Certain aspects of games may make assumptions about the player’s physical capabilities, such as color perception, hearing or the ability to play with two hands. A game mod or cheat code may make a game accessible to a player who otherwise would not be able to speedrun it, and I would like to discuss the implications and acceptability of doing so.
As a simple example, consider Super Mario Galaxy. The spin action is performed by shaking the controller and cannot be performed by pressing a button. This is a fundamental action in the game that must be performed often. A hypothetical player may have good finger dexterity, but be unable to shake the controller repeatedly for such a duration as a full game run. In response, this player might use a custom controller that allows them to perform the spin action with a button press. Would this player’s runs be accepted competitively?
Beyond controllers, certain game mods or cheat codes could be used as well. Perhaps the game is reprogrammed to perform the spin action with a button press, or a cheat code could be used for the same purpose. In either case, care is taken to ensure the gaming experience is not fundamentally changed and the player receives no practical advantage from doing so. Would runs using such mods/cheats be accepted competitively?
Certainly, a line needs to be drawn somewhere. The classic case is the turbo controller, which gives players a clear mechanical advantage over players using standard controllers. Similarly, game mods and the aptly-named “cheat” codes can get out of line in short order.
Personally, I believe any means that do not change the fundamental game experience should be acceptable. If a player wants to use a more comfortable controller or a cheat code that adjusts the button mapping or whatever, I feel it should be allowed as long as the human interface itself is the only thing being modified.
What do you guys think? Is this something that can be applied generally, or does it merit consideration on a game-by-game basis?
The tricky thing about any sort of modified controls, cheats, etc. is, where does the line get drawn? At what point does it stop being about accessibility and start giving players an unfair advantage? That's an impossible question to answer in a way that everyone will be happy about.
In any case this is definitely something that needs to be decided by the community of a particular game. Global standards for something like this wouldn't really make sense, and would likely cause more problems than it would solve.
I'm with ShikenNuggets here, the decision at the end of the day is with the community of that given game. That said, with Game Boy particularly, I believe Super Game Boy 2 and Game Boy Player offered palette swaps that would assist with vision problems. Since Nintendo offered these palette changes on officially licensed hardware, I think the use of the swaps should be universally accepted on that platform. I'm curious what other systems have color swap options.
@ShikenNuggets said this is an impossible question to answer in a way that everyone will be happy about, but I'd like to try:
What stands out to me about this situation is whether or not your setup allows you to make more inputs with fewer button pushes than the original. In a game like Super Mario Galaxy, a lot of the competition is about how quickly you can input a series of actions in proper timing. Minimizing the number of button presses over the course of the game makes a whole lot of difference over the course of a run. If you are simply wanting to add a different input for the shaking mechanism, this doesn't lower the number of inputs you need to finish a run. It starts to cross the line when you begin to replace multiple button presses or sequences of button presses with single button presses that are not available to all players.
Physical handicap or not, the question you should ask is whether your modification of the controller allows you to make fewer inputs or input at a faster rate than a normal controller would. That seems to be where the line is drawn and why turbo controllers are generally banned- they allow a single button push to emulate many rapid button pushes. It allows certain players to make fewer inputs to get the same result in ways that other people can't. If number of inputs is a limiting factor, this gives players using a turbo controller an advantage that is not accessible by the entire community.
Whether or not an advantage is considered "unfair" depends largely on whether or not it is accessible by the entire community and can be repeated by any player.
Like it was stated above, however, the reasoning behind why certain mods are banned and rejected changes on a case-by-case basis. Some games come bundled with a turbo controller and there's no reason to ban the controller that is meant to be used with the game. This site covers games at just about every end of a spectrum too large for any one person to comprehend, which is why we cannot make site-wide rules- there is ALWAYS an exception.