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Thank you so much to everyone from the Splatoon 3 community who brought this situation to my attention, in particular to those who pointed me to ProChara’s Twitter thread collecting negative experiences, and the Squid School YouTube Channel whose videos on the subject were a great resource for learning about the situation and the initial community response.
Over the past couple of weeks there has been a slowly growing conversation in the Splatoon 3 community centring around a newly introduced special attack called Splattercolor, and the impact that the special is having on disabled Splatoon 3 players.
For anyone unfamiliar with the game, Splatoon 3 is a bright and colourful third person shooter where two teams of players compete in short matches to paint a map so that more of it is covered in their colour of ink rather than their opponents, with shooting other players not directly leading toward an improved score.
The new Splattercolor special, when activated, is designed to disorient the enemy player’s team by reducing colour saturation, effectively changing the game to greyscale, and introducing a static style audio to the soundtrack. The effect only lasts a few seconds, but it is designed to make it harder for players to see which colour of ink is theirs, as well as causing general disorientation.
While the Splattercolor Special is inherently designed to cause short term disorientation, since its introduction is has become clear that for many disabled gamers it’s having a more intense impact that intended, with many players experiencing negative side effects making it unreasonably difficult for them to play the game, or impossible to do so comfortably.
To get one initial concern out of the way, while some players with photosensitive epilepsy are concerned about the feature, no users have reported seizures as a result of this special. Some seizure prone players are no longer playing Spatoon 3 since the special’s introduction, but this seems to be out of an abundance of caution. While the screen turns to largely bright white fairly quickly through a fading animation, it’s not a rapid strobe effect that is likely to be a common seizure trigger.
However, with that said, some photosensitive players are finding that the special’s activation is inducing migraines and nausea. The screen isn’t technically getting brighter, but the rapid perceived shift to a largely bright white screen during gameplay is causing some photosensitive users to be impacted.
Looking online at posts about the new special, a whole host of other disabled users seem to be experiencing negative effects from Splattercolor when used in matches, for a wide variety of reasons.
Players who suffer with with visual snow, a condition where vision appears to be impacted by effectively a layer of static, are finding that Splatoon 3 shifting to greyscale is exacerbating the prominence of static in their vision, disproportionately preventing them from seeing the game during the attack.
For some players with tinnitus, an audio effect played during the special is causing them to have an uncomfortable ringing in their ears which persists after the special is no longer active.
Multiple autistic players, and others with sensory processing conditions, have reported finding the inserted audio, as well as the sudden shift in visuals to a largely white screen, is triggering sensory overload, in a way they do not experience typically when playing Splatoon 3 normally.
Some players with differing degrees and types of blindness, who are reliant on Splatoon 3’s big blocks of bright colours to see enough of the game to play it, are reporting that when the game becomes greyscale they lose all ability to tell what’s happening, as opposed to the intended outcome of the special where a player can still see the game, but is required to think a little harder about which colours are which.
Some colourblind players are reporting that they’re struggling with the special because, while they can adjust the colour profile on their monitor to make colours easier for them to differentiate, using in game features like Colour Lock to create a predictable visual experience, a sudden change of visuals can make their self created accommodations no longer effective.
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, one common thread in experiences I read about the Splattercolor special was that, in most cases, these experiences came from disabled players who previously were able to play Splatoon 3, but no longer feel they can. The game is either becoming totally unplayable during the few seconds the special lasts, or is causing discomfort that becomes a barrier to comfortable play.
Digging into the community response from Splatoon 3’s players when the special’s accessibility concerns were initially brought up, there seems to have been a pretty sizable number of players online whose response was unsurprisingly ableist. Their responses largely revolved around dismissing this as being a concern, suggesting that the effect was intentionally meant to be disorienting so nothing’s wrong if it’s dissorienting in different ways for disabled players, or simply telling disabled players to stop playing the game if they don’t like the newly introduced effect.
However, there does appear to be segments of the Splatoon 3 playerbase who are coming around on the idea that the new special isn’t accessible, and who are trying to find solutions to work around Splattercolor while hoping that Nintendo addresses the special’s issues.
SendoQ is a website Splatoon 3 players can use to organise competitive matches and tournaments, and the website’s organisers have added a toggle allowing players to make it known if they wish to play matches in which Splattercolor is banned. The idea is that players who have accessibility issues with the special can be paired with players willing to agree not to use it.
It’s not a perfect solution, it doesn’t make general public matchmaking usable, and it’s very much built on an honour system, but it is at least a way for players to find matches that might help them avoid an attack which is likely to cause them undue disorientation or discomfort.
Nintendo isn’t great about responding to accessibility concerns which arise with their games, but in this case the issue is becoming a notable enough deal in the Splatoon 3 community that it is requiring outside tournament organisers to plan around it, which feels notable.
Nintendo needs to be aware that a wide variety of disabled players are having issues specifically with the Splattercolour special in Splatoon 3, and that it really does seem that if the special is going to remain in the game, it needs some retooling in consultation with disabled gamers impacted by its current implementation.
I hope that Nintendo either removes the special, or retools it to be more accessible. The issue is, this is Nintendo, and I’m never going to hold my breath for Nintendo to act on this kind of accessibility issue.
ProChara Thread: https://twitter.com/ProChara/status/1730986554078945562?s=20
SendoQ Website: https://sendou.ink/
Squid School Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv6YIw89bD0
SendoQ Announcement: https://twitter.com/Sendouc/status/1731730490535674250
Splattercolour Footage Via The T.C. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESF-rHRqCzA
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