Gamers who wondered why action-rpg title The Outer Worlds has no color-blind menu options received their answer today, in the form of a tweet from Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer (@jesawyer).
According to Sawyer’s tweet, The Outer Worlds has no color-blind menu options for a simple, straightforward reason: the game is designed to be playable without requiring any color-based information. Indicators, icons, and other means provide redundancy with information players normally discern via color, making an actual color-blind option in and of itself redundant.
PSA: The Outer Worlds does not have a colorblind mode because it was designed to be playable without color information. I.e., color information is redundant with other indicators. Tim Cain (one of the directors) has a form of colorblindness that approaches monochromacy.
— Jaws Slayer (@jesawyer) October 30, 2019
Gamers can apparently thank Obsidian director Tim Cain and his team for this accessibility-forward thinking, as Cain himself has a rare form of color-blindness approaching monochromatic vision. For those with this form of color blindness, the world appears in shades of grey. Two more forms of color-blindness are more common, with red-green color blindness the most prolific, affecting eight percent of males and 0.5 percent of females of Northern European ancestry.
Keeping this in mind, one can surmise that a great many gamers are affected by color blindness. While most modern games are built with a color-blind selection in the menu, the options tend to be lackluster in practice, either placing a filter over the entire screen or only shifting the colors of some UI elements. In fact, even some extremely popular games such as Overwatch have color-blind options that can make the game seem more confusing rather than less so.
To create an entire game with the scope of The Outer Worlds while keeping color-blind players in mind, therefore, is an effort all gamers can applaud. Anything that increases the accessibility of gaming to a wider audience, such as those with color-blindness or physical disability can only be good for the gaming industry and community as a whole.
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