Accessible and Humane Games

If you follow games media you have most likely heard of "games being too easy" criticism. This isn't without merit but it is not entirely correct. Games came a lot way forward in terms of presenting fair challenges. Also there are now plenty of games  where testing the player's limits is a major concern. Even games whose main point is being unfair and punishing comes out every now on then.
But something that isn't talked enough is games being accessible, "easy games", and game design where player's well-being is put into consideration. Video games need to be uniquely careful about this as for they demand the most effort from the player out of all medias out there. So, let's look at how games can improve at this:

Easy difficulty

There is actually very little reason for a game not to have easier difficulties. "But it will change the experience" I can hear. Yes, that's the point. It will make the experience better for some people. Trying to get everyone have the exactly same experience is vain, - you can't even achieve that in a short-film - also isn't it better that everyone has overall pleasant memories about your game? The original Doom and all the arena shooters took testing player as a core issue, yet all of them had a wide range of difficulty options. Which brings us to the more important question: How to do it?

• Most of the time you will just need to tinker a few variables: Give player more stuff, make AI less aggressive, reduce damage etc. It will add more testing time, but if you take accessibility seriously, it shouldn't be fundamentally different from adding anything else.
• Difficulty options should be labeled accurately, without trying to make players bad for picking easy - your ego trip is not that necessary - and they should be explained in-depth. From top of my head Baldur's Gate games do very good job at this. If the player doesn't even understand your terminology, it's probably good indication in itself they should pick easier difficulties.
• Don't lock game content for players playing the game in easy, ever; again, being developer doesn't warrant you to go on an ego trip on players, if having certain difficulty level is that much of a problem then it's just better not adding it . Also people who play on harder difficulties really do it for their own personal achievement.
• Player should be able to change difficulty when they want, for example a certain part of the game might be too difficult but other parts might be just fine, or they might not have enough time to put into the difficulty they started. Remember, one of the core ideas about accessibility is to ensure to make sure players not punished for their real life experiences. Admittedly this may not be as easy, especially if it affects real-time AI behavior, but if all it involves is changing some variables you have no excuse.
• It doesn't have to always selected from menu. You can channel it into gameplay choices as well.
• You can do it with cheats and console commands too. But if you choose this way, -again- don't insult the player for using them.
• Of course, difficulty choices don't excuse you from teaching your game well to your player. Players should be able to get all information they need in game without looking at elsewhere and your level and enemy design should be the primary teacher.
• Relatedly, mandatory tutorials are not fun for anyone. And don't be condescending towards your player, for example don't try to teach them how to control the game in 3 hours into the game. And while assuming someone played no video games at all is good practice, they shouldn't be solely focused int the most simple things. Most problems regarding tutorials easily get solved by making them not mandatory and not shoving them into player's face.
• If you really really need to have fixed difficulty, at least make sure to communicate this to the player well and be upfront about this in your marketing.

Sensory and Mental Issues

This is very significant, as being ignorant about sensory issues in design can render your game outright unplayable or worse affect the player's well-being. This might come off as harsh but someone who refuses to care about this doesn't deserve to be called a game developer, period.
Of course, this is a very large topic and most specific issues regarding this deserve deep analysis on their own. Still, we can talk about some general guidelines:

• Have content warnings! On your intros, on your sale page, on your box, everywhere! It costs you very little to do it but can protect a lot of people. "This game has violence." isn't enough, ESRB ratings don't help at all. If your game has rape, abuse, heavy realistic gore, depiction of common phobias etc. you should be very upfront about it.
• Don't add things just for shock value! Seriously, is your detailed torture scene that necessary? Can't we just black out during abuse scene? Don't just invoke common phobias for no reason too,  quality horror games explore things other than just scaring people, and if you game isn't horror then why it is there at all?
• If you have to include such heavy scenes, at least present the option to skip them. As pointless it was, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at least showed the courtesy of option to skip the "No Russian" level.
• Do you need to have violence at all? Too many games overly  focus on that already, and honestly a lot of games include that because it's so commonly accepted -like a habit- rather than it serves really anything in itself. Games like Life is Strange shows that there is actually a sizable demand to it, especially in AAA scene.
• If you have violence, how will you depict it? You can stylize it to make it harmless, or you can make it that every violent act is impactful and has real consequence. But whatever you do, don't glorify it.
• Options, options, options...Being able to switching off blood, heavy dismemberment etc. can benefit some people.
• Generally avoid flashing lights and epilepsy inducing content, or again, include a skipping option.
• Avoid nausea causing visuals. This seems pretty obvious, but developers indeed forget this time to time, most often when they get too excited about a new technology, aka VR.
• Use colors and lighting that is easy on eyes.
• This one is obvious too but don't include sounds that are really uncomfortable for most people.
• Making your game more accessible to autistic people: Avoid visuals and sounds that is commonly troublesome for autistic people.
• Make sure controllers are simple as possible and make sure player don't get tired excessively.
• Also please no jump-scares. Not only you make your game worse for a lot of people for little reason. It's cheap and uncreative 95% of the time.
• If you want to include sensitive content, make sure you doing for a very good reason. Sometimes the cost of expression is really excluding some people, but most of the time the expression itself isn't worth it.
• Among for other reasons, minorities shouldn't feel crushed by your game. There are a lot of things to be careful here. Little things such as not gendering blank state characters without player's request and big things like not depicting mentally ill people as dangerous, monstrous, easy-to-go villains.
• Subtitles! Subtitles seem trivial to a lot of people but honestly you will win so many people, people with auditory problems, people who are not very good at English...
• Different font options, again small thing but can go a long way for people.
• Different language options, this is very much a tall order, especially for story games, you need to really weigh in cost vs. gain.
• Allow your game to be moddable so players can make the game more accessible for themselves, among other benefits of it.
• For visual novels/story games with little interaction, developing an audio input/output version of it will be a huge boon for people with visual defects
• In multiplayer games, make sure you can mute people/words in text chat, have options for decrease and increase the voice of other people and have a robust moderation that responds harassment and bigotry. An aggressive environment really, really drives away marginalized people.
• DON'T pray on mental illnesses for making money. No predatory lootboxes and other micro-transaction systems that manipulate's people's psychology. No micro-transaction that depends on RNG, players should be fully knowledgable about their purchases.
• Avoid game design that is solely built on making people play longer.

Respecting Player's Time

I shortly mentioned it on "Easy Difficulty" section but it bears repeating here: Players shouldn't be punished for their real life experiences. A large part comes from  acknowledging how much time video game demands from player and making sure video game can adapt to player's daily rhythms and not on the other way around.

• Avoid filler content. From filler I mean everything that doesn't add anything to the core experience player wants to have. Occasional mini game can be welcome but make sure such content remains strictly optional.
• Being able to save at will: The biggest issue with using checkpoints as a saving method that they simply don't respect player's time. Player shouldn't be forced to sit-through a game. Also have backup saves, or give player plenty of room for saving. Auto-saving should also be included as option. If you are afraid that this will lessen the game's challenge, then restrict player's loading, not saving ability.
• Make sure we can stop and skip cut scenes/dialogue, and view dialouge at faster speed. This not only saves a lot of time for players, but also allows you to add as much as dialogue and cut scene you want. Additionally an option for being able to watch cutscenes for later is really nice too.
• Chill out with game over screens. If a game has a long "game-over" period, it's usually way too long. Players should be able to turn back to the game as shortly as possible. Of course some empty time can be helpful for your player, just make sure it's no longer than necessary.
• This goes without saying, but optimize loading times. For existing loading times, different options like putting cut scenes, useful tips/lore stuff, even mini games during loading are good options.
• As I mentioned above, you shouldn't design your game so players have to play the game to artificially increase the playing time. Money-sink mobile games are obvious examples but single-player games can sometimes do this too; by requiring excessive amount of grinding and forcing players to wait more than it's plausible, one good example is egg-hatching in Pokémon series.
• If your game is a kind of game that is inherently open to be played for long times, games can include warnings when you play them for too long. Taking one step further, you can add options so games can even close themselves after played for a certain amount of time.
• Different games have different pacing but make sure actions that gets repeated a lot are quick and fluid as possible within your design ideas.
• An option for making the game faster should be included too. There are reasons why emulators are so handy.
• Being able to teach players the game well affects this issue too, as the faster player can learn your game, the more they can spend their game time on actually enjoying it. Also goes without saying, tutorials should not be mandatory and be skippable.
• Design your game so that, the player will be able to experience as much as of the game in a single play through. Persona games are good examples to avoid the opposite, their social links are pretty hard to complete in a single play through and quite unnecessarily so.
• Don't lock content into New Game Plus. I am not talking about additional difficulty options, I am talking about extra levels and outright extra story content. Players should want to play your game for its own sake, not to get stuff they missed.
• If the game has multiple endings, viewing all of them should be easy and shouldn't require another play through. Being able to save at will make this a trivial task.
• If your game can be played on a handheld device, this can immensely help a lot of people. Cross-platform saving is not easy to have, but it's a good option to have regardless.

These are all my suggestions. You don't have to comply with this, no one has to do anything, nor I am demanding things, but if you want to have your game played as much as people possible -which I think most developers want- then you should make your game accessible as you can. It's really a terrible feeling when someone can't play something they enjoy because of a single feature that doesn't even feel necessary makes the game unplayable for you.