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Over the past few weeks, since the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, I’ve been watching a slowly growing topic of discourse around the system’s primary 1st party launch title, Mario Kart World.
Mario Kart World features a trio of accessibility settings – Steering Assist, Acceleration Assist, and Item Assist. Steering and Acceleration Assist are returning features from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, while Item Assist is new for Mario Kart World.
The argument I’ve been seeing is as follows – Mario Kart World is a bad game because if you turn on all three of these assists, the game “literally plays itself”. This usually comes alongside a video where someone sets up a single player 50cc Grand Prix with these assists all turned on, and shows their character getting first place without any player input required.
This is portrayed as a reason to criticise Nintendo, “they made a game so easy it literally plays itself”.
The question I want to ask today – Is that really a bad thing?
It is true, on the lower single player difficulty, you can set Mario Kart World to play itself pretty effectively. It doesn’t do the most high level tricks, or take advantage of obscure shortcuts, but the game accelerates on the player’s behalf, steers a predictable racing line, and uses items to combat enemy players. If you take your hands off the controller, it does “play itself”.
But, that’s not the whole picture – Each of these automated systems can be overridden to a degree by the player, even when the assists are switched on. Players with Steering Assist active can still use the analogue stick to steer, with the game just assisting to keep them on track and avoid them going off of the edges. Acceleration Assist can be overridden if you want to hit the break button to avoid the wrath of an incoming blue shell. Item Assist can be overridden if you see a great opportunity that the game hasn’t taken advantage of to throw an item.
But, even if that wasn’t the case, I would still argue that there is value in a game offering such robust accessibility support that it can, if needed, essentially play itself.
Firstly, just because a game like Mario Kart World can in theory play itself doesn’t mean players are forced to use it that way – It just has flexibility in how much support it offers players, to a natural if extreme endpoint. ANY inaccessible aspect of the game can be avoided, without limitations preventing you from doubling up on accessibility types because the developer felt it would make the game too easy to allow that level of assistance for the player.
Secondly, I think often when we talk about or design accessibility it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that accessibility should “make the game more manageable, without erasing challenge entirely”. It’s a mentality that’s in part born from concessions made to make accessibility discussions palettable to non-disabled audiences, but the thing is, there are disabled people with higher levels of support needs for whom that level of assistance and support may be necessary.
Previously, when I’ve brought up the topic of designing video games with accessibility for high support needs disabled players in mind, I’ve been asked in a fairly condescending tone “Why even offer that? At the point where a game is practically playing itself, who’s even going to get anything out of the experience?”
This kind of attitude is built on the basis of ableist assumptions about people with more complex disabilities. It’s built on the idea that people with complex physical needs don’t have complex interior lived experiences, and that those with cognitive or learning based disabilities aren’t worth considering as audiences for interactive art.
Someone who can only engage with video games via a Gaze Tracker may only have access to directional inputs and a limited number of button presses. Looking at a game like Mario Kart World, being able to turn on Acceleration Assist and Item Assist would free them up to engage with steering controls.
Someone with limited use of their hands but who struggles with fine motor control might benefit from turning on all three of Mario Kart World’s assist modes – They would still be able to control their own steering, but with controller assist keeping them within the track edges so that less nuanced stick movements are less likely to accidentally send them careening off track, while allowing their broader inputs to still be reflected in game.
Someone with a cognitive or learning disability may need longer to process things happening in a game, potentially making real time combat out of the question for some players in a game like Death Stranding 2. But that same player may really enjoy calmly trekking around that game’s world delivering packages – Would allowing the game to “play itself” during combat sequences make the game pointless to play? I’d argue not, there’s still value in engaging with the experience of taking scenic treks across that game world.
What about a series like Dragon Age – If a player using a sip and puff controller and chin based analogue stick wanted to play that game but could only access directional inputs and a couple of button presses, would there be value in a playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard where the player character’s navigation is partially automated, and combat is fully automated, but that player can control important dialogue choices? For many, those are the most important and engaging part of a Dragon Age game. I think you could very easily argue there’s still value to that person’s playthrough experience.
Beyond that, what starts as small amounts of interaction with a game can grow with practice. If you give a disabled player an accessible entry point where they can definitely impact play and learn how controls work, without needing to do everything at once, that can be a great tool for learning new skills and interfacing with a medium. If someone starts playing Mario Kart World with all three assists active, steering occasionally with the game keeping them in bounds, they’re going to get more experienced with steering. That could be a player’s first space to accessibly interface with that game, and could very much help make over time engaging with more systems more manageable.
At the end of the day, if we’re talking about single player video games, a game “playing itself” hurts literally nobody. If you don’t want that level of in game assistance, don’t turn those settings on. If you’re a developer, recognise that there are ways of playing your game that you might fear are “too easy” to remain engaging for the player, but that might be vital for opening up your game to more kinds of players.
If you allow your game to “play itself”, with that support activated in customisable segments, you allow for players you may never have considered to play your game in ways you may never have imagined. Don’t get hung up on if that “removes the challenge”, allow people to find joy and satisfaction engaging with your game, whatever that might look like for them.
This is obviously no replacement for other types of accessibility efforts more focused on assisting players with mechanics without automation, I’m not calling for games to automate first person gun combat at the expense of offering degrees of aim assist for example. But as much good as gameplay assists can do, we maybe need to be less afraid of occasionally offering players the option to automate gameplay mechanics entirely for the sake of broader accessibility.
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