Colorblind Modes (and More Accessibility Options) Coming to Dead by Daylight
If you’ve been here long enough, you’ve seen an article about Dead by Daylight. I feel like the clearest connecting thread in that work is accessibility.
What do I mean by accessibility? This means able to be accessed and used by all people. Specifically, we’re talking about options added to a game to allow disabled gamers to play. These can be graphic options, sound options, and keybinding options so you can customize how the game plays for you.
Behaviour Interactive have taken a long time to add meaningful accessibility options to Dead by Daylight. I do not want to underplay what they already have in the game. You can rebind all the keys on keyboard and mouse or controller to be more comfortable for your abilities. I’ve already taken advantage of that to place certain actions on my mouse (gestures and dropping items/survivors) and move the special ability button to where it my hand naturally sits. Those options let me play the game longer with less pain in each session.
What the game lacks in its current iteration is meaningful graphic and sound accessibility options.
There was an unfortunate incident about two weeks ago where one of the developers made some pretty dismissive comments about adding colorblind options to Dead by Daylight on his Twitch stream. He was called out for it and Behaviour Interactive responded in a way I did not see coming.
it makes me sad to hear this coming from a developer who is "Getting bored" of people "blabbing about colorblind mode"
— Steven Spohn (Spawn) (@stevenspohn) January 21, 2021
But @DeadByBHVR, if you're tired of "being badgered about it" imagine how tired people are of not being able to play your game because it's inaccessible to them https://t.co/6CnUwG7sDK
Remember, two years ago, on an official Dead by Daylight livestream, the participating team members dismissed the idea of colorblind options as being impractical because they would be abused by players who did not need them to gain an unfair advantage. The official stance was accessibility was less important than perceived fairness.
This is not how we wanted to reveal this, but we feel it's the right time... we have been working on a colorblind mode for some time now and we are planning on a release shortly.
— Dead by Daylight (@DeadByBHVR) January 21, 2021
Auras work in progress. pic.twitter.com/jqdKb8cj1I
— Dead by Daylight (@DeadByBHVR) January 21, 2021
First, they apologized to anyone who was hurt by his actions on Twitter. Then, they announced the colorblind modes that were already in development at the studio. They shared screenshots and discussed a loose timeline. Finally, the community manager created a new video further breaking down changes coming to the game regarding colorblind and other accessibility options.
A brief statement on colorblind accessibility (thread) pic.twitter.com/6a1jfrNfNu
— Dead by Daylight (@DeadByBHVR) January 21, 2021
From my own experiences with Behaviour’s staff, I know that they care about the player base. They do take what we tell them into consideration when working on the game. Their biggest issue is a lack of communication with the players. They do not like to announce anything until they have it complete and ready to enter the game.
There’s a level of frustration in that. We know what the timeline of the releases in the game is. Every three months, there is a new chapter with some combination of new killer, survivor(s), map, and features. About six to seven weeks after a chapter, you get the mid-chapter patch that adjusts balance, including altered perks, abilities, maps, visual/audio updates, etc. The messaging about the new content is incredibly inconsistent, with the actual official release date often not being announced until a day or two before it comes out. There is no planning ahead as the timeline sometimes has to bend.
Case in point, the mid-chapter patch should have released this past Tuesday, 26 January, if they hit their normal timeline; clearly, they didn’t. There was no official statement of a delay because they never announced when it was coming out. I knew that it was pushed to next Tuesday, 2 February, because I was in a Twitch chat when a community manager gave the head’s up to a Fog Whisperer (a partnered Dead by Daylight streamer) that they’d have to wait another week to show off the new features.
What caused the delay? The easiest speculation is the introduction of colorblind accessible graphics to the game. The new in-game UI was not met with the kindest reviews by the fanbase, especially not colorblind gamers. The indicators for survivor status where some combination of bright red or orange outline against the often dark green or dark blue maps, rendering them useless to many colorblind gamers. It was confirmed on Twitter that they’ve overhauled (or, more likely, were overhauling) that element of the UI to be more accessible. I could see Behaviour Interactive having to delay an update for a week to perfect it if they felt pressured to make sure the feature launched on time; clearly they did, as I’ve never seen them respond to controversy and gamer outcry like this before.
The rest of the colorblind options are tentatively slated to enter the game with the next chapter, which should hit in March. These include three different graphics options focused on Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanope colorblindness.
While I am not colorblind, my eyes respond better to the mockup for Deuteranope, which sets scratch marks and generator auras to a bright orange rather than a dull red option. As someone with light sensitivity issues, more options will always be better.
I was waiting on the actual mid-chapter patch to discuss this, but I do believe that Behaviour Interactive has been integrating meaningful graphics changed related to brightness for a while. The PTB will often feature more extreme contrasts of shadows and light and more aggressive killer overlay effects. By the time the new patch goes live, they’re almost always toned down. This was not always the case, but I have noticed it since around Chapter XVII in September 2020.
The problem comes from addressing older features. I’m going to use the Clown as the example as he’s been overhauled in the new patch. I cannot play against the Clown in his current state. The combination of the distorted screen and fast swirling purple gas of his power gives me a migraine. It’s why I became a killer main and why I refuse to play as Clown. Behaviour added a small crosshair months ago to give people with motion sickness issues a clearer focal point when hit by the gas, but it did nothing to address the almost strobe-like pattern of the effect.
I was scared to play the PTB. I wanted to see what the graphics would look like for his altered power. The Clown has two different gases now: purple slows you down, yellow speeds you up. I’m happy to report that I was able to play survivor for hours against many Clowns and never get a migraine. The screen still distorts when you are hit with the purple gas, but the gas itself is less dense. It’s more transparent and concentrated more around the outside of the screen. Because of my vision problems I’m constantly moving the mouse to keep an eye on my surroundings and find light conditions that I can see with; no matter how hard I swung my mouse, I never felt that strobe effect. Clown, a killer I’ve joked about deleting from the game like a bug for years, is finally safe for me to play against.
The next big battle for the game that is finally getting attention is the Doctor and his potential impact on photosensitive epilepsy. He shocks you with electricity, which causes a lot of flashing lights when he uses his power. The colorblind mode discussion online boosted a long-running request for a menu option to remove or replace the flashing light effect. While I don’t get seizures from flashing lights, I do get migraines and have had to stop playing before because of the Doctor’s powers. He’s another one that I try to avoid playing at all because of his potential impact on other player’s safety and wellbeing.
In typical Behaviour fashion, we don’t know when that will be addressed. They’ve said more in 2021 about accessibility options than they have in the almost four and a half years of the game prior to this. What we’re looking for are not easy Band-Aid fixes after a game has existed this long. Most games that have accessibility options launch with them, like gamma sliders for brightness adjustment, separate sound sliders for music/effects/dialogue/etc., or visual indicators for sound elements in the game. I have no doubt anymore that Dead by Daylight will finally start implementing meaningful accessibility options in the game; I just have no idea what that timeline is beyond the new UI getting a makeover for the mid-chapter update.
Dead by Daylight is available on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/S, and Nintendo Switch.
