“This talk outlines the principles that guide making accessible video games at Naughty Dog. It explores how these ideas can apply more broadly to design in general, and how designers can avoid unintentionally excluding people with the choices they make. Accessible design is good universal design, and its benefits extend to everyone.”
Presented at From Business to Buttons 2023.
“One of the motivations behind remaking The Last of Us for the PlayStation 5 was being able to port the many accessibility features that were developed for The Last of Us Part II. Looking beyond simple feature parity, new challenges and opportunities emerged to go above what was possible on Part II. This talk will discuss the development of cinematic audio descriptions, DualSense features, and other new accessibility features developed for The Last of Us Part I.”
Presented remotely at the Game Accessibility Conference 2022.
“With over 60 accessibility settings, The Last of Us Part II is the most ambitious game Naughty Dog has ever made and has been called “the most accessible game ever.” In this talk, lead designer Emilia Schatz and lead systems designer Matthew Gallant will chronicle the development process, including an in-depth focus on the features designed specifically for blind and low-vision players—a first for the studio. They’ll review how these features were planned for, tested, iterated upon, and shipped, as well as key learnings.”
Presented remotely at the Game Accessibility Conference 2020.
“While combat in the ‘Uncharted’ series has historically been tightly authored by the design team, Naughty Dog knew early in development that ‘Uncharted 4’ was going to be different. The open-ended gameplay and large complex environments led them to explore a more systems-driven approach to artificial intelligence. After over-steering in that direction, they ultimately found a balance between authored content and systemic behaviors. This talk explores the development process of ‘Uncharted 4’, and the lessons they learned about partitioning control of the AI between design and engineering.”
Presented at GDC 2017 and the Montreal International Game Summit 2016.
The slides are available here.
