2023 is the year of the fighting game genre, as new entries in established series are making triumphant returns. From the recently announced Mortal Kombat 1 to Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, fans of their favorite franchises and the overall fighting game community have so much to look forward to. But beyond the excitement of character reveals and new mechanics comes the inclusion of accessibility features and design practices that open these titles to disabled players.
Fighting games are traditionally input-heavy, meaning players need to execute precise movements and button combinations to perform powerful combos. While it’s possible to play without these moves, it’s often at a severe disadvantage. Couple that with the visual cues necessary for matches and fighting games pose numerous barriers for a variety of disabilities. Speaking with WIRED, the director of Street Fighter 6, Takayuki Nakayama, discusses creating accessible and inclusive games through control schemes and visual accessibility settings, and talk about his hopes for the future of the genre.
Gaining ControlAs a franchise, Street Fighter has always included extensive control layouts. With six buttons used to perform light, medium, and heavy attacks, as well as movements that vary between each type of character, the dexterity needed to master a fighter is often too much for physically disabled players with limited reach and strength. To bridge the gap and increase the player base, Nakayama and his team added “Modern controls,” a simplified scheme that lets people perform special moves and intricate combos with significantly fewer inputs. Despite being new to the series with Street Fighter 6, Nakayama says, the development of Modern controls began with Street Fighter V.
“During the development of Street Fighter V, we created a new character named Ed to test our theory,” Nakayama says. “We designed him to be able to perform special moves without the need for complicated directional inputs and button combinations, and we were able to confirm that the game works even when Ed exists among characters that require command inputs. That was when we decided to make it possible to play all characters in Street Fighter 6 with the more simplified Modern controls. To maintain competitive balance, we test through multiple battles and adjust as needed.”
Modern controls are not without their limitations. While it’s easy to throw Hadoukens as Ryu with a single button, as well as effortlessly execute some combo strings by holding the Assist button and tapping any attack, Nakayama explains that special moves only deal 80 percent of their overall power, and players cannot activate light, medium, or heavy versions. Combine that with less standard attacks, and the combo potential is noticeably different compared to the Classic controls. Yet, even with damage reduction and restricted move sets, individuals using Modern have the ability to compete and potentially beat those on Classic. And this was intentional for the overall design of the game.
“We started with the idea that we wanted more players than ever before to be able to play the game,” he says. “Fighting games are often thought to be difficult, and that it’s a challenge to input commands and perform special moves. Personally, I think fighting games are still fun even if you can’t perform special moves, but we still considered this a big hurdle.”
