With the popularity of Pokémon Go and Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu, one writer wonders why Nintendo continuously excludes disabled gamers and why going forward, the company should keep this demographic in mind when it comes to first-party games.
The winner of the Pokémon Go Championship grand finals in Orlando was stripped of their title, allegedly for 'unsportsmanlike conduct' during their victory celebration. The celebration involved the winner removing their headset, standing up, and pumping their fists before shaking hands with their opponent. Many believe the ruling was excessive and that winner's victory celebration was tame compared to celebrations by winners in other competitive games.
There are people that get offended seeing others just enjoying a moment, or enjoying a hobby, or just having fun.
Can someone explain to me what is so problematic with this? I watched video multiple times and all I see dude having bit of celebration. None of his actions felt aggressive or seem like they symbolize anything... Like winning sure deserves bit of celebration like that. I mean who wants to live in the world where you aren't allowed to be excited or have bit of burst of happiness when you win? Like was he supposed to act like emotionless robot? He should be allowed to have bit of his victory "hell yeah" moment, even if it is before shaking hands with opponent. Like it is not like he didn't shake hands or whatnot. And it is not like he is like some super serious government official to have to stick to protocol to a letter. This whole thing is just ridiculous.
Pokémon GO fans are waking up on Wednesday morning a little more nervous. Niantic, the developers of the augmented reality game, has decided to sell the game
You can't play Pokemon Go in China, but I needed a digital souvenir.
Nintendo isn't excluding anyone. Do they have a survey to ask people are they abled before buying?
I would like to say that this article mostly complains about Pokemon Go, which is created by Niantic and shouldn't represent Nintendo and Secondly, the Pokemon Let's go games don't need Pokemon go to get the full experience from Let's Go.
I would also argue that the Let's Go games make it more accessible considering you have the old way of play and a new 1 handed mode.
It would be nice if more developers made different control schemes for disabled gamers. But there are certain games that are built to be played with motion controls and encourage walking n driving to locations like pokemon. Not every game will suit everyone's needs based on play style. Yes it's unfortunate but you cannot make one product to fit everyone's needs that's impossible.
Couldn't this criticism be used against any game?
I'm all for inclusion, but the idea of support for disabled gamers is still rather recent. There are accessibility options in games now that didn't exist in the past, namely button mapping and control of on screen elements. It's not as robust as to handle all the potential disabilities one may face, but I don't think that a game that is designed to work a particular way has to go out of its way to be inclusive to everyone. It's great if they do, but the means to be inclusive have to exist at a hardware level before the software can be written to be inclusive like that. Unfortunately, hardware dependencies exist when it comes to this issue of physical disabilities which limit one's movement.
MS understood this well enough to start working on their new control for disabled gamers, because the existing control schemes weren't going to cut it in the bigger picture. Such controllers aren't always conducive to being convienant for every situation or game design though, and I don't believe in criticizing a developer for not thinking of every possible scenario on what would be standard for limited hardware input options.
Microsoft has just made there disabled controller workable for the switch apparently.. So yeah it does look like Nintendo are looking into it all and making there games more accessible to disabled users.