Mezzanine Stairs

World’s End has some moments of flashing light, and since we’re now running full screen we should include a photosensivity warning. We’re not at a 1980s arcade game level of flashing, but a couple of the later explosions in the game are intense enough to be problematic. Here’s an example reduced to a sliver to avoid causing the very problem in question:

Options

Fortunately, since this is software, we can make the effect optional. Since I’ve been studying the issue, I’ve been paying attention to screen flashing in other games and thought to myself that it might be nice if the game I’m playing in the dark in the middle of the night didn’t blast me in the face every time I landed a critical hit. So, we have added “Show Flashing Lights” and “No Flashing” settings to our paltry set of game options.

User Experience

I’m hoping we can keep the gameplay intrusion to a minimum with a question like, “Show flashing lights?” My initial thought was to replace the “Read cutscenes?” prompt which was an attempt at mitigating the downvotes we were getting from the “no swears” crowd.

We had a splash screen in the web version of World’s End to introduce ourselves to new players, but (at the moment) the full version of the game launches directly into the main menu. It’s nice. We don’t need to throw our logo in players’ faces every time they launch the game.

Best Practices

The ability to disable flashing, however, doesn’t solve the use case where a new player is unaware that they are sensitive, and there doesn’t seem to be any industry standard for games that contain flashing lights with the option of disabling them. Reviewing discussions about photosensitivity warnings in other games, it seems like players don’t mind being prompted with a choice as long as it’s remembered and they’re not asked over and over again.

I find the situation so frustrating that I contemplated eliminating flashing lights entirely, but Complacent argued against removing of one of our few visual effects. If an unobtrusive notification that says, “Some scenes have a strobing effect that may affect photosensitive viewers,” is good enough for Netflix, hopefully we don’t have to have a full-screen, multi-paragraph disclaimer of doom as the first thing players experience when launching our game. Console games relegate warnings to the backs of packaging and into user manuals. Again, who reads that?

What Do You Think?

The photosensitivity warning splash screen treatment feels more like it’s driven by lawyers trying to avoid liability than actually meaningfully warning players. Nobody likes being nagged, but I think giving players a yes or no choice to see flashing lights is more meaningful than showing a disclaimer nobody will read.

Do you read the warnings shown when launching games, or do you ignore them and mash buttons until you get to play? Have you played any games that elegantly handle the photosensitivity issue?