more and more i find myself disillusioned with the way that people talk about accessibility in fighting games

one button specials are good for accessibility but people talk about motion inputs like the only reason we have them is to be gatekeepy. you 100% lose something in a game with one button specials and i don't know what to do about that

like the function of the motion input on a dragon punch is not to make the dragon punch harder to do. the function is to make it unmashable. if you can mash a frame-one-invincible reversal... you understand you have to make other design concessions if you can mash your frame-one-invincible reversal

and there are design concessions to be make but they're concessions, they lose something. i just don't know what to do about it. it doesn't feel good to nerf an accessibility option, but it doesn't feel good to always have to design around the fundamental changes that those accessibility options imply. and fortunately, i don't design fighting games so it's not my job to know what to do about it, but i'm just kind of sick of the idea that this is a trivial thing to accommodate if only you cared

if your takeaway from this post is "holly thinks accessibility options in fighting games are bad" you can just go ahead and block me btw i don't want to have the bad faith argument today

i just kind of think this sucks tbh

like here it's getting out of a knockdown because that's the easiest thing to set up in training mode, but that's not so bad because the timing is consistent. my point here isn't "you can consistently get a dp out of being knocked down". but if you can mash it out here, you can mash it out of any random frame trap just as well

none of this is even touching "motion inputs are fun as hell to do and if something else is optimal you don't get to do them". this is not really a point in favour of or against anything at all, it's not really an argument. but i think there's an undercurrent in a lot of conversations about this of "you only like motion inputs because you can do them and i can't" and like, no, i like them because they're fun and feel good as fuck

@monorail I don't have anything to say as I completely agree with you, the only thing this made me think is

I think I don't ever want to try a leverless cuz yeah, stick feel good, like to wobble stick

to be so crystal clear: i think it's hard to make an accessible fighting game. i think there are a lot of difficulties that aren't immediately obvious, especially to someone who doesn't play them (perhaps because they need those accessibility options!). of course i think it's valuable. my point is extremely not "disabled players aren't worth it". it's "this shit is hard and you have to decide what to lose"

@monorail i do think that there is a certain point where a video game can’t support accessibility without becoming a different video game. something like celeste can manage this due to the fact that it is a single player experience, any sense of lost valor through slowing the game down 33% for your personal playthrough because you can’t play otherwise is fake and anyone trying to assert its reality should be discredited. but fighting games are at their core designed as a competitive multiplayer experience, and so a concession for one person applies to all people. i think that this “accessibility concession trap” applies to all media, and that there will never be a clean answer for any of it, unfortunately.