How to Solve It

Another aspect of parametric difficulty, the speed at which a game moves (and the relative speeds of entities within that world) is defined by the numerical values that make up that world (as well as the technological limits of the hardware). Users with mobility or cognitive difficulties may wish to experience gameplay at a different pace. Slowing the entire game helps compensate for slow reaction times, difficulty with rapid controller manipulation, cognitive difficulties regarding the processing of visual information, and so forth. Once again, this may feel like "cheating" to some gamers, but access to these kinds of options makes the world of difference for certain players with disabilities.

Some games use relative speed changes as part of their core play design -- bullet time, for instance, typically slows both player and enemy movement speed within the game world, but slows enemy speed more greatly. It might be a more difficult proposition for developers to allow players to tune this nature, if only from an interface perspective.

The exact needs of users can be determined only by testing, however, and the games industry has as only scratched the surface of user-solicited difficulty features. At the very least, developers should not assume that the speed they comfortably play at is the only speed at which the game can be enjoyable, or even challenging.