Katsuhiro Harada, the director behind the highly anticipated Tekken 8, has responded to concerns regarding the game’s accessibility options, in particular its colourblind format.
Tekken 8’s accessibility options started doing the rounds over the holiday season, prompting colourblind users and accessibility advisors alike to contact the development team on social media, reportedly having fell ill with migraines and vertigo after testing alternate modes.
Ian Hamilton, an accessibility specialist, commented:
You urgently need to remove one of your filters (the striped one), it cannot be present at launch as it may hospitalise players (or worse), in the same way as the infamous Pokémon episode. At the very least, it should be deleted, the way that people find out they’re prone to seizures, which can be fatal (SUDEP), is by having one. The intent, behind it, i.e. separating characters by something other than hue, is fantastic. But this isn’t the way to achieve that.
In response, Harada-san offered:
We have ‘multiple types of colour vision options’ for players with different colour vision, not just one pattern. In addition to that, there is also a brightness adjustment for effects, and an overall brightness adjustment, and with those, there is quite a range of adjustment.
On top of that, we have never claimed or publicised that these options cover all players’ colour vision (although it has been talked about by a favourable community as a result).
These colour vision options are a rare part of the fighting game genre, but they are still being researched and we intend to expand on them in the future. Currently, we have received positive feedback from many demo play participants, but we understand that this option does NOT address the colour vision of ALL players in the world (said again).
We would also like to inform you that we have been working with several research institutes and communities to develop this option even before we developed the ‘accessibility version of Tekken 7 (not for sale)’ and Tekken 8.
Tekken 8 is scheduled for release on January 26, 2024 for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
[Source – Katsuhiro Harada on Twitter]