer choice?

 

[Captain Ahab]

Increasing the speed in a movie increases the chance of missing something important, but if the viewer misses something important, that's on the viewer. No film maker in the history of film making has ever tried to make the speed up function not work on his particular DVD under the belief that "There is only one correct speed to view this". No book writer has ever tried to remove the reader's ability to read at his own pace. When Stephanie Meyer's Twilight included multiple blank pages in a row to symbolize how blank the protagonist's mind is at that moment, the book could not do anything to people who skipped those blank pages instead of treating them like they're full of text as equally entitled to the reader's time as the rest. The entire visual novel genre is full of game text with speed you can adjust, or mash through without reading, even in games like Phoenix Wright where listening to what people say and knowing what to call BS on is part of the core gameplay.

Deaf players can still partake in countless rhythm games using visual cues. Mother 3's minor rhythm game element chooses not to include a visual indicator of the right moment to press, but deaf people don't have the option to roll with this as far as I'm aware. For them, the game as inaccessible as a bouldering wall is to a limbless person. Or as inaccessible as Spider Man for the PS4's Quick Time Events are for those with disabled hands, if you don't turn on optional accessibility features designed to make the game playable for them. These features exist for those who need them without harming the intended gameplay experience for those who have the option to engage with the experience as it is intended. I don't know why you're bringing this argument up, because it supports my position. The sound-based rhythm aspect of Mother 3 is as off limits to a deaf person as a book without a braille version/audiobook format is to a blind person, and it didn't have to be this way. That's not how you design a game to be accessible. Experiences by nature cannot be universal, yes, but this isn't one of those experiences. This isn't something fundamentally inherently off-limits to people with a disability. This is like a french movie maker designing his MP4 file to disable VLC player's subtitle function to deny viewers the ability to view his work with english subtitles because he demands his work must be viewed how he intended, uncaring of what that means for anyone else. You can compare your choice to make a game less accessible to something that is fundamentally impossible to make accessible like a purely musical challenge intentionally designed without visual cues, even though optional visual cues could be added and nothing would be lost for those who don't turn Deafness Accessibility Mode on to get the optional visual cues. I can't stop you from choosing to argue dishonestly. You had to go out of your way to design your game to not play nice with a basic function of the emulator every other game plays nice with.

Pokemon isn't something that is inherently exclusionary by design, like audio-based challenges. You chose to make your game play worse for people who value their time and need the speedup function. Can you explain why, without insulting me for not liking an exclusionary anti-consumer choice?

You are arbitrarily conflating actual physical disability with simply not having enough time in the day to play video games, which is not the same thing at all, and I think you should probably feel bad for having drawn this comparison at all, given that I know physically disabled people who play video games who seem to manage playing games at a regular speed perfectly fine, just like most people on Earth.

How did you play Pokémon games on real hardware, exactly? Pokémon games have always been designed around a pick-up-and-drop philosophy by being one of the very few RPGs that will let you save absolutely anywhere on the overworld and since 1996 not a single soul has ever complained about the lack of a speedup key on a Game Boy or anything like that. It's not anti-consumer to expect a video game, which has had hundreds of hours of work put into it, should be played at the speed it was designed to be played at.

The core of this argument, really, is that you don't seem to actually care about the artistry that goes into the creation of a video game (itself an extremely technical and intensive process) and simply want an experience where numbers go up rather than a holistic RPG experience which was designed from the ground up to not require excessive grinding or use of speedup. Other aspects, such as aesthetic, narrative and music are obviously completely optional components to you, so to this end, I direct you to a game that you'll probably enjoy a bit more that has everything you seem to want; https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/

 

[Max Elixir]

I can't stop you from choosing to argue dishonestly. You had to go out of your way to design your game to not play nice with a basic function of the emulator every other game plays nice with.

Pokemon isn't something that is inherently exclusionary by design, like audio-based challenges. You chose to make your game play worse for people who value their time and need the speedup function. Can you explain why, without insulting me for not liking an exclusionary anti-consumer choice?

Just so we're clear, we're talking about a creator (an artist) choosing to restrict your access to emulator speedup (a third-party modification) when playing their game (the product of their labor that they have the right to curate the intended experience of), not restricting an actual accessibility feature (you keep trying to liken this to restricting the ability to turn on subtitles even after it was pointed out to how laughable a reach that was). Might want to be a little more honest about what we're arguing before we start pretending what is essentially a form of anticheat is "anti-consumer" and calling anyone else dishonest actors.

 

[Skeli]

Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with designing a game with a core audience in mind. You may feel like you're being excluded from playing the game, but ultimately, no game can be designed for everyone, and it's the developer's choice of who the game is for (even if it is a small subset of players). However, the problem I've seen here is that nowhere outside of comments on the thread is that audience made known to the player. It could be worth mentioning explicitly on the thread and on the bootscreen that the game is intended for those who want to take their time exploring a new world, and those who can't play without speed-up should avoid this game.

 

[Mukuitsjanuary]

It could be worth mentioning explicitly on the thread and on the bootscreen that the game is intended for those who want to take their time exploring a new world, and those who can't play without speed-up should avoid this game.

Videogames don't typically open up by telling you what their audience is supposed to be, it's informed through gameplay, so I think that's a weird exception to make here. I would assume that most people playing a new pokemon game are in it to explore a new world without speed-up, given how well Scarlet and Violet sold.

 

[Captain Ahab]

Videogames don't typically open up by telling you what their audience is supposed to be, it's informed through gameplay, so I think that's a weird exception to make here. I would assume that most people playing a new pokemon game are in it to explore a new world without speed-up, given how well Scarlet and Violet sold.

 

[MrKyurem]

Before I tackle the majority of this post, I want to comment specifically on one of the last points you make - as this point, to me, is woefully misguided.

Pokemon isn't something that is inherently exclusionary by design, like audio-based challenges.

Pokemon, by nature, is an exclusionary game, just like all video games. Strategy is a key part of the game, as are numbers and planning and memorisation and pattern recognition and all sorts of different cognitive skills. This leaves the game significantly less accessible, especially at higher difficulties (which many romhacks/fangames explicitly aim for), for people with more significant cognitive disabilities. This is an audience many people frequently forget, despite Pokemon's premise being particularly appealing for all audiences. I will not get into the topic of why people often choose to disregard, or completely forget about, this audience. However, I do want to explicitly say that yes, this audience is as worthy as any other, and plenty of games are accessible on this front.
The games already do make an effort to try and lower the skill floor in this regard in more modern titles - features like moves having direct indicators of what is/is not super effective, and the most recent games include a feature where it recommends which moves to learn/forget as your Pokemon levels up. This is all good, but it will never completely level the playing field. The games will always be harder on a player who cannot plan an intentional selection of Pokemon on their team, or think ahead on what moves they want to use at what points across a long battle - and there's very little the game can do without deconstructing its own core gameplay, because being harder on players who cannot execute these skills is fundamental to the gameplay.
There is also the unavoidable truth that video games will never be safely accessible to all epileptic people. Putting "epilepsy safe" on your game after you got rid of a couple of flashing effects is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Audio-only games can be made - and theoretically, Pokemon can be made audio-only (blind players already do play older Pokemon games with some external support) - but there comes a point where the changes needed make the game effectively exclusionary by design - even if the core gameplay can be preserved, the amount of effort needed behind the scenes can potentially get in the way of being able to safely finish the game to begin with.

This portion of my post used to be a lot longer, as I got on a tangent about how the decisions Pokemon makes consistently make it less accessible than it can be, which doesn't really tackle the concept of being inherently and unavoidably exclusionary. If anybody's interested in this, especially if you're looking for ideas to integrate into your own works, let me know and I can post what I had written up - it mostly tackles Pokemon's innate reliance on text and dialogue, and all of the different ways it could make greater efforts on that front (and how the games have actually regressed in some regards). I will at the very least say that, as I think this is a feasible goal for various hacks and fangames (and also because I'm frankly just a sucker for seeing people make an effort on this front), consider allowing the player to customise the colours of textboxes (and the text within) - even if it's just a couple of preset options, like black text+white background/white text+black background/black text+yellow background.

Increasing the speed in a movie increases the chance of missing something important, but if the viewer misses something important, that's on the viewer. No film maker in the history of film making has ever tried to make the speed up function not work on his particular DVD under the belief that "There is only one correct speed to view this". No book writer has ever tried to remove the reader's ability to read at his own pace.

I've been informed that, in the early 00s, various DVDs did in fact try and disrupt the speedup function of various players. I cannot verify this statement myself, so I won't dwell on it, but the premise seems very unlikely to have never been attempted before. Regardless, I find the primary use of fast forward on a traditional video player - which usually mutes audio as it does so - to be aimed for the user to easily catch up to a bit of the video they were at before their viewing experience was interrupted, not to watch a video faster. Of course, people will try and use it for this purpose anyway - but this does not mean they need to be catered for.

I would also like to note that, without getting into the nitty gritty of how the psychology behind games works, a lot of a game's design essentially revolves around tricking the player into having fun. There's a common premise I hear, and personally subscribe to, that if given the opportunity, a player will optimise the fun out of a game. If the player consistently makes choices that prevent themselves from having fun, this is a failure of the designer for presenting, or encouraging, those choices in the first place. Alternatively, to be more accurate to the actual point you made (as I wanted to get the game-related part out of the way first, given we're talking about games), if the viewer frequently misses important foreshadowing or dialogue in a narrative, the writer is very likely doing a poor job at presenting these elements to the viewer. As comfortable and appealing as the premise of "it's the audience's fault" is, it's almost never the case, even when on the surface it seems to be.

The entire visual novel genre is full of game text with speed you can adjust, or mash through without reading, even in games like Phoenix Wright where listening to what people say and knowing what to call BS on is part of the core gameplay.

Visual novels typically include a text log to go back over old text at your own pace, meaning that very little is usually lost from over-inputting. In some cases, nothing might be lost, as some VNs include expressions in their text logs along with rewind functions. On top of that, if I'm not mistaken, games like Phoenix Wright explicitly prevent you from speeding up or skipping through dialogue you have yet to read - making the feature nigh exclusively for catching up on lost progress when you reload a save file.

Deaf players can still partake in countless rhythm games using visual cues.

These games typically have some vision-focused element to their design - such as most rhythm games having to tell the player in advance what button to press, as most rhythm games rely on more than just one input. However, in the case of many rhythm games, the core appeal of the game is lost - as mentioned before, "the experience has now shifted from something distinctly founded upon rhythm and memorisation, and turned into a basic reaction challenge." This is not accessibility in its purest form - instead of offering the same experience (or as close to the same experience as possible) to as many players as possible, you are presenting two completely different experiences to different audiences.

It's also worth noting for both of these types of game that, despite their choices to include these features frequently, this does not speak to a need for these features. One could easily make the argument that many VNs are actively shooting themselves in the foot by allowing the player to speed through content they've yet to see, for example.

Or as inaccessible as Spider Man for the PS4's Quick Time Events are for those with disabled hands, if you don't turn on optional accessibility features designed to make the game playable for them. These features exist for those who need them without harming the intended gameplay experience for those who have the option to engage with the experience as it is intended.

These QTEs do not make up the majority of the playing experience - instead, they serve to supplement small cutscenes, providing additional agency to the event and using the player's inputs as a cheap ticket to make tense situations feel more dramatic. Very little is lost from the core experience by providing a complete bypass to these events, as the vast majority of gameplay is left unaffected - and what is lost is evidently unimportant to the developers' visions. In addition, it's important to remember that QTEs are considered somewhat taboo in general - mashing inputs in particular are heavily frowned upon.

The sound-based rhythm aspect of Mother 3 is as off limits to a deaf person as a book without a braille version/audiobook format is to a blind person, and it didn't have to be this way. That's not how you design a game to be accessible. Experiences by nature cannot be universal, yes, but this isn't one of those experiences. This isn't something fundamentally inherently off-limits to people with a disability. This is like a french movie maker designing his MP4 file to disable VLC player's subtitle function to deny viewers the ability to view his work with english subtitles because he demands his work must be viewed how he intended, uncaring of what that means for anyone else. You can compare your choice to make a game less accessible to something that is fundamentally impossible to make accessible like a purely musical challenge intentionally designed without visual cues, even though optional visual cues could be added and nothing would be lost for those who don't turn Deafness Accessibility Mode on to get the optional visual cues.

Contrary to how it may immediately seem, things can be lost in a game's design through the mere action of providing an option even in cases where the player does not engage with the option. Ignoring the effect that the change in gameplay the option presents (because you can't just slap in a feature and say "okay, done, i can forget about it now" - you've got to make sure the game is equally as fun and contains all of the same strong suits as the standard setup, which means if the gameplay changes, you have to be very conscious of what has changed), offering the option to the player to begin communicates something to the player. The option tells the player that the part of gameplay it affects isn't that important, and you'll lose very little by swapping the options. Notice how far Celeste, a game about difficulty and adversary, has to go out of its way to communicate to the player that its Assist Mode is a last resort and irrepairably breaks the core message of the game - and notice how some players will disregard this and use it when they don't need it anyway. This is not a feature decision you can make lightly.

I can't stop you from choosing to argue dishonestly. You had to go out of your way to design your game to not play nice with a basic function of the emulator every other game plays nice with.

You chose to make your game play worse for people who value their time and need the speedup function. Can you explain why, without insulting me for not liking an exclusionary anti-consumer choice?

I would like to make very clear that I am not a developer for Scale & Fang. I cannot tell you exactly why they have chosen to make the decisions they have, nor do I have any say in what they do - all I can provide is the stance that their choice is not a matter of accessibility, as you seemed to suggest in your opening post.

I would also respect it if you do not make the accusation that I am arguing in bad faith - I hope that it shows through my enthusiasm in this topic that this is something very personally important to me, and I frequently push the developers around me to make their own steps on this front. The reason why I take the firm stance I am taking here is because the muddying of the waters on accessibility-related topics makes the whole matter very hard to talk about to new audiences - something that seems to be particularly common in this community - so I abhor the concept that speedup is a moral stance on accessiblity (my personal reading has always suggested that making the game provide consistent opportunities for breaks and to allow the player to very easily pick up the game without being confused on where they left off would be much more productive than externally increasing the pacing). Having to defend the choice to include a reasonably paced rapid-fire option in my own (non-Pokemon) game is incredibly frustrating, especially when I first have to clear up that this has nothing to do with difficulty or casualisation or whatever other buzzwords get people quivering in their boots.
I have better things to do than obstruct my own desires in order to frustrate a stranger across the internet, or whatever it is you believe I am seeking to do.

As one last note, I also cannot speak for anybody else on this matter, but I find the sudden leap (immediately after I've focused on your accessibility-based argument) to use oddly specific yet topically unrelated disability-based similes like "as inaccessible as a bouldering wall is to a limbless person" to be a bit weird. If it's not just me and other people feel the same way, I'd recommend avoiding this in the future.

 

[mgriffin]

If anybody's interested in this, especially if you're looking for ideas to integrate into your own works, let me know and I can post what I had written up

I found your post eloquent and interesting to read, so I'll cast a vote for getting to read more of your writing :)

 

[MrKyurem]

I found your post eloquent and interesting to read, so I'll cast a vote for getting to read more of your writing :)

As what I had written down was aiming to highlight what the official games currently struggle with, I didn't find this particularly productive to post on its own - so I've rewritten it to focus on the specific improvements that could be made, and added a couple of extra ideas that hadn't already come to my mind.

Pokemon is, at its core, a dialogue-heavy and text-heavy game. The most blatant way this makes it a troublesome game for many players is the innate reliance on visuals - over two and a half decades of the franchise, we have yet to see any form of built-in screen reader or particular screen reader support, making the vast majority of the game inaccessible to a significant portion of visually impaired players without an external reader whose accuracy cannot be guaranteed (It is worth noting that the game is still playable with significant external support in the form of walkthroughs for the most part - but recent games have actually reverted progress on this front by removing key enabling features, such as the sound effect of bonking into a wall). This somewhat surprises me, because I believe many fans have been asking for voice acting for a long time now - this wouldn't be a true solution (after all, while the dialogue is incredibly important, the core gameplay doesn't revolve around dialogue, but around menus), but it would be a huge step in a beneficial direction. Given that many action-heavy games like Street Fighter can find themselves very accessible to blind and visually impaired players (fighting games in general are good on this front, actually), it's a bit disappointing to me that a game that, theoretically, requires very little visual recognition is taking steps in the wrong direction.

However, this is ultimately a rather small amount of people, and this issue would be a sizeable undertaking to resolve, as there are currently no screenreaders (to my knowledge) for any console Pokemon has been on (I'm not sure about the feasibility for screenreader support in PC fangames - maybe there's already innate support in some frameworks?). It is my personal, and very idealistic, philosophy that audience sizes shouldn't really be considered if possible - any reasonable amount of effort to support even one more player is effort well spent to me - the smaller amount of blind and visually impaired players compared to more common disabilities amongst gamers like colour-blindness doesn't change much for me. Despite my utopian wishes, however, scope is inherently something every game has to think about - spending hours and hours implementing a feature that will only assist one or two players is unfortunately rarely worth the effort that could be spent elsewhere. However, the games' lack of intricacies with its text-reliance causes issues in other regards that affect a much wider audience, too - and I believe these are issues that are far more tackleable, both for official games and for fanworks.

The visual parsibility of text is something there are a lot of potential improvements for. As already mentioned, the near exclusive use of high contrast, black text with white background textboxes (or more specifically, the lack of customisation on this front) can cause text to be much harder to read for various people, such as people with certain kinds of dyslexia (there is no one-size-fits-all combo here, so the ideal is free choice of text and background, but this obviously isn't always feasible). However, the font used, and how the text is formatted, can also be a big factor. I'm unfamiliar with the exact best practices here, so I can't comment on the choices of the official games, however I often see fangames that offer the choice to swap between various styles of font used in the GBA/DS games, without any choice to use an external font or a specifically chosen, less stylised font - allowing for the player to use something like OpenDyslexic for a font could be really helpful if the default fonts don't work for them). Being able to adjust the size of text would be very useful, too - especially when we consider the physically small size of the hardware the earlier games are made for. It really doesn't matter if your font is beautiful and perfectly scaled to fit it where you want it if people can't read it, after all.

Tying into the dialogue-heavy aspect of these games, ridiculously obviously, is the inherent presence of dialogue and narrative in these games. The topic of how to present text - and how to write text and narratives for as wide an audience as possible (where appropriate) - is one I don't feel knowledgeable enough to talk much about. However, I will note that for my own purposes with dialogue/text, I do my best to aim for a reasonably low reading level with a wide variety of automated tools (I don't currently have the resources to do any particularly indepth testing), and I format text as if I'm writing subtitles - the standards here are very indepth and worth looking into, but the basics relevant to most hacks and fangames are to avoid splitting sentences between dialogue boxes (or in some way preventing the player from being able to see an entire sentence at once), and to avoid line breaks in unnatural locations.

Something that modern games are doing better on the front of narratives, including fanworks, is the presentation of the narrative. Generations 3 and 4 both included a form of summary of what you did last time you played when reloading your save file, which makes picking up the game when you may not remember where you left off far easier. More modern games opt to instead have a permenant reminder of what your current main story objective is (although one can argue they started on the wrong foot here, with the obnoxious presentation of the Rotom Pokedex in gen 7). Many fanworks take this premise a step further and offer a full quest log, informing you of what you need to do both for the main story and your sidequests - this is great! I have seen some concern, however, that quest logs can over-encourage a player to pay less attention to dialogue, with the intent of just checking the quest log later and treating the plot like a to-do list, which I believe to be a valid concern when you've put so much hard work into your project with the only compensation being people's time and attention. Perhaps a good midway point would be to have the quest log give you a rough idea of what you need to do, but also specify which NPC you should go back to talk to if you want more specific information on what you need to do? On a similar note of helping with memorisation, offering a dialogue log similar to how many visual novels do could prove very beneficial for a lot of players who find themselves accidentally glossing over a line or two they genuinely didn't mean to skip.

I also mentioned colour-blindness by complete coincidence, but these games frequently feature some form of colour-coding. Shinies are the most famous example of this; while they do have a visual cue, this is temporary and easily missed, meaning that if the colour difference isn't distinguishable through all kinds of colour-blindness, the player may miss an otherwise rare opportunity (a simple fix could be to show a shiny icon in the status bar similarly to the gender icon). I personally consider this barely even a footnote in the grand scheme of things - shinies offer no gameplay benefit beyond bragging rights, and in 99% of cases there IS at least some way to tell even if you miss the sparkle - but it's worth mentioning anyway both out of convenience and to highlight how tiny aspects of games can unintentionally affect the audience. And as one last sidenote, Sword and Shield chose to relegate its audio options to an optional and easy-to-miss key item. I feel it's pretty self-explanatory as to why that's not very helpful for anybody. I also don't recall if the games still have the same stereo/mono sound options they had in earlier titles, but I hope they've stayed around.

My most important advice if you're interested in these things for your own works is to think about accessibility from the start. The earlier you assess what you want to do and what you can do, the easier it will be to work it into your game. And, above all else, remember that something is better than nothing. Don't let the idea that there's something you can't fit into your scope put you off thinking about the bigger picture.

Actually, that's a lie. Above all avoid referring to your games as "epilepsy safe" or similarly certain-worded phrases. Please DO reduce the flashing in your games, don't be lead to believe there's no point in that, and do communicate that you've done what you can to remove flashing imagery; but also do communicate you cannot guarantee any safety. I don't want anybody finding themselves with a big mistake on their hands after having tried to do the right thing.

EDIT: Oh, the actual for real most important thing I just remembered: make sure you've got a wide variety of players in your testing team, including disabled players! It's all well and good making these accessibility features for your game, but the only way you'll know what works and what doesn't work (and what to change, and what to consider for the future) for sure is to put it to the test - and casting a wide net of experiences and preferences with your testers is just good practice in general.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Seems the forest is being missed for the trees here.

Going out of your way to take an accessibility option away from the emulator that runs your game is a conscious choice to make your game less accessible. I'd be too generous if I compared it to a French movie releasing without english subtitles, instead of comparing it to a French movie maker going out of his way to make sure his movie cannot have subtitles. Locking your game away from the non-French speaking world... It seems fair to compare that to locking your game away from people who don't have as much free time as everybody else. It's a single player game, nobody is cheating each other by deciding to spend less time grinding. Is anyone worried that people will cheat themselves out something? If the developer was worried about people "speeding through his game without thinking and appreciating the art", well...

How many novelists are worried about people skimming through their books without engaging with any of the characters or ideas? How many novelists put a blank page between every real page with the hopes that the extra time it takes to turn two pages will make readers spend twice as long thinking and technically, from a certain point of view, "reading"? There's a book in your hands, you're interacting with the book, it could be argued that the act of turning a blank page to get to the content you're here for is reading just like it could be argued that the process of grinding through metaphorical "blank page" moments with nothing new going on to activate neurons is, from a certain point of view, technically "still gaming". How many game makers are worried about people playing their platformer, their shooter, or their visual novel at 800% speed and missing something important or ruining the game for themselves? How many movie makers are worried about people watching a subtitled, officially dubbed, or even fan-dubbed version of their work and missing something vital to the experience like a pun that only makes sense in the mother tongue of the creator? "What if people play my game wrong and ruin the experience for themselves?" is one way to start asking questions about game design, questions with many answers of varying quality. But taking options away from a player because you feel your game has only one proper way to be played and one specific speed... That's not the way to go. I respect Doom Eternal for wanting the player to go fast and think fast. I respect Dark Souls for wanting the player to fight slowly and think carefully before acting. That's a vital part of the experience. Part of the fantasy. Doom Eternal has a specific gameplay fantasy it wants to sell, and so does Dark Souls. These games have artistically valuable reasons for deciding upon a set speed for the player. "I was worried about people not appreciating me or my game" is... Well, it's certainly one of the reasons of all time, but I feel at some point the forest was missed for the trees. Has a shooter ever designed a game you can beat by holding Forwards and Mouse 1, and then tried to stop people from speeding the game up with Cheat Engine upon learning this, instead of designing the game to ask more of the player intellectually?

Can you beat Devil May Cry 3 at 1.25 speed? Of course you can. Can you beat Skyrim at 1.5x speed? Certainly. As the game requires more precision from the player, the increased speed makes things harder. But it's doable. It's a different experience, definitely.

Can you beat Pokemon Emerald at 800% speed? Of course. It's a roleplaying game. If it's music you've heard enough times already, a story you're familiar with, you already know which parts you'd rather skip before you even get to them... But all of this is beside the point. Grinding, running back and forth between the Pokemon center, the player isn't robbing themselves of something vital by speeding this up and wanting to spend less time on this. This isn't vital to the game's pacing like the platforming segments and other forms of downtime in Doom Eternal. This isn't vital to the game's world and story like Persona 5's real-life segments. This is filler content, and wanting to spend less time on it is entirely reasonable.

There were moments in Radical Red when I had to stop and think... How will I beat this trainer? How will I win this match? How will I get out of this bad situation? What is the right Pokemon for my team? The right move? My game's running at 4x speed or more, but I'm not moving, I'm thinking. Then I make a choice, I read, I see what's going on, and I make another choice when I've thought about it as much as I need to.

And there were moments in Undertale when I had to stop and think, even put the controller down. But not about questions like "How will I overcome the mechanical challenge". No, I had to stop and think about the story, the artistry, the emotion. That game gave you something to think about even after you were done playing, no matter what ending you ended up with.

This isn't Undertale. It would be unreasonable for me to expect every game to be like that, just as it is unreasonable to expect every player to spend the exact same amount of time on downtime that gets in the way of the core gameplay. Many games like God Of War Ragnarok and The Last Of Us use downtime for an artistic purpose, building the bond between characters, changing that bond sometimes depending on main plot progression. Do you recall that long ladder in Metal Gear Solid 3? It was designed to make the player think about what had happened so far. And putting it in the game meant putting the equivalent of watching paint dry between the player and something new to think about. What a thrill, indeed. Do you think Kojima would hate people who speed through that segment to get it over with faster? Do you think he will resent any speedrunner who finds a way to skip it? Do you think he would feel the same way if that ladder took twenty real-world minutes? What if it took fourty real-world minutes?

In Pokemon, there isn't much of a challenge for your hands. Select options from a menu, go to a place, there isn't an Active Time Battle system or Just Frame mechanic demanding timing and mechanical precision from the player. But there are ways to engage the player's brain at any speed. There are ways to make the player think about a deep gripping story full of compelling characters that make you care about them. There are ways to make the player think about hardcore battling challenges. How many filler battles in Pokemon devolve into "Just mash A and wait for it to end"? Those battles won't become better if they take 800% longer, they'll just become less bearable. And they'll become more bearable if you can choose to spend half as much time on them. How many times do you run to the Pokemon Center in an average Pokemon game with the speed up, mashing through what Nurse Joy says to get back to the game? Pokemon fangames have made me want to play them at normal speed before, experience cutscenes and music at the intended speed, The process of waiting for the game to present something to you that makes you think at least a little, makes you want to slow down at least a little, becomes easier to endure because the wait time is reduced.

Do you recall a show called Castlevania? I loved that show. But the scenes in Season 2 with the vampire girls and the guy they kidnapped just dragged on and on and on... I wasn't here for them. I wasn't here for this. None of these characters grabbed me and made me want to care about them like I cared about the real reason I was here. Good God, those vampire Team Rocket girls liked to hear themselves talk. After practically snoozing through these scenes and getting tired of that, I uttered something impolite and reached for VLC's speed modifier. I didn't miss anything I was here for. I turned the speed back to normal for the good scenes and the good characters, I didn't want to miss a second of that. I walked away from that series feeling satisfied. I hope there is a Season 3. Some Camilla fan might resent me for this, and the scriptwriter might not be pleased about it either. But if I was strapped to a table and forced to endure those scenes for their intended duration, I would hate them. It might sour my feelings on the whole series. Would that be a "Win" for the creators of this show? Would it be a "win" that I was forced to engage with content I'm not here for, and forced to engage with content I'm not mentally there for, for the intended amount of time?

The Fast Forward button is not the enemy of VHS tapes, anime, games, or art. It's the enemy of filler. Why would anyone try to disable the Fast Forward button instead of asking why it is used?

 

[Captain Ahab]

Seems the forest is being missed for the trees here.

Going out of your way to take an accessibility option away from the emulator that runs your game is a conscious choice to make your game less accessible. I'd be too generous if I compared it to a French movie releasing without english subtitles, instead of comparing it to a French movie maker going out of his way to make sure his movie cannot have subtitles. Locking your game away from the non-French speaking world... It seems fair to compare that to locking your game away from people who don't have as much free time as everybody else. It's a single player game, nobody is cheating each other by deciding to spend less time grinding. Is anyone worried that people will cheat themselves out something? If the developer was worried about people "speeding through his game without thinking and appreciating the art", well...

How many novelists are worried about people skimming through their books without engaging with any of the characters or ideas? How many novelists put a blank page between every real page with the hopes that the extra time it takes to turn two pages will make readers spend twice as long thinking and technically, from a certain point of view, "reading"? There's a book in your hands, you're interacting with the book, it could be argued that the act of turning a blank page to get to the content you're here for is reading just like it could be argued that the process of grinding through metaphorical "blank page" moments with nothing new going on to activate neurons is, from a certain point of view, technically "still gaming". How many game makers are worried about people playing their platformer, their shooter, or their visual novel at 800% speed and missing something important or ruining the game for themselves? How many movie makers are worried about people watching a subtitled, officially dubbed, or even fan-dubbed version of their work and missing something vital to the experience like a pun that only makes sense in the mother tongue of the creator? "What if people play my game wrong and ruin the experience for themselves?" is one way to start asking questions about game design, questions with many answers of varying quality. But taking options away from a player because you feel your game has only one proper way to be played and one specific speed... That's not the way to go. I respect Doom Eternal for wanting the player to go fast and think fast. I respect Dark Souls for wanting the player to fight slowly and think carefully before acting. That's a vital part of the experience. Part of the fantasy. Doom Eternal has a specific gameplay fantasy it wants to sell, and so does Dark Souls. These games have artistically valuable reasons for deciding upon a set speed for the player. "I was worried about people not appreciating me or my game" is... Well, it's certainly one of the reasons of all time, but I feel at some point the forest was missed for the trees. Has a shooter ever designed a game you can beat by holding Forwards and Mouse 1, and then tried to stop people from speeding the game up with Cheat Engine upon learning this, instead of designing the game to ask more of the player intellectually?

Can you beat Devil May Cry 3 at 1.25 speed? Of course you can. Can you beat Skyrim at 1.5x speed? Certainly. As the game requires more precision from the player, the increased speed makes things harder. But it's doable. It's a different experience, definitely.

Can you beat Pokemon Emerald at 800% speed? Of course. It's a roleplaying game. If it's music you've heard enough times already, a story you're familiar with, you already know which parts you'd rather skip before you even get to them... But all of this is beside the point. Grinding, running back and forth between the Pokemon center, the player isn't robbing themselves of something vital by speeding this up and wanting to spend less time on this. This isn't vital to the game's pacing like the platforming segments and other forms of downtime in Doom Eternal. This isn't vital to the game's world and story like Persona 5's real-life segments. This is filler content, and wanting to spend less time on it is entirely reasonable.

There were moments in Radical Red when I had to stop and think... How will I beat this trainer? How will I win this match? How will I get out of this bad situation? What is the right Pokemon for my team? The right move? My game's running at 4x speed or more, but I'm not moving, I'm thinking. Then I make a choice, I read, I see what's going on, and I make another choice when I've thought about it as much as I need to.

And there were moments in Undertale when I had to stop and think, even put the controller down. But not about questions like "How will I overcome the mechanical challenge". No, I had to stop and think about the story, the artistry, the emotion. That game gave you something to think about even after you were done playing, no matter what ending you ended up with.

This isn't Undertale. It would be unreasonable for me to expect every game to be like that, just as it is unreasonable to expect every player to spend the exact same amount of time on downtime that gets in the way of the core gameplay. Many games like God Of War Ragnarok and The Last Of Us use downtime for an artistic purpose, building the bond between characters, changing that bond sometimes depending on main plot progression. Do you recall that long ladder in Metal Gear Solid 3? It was designed to make the player think about what had happened so far. And putting it in the game meant putting the equivalent of watching paint dry between the player and something new to think about. What a thrill, indeed. Do you think Kojima would hate people who speed through that segment to get it over with faster? Do you think he will resent any speedrunner who finds a way to skip it? Do you think he would feel the same way if that ladder took twenty real-world minutes? What if it took fourty real-world minutes?

In Pokemon, there isn't much of a challenge for your hands. Select options from a menu, go to a place, there isn't an Active Time Battle system or Just Frame mechanic demanding timing and mechanical precision from the player. But there are ways to engage the player's brain at any speed. There are ways to make the player think about a deep gripping story full of compelling characters that make you care about them. There are ways to make the player think about hardcore battling challenges. How many filler battles in Pokemon devolve into "Just mash A and wait for it to end"? Those battles won't become better if they take 800% longer, they'll just become less bearable. And they'll become more bearable if you can choose to spend half as much time on them. How many times do you run to the Pokemon Center in an average Pokemon game with the speed up, mashing through what Nurse Joy says to get back to the game? Pokemon fangames have made me want to play them at normal speed before, experience cutscenes and music at the intended speed, The process of waiting for the game to present something to you that makes you think at least a little, makes you want to slow down at least a little, becomes easier to endure because the wait time is reduced.

Do you recall a show called Castlevania? I loved that show. But the scenes in Season 2 with the vampire girls and the guy they kidnapped just dragged on and on and on... I wasn't here for them. I wasn't here for this. None of these characters grabbed me and made me want to care about them like I cared about the real reason I was here. Good God, those vampire Team Rocket girls liked to hear themselves talk. After practically snoozing through these scenes and getting tired of that, I uttered something impolite and reached for VLC's speed modifier. I didn't miss anything I was here for. I turned the speed back to normal for the good scenes and the good characters, I didn't want to miss a second of that. I walked away from that series feeling satisfied. I hope there is a Season 3. Some Camilla fan might resent me for this, and the scriptwriter might not be pleased about it either. But if I was strapped to a table and forced to endure those scenes for their intended duration, I would hate them. It might sour my feelings on the whole series. Would that be a "Win" for the creators of this show? Would it be a "win" that I was forced to engage with content I'm not here for, and forced to engage with content I'm not mentally there for, for the intended amount of time?

The Fast Forward button is not the enemy of VHS tapes, anime, games, or art. It's the enemy of filler. Why would anyone try to disable the Fast Forward button instead of asking why it is used?

Because they already know why it's being used and it's because you're an impatient twerp who has the absolute balls to suggest that playing games at a speed not intended is an accessibility feature and not explicitly a tool available to only emulators. No console offers this to you. The game's design already bends over backwards to make sure it can be picked up and dropped at almost any point.

Hell, emulators have save states, which simply let you pick up and play even in situations where saving conventionally isn't available to you! The conclusion, then, is that you will write a gigantic text wall to justify why a game should cater to you when leaving speedup on will inevitably lead to a bunch of morons asking where they're supposed to go next because they sped up the game and mashed through some critical dialogue.

More's the point, your posts reek of not even having *played the game in question*. Perhaps you should do that, instead of being the biggest asswipe known to man and insulting actual disabled people, yeah?

Once again, what you want is Cookie Clicker. Go play it.

 

[Max Elixir]

The Fast Forward button is not the enemy of VHS tapes, anime, games, or art. It's the enemy of filler. Why would anyone try to disable the Fast Forward button instead of asking why it is used?

it seems that no matter how many times it is explained to you or others the message doesn't come across, almost as though you choose not to hear, rather than because you simply did not hear. the decision to limit access to emulator speedup was not one made without "asking why it is used". it was explicitly made because the answer was identified and measures were taken to address reasons why people use it to begin with (none of which, by the way, have ever had anything to do with "accessibility"). in the end, nothing but a full capitulation to the status quo will satisfy you, because it does not and did not ever matter what changes to the game's design were or are made. all you really seem to care about is unrestricted access to the zoomzoom button, which is why you've made no effort to really look beyond that snippet of information to learn why.

i'll spare your lengthy diatribe on what games you deem "allowed" to be considered art any more attention than it deserves, because it's both deeply embarrassing and a strictly anti-art and anti-artist mentality.

 

[mgriffin]

How many filler battles in Pokemon devolve into "Just mash A and wait for it to end"? Those battles won't become better if they take 800% longer, they'll just become less bearable. And they'll become more bearable if you can choose to spend half as much time on them. How many times do you run to the Pokemon Center in an average Pokemon game with the speed up, mashing through what Nurse Joy says to get back to the game? Pokemon fangames have made me want to play them at normal speed before, experience cutscenes and music at the intended speed.

The Fast Forward button is not the enemy of VHS tapes, anime, games, or art. It's the enemy of filler. Why would anyone try to disable the Fast Forward button instead of asking why it is used?

I think it's silly to suggest that the authors of this hack didn't ask why it was used. Presumably they don't believe that their hack is full of filler that should be skipped; almost no hobbyist intentionally puts filler into their game.

So I would say that what you have is a difference of opinion with the authors about what content should be experienced at regular speed. And that's... well it's too bad. You'll just have to accept that this isn't the game for you.

As a fellow ADHDer who hates battles you may as well just mash A through* and listens-to/watches everything on 1.5x speed, I sympathize with your position, I can't play most Pokémon games because they aren't able to capture my interest**. But idk what to tell you, the authors (seem to) think that playing everything at regular speed is vital to the experience—even the battles and backtracking you and I would call filler—and that's their prerogative, not every experience is for every person. And to me, it's certainly true that by forcing me to battle and backtrack at regular speed it changes how I experience the game, it makes me more inclined to have Repels and avoid trainers' line of sight, which afaict from their thread, is exactly what they wanted me to experience.

You may say "but they went out of their way to exclude us", but from my perspective every author has gone out of their way to make their game exactly how it is, so I don't view preventing speed-up as any different from a decision to include filler battles or lengthy dialogue or whatever else.

* Which, let's be honest, is all battles in almost all Pokémon games.
** For the benefit of other readers: I did mean "can't" and not "don't".

Perhaps you should do that, instead of being the biggest asswipe known to man and insulting actual disabled people, yeah?

I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that ADHD isn't a disability, or isn't as real as physical disabilities, but for me it feels like the implication is there and distracts from your other points.

 

[zapperil]

Imo, while the no-speed up things were a chore by itself, at least it's not that crippling and making the game unplayable. My gripe on the game seems to be more in the story and character interactions, which feels it could've done better.

 

[Mukuitsjanuary]

I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that ADHD isn't a disability, or isn't as real as physical disabilities, but for me it feels like the implication is there and distracts from your other points.

As someone who has ADHD I think the implication is moreso that the implication that speedup is 1. an accessibility feature and 2. one we need is kind of offensive. Cause honestly I do take offense to that. I think the whole "It's an accessability feature" thing is kind of a farce to make the side of not wanting to engage with the video game look morally correct.

Like yeah. I have trouble focusing. I have trouble starting tasks even when its something I want to do. But if I'm playing a video game, it's because I want to play it. I want to engage with it. I find the implication that I would need to speed through the game and skip everything just to hold my attention kind of infantilizing.

I feel like the way people have been talking about the game is also kind of insulting to the developers, there's been a lot of saying that speedup is needed for the filler and grinding and bog standard story, without stopping to think that the developers may have gone out of their way and put a lot of work into avoiding these things. There's a lot of sentiment here and elsewhere that just kind of comes across as "This thing you put time and effort into is just content to be consumed and I don't want to engage with it on a level beyond that" and as an artist I find that insulting as well.

So I find myself very taken aback with this whole discourse, the pro-speedup argument really comes across as an anti-artist argument using my disability as a shield. And obviously I don't like that. It's like a twofold exercise in making me feel bad about myself. I feel like if people are that interested in not playing the game they can just not play the game. It's not like I'm interested in difficulty hacks like Radical Red, they don't appeal to me because they're not the kind of thing I'm interested in playing. So I don't.