Stevivor: Inclusivity and Colour Blindness

[Unorthodox]

http://stevivor.com/2016/08/inclusivity-civilization-vi-female-representation-colour-blind-friendly-assets/

Inclusivity & Civilization VI: More female representation, colour blind friendly assets
An epic historical game opens its arms to more players.
Steveivor
Steve Wright4 Aug 2016






Civilization VI is looking to increase its (already fairly impressive) inclusivity in this iteration of the franchise.

“It’s cool for me to be a part of [Civilization VI’s development team] because I’m colour blind,” Associate Producer Sarah Darney told Stevivor recently in Sydney.

“I’m a colour blind gamer, and it’s good to have that representation on the team. All of the artists are so receptive of it. As we were doing the terrain, I had those guys come into my office every day, asking, “hey, can you see this?’

“It’s cool that we’re thinking about these things and that we have people who can help.”

Firaxis decided against toggles for different types of colour blindness — Darney is red-green colour blind herself — in favour of smart design.

“Because there is such a broad spectrum of color vision, it’s very challenging to plan for each one,” she said. “That said, whenever we use color language, it is almost always paired with shape language to keep everything easily distinguished at a glance. Additionally, the time of day system could provide an opportunity for users to find terrain settings that pair well with their particular vision.”

Moves toward further accessibility and inclusive don’t end there.

“As an industry, we’re moving towards making games more inclusive of different races and genders,” Darney said, quite pleased. “Civilization’s always been a game that did that, but it’s cool to be part of a group choosing to have more female representation as well.”

Said representation applies to both Firaxis and Civilization VI itself; at the time of writing, three of the game’s eight named leaders are female.

Emphasis mine, because it's something I've struggled with in the past.

[E_T]

I was wondering about that and truth to tell, is likely one of the main reasons as to why they had gone with the "cartoonish look"

Fantastic!!

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't mind the cartoonish, I think.  As long as you can tell what you're looking at and it's not unpleasant to have to stare at for hours on end, it's how the game plays that matters.  You can get used to the style, and I've spent a lot of time staring at shots from the game, what with making screenshots and cutting out a lot of avatars, and the look of what I've spent a lot of time with is actually attractive enough for me, honest.