JAN STASIEŃKO AGNIESZKA DYTMAN-STASIEŃKO KRYSTINA MADEJ ADAM FLAMMA MACIEJ ŚLEDŹ ”FRAGILE AVATARS?” Representations of Disability in Video Games  ”Fragile Avatars?” Representations of Disability in Video Games  Jan Stasieńko Agnieszka Dytman-Stasieńko Krystina Madej Adam Flamma Maciej Śledź ”Fragile Avatars?” Representations of Disability in Video Games Wydawnictwo Naukowe Dolnośląskiej Szkoły Wyższej Wrocław 2021 The book was published within the research project “Fragile Avatars?” Representa- tions of disability in video games, in linguistic, visual, narrative, and structural context’ funded by The State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People (PFRON) under the agreement number BEA/000057/BFD. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Authors retain copyright and grant the publisher right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this book. Reviewer Piotr Siuda, Ph.D., Professor of Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz Editorial Project Manager Magdalena Karciarz Bibliography Editor Sylwia Marciniak Language Editor Monika Karciarz Cover, Layout Design and Typesetting Wojciech Sierżęga ISBN 978-83-65408-56-3 University of Lower Silesia ul. Strzegomska 55, 53-611 Wrocław tel. 539 670 429 https://wydawnictwo.dsw.edu.pl/ e-mail: wydawnictwo@dsw.edu.pl Table of Contents Introduction 7 Chapter 1. Plot and narrative context of disability in games 25 Chapter 2. Representations of disability in the visual layer and game mechanics 45 Chapter 3. Linguistic aspects of disability in games 62 Chapter 4. PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games, representation of disability and children’s cognitive development 78 Chapter 5. Qualitative games content analysis 112 Chapter 6. The analysis of conducted focus group interviews 143 Conclusions 162 Acknowledgments 166 The games used in the study 167 List of Pictures, Figures, and Tables 171 Bibliography 174 Questionnaire template used in the study 187 Introduction As stated by the Newzoo report from 2021, the number of video game users in the world currently amounts to three billion people. This multitude of players also comprises represen- tatives of minorities and excluded groups, such as people with disabilities. Foreseeably, communities of people with disabilities have undertaken many actions to increase the accessibility to games, the examples of which are “Open Letter to Polish Game Developers on Facilitating Access for People with Disabilities” from 2019 and the activity of many international organizations and associations, whose mission is to facilitate access to various forms of digital entertainment for users with special needs (for instance, the Spe- cialEffect Foundation, Games Accessibility Special Interest Group in the International Game Developers Association or the DAGER Systems website, which publishes regular reports on accessibility in specific games). Nonetheless, these groups demand not only greater access to digital entertainment through, for example, dedicated controllers, functionalities, and interfaces, but also proper representation in games. Underrepresentation appears to be a significant problem. As Dan- ielle M. Marascalchi wrote on First Person Scholar (2020): “searching ‘Best Video game char- acters of all time’ leads you to a list of some of the most popular video games ever created. Of the characters featured on the list: 27 are white men, 12 are non-human men, 9 are white women, 1 is a man of color, and all 50 are able bodied.” Therefore, the aim of the presented report is to investigate in what ways representa- tions of people with disabilities in video games shape up. We chose to demonstrate several fields corresponding to these representations. Disability has been discussed in the following contexts: narrative, visual, game mechanics, and language. Games for the youngest players have been analyzed separately. We hope for the development of a fairly complete picture of disability in video games and contribution to its more proper and comprehensive represen- tation. The report also includes a set of recommendations/suggestions for the video game industry related to the presentation of disability and formulated in cooperation with players with disabilities. We expect that these remarks shall translate into a greater presence of characters with disabilities in games and that they shall encourage game developers to draw on the unique experience and ways of perception of reality by people with disabilities. Ulti- 7 mately, we also wished to study the legitimacy of using the term “fragile avatars” in relation to game characters and investigate how it “works” when describing disability representation in games. Research concept Subject of the research The subject of the study is the representation of disability in video games. The research area defined in this way primarily requires a discussion on the basic terms used in a re- search reflection. To define disability, we have employed the characteristics with a focus on the “nonmedical” and social dimension of disability, which results from the perspective of critical cultural studies on disability, described in greater detail later in the report. Such perception of disability, not as a reparable defect, but as an “effect of disabling environ- ments which produce disability in bodies and require interventions at the level of social justice” (Siebers, 2014, p. 290), began, as indicated by Shakespeare (2017, p.214), in the 1970s with UPIAS manifestos. The studies of Oliver (1996), Garland-Thomson (1997),1 Silvers (2003), and many other researchers are also noteworthy in this perspective. Helen Meekosha and Russell Shuttleworth (2009, p. 50) pointed out, however, that the social model of disability, as opposed to the medical one, has evolved towards critical disabilities studies, which attempt at building models of disability by eliminating binary differences in the discourse, such as impairment—disability, medical and the social model of disability, and so on (see also Shakespeare, 2014). The “International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health” developed for WHO in 2001 distinguished three sections: functions and structures of the body, activity and participation, and environmental factors, and also followed this direction. Therefore, disability is encompassed here within a broader spec- trum of problems and “interaction among other bodies, activities, communities, and envi- ronments” (Ellis and Goggin, 2015). For our study, the basic elements of the definition of disability in social and critical terms are the following: its presentation as cultural identity, social definition and stig- matization of the body of people with disabilities and determining them as minorities (bearing in mind that in a critical approach disability goes beyond the framework relat- 1 Thomson wrote about disability more as a representational system rather than as personal misfortu- ne and bodily flaw (Thomson, 1997: 6). 8 ed to the category of minorities and that it requires to be “universalized”) (Zola 1989). From critical disabilities studies, it is also worth drawing on a specific understanding of the body with disabilities as a variation of the human body and the recognition of its complexity. These elements enable the presentation of representations of disability in video games as a result of a normative discourse on the body, gaming practices rooted in ableism, and the decisions of creators on the shape of these culturally and socially motivated representations. A significant issue is a discussion on the category of disability representation. As Gar- land-Thomson wrote, “…representation frequently obscures these complexities in favor of the rhetorical or symbolic potential of the prototypical disabled figure” (1997, p. 15). Thus, it is a kind of cultural construct that gives specific meanings to a body with disabilities. In this case, representation has a double context. On the one hand, it is an object that symbolizes and imagines the represented, and on the other hand, it represents and thus is a “representative” in the world of cultural messages. In the studied area of video games, these representations are based on many elements of the presentation, including an inter- active visual layer, an audio layer, a complex system of character mechanics (ways of mov- ing, ways of perceiving the environment), and so on. The simulation nature of games, their interactivity, various strategies, and the player’s position towards the character (a character as an avatar—a role to play, a character as an extension of the player, a character as a pup- pet, a tool, a prop; see, for instance, Linderoth 2005 and Bayliss 2007) contribute to the complex relationship between the player and the character and complicate the problem of representation to a greater degree. Interactions with the character with disabilities thus be- come an exemplification of the complex embodiment theory, which assumes that the body and its representations mutually transform. In this perpetual game, social representations (built from an ableist perspective) seek to impose on people with disabilities the way they should perceive themselves and their bodies. Even given this social pressure, people with disabilities take measures to avoid being controlled by these representations. Therefore, the report attempts at investigating to what degree a general lack of such representations in video games is also a kind of representation of people with disabilities as non-existent, overlooked, and unnoticed. 9  Furthermore, few cases in which the game features such representations2 have been presented with an indication with what kind of attitudes, frequently biased, they have been constructed, and in what ways the communities of people with disabilities and people who are concerned about their adequate representation in games can oppose these unfavorable strategies (see the section on “modding” in Sims). Hence, our report has situated in a critical position, but we sought to show also those representations of disability in games that stem from respect and an open approach to the problem of disability, and a deeper reflection on the essence of this representation at various levels: mechanics (its authenticity or deception, semblance), language or plot. The last category, a video game, also raises issues of interpretation due to a considerable number of its definitions. Two approaches, narratological and ludological, have competed with each other in video game studies for many years. The first focused on the functioning of video games as interactive plots; narratological and literary studies tools were employed in their analysis. The latter viewed games as interactive structures and simulations, defined by means of a set of rules of the gameplay. In the case of the ludological approach, the player was perceived more as an initiator of action in the game, whose role is not only to 2 It is very difficult to accurately determine the number of games in which representations of disa- bility appear. Using the Giantbomb.com website, which was used for the first time by Gałuszka and Żuchowska-Skiba (2018) to find games with disability representations, one can try to estimate this number at several hundred titles. The database of games on the website can be searched according to the so-called ‘concepts.’ i.e., key ideas or objects present in the game. Among them, one can find several categories related to disabilities, e.g., blindness, hearing impairment, wheelchair, autism. The number of concepts and objects related to disabilities is not very large; it lacks many diseases causing disability, it also lacks categories such as prostheses, crutches, etc. Meanwhile, it is equally difficult to define the global number of all available game titles. In 2019, the Gaming Shift blog tried to do so, which estimated the number at over 1,181,000 (GamingShift, 2019). However, the authors of the calculations made only a simple sum of the offer of the largest gaming websites, the offer of digital purchases on mobile platforms, and the range of in-house game consoles stores. This result does not take into account the duplicate offer. Even if the total number of games offered is currently 600-900 thousand titles, then several hundred games in which we can recognize representations of disability is a negligible percentage, considering, for example, the UN estimates that 15% of the world’s popula- tion are people with disabilities (United Nations, bd). 10 perceive the setting and the plot but to actively co-create them (or simply interact with the game system in a situation in which the game does not have a narrative layer). Over time, this polar opposition ceased to be so strongly emphasized, and new interesting views began to emerge, for example, procedural rhetoric of Ian Bogost, who indicated that games have a persuasive potential manifested not through words, still and moving images or sounds, but through procedures typical for computer operations. Thus, meanings in games are created by means of these very processes. The legacy of these discussions consists of a substantial number of game definitions. Among them, the concept of Nicolas Esposito (2005), the author of the so-called the simplest definition of the game, is noteworthy. He wrote that a videogame is a game which we play thanks to an audiovisual apparatus and which can be based on a story. Other researchers, fo- cusing on video games, frequently propose more extensive definitions, including non-digital games. For example, Salen and Zimmerman (2003, p. 93) indicated that a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. Jesper Juul (2003, p. 93) described a game as “a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable.” What would stem from these various approaches for the study on the representation of disability in games? Primarily, it is necessary to point to an important role of the player in building these representations. Games are not a medium that is subject to passive percep- tion; therefore, representations of disability are to some degree and, in some cases, modifi- able elements of the game environment. Whether it is possible to actively influence these representations also bespeaks the attitude of the game creators to the problem of disability and constitutes the scope of the player’s significant autonomy. In this case, the issue of the so-called subversive play, that is, the possibility of playing against the game system, against the scenarios planned by the developers, deserves attention. It is also a strategy that can be revealed in the context of disability depicted in the game—players opposing its represen- tations may wish to take action to creatively manifest this objection. Moreover, as in Juul’s definition, the player emotionally related to the outcome of the game is frequently engaged in the gameplay, and thus can also express emotions related to representation of disability, both inside and outside the game, for example, as comments and posts in social media or on Internet forums. Furthermore, there is a reference to the so-called game mechanics in 11 many definitions, that is, the necessary forms of player’s activity in the game, which are often unique to the given gameplay.3 Game mechanics frequently take the form of simple activi- ties, such as running or shooting; however, they can be complex choices that must be made by the player-controlled character, for example, ethical judgement (see Zalen, Zimmerman 2003). These simpler and more advanced decision models create behavior patterns in the player, which can be of significant importance when the player controls or interacts with a character with disabilities. The way in which the “disability mechanics” are reflected in the game undoubtedly has an immense impact on the perception of this problem by able-bodied players and also determines the attitude of players with disabilities to the game. These “dis- ability mechanics” are also within the scope of procedural rhetoric discussed earlier and thus translate into the final consciously or unconsciously created image of disability in the game. State of the research The research work undertaken so far has primarily included solutions to increase the acces- sibility of games for people with disabilities and to use the potential of games in therapy and rehabilitation. Nonetheless, the findings related to the representation of disability in games are very “sparse.” The field of ​​increasing accessibility and therapeutic applications concerns the analyses of the use of both existing and innovative game interfaces in the therapy of people with dis- abilities, for example, through the use of kinetic interfaces (Microsoft Kinect, Sony Wii), see, for instance, (Chang et al., 2013); (Weybright et al., 2010) or the development of gameplay control systems through eye movements (Gips, Olivieri 1996), or the use of Brain-Computer Interface (see Monaco et al., 2019, Sakharkar et al., 2019). These studies are largely con- nected with the therapy of motor disability (for instance, Breugelmans et al., 2010), and the experimental games produced in this way frequently pertain to the genre of fitness games (exergames). A certain part of the research conducted thus far consists of works on the de- velopment of serious games related to the educational support of people with learning dif- ficulties or mental disabilities (Corrales Astorgano et al., 2016). While there is a number of 3 According to Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. (2020, p. 314), they are “events or actions that the game design allows for; for instance, driving, regaining health, or shooting. Mechanics may be thought of as the ’verbs’ of a game, that is, what the player can do.” 12 recommendations regarding the design of games accessible to people with disabilities, they are formulated primarily from the perspective of representatives of the game industry (Bierre et al., 2005); they do not result from wider scientific research (with the possible exception of Costello et al., 2019, Cairns et al., 2021). An example of concern for the issue of diversity in games, including representation of disability, is the trade report entitled ”Diversity in Gam- ing” financed by a consortium of game developers (Ubisoft Montreal, Naughty Dog, BioWare, Telltale Games, and Blizzard Entertainment); however, the report devoted little space to dis- ability. There is little research focused on the social and cultural aspects of using video games by people with disabilities. In this area, studies indicating the functions of games in the lives of people with disabilities appear quite occasionally (Gibbons 2015). As mentioned, there are very few studies on the representation of disability in games. Thus, a double lack of representation is addressed here. Underrepresentation of people with disabilities in the games, which has been investigated in our report, overlaps with the ab- sence of such a subject matter in scholarly sources. Historically, Chapter Seven of Ellis and Kent’s (2011) “Disability and New Media”— “Av- atars with Wheelchairs, but No Virtual Guide Dogs: Disability in Second Life” can be con- sidered a study related to the subject of representation of disability in games. While it is difficult to fully reflect on Second Life as a game, the methods of mediatizing the disability connected with this environment seem to be quite akin. Ellis and Kent emphasized that such virtual spaces, by definition, may turn out to be excluding, for example, for people with visual impairments. The discussion on visibility strategies of disability in the virtual environment has been an important part of the consideration. The authors pointed out that for some people with disabilities, the possibility of showing themselves as able-bodied avatars is a way of equalizing chances; contrastingly, hiding disability supports the ableist discourse. Further- more, the analyses related to the motivations of Second Life users to employ avatars with visible disabilities and the reactions of other players to these characters comprise an inter- esting part of the work. A few more analyses of disability representation can be found in Diane Carr’s works (2013, 2014, 2020). Her articles confirm that if the subject of game characters’ disability appears, rather titles for older adolescents or adults are analyzed, with a general lack of re- search on games for children and younger adolescents. In the text from 2013, Carr analyzed a game entitled Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and in her text from 2014—a horror Dead Space. Both games have been aimed at adults. Inspired by the theories of “narrative prostheses” 13 and “body genres and disability sensations” by Snyder and Mitchell, the author investigated them with literary studies tools. Carr reflected on the functions of game mechanics, such as extensions and modifications to the body of Adam Jensen, the protagonist of Deus Ex, and the deformations of the terrifying Necromorphs in Dead Space, in the metaphorical presen- tation of disability. Simon Ledder’s (2018) work brought new findings in the field of representation of dis- ability in games. He deliberated on the vulnerability of the game characters. Vulnerability in this medium is inseparable from mechanics of overcoming, which translates into a natural medical approach to disability in games as a problem that characters have to handle. The main subject of Ledder’s research is a subsequent part of the game Deus Ex: Human Revo- lution, which, in his opinion, due to a common wish of characters to improve their bodies using implants and biomechanical prostheses, becomes a metaphor for the technological discourse related to repairing the body as a desired idea connected with a transhumanist perspective. Among the remaining few studies, the works of Dakoda Barker deserve mention. Bark- er indirectly referred to aspects of disability, studying representations of chronic illnesses in video games. This issue has been discussed on the basis of the content analysis of the selected games in the book entitled “Games as Texts: A Practical Application of Textual Analysis to Games” (Cole, A. & Barker, D. 2020). In the chapter called “Games and Chronic Health Conditions,” the author pointed to the problem of stereotypical perception of peo- ple suffering from chronic diseases as weak, while players rather expect strong characters; hence game developers avoid the issue of disability, neurodiversity, or mental diseases. In his previously unpublished doctoral dissertation from 2018, Barker focused on constructing tools and presenting the entire process of creating representations of chronically ill people in games. He employed these tools in three games he has developed, which can be applied by the developers as an example of creating characters in a credible way, not based on the stereotypical perception of them. Rarely does research focus on discussions of game project implementations with the goal of highlighting the issues faced by people with disabilities. Such is the nature of, for example, “On Fighting Shadows,” da Silva’s project of the game (2020), presenting a young man—Marvin, who suffers from anxiety and depression caused by hydrocephalus. In Poland, the subject of video games and disability has appeared only recently and only in a few studies (see Gałuszka 2017, Gałuszka, Żuchowska-Skiba 2018). The latter study 14 is particularly noteworthy, as the authors reviewed representation of disability in games, discussing selected titles in terms of the role of characters with disabilities in game the plots and ways of reflecting the functional and social limitations encountered by characters. Importantly, the authors undertook the analyses of various forms of disabilities in games. They concluded that it is easier to represent the problems of the locomotor system in games than less visible forms of disability, such as deaf and blind characters, as well as those with developmental disorders and mental illnesses. They have addressed the deficiencies in the representation of disability in games as a result of a transition state in the development of this medium. When comparing our report with the few studies on representation of disability in games discussed previously, it should be noted that our research is of a more cross-sectional nature; it refers to the analysis of a larger research sample of games and also indicates the specificity of disability in various layers of the game, not limited to research of the plot only. Purpose of the research and sample selection The aim of the report was to provide answers to several research questions related to the scope of representation of disability in games, as well as their nature. We were particu- larly concerned with issues such as the degree of incompleteness, selectivity, schematic and stereotypical images of characters with disabilities, the nature of mechanics reflecting disability, types of disabilities represented in games, and their proportions in the studied research sample (including unrepresented disabilities). Furthermore, we aimed at investi- gating the presence of disability representations in different layers of the game. Finally, we also sought to form recommendations for the gaming industry on how to represent disability in games. The implementation of the latter goal was also accompanied by the method of devising the sample of the analyzed games, which included 79 titles. Primarily, their selection resulted from the willingness to analyze games that were perceived in the industry and among players as important from the perspective of representing disability. Therefore, we created a research sample that is the result of “industry” recommendations, using statements from fan forums of the selected games, industry texts that constitute discussions and rankings of such char- acters, posts on social media in groups gathering players discussing the topic of disability in 15 games.4 And although the original requirements of the project financed by The State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons obliged us to include games addressed to children and adolescents in the research, we expanded the sample to comprise games addressed to adults so that balanced representation of all age categories would contribute to formulating entirely useful recommendations for the gaming industry on how to represent disability in games. Theoretical background General methodological assumptions The research perspective employed in the report is the resultant of critical cultural disabili- ties studies, critical studies on video games, and the research on characters in video games. Let us consider what elements of the social approach to disability and critical disabilities studies can be applied in a video games analysis. Importantly, many views perceive people with disabilities as a minority and an oppressed group (see Barnes 2016, Garland-Thomson 1997). This approach overlaps with the extensive critical studies on games focused on showing how games relate to the representation of racial, sexual and political minorities. People with disabilities constitute another research group here. 4 The following texts and discussions constituted the grounds for the selection of games for the research sample: type2cryabetes. (n.d.). [post] Reddit. Has there ever been a disabled videogame char- acter? https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/p78ms/has_there_ever_been_a_disabled_vid- eogame_character/; Parlock, J. (Jan 8, 2020). Video games and disability: Looking back at a challenging decade. Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/8/21056713/disabilities-video-game-charac- ters-inclusion-accessibility-decade-in-review; discussion in the comments below the article in Eurog- amer magazine, Henley, S. (Apr 28, 2021). BioWare is wrong, Dragon Age doesn’t need to replace its disabled protagonist. Eurogamer. Downloaded on Dec 3, 2021 from https://www.eurogamer.net/ar- ticles/2021-04-28-bioware-is-wrong-dragon-age-doesnt-need-to-replace-its-disabled-protagonist; a discussion in Girl Gamers group on Reddit Games featuring physically disabled protagonists, (n.d.). [post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/p78ms/has_there_ever_been_a_dis- abled_videogame_character/; Marascalchi, D. (12 Feb, 2020). Where Are the Disabled Sims? First Person Scholar. Downloaded on Dec 3, 2021 from http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/where-are- the-disabled-sims/; the research sample of games for the youngest players was completed based on recommendations from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ 16  Diagram 1. The area of cultural studies on disability Furthermore, we have utilized the findings related to normativization, the key of which is the Garland-Thomson term “normate,” that is, a social model that allows people to pres- ent themselves as definitive human beings. In the games under study, we have researched the bodies of the heroes with disabilities in relation to the game normate. On the other hand, the concept of Garland-Thomson also involves the presentation of the body with a disability as a spectacle (Garland-Thomson 1997). In video games, disability is quite fre- quently presented as a visual (also ornamental and cosmetic) effect, which has been the subject of our analysis. Moreover, we have sought to show in what way the social construction of the image of disability in video games is the resultant of technological processes, team design and player’s interference. This view allows for triggering the research strategies known from the soft- ware studies and platform studies, which approach the cultural and social conditions of code writing (in this case, games) and similar contexts of functioning of game platforms, such as consoles, personal computers, and smartphones. Subsequently, the social model of disability emphasizes the role of institutions that im- pose an “oppressive” image of people with disabilities and determine their access to resourc- es. This aspect has allowed us to investigate institutions and communities, such as game 17 studios, as places where this exclusion occurs at the level of decisions regarding the narrative shape of games, the selection of genre conventions, mechanics, and character concepts. Also, we have referred to Garland-Thomson’s discussion on the act of “staring” at a dis- ability (2009). In relation to games, this aspect has developed in a new direction because star- ing turns into a kind of voyeuristic manipulation in games. The player is able to interactively impact on characters, which, on the one hand, gives the impression of a virtual “groping,” and, on the other hand, allows for various modifications and experiments with characters. In this perspective, the concept of Walters’ rhetorical touch is recontextualized. It indicates in what way the touch is for people with disabilities an element of identification with others, a way of acquiring knowledge, sensing, and communicating. The touch becomes a form of creating meanings and persuasive action. In the case of voyeuristic virtual touches in the game, we encounter the opposite situation—a character with disabilities may become an object of op- pressive touch, the player “touches” with a specific intention. In turn, the vulnerability theory proposed by Tomassini (2019), in his view, should replace existing categories such as physiological impairment and social disability. According to the researcher, both of these categories are normatively restrictive. Vulnerability seems to have many links with the category of ”fragile avatars” we have proposed. Tomassini indicated that thinking about vulnerability also results in “meta-narratives of vulnerability,” the main narra- tive tropes of which are the figures of the victim, the restoration, and the seeker (activist and self-discovery). In the course of the analysis, we have investigated to what degree characters with disabilities fit in these figures in games. Social and critical concepts of disability, which are connected with the research on cul- ture (including popular culture), have been of particular importance for our report. Renowned and classic works on critical studies on representations of disability in cinema (Norden, 1994), literature (Hall 2016, Beauchamp et al., 2015), comic books (Foss et al., 2016), and media messages (Ellis & Kent, 2011, Ellis & Goggin, 2015, Worrell, 2018) can be found here. Representations of disability were studied in these works in distinct contexts; however, the area of games appears to be completely intact, underrepresented. Nonetheless, the research on film, television, or literary representations may prove help- ful in the context of the analysis of narrative and visual aspects of games. The aforementioned concept of “narrative prostheses” and “marked bodies” by Mitchell and Snyder (2000) holds a special place here. The authors of the concepts showed that in literary works (and more 18 broadly in various works of culture), disability is “always meaningful,” it is a rhetorical ploy that the authors of the work base on. In our report, this perspective supports thinking about game plots as places of often simplified and schematic roles of heroes with disabilities and about frequent “confining” in such characters hidden forms of ableism. Moreover, a very interesting concept of aesthetic nervousness also stems from the field of literary research on disability. Its author, Ato Quayson (2007), proved that the presence of characters with disabilities con- tributes to the creation of numerous tensions in the work; they appear, for example, between able-bodied characters and those with disabilities, but mainly between the dominant pro- tocols of representation in the work and disability. Aesthetic nervousness accompanies the reader, who feels discomfort in the face of disability, resulting from the fact that they do not know whether a character with disabilities is presented in the work as a full-fledged hero or as an inferior and degraded character. Shall it be a legitimate character, or just a metaphor of the human condition, and so on? These tensions are located on distinct levels of the structure of the work. In video games, this model of aesthetic nervousness can be associated with differ- ent attitudes of players to characters with disabilities, which is manifested both through the gameplay and in the form of fan discourse, also analyzed in this report. The area of ​​critical video game studies and the concept of critical play The second area that comprises the methodological framework of the report are critical video game studies, which focus on responding to questions about the role games play in creating power relations, the way of representing or not representing minorities in games, and finally about places, in which there is stereotyping and stigmatization. Works from feminist and gender studies showing gender stereotypes dominating in games and ways of manifesting cultural gender (Cassel & Jenkins 1998) can be found here. Certain researchers also focused on the presence of LGBTQ+ communities in the gaming industry and their representations in games (Ruberg 2020). Game-related racial issues have been widely researched (Mou & Peng 2009). Integrated studies on identity, gender, sexuality, and race representations are also no- ticeable (Malkowski and Russworm 2017). Remarkably, in most literature sources concerning the discussion on representation of minorities in video games, there are no references to disability. Other branches of the game research that may prove useful in investigation on disability representations are studies related to the so-called critical play and critical design. The cre- ator of the concept of critical play is Mary Flanagan; in her work entitled “Critical Play. Radi- 19 cal Game Design” (Flanagan, 2009), the author showed that games (not only video) could go beyond their entertainment functions. In her view, games can and are able to communicate values and create meanings with a significant social and cultural role. Flanagan proposed a game design model which takes these important ideological aims into consideration. Surpris- ingly, with all the ambitious goals of her work, it does not contain any reference to disability. The concept of Flanagan concurs with the intensive development of various types of games that are not intended for entertainment purposes, such as serious games, games for purpose, or alternative games. Persuasive games and news games, to which Ian Bogost dedi- cated a lot of attention, deserve inclusion in this set (Bogost 2010). The subsequent scientific analyses devoted to values in games, such as “Values at Play in Digital Games” (Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2016), have appeared. Our report has investigated to what degree serious games are present in the analyzed research sample of games in order to define the propor- tions between them and entertainment games. Also, similarities and distinctions between representations of disability in entertainment and serious games deserve investigation. Research on characters in video games The last area employed to create a research scheme is the line of a research reflection fo- cused on characters in games. Among the multiple opinions connected with the analysis of characters in video games, the studies by Consalvo and Dutton (2006), Markku Eskelinen (2001), Fizek (2014), and Felix Schröter and Jan-Noël Thon (2014) require attention. Focusing the study on playable characters, Sonia Fizek pointed to their pivotal position towards the setting—all objects and the game system revolve around them (Fizek, 2014). Eskelinen, in turn, wrote about the character as a set of possibilities. All these studies have proven that the character in the game is a complex narrative and technological construct and that its interactivity distinguishes it from the predetermined heroes of comic books or movies (Eskelinen, 2001). Schröter and Thon emphasized, for instance, that game characters are intersubjective in nature, being the resultant of predefined properties, appearances, and narrative structures, as well as mechanics and operation of artificial intelligence and the player’s actions and re- actions to the changing environment of the game. Researchers referring to studies on film characters cite, among others, Eder, whose conceptualization of fictional characters seems to be taken directly from Garland-Thomson’s works placed within the studies on disability. Within this approach, characters are “communicatively constructed artifacts” and intersub- 20 jective constructs “based on normative abstractions about the ideal characters-imagina- tions” (Eder 2010, p.18). Schröter and Thon devised an interesting and valuable for our report three-layer defini- tion of a character, which is the result of different types of player experiences. The protago- nist of the game, as an effect of the narrative experience, is a fictional being whose mental model, containing various bodily, intellectual, and social properties, is constructed during the gameplay. This character is normally placed in a chronological cause-effect sequence related to the plot. In accordance with the effect of the ludic experience, the character be- comes a tool and an extension of the player’s agency in the game. Therefore, the character’s attributes, such as health points or special skills, as well as the possibility of modifying the character, are important. Characters as a result of social and communication experience are representations of other players, for example, in multiplayer games. There are many interesting contexts relevant to the research on the representation of disability in games linked with the different layers of constructing game characters discussed: they can be narrative prostheses, as in the literary works studied by Mitchell and Snyder (2000), they can be a ludic resultant of the game system, or they can be representatives of other players, which also determines the reactions of a game user (for example, “I feel anx- ious shooting at disabled people,” “this character scares or makes me laugh”). In turn, the article by Mia Consalvo and Nathan Dutton (2006) entitled “Game Analysis: Developing a Methodological Toolkit for the Qualitative Study of Games,” in which the authors outlined four areas for the qualitative game analysis (object inventory, interface study, inter- action map, and gameplay log), has analyzed characters in the context of the interface under- stood here as a resource of all information about the heroes to which the player has access. Research tools and techniques In terms of the research techniques employed in the report, it should be pointed out that the main research tool has been a qualitative critical analysis of the selected game research sam- ple, including the following elements: visual analysis of in-game avatars of characters with visible physical disabilities, investigation of the influence of the game characters’ disabilities on their mechanics, analysis of the dramatic structure of the game, taking into consideration the role of these characters in the plot and interactions with other characters, classification of game characters’ disabilities, linguistic analysis of the text layer of games on the basis of dialogues, and the analysis of players’ discussions on representation of disability in games. 21  The study has used a detailed game analysis questionnaire specifically developed for the purpose of the report, which uses analytical categories related to the four researched layers of games: narrative, visual, game mechanics, and language. The questionnaire has also been used for the quantitative analysis, the results of which have been presented in the final chapter. The analysis of games for children, based on the study of the content of selected games, maps narrative and gameplay against children’s development and forms a separate part of the research. The conducted focus group interview constitutes a crucial element of including people with disabilities in the research process. Due to the survey, it was feasible to formulate a set of recommendations for the video game industry concerning the proper representation of people with disabilities in games. Difficulties related to video game research and limitations of the research In the section devoted to the methodological aspects of the report, the difficulties related to the research on the representation of disability in video games are noteworthy. The genre range of games, numerous perspectives of presenting the setting, which affect the percep- tion of characters with disabilities and the mechanics associated with them (top-down per- spective, side view, isometric view, FPP—first-person perspective, TPP— third-person per- spective) may cause problems. The games also differ in terms of plots—we find those with an extensive plot, but also games without a plot and even games without heroes if the player controls a vehicle or a geometric object. Since game characters are not always humanoid, in numerous cases, it is difficult to at- tach categories corresponding to the “human” perception of disability. As characters in the games are also non-human beings, for example, more or less anthropomorphized animals or animal-human and human-technological hybrids and “non-terrestrial” aliens, the report has also sought to capture the context of non-human disability with reference to issues connect- ed with the disability of animals. In our research, there were a few limitations related to the use of the aforementioned tools and techniques. Four players, all of whom were male, participated in the focus group interview, which narrowed the observations obtained from it. Undoubtedly, physical disabil- ities represented by the interviewees do not correspond to the full spectrum of disabilities. 22 In order to obtain a more complete picture, the research should be broadened to comprise other focus groups, including female players, as well as the participation of people of various genders representing cognitive and sensory disabilities. The quantitative study did not con- cern the data on the ethnicity of characters with disabilities in games. The research on the statements of players on the representation of disability was limited to the analysis of those in Polish and English. Report structure Our report comprises six chapters in which representations of disability in video games cor- respond to the game layers we chose to analyze. The first chapter discusses the narrative contexts of disability in games. The selected games have served as illustrations of basic narrative strategies related to the presentation of disability, ranging from entire settings associated with the concept of disability, the analysis of the chosen antagonists and protagonists, to situations in which disability is an isolated or minor plot point. Chapter Two is devoted to the visual contexts of disability images in video games and aspects corresponding to the afore-defined “disability mechanics.” This part attempts at ver- ifying to what degree characters with disabilities conform to the dominant ableist visual model of games. Furthermore, this section presents the degree to which games can reflect the unique forms of being-in-the-world of people with disabilities. The third chapter is the resultant of language studies and linguistic analysis of the dis- course in terms of video games. The study of dialogues of selected games as well as the discussion of the statements of players in which they refer to the representation of disability in games have been presented. Chapter Four discusses children’s games. We assumed that the utter lack of scientific studies on the representation of disability in games for users of PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 age groups (occasionally also PEGI 10—North American rating standards include the lowest rang- es, “for all” and “for all aged 10”) necessitated devoting more space to these groups in the report. The analysis has been carried out in the perspective of children’s interaction with games at different stages of their cognitive development. The fifth chapter summarizes the quantitative analysis of the studied sample of games. This part presents the results of the research showing which representations of disability 23 dominate in the studied group of games and in what way they situate in relation to various aspects of games, such as their distribution platforms, genres, or reception strategies. Chapter Six demonstrates the outcomes of a focus group interview conducted with play- ers with disabilities. This part includes the results of fruitful conversations with this group, which translated into recommendations for the video game industry, concerning not only the manner of adequate and proper (reputable and authentic) presentation of disabilities in games, but also the potential (for example, for the plots and mechanics) which is related to unique ways of reality perception by people with disabilities. Chapter 1. Plot and narrative context of disability in games The main assumption of this part of the report is an attempt to define the narrative contexts in which disability-related themes appear in video games. The themes should be understood as 1) the presence of people with disabilities, 2) the way of addressing the issue of disability within the game convention (if it is relevant), whereas a narrative context is defined as a) the character’s personal story, b) the selected elements of the setting to which the character is related or those directly influencing him/her. Such an approach to definition facilitates the analysis of how disability is presented in terms of its significance for the character and its impact on their fate, and thus—where it actually signified—on the semantics of the entire game. Surveying the problem of disability in this manner and trying to map it, it is feasible to assess what function a disability really serves in the context of the story told in the game. Is it a functional element that influences the perception of the plot and its shape, or just staffage, which does not have much importance for the reception of the game and story, in practice, only an excuse to initiate, for example, a task for the player, the so-called quest? Another question raised by the conducted analysis is whether it is attainable to identify any patterns or repetitive regularities related to the content of the plot or its structure in games featuring characters with disabilities. This question is legitimate as it allows us to de- termine whether characters with disabilities may constitute a separate personological cate- gory, or whether this feature does not provide grounds for the creation of a distinct category of characters in video games. The question is decisive for grasping what disability can really be in the game: is it just a character feature of a hero or is it a narrative factor related to the hero, or yet is its role different? Furthermore, in order to properly consider a character’s disability, it is important to explicitly define the boundaries between the disability and the character. This refers to disabilities occurring in characters in any way interactive in the setting, that is, they meet one of the following conditions: 1. the player can control them 2. the player can interact with them 3. the player can observe their actions and/or listen to their utterances. 25  Only by analyzing such characters can one discern the meaning of any character feature and this character’s meaning in the story presented in a given medium. Therefore, in relation to the plot, there are three key categories for understanding disability as traits of heroes: 1. representation 2. functionality 3. meaning. The first is to describe the context in which the character with a disability is portrayed— the narrative but also social (or other, if any) context in the setting. The second concerns functionality in relation to the storyline and gameplay (if it is relevant), also to classic narrative structures such as Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and the male (Campbell 1997) or female character’s journey (Murdock 1990). It also takes into consideration the importance of the character as an element in the story told according to the typology of Vladimir Propp (Propp 1976). The third category concerns the semantics of disability of a given character in the plot and the appearance of this particular character in general—answering whether disability changes something in a given character and its meaning for the player and for the setting shall be crucial for the final conclusions of the report. Nonetheless, it is essential to treat disability as a trait which is understood as a distinguishing element of a given male or female charac- ter; its relevance, structure, and role with reference to the storyline become an element of research. In order to conduct such an analysis, it is indispensable to establish more precise defining elements, that is, perception of the characters and the plot in the game. Methodology of characters research vs. identification and functionality of the category of disability When determining the definition of a character for the purposes of this research and select- ing methodological assumptions, it was presumed that a video game is a coherent narrative text with a protagonist, time and place of action, and a plot (Aarseth 2003/2010), though taking into consideration that each element of the game and its plot can be studied separate- ly from the gameplay or, if necessary, with respect to it (Aarseth p. 19). This departure from the holistic approach to researching video games (Konzack 2002/2008) results from the fact that in the presented analysis, the game has not been considered as a mechanism combining the plot, game components and gameplay and the associated experience into one, but as a story where the gameplay serves the action to “happen.” The character is understood as: 26  • a set of functions—with regard to the roles which a given character plays in the set- ting and the story told in the game • Artificial Intelligence—with regard to non-playable characters, uncontrolled by the player in any way, but that can interact with the player • representation of players—when the major problem of a given character controlled by a player is the mind-body relationship (Fizek, 2015), in this case, disability. Such a perspective allows for focusing on the functionality of the feature of disability, and also on its impact on the setting, as well as on how it affects the player’s bonds with the controlled character. The next step is the identification of a disability itself, which can be indicated in a video game in the following manners: 1. narrative: using dialogues, narration (if there is a narrator in the game), in-game doc- uments, descriptions in the intro or outro, as well as specifications in parts of the game interface, for example, a character window, inventory, etc. 2. visual: due to visible absence of limbs or their mechanical or synthetic prostheses 3. mechanical: if replacing limbs or parts of the body and organism with prostheses, im- plants and synthetic substitutes constitute game mechanics, for example, character upgrade and development; if a character’s disability affects the appearance of new mechanics, for example, moving in a wheelchair. Each of these methods enables a recognition of a character’s disability, that is, focusing attention on this feature. The attention of the recipient, also in the game, stems directly from historical factors: in many cultures and eras, disability did not appear as something normal (Stiker 1999: 3). Nowadays, such a thought pattern in portraying characters in different me- dia also seems to exist; hence various deficits, whether physical or mental, become so dis- tinctive and attract attention. Simultaneously, the way disability is presented may be the same (and in many cases is) as the function it serves in the case of a given character or a number of characters. How it is put into practice shall be shown later in this chapter, on specific examples of characters. When discussing the function, we cannot forget about the opposite situation—when disability does not really matter, it only serves as an ornament, a kind of artistic staffage which is only to arouse certain emotions in the recipient. Nevertheless, in terms of the plot, events, or the 27 gameplay, disability changes utterly nothing—everything would be undifferentiated regard- less of whether the character is fit or not. This is when we encounter the staffage function. Can the present research on characters with disabilities be treated as an analysis of the portraits of the social group of people with disabilities created as part of games (Ivory 2013: 41)? As Gałuszka and Żuchowska-Skiba reasonably noted (Gałuszka, Żuchowska-Ski- ba 2018: 96), earlier such textual analyses or broadly understood content analyses allowed for identification and recognition of gender stereotypes in video games. In the case of map- ping disabilities and analyses of characters with this trait, it is problematic to find unequivo- cal conclusions that the game representations of characters with disabilities actually reflect stereotypes about people with disabilities. This is also true when it comes to treating disability in games as the so-called narrative prosthesis (Mitchell, Snyder 2000). While it is possible to handle disability as a sign of a dif- ference in the corporeality of the character, and perhaps initially even assume that therapy and rehabilitation are not always the instruments of the story. Nonetheless, the characters have also been studied in this regard. Convention vs. disability Considering the conventions in which the plots of the analyzed games take place, they can be divided into the following aesthetics: 1. Real or quasi-real 2. Fantasy 3. Science fiction 4. Combination of fantasy and science fiction 5. Cyberpunk Disability as a characteristic was least represented in games within fantasy aesthetics. The games within this aesthetics, which favor more classic monomyth stories, do not omit difficult topics in their plots, such as death, loss, violence, etc.; however, the topic of disability appears relatively seldom. Nevertheless, when it does, it mainly relates to the plot and the extensive context byways of the character’s personal story. An example is Theresa, the side female character of the Fable series, a sister of the main protagonist. As a result of an attack on her home village, she is brutally mutilated—one of the game’s antagonists has gouged her 28 eyes out and abandoned her. In the series, she is presented as a victim of violence; however, the lack of eyes and blindness are replaced by the gift of prophetic dreams, due to which, during rare meetings with the main protagonist, he gets new quests and learns more about his path. Picture 1. The image of grown-up Theresa (Alternative description: In the foreground in the middle, there is a woman named Theresa shown from the waist up. She is blindfolded, and her oblong face is bordered by brown hair reaching her neck. She has a tattoo covered with hair on her forehead. She is wearing gold- en armor with embossed ornaments. In the background, on the left, there is the outline of a large tent; on the right, there is a pennant hanging onto the ground, with an eye sign on it) Thus, Theresa becomes a kind of an oracle, with her power permanently awakened af- ter she has lost her sight. Therefore, it can be concluded that the gift of dreams (although manifested even before the mutilation) has become compensation for the lack of eyes. The motif of a female character deprived of vision as a result of the injury also appears in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, in which one of the plot lines (if the player chooses Iorveth’s path) shows a mutilated sorceress Philippa Eilhart, blinded by one of the monarchs in the act of vengeance. The lack of sight is connected with the missions that the player controlling 29 the witcher needs to perform in order to help the sorceress. The witcher has to complete this quest, not for the sake of compassion, but as a quid pro quo—providing help to Eilhart means that she aids Geralt to disenchanting Iorveth’s beloved, Saskia. After receiving help, in accordance with the femme fatale archetype of the sorceress in the game, she runs away and sends a powerful enemy to the main hero. Her loss of sight is a factor stimulating the plot; however, for the player, it is primarily an expression of the morbid hatred of the monarch punishing Eilhart. Picture 2. Blinded Philippa Eilhart (Alternative description: In the foreground in the middle, there is a young woman, Philippa Ei- lhart, shown from the shoulders up. She has two black braids falling down her shoulders and breasts. She has a high, white, lace collar around her neck. Dark red blood is pouring from the woman’s empty eye sockets. On the left, at the level of her face, there is a brown gloved hand holding a sword pointing at the woman. In the background, there is a stone castle wall) Nonetheless, there is no question of compensation here because it is not associated with additional power (on the contrary—with its impairment), but it is a form of narrative prosthesis (though to a small extent), where imperfection is linked to degeneration and social aggression towards the sorceress shown by another minor character, that is, the aforemen- tioned monarch. Games within a real or quasi-real convention, combining, for example, reality with dream- like themes, approach disability distinctively. In most of them, a character’s disability is only supposed to create the narrative and emotional context, for example, to indicate the difficult 30 life situation of the characters. One such example is Lucy, the protagonist of Lucid Dream. The girl is in a wheelchair, whereas her mother suffers from severe depression. Picture 3. The image from “Lucid Dream” (Alternative description: The picture shows the interior of a dilapidated kitchen. In the background in the middle, there is a woman standing back in a circle of light from a met- al lamp on the ceiling. A girl with long, fair hair is sitting in a wheelchair on the left of the woman. Her hand is resting on a wheel. The girl is turned sideways to her mother. Behind the girl, on the left, there is an old tiled stove with metal pots on it. On the right, there is a table covered with a checked tablecloth. There is an old kettle on the table and a window with curtains above the table. On the right of the table, there is a wooden door.) The protagonist tries to help her mother at all costs, however, she is unable to do so. Only by flying a kite into a dreamlike world can she perform activities that lift her mother’s spirits. In this world, Lucy can make use of her own legs and, apart from her first journey, when she expresses wonder and joy (it is literally one sentence), she mentions nothing more about her disability. In relation to the storyline or the game mechanics, it does not matter, apart from outlining the context of Lucy’s difficult family situation. The case differs in games with science fiction elements. In games that combine this genre with fantasy elements, people with disabilities appear as side characters, and disability significantly influences their nature and role in the plot. An example is Malik from Assassin’s Creed, who has lost his hand as a result of an unsuccessful action led by Altair—an assassin 31 controlled by the player. While Malik has always regarded Altair as selfish and proud, his failure and the limb loss further aroused his resentment against that character. In terms of the plot perspective, there is a story behind this: due to the limb loss at a young age, Malik is removed from typical activities for assassins, namely field actions, and combat. This is a hu- miliation for him, and assuming the role of a Rafiq, that is, the head of the assassin field office, at first becomes a symbol of his own defeat. Due to the limb loss, he has become useless in combat, which is the main task of his brotherhood. Being a rafiq—a person responsible for infiltrating a given city and assigning tasks to other assassins, he really has to focus on his intellect and overcome his humiliation because this is how he treats his disability initially. Picture 4. Malik as a Rafiq with the main character of the game, Altair (Alternative description: Two men are standing on opposite sides of a long wooden table. The man on the right (Altaïr), turned sideways, is looking at the map on the table. He is wearing a white robe with a hood and a wide belt, and also high brown boots. He has got a saber. The man on the left (Malik) is wearing a dark coat and a long white robe with a wide decorative belt under it. The man’s left arm is missing from the elbow down. In the background, there are shelves with books.) This event casts a shadow over Malik’s relationship with the primary protagonist; how- ever, his admiration for Altair grows over time to such a degree that he finally has forgiven him for the recklessness that has made him incapacitated. This situation is to build emotional tension between the player and Malik; a rafiq’s disability is a reminder of the main protag- 32 onist’s deeds at the beginning of the game. Therefore, its meaning is symbolic, and still, it constitutes one of the main elements of Altair’s relationship with the world. On the contrary, science fiction aesthetics, which by definition is full of various ideas about the vision of the future, and thus humanity, commonly treats the issue of disability as the cause of the lack—most often a limb or an organ or other body part which can be replaced with a prosthesis. Nonetheless, it is very rarely related to the plot; mainly, these are elements that can be used in the gameplay, as in the case of Holly Summers in No More Heroes. She is a side character with a prosthetic leg with a rocket and laser missile launcher that the protag- onist has to fight. From the perspective of the storyline, it does not matter to a great degree; however, due to the setting, it only draws attention to the convention within which the game takes place. Thus, disability is semantically irrelevant, also in terms of the plot, but it is a form of staffage that marks a particular convention. A specific example of representation of disability in science fiction aesthetics is Cyber- punk 2077, according to the title, based on the literary genre of cyberpunk, in which the key thing apart from cyberspace and internet networks are various body modifications. It is sig- nificant because modifications understood as prostheses, implants, and replaceable improve- ments of the sensory organs are aimed at eliminating disability in general. One of the essential features of this world is overcoming physical barriers and various weaknesses and deficien- cies while improving the human body with technology. Nevertheless, in the aforementioned game, the subject of disability is not addressed at all, although the main protagonist has a lot of possibilities to modify the body. Simultaneously, among the characters of enemies, you can often see characters with mechanical limbs. The reasons for these “improvements” are unknown to the player; the plot of the game and the information that belong to the narrative milieu do not mention anything about it, except that the excessive number of improvements may have a negative impact on the human psyche. There is no mention of efficiency itself. Advertisements displayed on the streets of Night City, where the game takes place, show that everything can be improved, and every disease can be overcome. Hence, disability un- derstood as a dysfunction, the lack of a limb or an organ supporting the sense should not function at all. And yet the game features non-playable characters in wheelchairs, whose ap- pearance contradicts the logic of the cyberpunk world. Their presence is not explained in the game; therefore, these characters are only an ornamental element that has become popular in the players’ sphere of memes over time. All because these characters are not programmed as people using wheelchairs, but only sitting in them in one place—like characters sitting on 33 a bench. When the protagonist approaches them and draws a weapon and points it at them or attacks them, they get out of their wheelchairs and start running away. In this way, dis- ability in Cyberpunk 2077 quickly became the subject of jokes, often exposed when showing bugs in the functioning of CD Projekt RED production (Gabriel MS 2020). Disability representation in games — types and characters With respect to video games, one of the most classic forms of narrative use of disability turns out to be extensive disability resulting from an injury or disease. It most often affects the arms and legs, which makes it a narrative background for understanding the character and their personal story, as well as the role of that character in the plot. Disability can also be applied to understand a character’s physicality. The latter is well illustrated in the case of Adam Jensen, the protagonist of Deus EX: Human Revolution. He has lost his limbs in an at- tack on an industrial building where he was the head of security. As a result of injuries, he fell into a coma, during which he has been “repaired”—in the course of numerous surgeries, he has received biomechanical prostheses of limbs with multiple improvements. Disability and a surgical attempt to combat it explain the hero’s cyborgism, but together create his personal story as a “miraculously saved.” It should be recalled that the game takes place in the cyberpunk world; therefore, elim- inating the problem of disability has a dual function—narrative and aesthetic because it al- lows Jensen to become a full-fledged hero of a cyberpunk story. Furthermore, it is one of the rare examples of a character whose loss of fitness we witness during the game, and it is not just information from the stories that happened before the storyline comes about. Situations where disability is associated with a disease are much more connected with the plot, as in the case of Jeff “Joker” Moreau, the pilot of the SSV Normandy in the Mass Effect series. He suffers from Vrolik’s syndrome, which is severe bone fragility, due to which he is virtually confined to the cockpit of a spacecraft. The instance of Joker is special be- cause he can move; however, each move can result in serious and long-lasting fractures. The player obtains this information from the pilot in the first part of the game. The disease is the subject of their dialogues, as well as the main theme of Moreau’s personal story, who proudly emphasizes that he is the best pilot of Alliance (a galactic-wide military organization that defends the interests of mankind), and his medical condition does not hinder his efforts. Although Joker is an important character in the entire series of games, he does not directly participate in the player’s mission but stays in radio contact with them. The disease and the 34 pilot’s role somewhat explain the fact that he always stays on board. It is worth noting that in the second part of the game, during the attack on SSV Normandy, when the spacecraft breaks up, Joker’s limited fitness and mobility problems become the basis for the mission that the player has to perform—to save the pilot at all costs. This is the only case where disability regarding this character is related to a quest to be performed. Picture 5. Promotional image showing Adam Jensen with prostheses (Alternative description: In the foreground on the right, there is a middle-aged man (Adam Jensen) shown from the waist up. He is a brown-haired man with a short-trimmed beard and a mustache and with dark narrow reflective glasses. He is wearing a massive black jumpsuit. He has bionic prostheses resembling real hands and long straight blades protrud- ing from his forearms. In the background on the left, there is an installation made of wires and TV screens of various sizes.) On the other hand, residual disability is of lesser narrative significance, especially with reference to visual impairment. In games such as Biomutant or the Thief series, the main protagonists of both titles do not have one eye. In the first game, it is of little importance; however, we learn from the flashback that the character used to have both eyes. The cause and the narrative background of the eye loss have not been explained in detail. It is some- what different in the Thief because there the primary hero, the thief Garret, has lost his eye at the end of the first part of the game—it has been brutally gouged out. Thus, it is a narrative element, which in theory is a key point in Garret’s story because he undergoes a transfor- 35 mation—he becomes weakened. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the entire series, it proves to be only an excuse—though justified with respect to the plot—to introduce new mechanics in the sequel, which is possible due to a mechanical eye. Synthetic replacement of a sensory organ improves Garret’s visual capacity, allowing him to connect to a camera system and, due to this, better pursue his profession as a thief. Hence, the climax of losing an eye consists in being better at his profession, but it is not an element with the extensive nar- rative context; it only affects the gameplay and the player’s capabilities. The same relates to General Horace Warfield, the side character of Starcraft 2, who has lost his arm during a war battle. It is quickly replaced with a mechanical arm which can be modified as needed: it can be either an arm or a cannon. Therefore, Warfield has to wear a special suit as his synthetic arm is larger than “usual” prostheses. Although the moment of losing the arm is shown in one of the cutscenes, in terms of storyline, it is explanation for the improvement of Warfield’s statistics—he becomes stronger and has more damage power with a synthetic arm, which in the real-time strategy game like Starcraft 2 is of primary value. The prior examples of residual or partial disability are closely related to the treatment of disability as a weapon in the game, which most often concerns synthetic prostheses. This function is quite specific and—unless the disability is just an excuse for some mechanics in the game—appears relatively seldom. Nevertheless, examples such as Craftsman from Very Little Nightmares show that despite the condition (the character has abnormally long limbs and has to move in a wheelchair), he can use his disability or disease as a weapon. Craftsman is one of the adversaries in the game, and one of his advantages is a wheel- chair attack. In this way, disability-related equipment, which is designed to facilitate, be- comes a lethal weapon. Any physical reactions shown in contact with the real world by Max, the autistic protag- onist of the game Max, an Autistic Journey, also prove to be weapons, though not necessarily lethal. All kinds of reactions, symbolically shown as symptoms of anger, for example, scream- ing, are the hero’s weapon to deal with the monsters and adversities which appear during the gameplay. Nonetheless, the situation is much more complex here. Most of all, Max’s autism is the primary trait of the protagonist defining him as well as the way he perceives reality. This evidently translates into the game setting, its structure, and plot. Essentially, the pro- tagonist’s everyday life, that is, activities related to functioning at home and at school that Max attends, are presented as a journey and a constant adventure based on elements of the monomyth. The boy’s condition plays a world-creating and plot-shaping role because autism 36 generates obstacles and enemies that he tames—just like his own disease—with the help of parents and their tips. Picture 6. The image from the game, Craftsman in the middle (Alternative description: Top view diagonally. In the middle, there are six rectangular bath- tubs filled with liquid. Between them, in the middle, there is a figure with unnaturally long arms and legs in a wheelchair (Craftsman). In the background, by the wall, there is a metal sink, on the right—a wooden table with a canister, a large bottle, and a bowl. At the bottom of the picture, there is a small figure of a child in a yellow coat with a hood on the head.) Furthermore, autism, initially giving an impression of the hero’s weakness, becomes his superpower as the game progresses. It is not only a basis for a storyline, a kind of filter im- posed on the world, but also the ground for creating mechanics in the game. The specificity of this game stems primarily from the fact that it is an independent production, the purpose of which is to show the problems faced by autistic children on a daily basis. It is similar in other productions with such a mission, for example, That Dragon, Cancer, where the player 37 takes care of a son dying of cancer. The disease is the core of the plot and the source of me- chanics and visual and technical solutions. Comparably to Max, an Autistic Journey, this is an independent production5, the aim of which is to show a certain problem; it is not just pure entertainment as it is the case with most commercial games. Picture 7. The image showing the gameplay interface (Alternative description: A game screen. In the lower left-hand corner, there is a smiling boy shown from the waist up (Max). He is wearing a blue T-shirt. On the right of him, there is a writing on a gray background saying: The “King of Monsters” and his friends took my schoolbag hostage!! On the left, there is a pictogram of a backpack, and on the right—a green pictogram of a boy. Next to it, there is a colorful vertical energy bar. In the background, there is a shot from above of three rooms: a common room on the left, a bath- room in the middle, and a boy’s room on the right. In the room, there is a small silhouette of a boy surrounded by a green monster and his little light green helpers.) Max’s instance has one more function: his disorder is aimed at emotional strengthening of the story. This procedure, strongly focused on interpretation, appears quite often in games in connection with the disease and disability; however, it frequently happens in a narrative form and does not always have a noticeable impact on the gameplay. This is the case with Carl, the protagonist of The Last Day of June. In the aftermath of a car accident in which his wife and 5 More about indie games see: Juul (2019). 38 unborn child died, the hero moves in a wheelchair. His disability is primarily to remind the player what happened, not to let the consequences of this tragic event be forgotten. As the player ob- serves Carl’s accident, it is an emotional shock, as well as Carl’s subsequent attempts to move, controlled by the player. The character has to struggle with limitations for people in wheel- chairs—this applies to the blocked entrances, which he cannot get through while in a wheel- chair, or items placed high. These elements appear mainly at the beginning of the game, right after Carl’s accident, to strengthen the emotional nature of the events that have happened. The emotional nature of the plot and characters’ problems is one of the principal ele- ments of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, in which the main female protagonist struggles with psychosis and trauma after the Vikings killed the inhabitants of her village and her loved ones. Senua’s mental problems and feelings for her beloved, whose soul she wants to save from the Nordic Helheim, constitute the core of the whole adventure. As the game progress- es, we learn more about the character’s medical condition and that she was isolated from the world by her strict father because of her problems, as well as about her relationship with her dear one, Dillion. The heroine’s illness takes its toll, and its symptoms are intensely recurring voices Senua hears in her head. They depreciate and insult her and constantly comment on her actions, referring to her love and bond with her family. In this way, the female protago- nist, wandering thorough consecutive lands and fighting against adversaries to retrieve the soul of her beloved, overcomes her own illness and limitations and weaknesses resulting from it, which only intensifies the emotional message of the game. Furthermore, it should be noted that the illness enables us to understand Senua’s character, her way of thinking, fears, and motivations. This is a function that disability sometimes serves in games—it allows for understanding the character of the protagonist and their actions. The examples of this phenomenon are Dunban (Xenoblade Chronicles) and Rahm Kota (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II). The first has a right arm paralyzed in the aftermath of using the weapon with which Dunban has saved humankind in a clash with the race of ma- chines. However, saving many lives was associated with paralysis of the nervous system and numerous injuries to the right hand. Since the arm is crippled, the character covers it with a cape, protecting it from damage. As a side character (also partially playable), he seems to be defined by his disability; it is the result of a noble and admirable action, but the price is extremely high. Sacrifice in the name of humankind, noble as it is, has caused the character to become disabled, leaving him worried about his sister, Fiora. Dunban, as her guardian, feels responsible for her; hence their dialogues or contacts shown in the 39 game are quite melancholic, and the man himself exhibits anxiety that being disabled, he is not able to fully protect his sibling. While a disability somewhat ennobles Dunban, in fact, due to it, players discover the true face of the hero—caring, melancholic and concerned. Equally noble motives are associated with the acquisition of disability by Rahm Kota, the hero of one of the games in the Star Wars universe. Comparably to Dunban, his health problems have occurred before the plot of the game, but they affect the reception and nature of this char- acter. During Kota’s stay in one of the Empire’s stations, a Sith attack took place. The character wanted to help and distract the commander of the attackers—Darth Vader. However, he was unable to implement the plan because he met Vader’s apprentice—Galen Marek. He severely beat Kota and blinded him. The only thing that saved the man was the efficient use of the Force. The Force comforts him and helps him in his life. Though blind, the Force and skillful use of it allow him to replace his sense of sight. And even though there is a kind of sensory organ re- placement here, the key importance of the character’s blindness is related to how it affects him: it makes him persistent, trusting in the Force and its nature, which becomes his main feature. People with disabilities are also portrayed in games as extremely talented and determined and as outstanding professionals in their field. In a way, their disability limits them in one aspect, but they achieve mastery of another as narrative compensation. This is the way to describe Les- ter Crest (Grand Theft Auto series) and Barbara Gordon (Batman: Arkham Knight). Crest is one of the regular principals and a deuteragonist in Grand Theft Auto V. He suffers from an unidentified disease that weakens his body, making it difficult for him to move around. Thus, we see him walking with a stick or moving in a wheelchair. Disability and physical mobility problems are com- pensated by Crest’s incredible analytical, leadership, criminal action planning, and hacking skills. Therefore, he is present as a person who plans and supports numerous actions of the player. His intelligence seems to conceal his health problems. It is similar in relation to Barbara Gordon, who supports Batman with her hacking skills. She is IT support for the hero and performs tasks essential for his actions. And like Crest, she cannot take part in them directly. While the disabilities of Crest and Gordon do not play a major role in the plot, it can be noted that there is a pattern related to people who experience problems with movement and mo- bility. Like Joker in the Mass Effect series, they fulfill important logistic and navigation tasks for the player, which he/she is unable to perform because the character controlled does not have appropriate competences. Although disability cannot be described only as staffage, it can be considered a feature whose role is to display the character’s other qualifications, in the case of Crest and Gordon: intellectual and hacking skills. 40  Picture 8. Lester Crest while assigning one of the missions to the player (Alternative description: In the middle, there is a balding man with glasses (Lester Crest). He is sitting in a wheelchair. He is wearing a checked shirt and jeans. In the background, there is a computer, recording devices, and screens.) An interesting case of disability in games or dysfunction of one of the senses is present- ed in the game Moss, intended for VR. The player moves around a mysterious world accom- panied by Quill, a mouse that is unable to communicate by means of speech. It is a mouse, so communication difficulties could be natural; however, in games, it is not a normative issue because animals are often anthropomorphized and communicate by voice with the main protagonists. Quill travels with the player and expresses its emotions, and gives clues to logic puzzles using the American version of sign language. This form of communication does not have strictly narrative meaning, but it results in establishing a relationship with Quill, which, through its reactions, tells us its attitude to the player’s actions. Labeling a communication barrier as a dysfunction, a disorder, or a disability seems to be a significant misuse; however, problems with communication with the mouse are an impediment for both Quill and the player. Therefore, this “barrier” should be treated as an accepted disorder. Another type of representation in games in connection with the plot is demonstrating disability as a consequence of the player’s actions. It is quite a complex situation and mainly has a strong emotional background, as it makes the player aware that a character’s disability is somewhat their fault. By contrast, the narrative use of such an action may be different—it 41 may be the climax of a certain part of the plot, as well as an element initiating subsequent tasks, for example, related to reversing the situation or immediate help to the injured charac- ter. Such a case occurs in Life is Strange, where the main female protagonist sees the future in one of her visions and her friend Chloe paralyzed from the neck down in the aftermath of a car accident. Since this moment occurs later in the game and is the consequence of one of the possible choices, it is an emotionally charged sight when the player knows about the girls’ friendship. Picture 9. Image from the game depicting Chloe in a wheelchair (Alternative description: In the foreground, there is a young woman in an electric wheel- chair (Chloe). Her torso and arms are strapped to the wheelchair. The girl’s head is support- ed with a stabilizer. There is a tube of a ventilator visible on her neck. The girl is riding along the corridor of the apartment.) Nonetheless, in terms of a storyline, it is crucial what disability brings to Chloe herself. Remarkably, previously a rebel girl, affected by alcohol problems, drugs and cigarette addic- tion, calms down due to her disability. She steps back from everything and gains inner peace. From the perspective of the events in the game, it is difficult to state whether this serenity is the effect of resignation after the accident or a form of relief. The aforementioned examples of representation of disability in games involve assigning disability some meaning—with reference to the plot of the game, the setting, or understand- ing of the hero: their character, motivation, or specificity. Sometimes it is also difficult to 42 unequivocally determine whether a given feature is a disability, a dysfunction, a disease or something else. Yet, regardless of the name, it has narrative or personological meaning. This does not mean that only such examples of representation of characters with disabilities can be found in video games. Many of these representations do not have any narrative conno- tations, and disability is not relevant concerning the story told. Examples of such characters include Sir Alistair Hammerlock from the Borderlands series, who has numerous synthetic prostheses. Although his disability can be considered a weakness due to his inaction and mobility problems, he is a quest giver and an ally; therefore, his health has minor narrative significance. It also applies to Gazi, a character with a mental disability from Harran, a city in Dying Light, who, as a side character, assigns quests to the player. Despite the fact that they are quite trivial (it is about bringing a certain item to Gazi), the character’s condition does not have much of an impact on the nature of the task. However, it becomes meaningful, though marginally from the viewpoint of the plot, only during the exploration of Gazi’s house, where the player can see an effigy that the man treats as his mother. This peculiarity is related to the nature of the setting, not to the story itself. There is also no way to learn more about Gazi in order to determine whether his medical condition affected his perception of the world or distorted his judgment in any way. It is rather a form of staffage, insignificant in connection with the plot, like disabilities of characters, for example, in fights, where they do not affect the storyline (usually told in story mode, for example, in the Mortal Combat series); it is similar in the case of arcade or cooperative games, for example, in Overcoocked where one of the characters, a raccoon, moves in a wheelchair. Nevertheless, it does not have any plot significance and is only a form of ornament. It can be argued that the most substantial problem with presenting disability in video games is that frequently it performs a marginal, even ornamental function. In many instances, it is only staffage focused on making the characters visually more attractive, placing them more strongly in the aesthetics in which the game is played. Most of the disability representations in the studied games turned out to be irrelevant in terms of the narrative or the plot. Inde- pendent games aimed at making people aware of a problem—a disease, a dysfunction, or a disability—are somewhat in complete opposition. In these titles, which are not preoccupied with commercial success, the health condition is the main narrative motif, and the game’s 43 narrative structure is focused around it, or the structure of, for example, the monomyth is adjusted to the reality of a given disease or other problem. This way, a disability or a medical condition also becomes a considerable element of the game design process—the specificity of limitations and possibilities, for example, related to movement or reacting to stimuli, be- comes the basis for successive events (written by the scriptwriter) or proves to be the genesis of various mechanics implemented in a game (created by the designer). Nevertheless, the majority of games display disability as a functional element, where showing a disabled character has a specific task whether in connection with shaping player’s emotions or in the context of the hero’s moment of transition—transformation into a cyborg character typical to the aesthetics of a given game. The last example is most often associat- ed with the presentation of the moment of loss of limbs or a sensory or another organ. This function of showing disability combines the initiation of a new part of the plot, that is, the story “after” receiving prostheses, and the emergence of new mechanics for the characters, and thus, it increases their capabilities and statistics as a kind of prosthesis of the basic game- play. Less frequent but occurring cases concern representation of disabilities that bear real narrative or emotional significance for the player, indicate the consequences of certain events or become the core of events leading to acquiring knowledge of the game setting and its characters. Becoming acquainted with these characters, their motivations, and the impact of disability or disease on their life and psyche is the area with the most significant narrative representations of disability in big-budget games. These conclusions unequivocally indicate that it is unfeasible to talk about the polariza- tion of narrative representations of disability in games. In fact, we can refer to the contrasting process, namely the atomization of this trend, though taking into consideration the majority of pure staffage representations. Nonetheless, the assessment of this situation as atomized is primarily the result of large discrepancies between how disability is shown in games with different budgets and other parameters: mechanics, genre, or even the narrative status of the character affected by a disability—ranging from the primary protagonist, an ally (that is, side characters) to minor characters, such as task givers. Chapter 2. Representations of disability in the visual layer and game mechanics In this part of the article, two very important contexts of gaming disability have been ad- dressed. By analyzing how both characters with disabilities and the settings in which they can be found are presented to game users, we have indicated visual tropes and figures related to representations of disability. Furthermore, as games are not static visual environments to be admired passively, we have also aimed at pointing out in what ways disability is represented by means of deep game mechanics. Our goal was to investigate how active characters with disabilities are in the game environment, to what extent we can talk about their interactivity, and how closely game mechanics reflect the ways of being in the real world of people with disabilities. It can be stated that in connection with the contexts of research on game characters distinguished in the literature on the subject, we have focused more on the ludological rath- er than narratological approach because it emphasizes the issues related to the rules of the gameplay and touches the process of playing itself. Therefore, we have indicated the con- texts of characters related to what Schröter and Thon (2014, p. 49–50) called the “ludic experience” of the player who treats the characters in this approach as “elements of the game mechanics, as game pieces that are defined by game-related properties, such as ‘health points,’ ‘speed,’ ‘special abilities.’” On the other hand, the perspective of the character’s “play- ability” and interactivity and treating this character as a tool in the game also raise essential questions about the issue of simulation related to heroes with disabilities. As stated by Farris (2020, p. 178), simulation in disability studies is in disrepute because researchers see it as “an attempt to control or homogenize nonnormative identities [...] for giving a false or partial im- pression of what it is like to have a disability.” Nonetheless, the immanent feature of interac- tive characters in games are various forms of simulation, which is why we have investigated this issue in this section of the report. Visual analysis of avatars with disabilities This part focuses on the formulation of typology of visual representations of disability in games. This typology intends to identify popular visual figures related to disability, along with a critical view of the strategies for using these themes as visual metaphors of disability. These 45 figures are also a measure of the schematic representation of disability in games and visual “narrative prostheses,” as understood by Mitchell and Snyder (2001). An elderly lady in a wheelchair The stereotype of an elderly woman in a wheelchair has been known not only from video games but also from other forms of presentation. It seems to do much harm because it somewhat undermines not only the community of people with disabilities, and also bears negative links with ageism. This is an uncommon but quite specific theme in games be- cause, most often, the image of an elderly woman in a wheelchair is applied when creating parody racing games. Therefore, it is used instrumentally and for a specific offensive comic effect, which is associated with disability. Such is the nature of the game by Fareeda Banu, withdrawn from the App Store, entitled Granny Racing, in which elderly women compete in wheelchairs on the racetrack. Save Granny by Sajwar Khizar employs a similar theme; the game uses the genre convention of the so-called endless runner—a game in which a player’s mission is to avoid obstacles in a continuous run. The game features an elder- ly lady in a wheelchair, who dodges cars on a busy street heading towards her. Electric Wheelchair Simulator 2020 by Deep Pocket has a similar character. A player controls an elderly woman in a wheelchair and again goes through busy streets, complicated paths, and ramps. It seems that the most bizarre effect was caused when the discussed theme was used in the convention of an educational game. A puzzling game called Granny Prix Multi-Player— Multiplication in witch the developers’ intention is to teach children multiplying in connec- tion with racing characters in wheelchairs. The player-controlled character is an elderly lady whose appearance can be schematically determined at the beginning of the game by choos- ing the color of clothes, hair, or graphics on the wheelchair. This customization of a character is an example of an intensely stereotypical approach not only to age and disability but also to the color of the skin and a social group. The old lady may ultimately be a dark-skinned punk in a wheelchair in LGBTQ+ rainbow colors; however, the schematic nature of these solutions means that we are dealing here with grotesque visual reference to the representation of minorities. Then there is a race in which the granny wins the competition with other wheel- chairs if a player gives the correct result of multiplication. 46 Shooter in a wheelchair It is a visual figure which appears as both a playable character, an opponent, and a non-play- able character. As narrative prostheses, these characters most often communicate a refer- ence to the “old times”—characters in wheelchairs are usually older, forgotten by the world guardians of their territory. This is the case with Out-of-Date, a supporting character in Biomutant, who explains to the protagonist what happened to the game setting in the past. It can be indicated that Jardiniero in the Viva Piñata series exhibits similar features, even though he is not equipped with a weapon. An interesting example of this type of character are also opponents in the game Blood- borne, known as the Wheelchair Huntsmen. These are the opponents equipped with various types of weapons, most frequently they move slowly around; however, in one version, they are able to ride a wheelchair at high speed. Their presence in the game raises discussions and doubts about their logic and ethical issues among the players. In posts concerning these characters in wiki services (https://bloodborne.fandom.com/wiki/Wheelchair_Huntsman), voices have been raised that the concept of opponents as elderly people moving quickly in wheelchairs is ridiculous, and a sniper in a wheelchair sounds funny, and so on. A player Scribe1995 feels discomfort when shooting at a “guy in a wheelchair.” Other players dispel his doubts by pointing out that these characters are not children, which would be more eth- ically challenging, or that “it is self-defense when a cackling geezer chases you around with a flame thrower.” Sometimes characters of this type suffer from mental disorders, which should explain their distrust of strangers, agitation, and easy anger. Harman Smith, a character featured in Killer7, is slightly more complex in this case: he is a hitman on a wheelchair who is affected by “Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon”—a condition invented for the game that enables the hero to absorb the consciousness of the dead. William Blazkowicz, who appears in the Wolfenstein series, is also a wheelchair shooter; in The New Colossus in one of the complex sequences he uses a wheelchair. Mechanics of this character have been discussed more extensively later in this chapter. Male/female scientist in a wheelchair The figure of a scientist in a wheelchair is also related to the theme of a wheelchair shooter. There are numerous representations of both male and female characters of this type. Their 47 extensive profile is often conveyed rather in the narrative layer of games, while in the visu- al layer, the heroine or hero is simply a person in a wheelchair without any special graphic distinguishing features. In a sense, the scientists represented in this way are, for example, Joker in the Mass Effect series, Barbara Gordon in the Batman: Arkham series, Professor X in the X-men series, or Jasper Guns in Overkill (until transformation into a monster). When a character is provided with a visual indication of a scientist’s profession, it seems then dou- bly stereotyped—next to a wheelchair, there are expressive but schematic graphic elements, such as glasses and an ID (Huey Emmerich in the Metal Gear Solid series, Richard Keller in Half-Life: Decay), an overall or apron (Dr. Finkelstein, among others, in the series of Disney games Kingdom Hearts), and a character even has the elongated skull. The image of Code Talker—a character featured in the Metal Gear Solid series—is slightly more visually devel- oped. The protagonist is a Navajo biologist who uses a wheelchair, and instead of an apron, he wears more traditional clothes associated with the Native American community. Talker con- ducts experimental work on parasites which he applied to his own body. The cloudy eyes of the character indicate that these parasites have replaced many of his internal organs, includ- ing his eyesight. Due the support of parasites, Talker managed to live to over a hundred years. A burly thug with an intellectual disability Such a visual figure is also present in movies and comic books. These are characters with a low IQ, who most frequently appear as mass killers, and enemies with high damage power but low agility. An example of such a hero is Piggsy featured in Man Hunt, a sadistic thug who wears a mask made of a pig’s head. One of the opponents featured in Dead Rising, Theodore “Ted” Smith, with whom the main character has to face, was shaped in a similar way. He is a heavyset, impetuous psychopath whose only goal is to feed his tiger with the meat of de- feated enemies. In numerous other games, whole classes of opponents are shaped according to the described pattern, for example, the so-called atomic men featured in Tormented Souls. Max Hass, a character featured in Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, is created distinctively. Max is a positive character, a member of the resis- tance movement. He was born with severe brain damage; therefore, the doctors decided to remove a significant part of it. In the visual layer, the character has a pronounced skull defor- mation and a giant-sized body. Since the operation, Max has not spoken; he can only say his name and surname. Due to the extensive interpersonal relationships with other characters 48 presented in the dialogues of both mentioned games, this character has been discussed more thoroughly in the chapter devoted to the language layer. Blind nemesis This group of characters most often comprises protagonists who have lost their sight as a result of some act of aggression in the story and return as blind avenger. The visual attri- bute of the character, in this case, is a blindfold. Daredevil from the Marvel universe (even though he lacks a blindfold), Kenshi in Mortal Combat, General Rahm Kota from the Star Wars universe, as well as Con Smith in Killer7 (who wears a red bandanna covering his eyes) belong to this group. These characters possess developed, particularly sensitive hearing or other forms of technological or organic echolocation and are often utterly fast. Antagonists with deep deformities This group incorporates examples of opponents of the main male or female character, who are to threaten with profoundly deformed bodies. Diane Carr has already addressed the problem of these deformities as an expressive emblem of disability (2020). While studying the game entitled Dead Space, the author wrote about the “abject bodies” of undead mon- sters present in the game, which symbolize disability as a major threat. These deformed bodies as excesses and the root of terror can be found in other games. Little Nightmares and Very Little Nightmares, two games with a similar setting, connected by the heroine—a little girl in a yellow coat,6 feature numerous deformed antagonists. They are supposed to awe with their bodies. In the former game, the girl is threatened by the Janitor—a blind man with monstrously long arms, the Twin Chefs with deformed faces, and extremely obese Guests. The latter features the Craftsman, also with very long arms and legs, who is permanently in a wheelchair, and the constantly hunched over Butler. Even more ghoulish images of physical disability are featured in Tormented Souls, in which the main protagonist’s opponents are, for example, monsters in wheelchairs described as elderly people with dementia, who have become victims of inhuman experiments—their eyes with cataracts have been removed, and resonating “forks” have been implanted instead in their heads, thanks to which they know where the sound is coming from and attack this place with grotesque clawed arms. The other 6 Although both characters are remarkably similar to one another, fansites claim that they are different persons: the protagonist of Little Nightmares is the Girl Six, and of Very Little Nightmares—the Girl in a Yellow Coat. 49 opponents, Acid Spitters, are former doctors who have removed their digestive and vascu- lar systems, replacing them with an acid reservoir. The Spitters have no legs, but they can strike the opponent with spit acid and claws made of surgical steel. Furthermore, Slashers are a group of former doctors who have gone insane and started experimenting on their own bodies. These procedures resulted in brain implants amputations of hands replaced with blades and scalpels. The appearances of the enemies in the described game resemble the effect of the medical discourse on disability intensified to the point of absurdity. Its medical- ization was most frequently associated with the desire to repair the “defective” body, while in the game, the experiment has turned towards monstrosity, which has here become a visual symbol of the absurd of the medical approach to physical forms of disability. A wheelchair as a “household appliance” Disability-related visuals do not have to relate to character representations only. In several games, a wheelchair appears as a piece of equipment belonging to the player’s environment. In the horror movie entitled Granny, a player hiding from the main character—a killer elderly lady, may come across a wheelchair in one of the locations (a prison cell), and, which is also characteristic of several other games, cannot be moved. It is a permanent element of the surroundings, which, on the one hand, is to deepen the dark atmosphere of the room, and on the other hand, it is a place where a player can hide from the opponent. Symbolically, a wheelchair is here an old, unused piece of equipment covered with cobwebs, which is clearly associated with unfriendly space and a feeling of discomfort and danger. A wheelchair featured in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a popular game with a nice and fairytale atmosphere, should not bear negative associations. Nonetheless, the representa- tion of a wheelchair is also problematic because it is a stationary device which can only be placed at home, to sit in, but without the possibility of moving. It simply functions as a piece of furniture that can be bought in the store and adapted in a color that suits the player. What is even more bizarre, the wheelchair can be given as a gift in exchange for another present. An attempt to “activate” this wheelchair appeared in the community of Animal Crossing play- ers. A user suffering from a movement disorder, famous activist Sam Bosworth, adapted the wheelchair in the game to the appearance of his real one, which sparked a very lively dis- cussion on Reddit (DrBozzyBee, n.d.) about the sense of placing this equipment in the game and the needs of the community of people with disabilities regarding the representation of disability in the game setting. 50 Disability mechanics analysis Here, we have attempted at showing in what ways the game developers deal with creating disability mechanics. In the digital medium of games, these mechanics attempt to imitate the ways people with physical disabilities move, simulate the ways of communicating and perceiving surroundings by people with visual or hearing impairments, as well as people with a wide range of cognitive limitations. It is not a simple undertaking. Despite great possibili- ties of creating realistic simulations and graphic representations in games, their creators use various schemes and simplifications, which are influenced both by decisions related to the choice of the genre of games and their narrative background, as well as the attitude towards disability itself. Disability is frequently treated instrumentally as a “visual attraction” or is supposed to evoke a feeling of fear and threat. From the research sample under study, we have chosen those games for a more exten- sive discussion in which mechanics of various forms of disability appear. We have sought to point to those elements of the selected games which indicate in what way the structure and procedures of the gameplay are related to specific aspects of disability. Disability as an element of character customization The above-discussed customization of the elderly lady in Granny Prix Multi-Player—Multi- plication is a great example of how the simplified possibilities in this respect associated with a given game can stereotype disability in a highly negative way. In other games, this can also be an issue. Alayna Cole and Dakoda Barker (2021: 86-87) indicated that in Sea of Thieves (Rare 2018), a player has the option to adapt the character to the appearance of a typical pi- rate, that is, replace his hand with an appealing hook, put on an eyepatch, implement a wood- en leg, and so on; however, a player can return to the previous appearance of the character at any time. In this way, the signs of disability are misrepresented here as “clothing” accessories that can be switched on and off. The possibility of changing prostheses in the case of the protagonist of the Metal Gear Solid series requires similar criticism. The main character, Ven- om Snake, has lost his arm on the battlefield; it has been replaced with a bionic prosthesis in the fifth part of the game entitled Phantom Pain. During the gameplay, these prostheses can be changed, and each of them has different combat capabilities. Again, using the prosthesis resembles an activity of getting dressed. And even though this part of the game includes numerous references to disability, and also other characters (for example, Kazuhira Miller, Snake’s comrade) suffer from wounds sustained in combat, the entire context of disability 51 is another narrative prosthesis here. Furthermore, conscious planning of Snake’s disability by the game developers is questionable. According to the Metal Gear fandom, a lead game developer, Hideo Kojima, indicated in his project notes that the decision about the hero’s dis- ability was made early in the production of Phantom Pain. Snake was not supposed to have the two fingers of his other hand. All these decisions were to increase the range of possibil- ities of the character (“Venom Snake’s Bionic Arm,” n.d.). Thus, we are dealing here not only with prostheses in the narrative layer of the game but with the “purposefulness” of disability and its conscious design at the level of character mechanics. This “usability” of disability also translates into the commercialization of Snake’s prosthesis: its replicas in various sizes are offered in fan shops as gadgets to buy. It is noteworthy that the focus of Phantom Pain on amputation and prostheses translat- ed into Konami’s collaboration with a leading prosthesis designer—Sophie De Oliviera Bara- ta, who developed a game-inspired prosthesis for James Young, a player whose arm and leg were amputated in the aftermath of an accident (“Konami Helping Engineers Create Bionic Arm for Amputee with ‘The Phantom Limb Project,’” 2015). Mechanics of prostheses and limb dysfunctions When discussing prostheses, it is noteworthy to point to a few examples of games the de- signers of which undertook to develop specific mechanics related to them. Overwatch fea- tures many heroes with multiple forms of disability; however, only one character, Junkrat, has mechanics in which disability is somewhat visible. The hero uses a “pirate” prosthetic leg and visibly limps, and is slower than other characters on the battlefield. Among the numerous users of prostheses in games, the protagonist featured in Blood Will Tell, Hyakkimaru, deserves mention. The game, based on the famous manga “Dororo” by Osamu Tezuka, employs the theme of a specific hero with disabilities. Hyakkimaru has been deprived of many parts of his body by demons and strives to recover them throughout the plot. Visual representation of these deficiencies is the use of two swords embedded in the hero’s arms or the use of a bazooka hidden in his knee. Due to the fact that the character has magical powers in the game, representation of disability is treated only as a visual attri- bute—a player smoothly switches between the “able-bodied” and “disabled” hero mode in the mechanics layer. A special character after the entire arm amputation is Baiken, featured in the Guilty Gear series. The game is an example of the genre of the so-called fighting games in which two 52 characters face each other in direct confrontation. Visually, Baiken’s hallmark is a wide sleeve that flutters in the wind and covers the lack of arm. In-game character animations focus on one-handed combat, but mechanics of the character deal with an interesting move because this sleeve is the place where various weapons, such as a mace, a fan with blades, a spear, a hook, a claw or a chain, appear. Mechanics of the character are specific because the use of hidden weapons and prostheses is associated with the so-called combos, that is, a special combination of hits triggered by an appropriate sequence of keys. An interesting instance of the limbs with dysfunction in terms of mechanics is Xenoblade Chronicles. The game features Dunban, who wields a powerful sword; however, this weapon causes almost complete paralysis of his right hand. Therefore, the hero has to learn to fight with the left hand and acquire new skills related to it. Lisa is yet another intriguing example of a game with successful mechanics representing behavior of a character after amputation of limbs. In spite of using only simplified pixel graph- ics in the game, the creators managed to develop a system in which a player has to decide whether the heroine loses one or two hands during the gameplay or manages to save them. Depending on the choice, Lisa’s combat mechanics change. Mechanics of a wheelchair We have sought to discuss mechanics related to the representation of wheelchair riding taken from the selected games, namely Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Wheelchair Simulator. The New Colossus comprises an extensive sequence in which the main character of the game, William Blazkowicz, after severe injuries in combat and a 5-month coma, is in a wheelchair, from which he then fights against the Nazi soldiers. This sequence shows how greatly simplified the mechanics of riding a wounded Blazkowicz’s wheelchair is— the wheelchair easily overcomes very high thresholds between rooms; it is hardly visible that these thresholds exist at all. The hero freely maneuvers his wheelchair with one hand while shooting at opponents with the other. Another footage shows Blazkowicz simply riding his wheelchair down the high stairs in a bizarre way, and yet another as he climbs up in his wheelchair along two steeply arranged pipes. Moving in the wheel- chair, the hero also effortlessly rides over the bodies of killed enemies. To strengthen the pseudo-credibility of these mechanics, the game features a scene in which the hero falls off his wheelchair and has to climb onto it with difficulty. More reliable mechanics of overcoming obstacles are visible only in non-interactive cutscenes between game 53 levels (for example, one of the side characters, Set Roth, helps Blazkowicz ride over one of such thresholds). Wheelchair Simulator is defined as an important game presenting the issue of disability. It deserves special attention due to the availability of its version for VR devices. The use of virtual reality is of particular importance for the problem of simulation in relation to disability because a game user plays the role of a person in a wheelchair, and the game creators described the gameplay as facing transportation problems by people with such disabilities. The narrator of the game is a Ukrainian, Dmytro Schebetyuk, in a wheelchair himself. His utterances during the gameplay have been discussed more thorough in the chapter on linguistic communication; here, it only needs to be indicated that the participation of a “real” person with disabilities is to strengthen the credibility of the game. Meanwhile, the mechanics of the character controlled by a player have a rather conventional and “entertaining” nature. It seems that the developers have not attempted at precisely reflecting the life of a person in a wheelchair but rather have given a player a set of quite difficult levels with accumulated obstacles and missions, many elements of which are quite funny. This creates certain cognitive dissonance because as play- ers we would expect a real disability simulator, which Dmytro authenticates, and we have got a game focused on agility with very simplified elements of the setting or the character. Visually, the game departs from the realism that is achievable for video games. In the me- chanics layer, the character falls unrealistically off the wheelchair when hit by vehicles and is able to knock over other passers-by, who bounce off a few meters upon impact. Admittedly, the wheelchair responds to obstacles by wobbling or tipping over them; however, the effects of the physics of the setting are exaggerated. A player has to deal with missions which would not be encountered in real life—he smashes densely set equipment and furniture on the road with his wheelchair, rides across the road between speeding cars, which an able-bodied person would not dare to cross, trespassed on the construction site where the entry is for- bidden for anyone. This very conventional approach to building the character’s environment and missions in the game corresponds strongly to frequent accusations by certain disability researchers that, in numerous instances, we are dealing with a simulation distorting disabil- ity. The problem with Wheelchair Simulator is particularly visible when following the game videos recorded by several YouTubers. They have had fun with a game that requires real physical effort in the VR version, and they have appreciated the mission of the game, which is to support a foundation that helps people in wheelchairs. Nonetheless, they also have had the mistaken idea that they already know what problems people with motor disabilities face. 54 Mechanics of visual impairment From among a large number of characters with visual impairments, four groups with specific mechanics associated with them deserve distinction. Primarily, attention should be paid to audio games as a genre addressed to blind people, and simultaneously, the one in which the controlled characters are frequently also visually impaired. BlindSide, kept in a horror convention, features Case, a university lecturer who has lost his eyesight for unknown reasons one day and woken up in a city overrun by mysterious creatures devouring people. During the gameplay, the hero has to save himself and his fian- cée and solve the mystery of the apocalypse around him. In Three Monkeys, the game which gives insight into life in Byzantium, a player controls Tobar— the hero who was born blind. The protagonist of Papa Sangre gets to a world of complete darkness after his death. Blind Legend features a blind knight, Edward Blake. All these characters are usually controlled in a traditional way, that is, they can move in different directions, frequently fight or defend themselves. Due to the fact that games of this type are entirely devoid of graphics, a player has to react only to sounds generated in 3D audio format; therefore, the entire mechanics of the gameplay are subordinated to the audio track. The second group consists of characters of typical games with a visual layer, but those who use either skills or technology which replace their eyesight during the gameplay. There- fore, the mechanics of the characters undertake to reflect these methods of compensating for the lack of vision. One such example is Daredevil, a hero from the Marvel comic book universe, present in numerous games since the 1980s, but only in a few of them actually shown as blind. Daredevil, with his keen sense of hearing which he developed to the level of vision-replacing echolocation, is most often shown as an “ordinary” superhero with all the possibilities of able-bodied protagonists. One exception is The Punisher from 2005, featur- ing non-interactive video sequences in which the protagonist, who is a lawyer in everyday life, hides his superhuman abilities by using a white cane. On the other hand, in the 2015 fighting game Marvel: Contest of the Champions, certain animated sequences of the attacks explicitly show that the hero is not looking at the oppo- nent, but listening, and echolocation is graphically “visible.” The game entitled Perception operates a much more developed system of mechanics re- lated to echolocation. The blind heroine, Cassie Thornton, while moving through dark mono- chromatic corridors and corners of the mansion, “sees” only those objects, phenomena, and 55 characters that make sounds. The way the character moves is also connected with echolo- cation mechanics because the heroine can deliberately get familiar with the place by tapping her cane. Then the immediate surroundings appear for a moment. In games, unequivocally negative associations seem to accompany quite numerous char- acters of blind opponents, most often the strongest ones, called bosses. The game developers frequently refer to the mechanics of sound reaction of such heroes if a player’s character is close to them. In such a situation, blind opponents attack when they hear where the player’s hero is. This often happens with a slight delay, during which a player can either avoid being hit or hide somewhere. Such mechanics related to blindness present this form of disability explicitly as negative—an encounter with a blind person leads to loss of health or death. The sequences of battles with the bosses, namely the Adjudicator and the Old Hero, featured in Demon’s Souls were arranged in this way. In the horror Little Nightmares, several sequences are related to the above-mentioned blind Janitor, from whom the heroine seeks to escape. In extended sequences, the girl silently sneaks behind his back or tries to avoid the character’s monstrously long hands moving in the dark. The third group, perhaps the most unique, comprises blind animals. The presence of animal characters in games which relate somewhat to the problem of disability is a broader issue, and other parts of the report address a variety of protagonists of this type. In the case of blind animals, character mechanics need to take into consideration both the context of disability and the specificity of animal behavior (even though these animals are frequently anthropomorphized). Such an animal is also Badu, a member of the inhuman race, featured in Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator; the creature has no eyes and uses organic radar, as the game developers called it. Moreover, a blind animal character is Seath the Scaleless, an albino dragon featured in Dark Souls. A less unreal animal is blind Grizzle Face, a bear that appears in Sly 2. Band of Thieves. This character is associated with a specific type of stigmatizing mechanics. The bear is insultingly and instrumentally treated from the very beginning by the main characters of the game (also animals)—they refer to him as an old animal that is ignored by the guards because of his blindness and necrotic nerves. Nonetheless, due to the fact that the bear uses the sense of smell, this character can be employed by the main protagonist to smash the elements of the surroundings and attack enemies that he can locate by the smell of fish thrown at them. 56 Mechanics of hearing impairment The game The Quiet Man features a deaf protagonist. A player controls a deaf boy who at- tempts to find a singer kidnapped by a masked aggressor. During the game, the hero wanders through the dark streets of the city and fights against the members of the underworld. In the mechanics layer, we deal with a rather traditional action game. However, choosing the pro- tagonist, the developers aimed at reflecting his way of perceiving the surroundings; therefore all sounds appearing in various locations are very muffled and become unrecognizable. Players’ attention was also drawn to the game entitled Moss for VR systems, in which Quill, a mouse, uses American sign language. A player can control the mouse to solve puzzles in the game and move to further locations. Sign language messages, however, are a supple- mentary element here—the character formulates clues and expresses emotional states by signing; however, the knowledge of sign language is not particularly needed to participate in the game. Nonetheless, the use of ASL by the heroine was very warmly received by the gaming community and proves her uniqueness. Among other deaf protagonists in games, Hailey Cooper featured in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales deserves attention; the character has been presented more extensively in the chapter on the linguistic aspects of games. A small attempt to use sign language in the game Tacoma is also noteworthy. The main female character uses it, for example, when entering a password to a computer (which is capable of recognizing her gestures). Serious games ad- dressed to deaf people need to be mentioned, particularly Deafverse, which, according to the developers, is aimed at preparing deaf teenagers to fight for their rights at school and at work and to shape their interpersonal skills. Mechanics of mental disability and neurodiversity It appears quite difficult to incorporate mental disability and neurodiversity in the mechanics layer, as diseases of this type often do not exhibit external symptoms. The unique way of representing schizophrenia in the game entitled Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is undoubtedly worth noting; the developers have undertaken to reflect the presence of different voices/ personalities in the head of the main character. Mechanics of this internal polylogue have been discussed more thorough in the chapter devoted to the language layer of games. Due to the fact that the autism spectrum and Asperger syndrome are also quite often represented in the dialogues and the text layer of games, further examples of this type (Josh Sautchak in Watch Dog 2, Max Hass in the Wolfenstein series, Symmetry in Overwatch) have been 57 discussed in the “language” chapter. Nonetheless, these instances indicate that it is easier to represent this type of disability through linguistic messages than mechanics. Special mechanics have been presented in Auti-sim, which belongs to the group of the so-called serious games. The developers of the game have sought to simulate the perception of the surroundings and the reception of visual and auditory stimuli of a child with autism. There is one location in the game—a playground where a group of children plays. They are portrayed as static, identical 3D models without clear details; perhaps the developers in- tended to illustrate problems with reading facial expressions by people with the autism spec- trum. The protagonist of the game, seen in the first-person perspective (view from his eyes), can hear the standard “sounds” of the playground—screeches and yells, reciting the alphabet, when approaching children. Nonetheless, getting closer to the shapes causes the intensifi- cation of both auditory and visual stimuli. The noise becomes unbearable, and the picture becomes fuzzy and flickery—full of visual noise. The only chance for the audiovisual layer to “calm down” is distancing from the children. A player naturally looks for a secluded place in the playground to shelter from the excess of stimuli. It can be said that the moment the play- er realizes that the playground has a closed structure, a place with no way out, is an intense experience. It needs to be highlighted that the game does not portray autism as a whole (dif- ficulties with social interaction and communication, restricted behavior) but focuses mainly on the atypical perception of the world through the senses, which very often accompanies autism, in this case on too intensive sensing stimuli and consequences of sensory overload. While the gaming community has appreciated the effort of developing the game, it should be considered a metaphor for autism, not a detailed simulation. The players with autism spec- trum have argued how well the game has reflected their experiences. Some have claimed that these are their real feelings, while others that the spectrum of autism is broad and the perception of the surroundings does not always look like in the game. Voices have been raised that the sound layer is plausible; however, the visual stimuli reaching particular autistic people may differ. The users are right because autism is a spectrum, which means that it is slightly different for each person. This raises a great difficulty in presenting this comprehensive devel- opmental disorder, which is why the developers probably concentrated on the sensory issues that are relatively recognizable by the environment or identified with autism. From the narrative side, Max: an Autistic Journey is also an interesting project, which translates into a well-thought-out layer of game mechanics; the game has been discussed in the chapter devoted to game narratives. 58  In the context of mechanics related to mental disabilities, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy deserves mention. The game features a sequence in a psychiatric hospital for particularly dangerous criminals (Bellevue Asylum). The protagonist conducts her investigation there, during which there is a power cut and all patients get out. The heroine has to escape from them to a safe part of the hospital. The halls of psychiatric hospitals are mostly depicted neg- atively in games, and this is true in this game as well. Patients are shown as beasts resembling zombies. Nonetheless, the most interesting is that the game creators /developers have built special fear mechanics in this sequence, which deepen the negative perception of people with mental disabilities. The heroine, sneaking past the criminals, gets hysterical and terri- fied; therefore the player’s mission is to balance the indicator responsible for these emotions in order to calm down the character. Only then can she survive. Activist modding mechanics The graphic elements of the game setting and its mechanics addressed in this chapter have been presented so far as the effect of the actions and decisions of the developers. Nonethe- less, video games provide the option of involving players in the creation of the game content, which may be particularly important in the case of disability underrepresentation. The range of possibilities for creating the game content is very diverse. Players can create new maps and levels for the games using the editors implemented in them. In numerous instances, it is possible to significantly modify the game by providing players with the game code, which results in advanced modifications that allow for adding new types of weapons, items, and buildings, as well as game modes and narrative missions. Here, we have analyzed the case of the reaction of the gaming community to the lack of disability representation in one of the games. The game in question is The Sims series, which can be briefly described as a set of simulators of everyday life. Players have a fairly advanced option to choose a character whose life they manage in the game, starting from gender, race, appearance, and creating character’s surroundings to developing the professional path or shaping family relations. The series has been developed since 2000 and comprises numerous expansion packs and subsequent parts. Despite this fact, and even though the essence of the game is the representation of everyday life and social relations, it is very difficult to find aspects related to disability in it. The long-term failure to incorporate the issue of disability by the game developers at Maxis Studios sparked a discussion in the gaming community, who treated the absence of disability in games as a specific deficiency and defect. 59  The change in approach resulted in numerous mods to the game as new elements of the surroundings and characters, such as hand prostheses, eyepatches, scars, or wheelchairs, the color of which can be changed. There were even cataract eyes or a guide dog. The players have pointed out that it is much more difficult to implement mental disabilities in the game. Russie Wright, suffering from fibromyalgia, deliberated in “Why We Need Disability Repre- sentation in The Sims 4” (Wright, 2019) how to represent invisible forms of disability in the game. In the discussion in the comments below the text, the Internet users argued that the set of features and indicators assigned to them, which already exist in the game, allow for the representation of mental disabilities. And one of the modders—miceylulu from Mode the Sims community, together with his acquaintance with Asperger syndrome, developed a simulation of selected behaviors for a Sim related to this disorder, such as total concen- tration on a favorite thing or activity or overstimulation. The set of parameters assigned to characters with Asperger syndrome is well thought out and extensive here—for example, the indicators of friendship and romantic relationships increase slower and decrease faster, the character has a higher indicator of logical thinking, loses energy faster, it is more difficult to raise a character’s charisma indicator, and a character has a different set of hormones, the so-called moods. The features of Sims have been shaped in a similar way in other mods con- cerning various social phobias and even aquaphobia. Nonetheless, these noble and activist actions of the gaming community are not able to compensate for the lack of representation of disability in the basic game project. As Danielle M. Marascalchi wrote in “Where Are the Disabled Sims?” (2020), the problem with disability mods is that they are unofficial, unregulated, and completely voluntarily created. There are numerous which offer simplified and underdeveloped solutions. They require a longer search, and the very idea of mods that need to be installed additionally can be a significant limitation for less technically gifted players. Disability in The Sims thus seems to be doubly excluded—it is absent in the basic game and presented via mods may reach a limited number of users. Under the pressure of the gaming community, Maxis Studio announced that they are considering the implantation of various aspects of disability in the game but wish to do it carefully so that these issues do not raise controversy and do not offend the community of people with disabilities. One idea is to introduce an ASL-like sign language to the game. The future shows how these declarations will be fulfilled. 60 Visual representations and mechanics of disability in games discussed in this chapter are frequently found to be negative solutions as they reinforce the stigmatization of disability and intensify players’ ambivalent attitudes towards it. Due to the choices made by the game developers, the characters with disabilities appear to players as dangerous, to be avoided, and even frightening and disgusting. They are often characters that the game design itself puts in the role of the player’s tools, depriving them of their subjectivity. Among the attempts to overcome these unfavorable tendencies, the selected games which tackle sensory and cognitive disabilities deserve attention because representing the specificity of disability is a considerable challenge in this case and involves the risk of misunderstanding from players. The games such as Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Ether One, or Perception, however, give a sense that this type of risk can result in a new, unusual way of gameplay and translate into high ratings from users. Visually, disability, mainly physical, is frequently an attractive attribute, not an element of everyday life. Following the narrative prosthesis, it becomes a visual prosthesis because, thanks to it, the game developers can provide players with new combat mechanics or make the character’s image more attractive. In a symbolic way, the game developers become con- scious creators of disability—they mutilate the characters at the stage of building their con- cept in order to obtain specific benefits. Chapter 3. Linguistic aspects of disability in games This chapter of the report discusses in what way various disability contexts are represent- ed both in the linguistic layer of games and in the discourse of players. Therefore, we have conducted a two-way analysis. The first part concerned the dialogue lines of characters with disabilities, focusing on both various statements of these protagonists and those concerning them, as well as on the textual layer of the selected games. The second part investigated the results of the analysis of the players’ discussions on these characters, based on the study of the selected Internet forums and discussions in the comments below the articles in the industry press. Ultimately, both parts of the analysis can be referred to as a study of the “same” linguistic layer of games, given how the linguistic aspects of games are addressed in the literature on the subject. Astrid Ensslin (2011, p. 6) listed the following levels of linguistic communication in games: 1. language about games and gaming used by gamers across different media and com- munication platforms; 2. language about games and gameplay used by industry professionals, such as game designers and developers; 3. language about games and gaming used by journalists, politicians, parents, activists and other media stakeholders; 4. language used within games as part of their user interfaces, scripted dialogues, in- structions and backstories and 5. language used in instruction manuals, blurbs, advertising and other ‘peritexts.’ The analysis has comprised all levels distinguished by Ensslin (within the selected scope): the analyzed players’ discourse (level a) concerned discussions on press articles in a few cases (therefore the analysis also applied to the journalist language—level c), the statements of the industry representatives were also cited (level b); the first part of the chapter investigates the “language in games” (level d), and the language of peritexts and texts about games (level e). In the analysis, we have addressed the problems indicated by Tejasvi Goorimoorthee et. al. (Goorimoorthee et. al., 2011), who wrote about linguistic ideologies in the discourse of 62 video games, analyzing the emphasis of characters statements, which, according to them, is an example of stereotyping characters by forms of sociophonetic othering. In the case of the report, we have sought to draw attention to the instances in which linguistic stigma is used to make people with disabilities “different.” Research on the linguistic layer of games Characters’ dialogue lines, which could be a confirmation of a disturbed or alternative lin- guistic competence, characters’ statements about their own disability and disabilities of other characters, audio and text messages constituting elements of the game world, such as diaries, journals, audio records, were carefully chosen from among the studied linguistic components. In the selected cases, peritexts external to the game, which characterize heroes with disabilities, such as comic books about them and their profiles on websites—both those created by game developers and game fans (portals like Wiki), were also used. Disturbed or alternative linguistic competence of characters with disabilities It is frequently more difficult to adequately convey the specificity of particular diseases and limitations in the linguistic layer in video games with representations of mental disabilities and mental problems. Gazi is a mentally disabled character featured in Dying Light. The pro- tagonist is presented in a quite schematic way as a person with a low intelligence level, attached to his daily rituals, who, after his mother’s death, treats the effigy kept in his apart- ment as her embodiment. The dialogue lines related to this character do not reflect the lin- guistic competence characteristic of oligophasia. The only technique, quite trivial, is the use of third-person verbs in conjunction with the name “Gazi,” such as “Gazi is watching.” The remaining sentences and entire statements are devoid of grammatical errors, and vocabulary is also the same as that of other characters. In the textual layer, which can be analyzed on the basis of Gazi’s diary, the only sign of linguistic problems are numerous writing errors; there are few syntax or inflectional errors, or they are so occasional that they in no way suggest a disturbed linguistic competence. The game Watch Dogs 2 features a character with the autism spectrum and/or Asperg- er’s syndrome, who is able to formulate short, specific statements, and jokes accurately when no one expects it. The accuracy of jokes can be surprising since autistic people may have a specific sense of humor that needs to be learned. The weakening of communica- tive competence is manifested in, for example, the absence of communication initiative. 63 Josh rather responds to the contact, does not initiate it, even though he always replies in a competent way and according to the situation. From the perspective of autism and Asperger syndrome, the statements and text messages of other characters about Josh de- serve analysis. In one of the scenes in the expansion pack—Human Condition, featuring non-binary Lenora Kastner, Josh is called “puppy,” “cute,” and “plum” because his shyness associated with autism seems attractive to this character. Josh has also been extensively discussed in the so-called Horatio’s Report, an audio log prepared by one of the protago- nists. It says that the hero uses a specific style of expression, that his official files indicate he is emotionally unstable and mentally immature, which contradicts the real facts. Horatio presents Josh as someone with a black and white vision of a reality in which there is a clear division between what is fair and unfair, which he believes can be both refreshing and fun for the group. Josh is an example of a character with an extensive biography posted by Ubisoft outside of the game. The profile includes information on how he functions in a group, about the family he was brought up in, and how his sense of humor shows. This method of creating supplementary materials about characters with disabilities is quite common. Such materials can also be mentioned in relation to Overwatch characters. In the comic book devoted to Symmetra, the fans find the protagonist’s statements which suggest that she is a person with the autism spectrum; this was later confirmed by a game director, Jeff Kaplan, in an official announcement. This type of linguistic representation of disability can therefore be defined as postulative or declarative disability—the protagonist is characterized, for example, as a per- son with Asperger’s syndrome, but there is no real representation of disability. The game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an elaborate attempt to recreate in the lin- guistic layer the mental states of a person suffering from psychosis. In the audio layer, this psychosis is manifested in the constant presence of various voices in the head of the title character, the so-called the Furies. Sauna discusses with them; they frequently comment on her actions, give her orders, and partly explain game mechanics to her. This presence creates a very special emotional atmosphere of the game. The Furies reinforce the psycho- logical profile of the heroine and make us perceive her as a complex and multidimensional character struggling with acute psychosis. The dialogue with invisible voices is a linguistic image of psychotic disorders. Specific disintegration of speech manifests itself in scarcity of the linguistic skills—statements are frequently limited to single words, short, simple sentences dominate. These syntactic simplifications may be linked to working memory 64 dysfunctions, such as those seen in schizophrenia, which make it impossible to store more information in the memory, necessary for constructing longer, syntactically complex state- ments (Woźniak 2018). An interesting example of linguistic communication, which is a reflection of mental dis- ability, are the dialogue lines of Max Hass, the protagonist featured in Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, mentioned in the previous chapter. Due to his brain damage, Max uses simplified linguistic messages, limited to his own name and surname, which replace all other statements. In the plot, Max is often a mirror character for others who, feeling safe and not afraid of rejection or criticism, confide in him with their problems. These types of dialogues reflect the complex relationships between the characters, and Max Hass also appears as a complex character with a great deal of empathy. The characters settle with their past in his presence, share their fears, reveal secrets. Unfortunately, the dialogue lines reflect a quite frequent negative attitude towards people with intellectual disabilities known from real life. The characters, often impatient, shout at Max or patronize him. This happens particularly when Max exhibits hidden abilities that no one expects. He has amazing motor coordination, can draw beautifully, and solves complex tasks and puzzles. One of the heroes, a scientist Set Roth, has called him a “stupid Golem” after losing a game of chess to him; oth- ers mock his “friendship” with Rosa, the pig found on the submarine. These statements, even though negatively charged, accurately reflect the actual linguistic acts of oppression against people with communication problems. Among games that relate to disability in the linguistic layer, attempts to use sign lan- guage deserve attention. Sign language is featured in the game entitled Moss, discussed in the previous chapter. Furthermore, the heroine featured in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Mo- rales is noteworthy. Dark-skinned Hailey Cooper is a deaf character whose presence in the game has been proudly indicated by the developers. She uses American sign language and is a local activist. As a screenplay writer, Mary Kenney told, Hailey’s deafness “is an aspect of who she is but it’s not what her story is about. Her story is about what she wants to do for her community and how she expresses that” (Zornosa, 2020). Sadly, Hailey is only a minor char- acter, and therefore it is difficult to discuss any interaction mechanics. The scenes with the heroine are complex sequences of communication and expression in sign language, which deserves recognition. Importantly, the character is based on a real deaf dark-skinned actress, Natasha Ofili, who participated in recording movement sequences in which the developers used the motion capture system. 65 Characters on disability Wheelchair Simulator is a game to begin the analysis with; it comprises the highest number of comments about disability among the research sample games. The game has been narrat- ed by a real person—a Ukrainian, Dmytro Schebetyuk, who is in a wheelchair after suffering a spine injury. The linguistic layer is full of diverse statements that concern both the game- play and the narrator’s life. Launching the game menu, we instantly learn that Dmytro had a skiing accident in 2012. While playing another game mode (Tricks), Dmytro also thoroughly covers the first moments and months after the accident, during which he had to be inten- sively rehabilitated and had moments of great depression, but he also realized that the lim- itations are only in his head. The narrator’s statements contrast strongly with the character of the gameplay, which is rather comedic, as the creators have confirmed (mechanics of the game and the physics of its world discussed previously are simplified, collisions with vehicles and characters are rather amusing). It seems as if the developers tried to soften the recon- ciling and recollective style of certain of Dmytro’s statements with the unrealistic world of the game. Nonetheless, Dmytro also expresses less serious statements related to disability. For example, he points out that he should not be called a hero because he managed to cross a busy road, but would be one if he managed to rescue a cat stuck in a tree from his wheel- chair. There are more of such “easy-going” statements; for instance, Dmytro says that when crossing the street, he is frequently followed by children, trying to imitate him, and none of this group ultimately reaches the other side. Comments also apply directly to the gameplay: a player cannot ram people in the street because it is illegal, or when the road is blocked with various equipment, it means is Monday after Black Friday. Numerous comments during the gameplay are related to disability—Dmytro says, for instance, that one of the heroes invented a medicine, thanks to which he was able to complete the level on his feet; therefore he was referred to as a cheater. Another time, Dmytro urges a player: “come on, you have wheels so move faster.” The theme woven into the game is that the barriers in the minds are more important than the architectural obstacles. A very interesting narrative technique was employed in Lucid Dream, in which the main character—Lucy, a girl in a wheelchair—hardly speaks about her disability. The idea behind the game is the girl’s desire to save her mother, deeply depressed after losing her husband. The woman is exposed to long-term suffering and limitations in family and social functioning. The absence of Lucy’s statements about her disability makes her an exceptionally active and inventive entity, showing great determination to act, and not, as is frequently the case in 66 game plots, a passive person who needs help. Her dialogue lines focus on statements related to exploring the environment and not on reflecting on the past. In turn, due to the extensive dialogues of the girl’s mother, including memories about Lucy’s father, a player can be direct- ly confronted with the symptoms of depression and its impact on family relationships. Lucy does not talk about her disability because her problem seems less important and life-devas- tating to her than her mother’s illness. The girl’s disability is “covered” by her mother’s illness; therefore it seems irrelevant to dwell on the health problems of the main character. A dys- functional family is a greater obstacle to functioning than a motor disorder—perhaps that is why it is left unsaid. Furthermore, the girl wanders through the lands of dreams without her wheelchair. Numerous times in games, the statements of protagonists with disabilities about the cir- cumstances of its occurrence are a way of presenting the events that precede the plot and current events. The set of these statements most frequently accords with the idea of Mitch- ell and Snyder’s “narrative prostheses,” which the authors of games can use to “enrich” and dramatize the plot; in this way, they are able to justify various forms (characteristic of the main part of the game) of “repairing” the heroes with dysfunctions by means of sophisticated prostheses which completely eliminate disabilities or bring the protagonist powerful benefits. Out-of-Date featured in Biomutant seems to be an exception here; we learn from the hero that he uses a wheelchair because Porky Puff bit off his leg. In this case, the disability is not re- paired, and the main character’s motor disorder becomes a universal metaphor for the world created in the game, in which the consequence of the ecological devastation of the Earth is the appearance of mutations and bloodthirsty Worldeaters, such as Porky Puff. Out-of-Date is a character who is a treasure trove of knowledge about the past world and the circumstanc- es of the catastrophe; therefore the past tense prevails in his statements; there are numerous archaisms and complex sentences, but this is not a consequence of disability. Out-of-Date seems to be a kind of narrative topos of the “wise man in a wheelchair,” which may also appear in other games or forms of the presentation, such as movies, novels, or comic books. A special example of linguistic representations of disability are the statements of two characters featured in the Borderlands series: extremely colorful Sir Hammerlock and T.K. Bahas. Their presence seems to confirm an open attitude of games towards minorities. Ham- merlock is a man of color married to another male protagonist, Wainwright Jakobs. He suf- fers from numerous physical disabilities—his arm and leg have been replaced with prosthe- ses, and he has a cyber eye. During the gameplay, the character is self-mocking at times: 67  “I see you’re admiring one of my many scars! Yes, I’ve seen my fair share of danger -- the odd skag ambush here, a stalker mauling there. Really gives one an appreciation for the creatures of this planet. And a hateful desire to wipe them all out.” At another time, he also comments on the background of his disability: “Old Slappy removed several of my limbs the last time we met. One hopes the scent of my extremities will bring him out of hiding -- make him eager to finish the job, as it were. Plant my hand outside Slappy’s lair in the highlands.” T.K. Baha is a blind widower who has lost his legs in a fight with a local monster and uses the prosthesis of one of them. The disability becomes a pretext for him to formulate sarcastic jokes and “intimidate” the able-bodied heroes of the game. On the first encounter, for exam- ple, he says “You should see your face!”; even though he cannot see anything, he obsessively repeats: “See you later.” One of the most interesting games in which issues related to disability are raised in the dialogue lines is Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. On numerous occasions, the pro- tagonists reflect on personal traumas related to participation in warfare, the consequences of which are disabilities. The very subtitle of this part of the game indicates its main theme; however, the entire series comprises numerous protagonists after amputations of their legs and arms caused by war injuries. Benedict “Kazuhira” Miller is such a hero who frequently refers to the trauma of disability in his statements. One of such quotes has been entered into the canon of speeches used in battlefield simulations: Kazuhira Miller: “Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I’ve lost... the comrades I’ve lost... won’t stop hurting... It’s like they’re all still there. You feel it, too, don’t you? I’m gonna make them give back our past!” Another time the hero says: “We hold our rifles in missing hands. We stand tall on missing legs. We stride forward on the bones of our fallen. Then, and only then, are we alive. This ‘pain‘ is ours and no one else’s: a secret weapon we wield, out of sight. We will be stronger than ever, for our peace.” Such statements play an ambiguous role in the game. On the one hand, the game has a somewhat pacifist character—the hero is bitter, and his disability serves as an illustration: 68 it indicates the brutalities of war. On the other hand, the hero’s desire for revenge, and in a more general sense, assignment of the game to the genre of the so-called stealth games, which are based on sophisticated ways of neutralizing opponents on the battlefield, make the pacifist tone at odds with the enjoyment of killing enemies that players derive from the gameplay. Disability in the game described as an illustration of war trauma is again a “narrative prosthesis,” but is also used in a dangerous way as an excuse for the characters’ revengeful actions. Stigmatizing nomenclature In relation to the oppressive language built around the community of people with disabilities mentioned in the introduction, it is noteworthy that in certain games, such a stigmatizing nature is already indicated by the names of characters. The first part of Borderlands features a whole group of enemies called midgets (a midget psycho mutant, a midget shotgunner, a midget zombie, and many others). The authors of the game, probably having noticed the inappropriateness of this term, modified it in the expansion pack— Borderlands: the Pre-Se- quel. The characters are referred to in this part as ‘lil’ (short for “little”). In Borderlands 3, all opponents in this class are referred to as Tinks (short for “tinkerers”). Thus, the name does not refer to being short in stature, but a common profession of those opponents who were initially psychotic murderers and now have become “more” intelligent and technically skilled. Occasionally, this linguistic stigma does not take place at the stage of game development but within the gaming community. The Dark Souls series features opponents, known as Ti- tanite Demons, which can be found quite often in various places. These characters function as “cripples” in the gaming community. One of the focus group participants who brought these characters to our attention pointed out that, while the name is amusing, Titanite De- mons are one of the most difficult and annoying classes of opponents in the game. Thus, the term “cripple” may, in this case, be an expression of negative emotions towards these characters. Players on disability The study of the players’ discourse on representation of disability in games has been based on the analysis of seven discussions that appeared on Reddit and below the selected industry articles. A total of 177 posts have been studied. 69  Among the forums that deal with disability in video games, attention should be paid to the discussion on Reddit (type2cryabetes, n.d.). The discussion covering 23 posts started 10 years ago and deserves mention because its initiator—the user type2cryabetes, has been clearly looking for information about characters who are defined as the ones with disabilities. The user is aware that games often feature pseudo-representations of disability, shown as characters with bionic limbs, which make them properly able-bodied and even extraordinari- ly fit. The discussion includes a list of various characters with disabilities. The authors of the posts have drawn attention to both characters with physical limitations and the heroes with cognitive and mental problems (for example, Piggsy featured in Man Hunt). Furthermore, they have frequently regretted that some interesting characters with disabilities, such as Castile, a girl in a wheelchair featured in Phantom Brave, are non-playable characters. A Red- dit user—deleted, has provocatively replied to the main question of the discussion (“Why there are so few characters with disabilities in games?”) that their presence would make plat- form games rather boring. This comment has received negative reactions from the debaters, and type2cryabetes has replied that the essence of games is overcoming challenges, and disability is, after all, a significant challenge. This user has also pointed out that the characters in games are constantly “temporarily” disabled, probably referring to frequent limitations imposed on various game characters, including able-bodied ones. The universality of disabil- ity, already mentioned by scholars in the disabilities studies stream, is an interesting topic in the discussion. Another user, Lasertoplasma, has written admittedly jokingly, but with some conviction about “unaware” references to disability in games such as First Person Shooters, that countless heroes of these games have problems with communication because for long hours, days and months, they do not say a word. It is difficult to assess whether the negative reactions to the statement of the user deleted have been dictated by the actually perceived lack of heroes with disabilities in games or rather by a certain self-creation of debaters. Re- gardless of the reasons, negative reactions should be assessed positively. Another discussion worth thorough analysis are the statements posted below Joe Par- lock’s article entitled “Video Games and Disability: Looking Back at a Challenging Decade” on the Polygon website. The article has brought numerous interesting observations on the representation of disability in games, but the discussion in comments below it, which com- prises 22 posts, deserves separate consideration. It has begun with doubts about cyborg characters in games that, according to one user, Andy Butula, should not be treated as heroes with disabilities because “they have all the same 70 capabilities as a typical human, frequently more.” Butula has pointed to specific examples. Sir Alistair Hammerlock from Borderlands 2 lacks an arm, a leg, and an eye, yet he sees, moves, and acts like the other members of the group. Caroline Becker, featured in the Wolfenstein series, as a wheelchair user receives a special suit in the New Order part, which allows her to operate without any obstacles or limitations. In the discussion in this thread, the players have pointed out that the problem of using technology to overcome disability-related limitations is widely commented on within the disability community, and showing heroes who can be recovered entirely by means of technology is a distortion of this problem. Thus, in this case, similarly to a “narrative prosthesis,” we may speak about a “visual prosthesis.” At this point, the debaters have also indicated other heroes with disabilities. A user Mim- ikkyu has emphasized that among characters with mental disabilities, Sam Porter Bridges featured in Death Stranding, suffering from fear of touching or being touched (haphephobia), deserves mention. Mimikkyu’s statement has shown in a very specific way how people with disabilities perceive heroes with similar problems and what they expect from such charac- ters. Mimikkyu has admitted to germaphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This allows the user to appreciate the fact that the creators of the game have been able to subtly com- municate the inability to form ordinary relationships with other people. Mimikkyu has also claimed (which recurs in relation to other games) that in Death Stranding, this form of dis- ability representation is much more important to her/him than the values that other players attribute to this game. IndigoAK, suffering from a borderline personality disorder as a result of emotional and physical abuse in childhood, has formulated the statement in a similar vein. Nonetheless, the observations are rather negative here. The user has disagreed with the way of representation of personality disorders related to schizophrenia, bipolar and borderline disorders. This user believes that these images are very poor and carelessly created only to justify the “unhinged nature” of a character. For IndigoAK, the complete lack of empathy in portraying these char- acters is genuinely devastating. The users notice the absence of well-constructed characters with the autism spectrum; Josh, a hacker featured in Watch Dogs 2, stands out positively among them. The discussion has also included the idea that well-constructed characters with disabilities are those whose disability is an inseparable part of their nature and does not give the impression that a char- acter is inferior because of it. In this way, the values of the whole group of characters, such as Huey Emmerich, Peace Walker, V, “Kazuhira” Miller, featured in the Metal Gear Solid series, 71 have been emphasized. The user Cleretic has indicated that these are not positive heroes and role models, but their various forms of disability, which are most frequently the result of war wounds/injuries, are an important element of their unsimplified images. Two other users—Lopogyn and Arkayjiya, have argued in a similar vein with the author of the article about Nathan Prescott, the main antagonist featured in Life is Strange. They have disagreed that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder only serve to justify his functioning as a “dangerous psychopath.” They have indicated the character’s in-depth image and the fact that he has become evil in the aftermath of mistreatment and rejection due to mental problems. The character evokes sympathy rather than disgust in both discussion participants. Throughout the discussion, the players’ high awareness prevails that disability is not a shortcoming to be cured and remedied and that representations of disability are often superficial and not reflected in character mechanics, behavior, or communication. Disability is frequently an attractive visual ornament that does not involve any major consequences. It seems important in this context that the discussion participants have represented both the community of people with disabilities and able-bodied players. The discussion in the comments below the text in the “Eurogamer” magazine (Henley, 2021) is also multi-threaded and comprises as many as 95 posts. The text has caused con- troversy related to the main thesis endorsed by the author, who believes that the newest Dragon’s Age game shall lack the Inquisitor—the main player-controlled character featured in Dragon’s Age: Inquisition because of the hand loss in the final part of the previous game. The author claimed that it is easy for the game developers to resign from this hero in the next part as he is no longer able-bodied and thus attractive for a player. Voices prevail that the author is wrong because the change of the main characters in the subsequent parts of the Dragon’s Age series is typical. On the other hand, numerous more general statements about the presence of characters with disabilities in games have appeared, which seem particularly relevant to our report. They have been formulated by both able-bodied players and players with disabilities. An ableist point of view has been expressed in numerous posts. The user Ikanly believes that: “Anyway disabilities are ok, but forced ones in an RPG? a genre all about our choices with our characters? no. You can’t force people to play as disabled in an RPG”. In turn, Sting- ingVelvet wrote: “Ideally the game will allow a wide variety of class choices, and a disability would limit those choices.” The statement of the user MaSeKind is particularly poignant. He/ she believes that games are designed to entertain players, and therefore characters with dis- abilities do not fit into them because there is nothing funny about being disabled. 72  Other discussion participants have attempted at arguing with this statement. Britesparc has claimed that this is the point of view of an able-bodied player and that the aim of the author of the article has been to show the plot potential of the Inquisitor’s development as a character with a disability. Furthermore, this user has given an example of Arkham Knight: poison-infected Batman hears the voice of the Joker in his head, and has hallucinations, but his condition does not make the game stop being fun. MaSeKind has replied that disability in games is misrepresented, which may be considered offensive to people with disabilities, such as when a wheelchair in a game placed in front of the stairs suddenly activates the hovercraft mode and simply flies over the stairs. Therefore, a wheelchair is not a typical indicator of a disability since it provides its user with “superpowers.” Several users have indicated that disabilities hidden by means of the use of prostheses, robotic and magic enhancements, or exoskeletons prevail among in-game representations of disability. Thus, disability is, in this case, overcompensated, or these solutions are a cover for justifying the efficiency. Prostheses, as the debaters have written, suppress disability or make it unfeasible for us to deal with it anymore. The players with disabilities have expressed slightly different opinions in the discussion. Disabled Gamer has claimed that he does not play games to remind him of all disability prob- lems in real life; on the other hand, he has insisted that: “we need more representation the disabled community, as actual people with lives, in all our nuanced glory.” Super-eve, a user who lost her leg at the age of five, has also emphasized that she is not looking for characters with disabilities in games but plays games for their mechanics. JakubKorinek has confirmed that gamers play primarily to escape the hardships of life and relax, and he does not mirror himself in the game but plays a role like an actor. The war veteran, DisabledVet, has claimed that there are numerous games, for instance, Overwatch, that show characters with disabili- ties in a much more favorable way. Johann_Popper has expressed a very negative view of the representation of disability in AAA games. The user has indicated that: “The worst and most subtle form of abelism is rooted in scientific ignorance. Disability doesn’t begin from the neck, down. So-called AAA games are replete with disabled characters -- the constant disgusting demedicalized demonization of the mentally ill (i.e. those who suffer from brain diseases that affect cognition, insight, and mood) as practically every villain in every game.” 73  Even worse, actually, is when “positive” portrayals of disfunction are superstitiously de- medicalized, and physical issues are conflated with psychological problems or the classic go- to of primitive thinking: demonic possession. This post illustrates a broader problem with disability representations in games, namely their decidedly strongly simplified, schematic, and frequently superstitious or stereotypical character. Numerous posts have been deleted throughout the discussion by the moderator. They may have included the content that could be disrespectful to people with disabilities or to the author of the text, which is also a significant element of this discussion as it reflects the level of emotions associated with it. Furthermore, the discussion mainly devoted to physical disabilities has also occurred in the Girl Gamers community on Reddit (“Games Featuring Physically Disabled Protagonists,” n.d.). It appears that the majority of 21 statements have focused on identifying those games in which actual mechanics of disability are reflected. The discussion participants have pointed out that such mechanics appear in Mass Effect 2 in relation to Joker. Such characters are also wheelchair user, Harman Smith, featured in Killer 7, and one of the Mayu sisters, who perma- nently limps due to a former injury in Fatal Frame 2. Xenoblade Chronicles features Dunban, who has lost his hand during the gameplay, and since then, he has to master one-handed use of weapons, due to which he develops specific skills related to it. Apart from the examples of representation, the discussion participants have indicated more general issues. Disabled Jadis4742 loves Mass Effect 2 because by feeling the limitations of characters in a wheel- chair, she recollects that people with disabilities can be both useful and heroic. Beargrowlz has emphasized that the implementation of disability into game mechanics should not be a difficult task due to the fact that in hundreds of games it is attainable to play characters with various possibilities and limitations. Therefore, this user has regretted that characters with disabilities appear so rarely in games. A short (five posts) but important discussion has occurred in the comments below Nick Jenkins’ article in “Game Skinny” magazine (Jenkins, 2017). An autistic gamer, Sean Handler, has not been surprised that there are no characters with disabilities in games due to the fact that the faulty presentation of disability in a game can provoke huge opposition and there- fore the developers are afraid of creating such characters: “Nobody wants to offend anyone, so they avoid the topic altogether.” Glitchieetv has agreed that more characters with disabilities are needed and has compared this situation 74 to the literary circulation in which reviewers, most frequently those with disabilities them- selves, regret the lack of well-written roles for the protagonists. Among a few games with well-constructed characters with disabilities, the commenter has mentioned Perception and Life is Strange. Quite unexpectedly, a more vibrant debate about characters with disabilities has not appeared in the disabled gamers community on Reddit. The discussion thread entitled “dis- abled video game protagonists?” contains only eight not exhaustive posts, comprising mainly a list of very few games with protagonists with disabilities. In another thread: “Need Help: List of Disabled Characters in Video Games,” there are only three responses, and the author of the thread—aemagic, has listed instances of 16 heroes divided into positive and negative representations. In the games presented, the linguistic layer most frequently reflects the individual features of characters with disabilities. Due to this, they are more complete as characters; they decide about the uniqueness of a given game. Games in which the characters’ language reflects their complex states and mental problems, for example, in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, deserve attention. Nonetheless, it turns out that also in the case of physical disabilities, which would seem to mainly affect game mechanics, it is possible to create rich dialogue lines. A particular example is Wheelchair Simulator, in which, despite the extremely “entertaining” nature of the game, the developers managed to strengthen its message and context related to disabilities precisely through the extensive narrator’s statements. Furthermore, Lucid Dream Adventure constitutes an example of how to build characters drama through their language. The dia- logues between a mother and a daughter create a very complex relationship between the protagonists’ different diseases—both physical and mental, as well as different time frames (happy past and the terror of the present), making the gameplay immersive. Despite the use of traditional types of mechanics known from point and click adventure games, Lucid Dream Adventure has an original and unique character. In the studied research sample, extensive dialogue lines accompany, above all, the se- lected genres, such as adventure, RPG, and FPS games, which is primarily determined by the specificity of these genres more than others oriented towards the plot. Nonetheless, “Wheelchair Simulator” proves that with a little effort, also games embedded in other genre 75 conventions, normally not associated with the extensive linguistic layer of characters, are able to expand this layer and thus also increase the possibilities of representing disability in an original way. It is noteworthy that the game developers have numerous possibilities to communicate various aspects related to disability in the linguistic layer. While most frequently characters’ direct statements are an opportunity to present the background of disability, as well as to define the character’s attitude towards their own limitations, nuanced contexts related to disability can be developed both with textual elements inside the gameplay and with external peritexts. Such solutions have been employed by, among others, the developers of Watch Dogs 2, in which players can indirectly learn about the specifics of the autism spectrum by reading reports about Josh available to the game heroes. Blizzard Entertainment studio has also utilized numerous forms of expanding knowledge about the various contexts of characters’ disabilities, for example, additional videos or comic books. They present events from the heroes’ past or alternative threads indirectly related to the main game. In this way, a player can learn about the battlefield injuries that have caused physical disabilities or the psychological traumas of the characters. Sharing with players ideas and concepts from the production phase as well as conceptual assumptions related to a given protagonist is anoth- er opportunity for explanations (for example, regarding Symmetra’s autism). In this way, the character with disabilities is not only a closed construct and a narrative and structural ele- ment of the game but becomes the result of a complex and multi-threaded discourse going beyond the gameplay. The analyzed examples of the players’ discourse related to disability have proven that articles on industry portals and posts on social media regarding the representation of dis- ability in games are an opportunity both to manifest the needs of the community of players with disabilities and to increase the sensitivity of able-bodied players to problems of fellow gamers with disabilities and to the ways of presenting disability in games. The analyzed state- ments have indicated that this sensitivity and knowledge of representations is increasing— players are aware of misrepresentation and simplifications related to showing disability in games. They are also quite aware that disability in games cannot be stigmatized and that its frequent absence in game plots is not due to any objective reasons but stems from intimida- tion of the developers by this subject or their lack of interest. Another reason for overlooking characters with disabilities in games may be the lack of awareness of the need to balance the representation of individual groups. Media culture, in a broader sense, is still learning 76 to “supply” representation of various minorities but mainly focuses on those related to skin color, nationality, or sexuality—disability is still not “attractive” enough. Ultimately, the analyzed discussions have also shown that game users with disabilities best perceive that both at the stage of game development and in use, players cannot be di- vided into able-bodied and those with disabled because they are all one and the same com- munity. An interesting thread comprises the statements of the players with disabilities who do not want disabilities in games because they play for fun, not to increase social awareness of disability, and prefer to play able-bodied characters to feel like “ordinary” players who do not have to struggle with limitations. The game allows them to break away from difficult reality, it eliminates the opposition of the disabled—the able-bodied, and in this sense, it can be therapeutic and relaxing. This is an important voice in the discussion about disability in games because it comes from the community of people with disabilities. The possibility of choosing and carefully introducing characters with disabilities to a game is significant from this perspective. Unfortunately, it requires time and effort from the game developers but also increased awareness of the subject. Chapter 4. PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games, representation of disability and children’s cognitive development The 1990s brought one of the earliest representations of disability to children who played video games in Camp Frog Hollow (1996), a language program designed for students with special needs. The game, designed by early advocates of assistive technology and inclusion, included representations of children of many races and one child in a wheelchair. The wheel- chair, already a recognized symbol commonly associated with disability, became the image most used for representing physical disability in games that aimed to be inclusive. The most beneficial type of representation of disability in children’s games should provide players with exposure and engagement that adds understanding and helps them create meaning about the disability represented. As it stands, games differ significantly in how they represent dis- ability. Representation can be cosmetic, providing exposure but not gameplay utility; it can be incidental, used as a device that provides purpose for the narrative; or it can accurately represent the disability and show how the character copes with their disability. How repre- sentation is perceived by children, i.e., the message that is received depends on what stage a child may be in their cognitive development, the society of which they are a part, and their exposure to disability in games previously. The majority of research in children’s cognitive development and games has focused on skill development (literacy, math, science) and, more recently, the social and emotional relationship with characters that encourages skill development (Blumberg, 2019). Serious topics for children concerning social issues such as the perception of disability and how perception is established and maintained or altered through playing video games has received less attention.7 Cognitive development concerns itself with looking around, investigating and testing what’s there, and developing ways to function in the world, that is, problem solving. Vid- eo games engage players in problem solving. Whether the game is a cooking game (Over- cooked!), a straightforward math learning game (Granny Prix Multi-Player), or a puzzle ad- venture game about dementia (Ether One), children must learn the mechanics of the game 7 Rising issues in social media such as bullying have encouraged research and development of games that tackle serious topics for children (Madej, Taking on Serious Topics in Children’s Entertainment Games, 2017). 78 (underlying rules) and create a personal dynamic (how they personally play the game) with the aesthetics of the game (Hunicke, 2004). In playing the story, they are involved with both the way they play the game, and the way they integrate concepts (whether cooking, math, or dementia), on their own terms (Gee, 2003). Traditionally, we’ve made assumptions about cognitive development and how children integrate information and change it into knowledge top-down, by observing their daily be- havior8. In the 1930s psychologist Jean Piaget’s research led to theories about children’s stages of cognitive development based on age, distinct characteristics, and recognizable milestones. Piaget theorized that children, as they grow older, go through a sequence of development stages that are revolutionary. Through assimilation (knowing based on action) and accommodation (integrating this knowledge into a personal schema), important changes in cognitive structures, processes, and abilities occur. As children develop, they are capable of recognizing and integrating progressively more complex characteristics into their percep- tion and move from becoming spatially aware by playing with objects to recognizing symbols, understanding comparisons, and becoming more socially and intellectually aware (Piaget J., 1972). As children learn to master life skills, they become less dependent on their parents and more autonomous. Once they enter more social environments like school, they begin to develop collaboration skills and begin to position themselves as individuals in the world they are learning about by testing it (Vygotsky, The Role of Play in Development, 2007). Playing games develops both individual aptitudes and a set of effective social practices and offers a way to share knowledge skills and values with others (Bailey, 2006). Human neurobiology, bottom-up study of the brain, was not easily conducted until the 1920s and the development of the Electromagnetic Encephalogram (EEG). The brain devel- ops by making connections; these connections, called synapses, can be mapped as electrical transmissions. EEGs are effective in showing existing and changing patterns of electrical transmissions (Banich, 2011). Improvements in brain imaging techniques have made it possi- ble to examine brain activity in even very young children. 8 Recorded writings which argue that children learn through play go back thousands of years to An- cient Greece. They include Plato, (Laws, The Republic c350bce) and notables such as Martin Luther (1500s, Treatises on Education), John Locke (1600s, Some Thoughts Concerning Education), Friedrich Froebel (1800s, The Education of Man), John Dewey (turn of the 19th century, The School and Socie- ty) among others. 79  Together, behavioral and neurobiological research shows “strong and consistent rela- tionships between children’s playfulness and their cognitive and emotional development” (Whitebread, 2012) and provides a picture of children’s cognitive development that can be used to consider how children experience a representation of disability in games. Nineteen games (1994-2020) with a PEGI 3 rating, and seventeen games (2004 to 2020) with a PEGI 7 rating, were reviewed to consider how representation of disability maps against cognitive development of children to the age of 12. PEGI 3 games with the representation of a broad range of disabilities are limited, and the list includes historical games no longer readi- ly available. PEGI 7 games were also chosen to represent a broad range of physical disabilities and game genres. These are all in current use. The first section of the chapter expands on the cognitive development concepts men- tioned above and as well, includes a discussion of schema, play, dreamworlds, cognitive tool- sets, and mirror neurons, and illustrates the discussion with examples from PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games. The chapter then reviews games for types of representation and children’s percep- tion based on their development. In addition, there is a discussion of how rating systems map against cognitive development. The chapter concludes with a summary and thoughts for future work. For reference, young children are 3-5 or pre-school, middle age children from 6-8 or early elementary, older children from 9-11 or later elementary, which straddle the PEGI rating ages. Children’s cognitive development: schema, play, the dreamworld, and societal norms What then cognitively happens when children are playing games? How do they integrate knowledge about disability when they push a button, move a mouse, slide their finger over a cartoon child in a wheelchair who hits a baseball at their instigation? We must first look at schema as it is the framework of experience that humans construct from birth throughout their life which helps them relate to and integrate new information. Schema is dynamic; always in the background accumulating experiences and adding depth and breadth to chil- dren’s (and then adults’) perception of the world. The richer the schema children bring to a situation, the easier it is for them to understand the new situation more thoroughly and more quickly. 80 Schema When children are babies, they reach out physically to experience the world. They push, pull, and prod to make things happen. This ongoing exploration is inherent, a way all living creatures ensure growth and development. Through such interactions, babies begin to build a schema of understanding on which all their future perception of the world is based. Schema scaffolds – this is most easily understood as ongoing construction of mental models that are easily referenced as little stories. A schema is always there to refer to when a new experience presents itself and provides the base from which to move on. Without a scaffold of informa- tion, humans would need to relearn everything on an ongoing basis, an impossibility. Schema is dynamic. Children are always in the process of acquiring new experiences, finding new objects to explore, and new worlds to challenge. When children experience something new, they will either assimilate it into a schema that already exists or, if they do not have an exact reference because as of yet their experience is limited, they will branch out with a new sche- ma that will accommodate the new situation (Bartlett, 1932, Engel, 1995, Schank, 1990). Al- though cognitive development theories are introduced later in this chapter, it is appropriate to touch on one of Piaget’s concepts as it reinforces this view of dynamic schema. Cognitive development relies on two things that must happen: children’s cognition changes as they first adapt to new situations, and they then achieve equilibrium. Adaptation involves both assimilation, applying existing concepts to new ones, and accommodation, altering previous concepts when new information is provided. Equilibrium is the balance that comes with suc- cessful adaptation (Piaget J., 1972). An example of building schema is a young child who has no experience of a wheelchair playing the game Peg and Pog (Age 3-5). This is an educational game with eight adventures, one of which is a musical party. When the scene opens, it highlights a high stage at the end of the room on which are located a girl in a wheelchair and some musical instruments. There is no access to the stage at the front, but there is a ramp on the left side down which the girl could wheel herself. Instead, as the animation begins, she simply moves forward and drops from the front of the stage to the floor. As the graphics are puppet-like and front-only view, there is no realism, only similitude, and this type of movement is typical in the game. The girl moves forward in the room where five friends join her, and they all wave their hands to the music. The five friends move their feet, and it is obvious the character in the wheelchair does not. As in our example the player is not familiar with a wheelchair, and the graphic image of the character does not clearly identify how the wheelchair moves (she did simply jump off 81 the stage),how is this interpreted? Where does this new entity fit? From previous media ex- posure (book, film) the player has a schema of a mermaid, who does not walk, but does move about (if only in water). Perhaps the new entity, who does not move her legs either, is similar to a mermaid, and the wheelchair is part of her body (assimilation). In time, as more informa- tion is added to the girl-in-a-wheelchair schema (perhaps through a discussion with an adult, or by seeing a person in a wheelchair), a more accurate version of reality will be accommo- dated. As scaffolds and their schema are dynamic, the wheelchair schema will continue to be added to and change with each new experience. In the games Overcooked! and Moving Out, the inclusion of a wheelchair to a character does not change gameplay: the schema is that a chef or a mover in a wheelchair are equally capable to those not in a wheelchair. Information added to the schema can be of a positive or negative implication: Positive: being in a wheelchair is no big deal – a wheelchair user is considered in the same light as a non-wheelchair user. Negative: being in a wheelchair is no big deal – the actual difficulties of living using a wheelchair are not considered because they are not identified or taken into account. Without knowledge about the implications of a wheelchair (pain, hospital visits, inability to participate in activities, need for assistance), younger children’s schema will define the character as normally able and not increase their knowledge, understanding, or empathy until such time as they are provided accurate repre- sentation. The sandbox game Toca Life, in which, like Moving Out, a wheelchair is an added accessory, is different as children create their own stories in which a wheelchair is either a neutral cosmetic addition or is a life-defining mobility aid, depending on their knowledge of its purpose and their interest in stories that are realistic. Constructivist theory suggests that when children make something concretely, as in creating the sandbox stories, the learning is more efficient, which implies that the schema created through Toca Life is more persistent than that created by Pog and Peg, Overcooked or Move Out. Play Play is a characteristic of young children’s cognitive process during which they exercise con- trol of objects and integrate them into their perception or schema. Child psychologist Mela- nie Klein observed children with affective disorders who were as young as two to learn how they interpreted their world. From her observations she theorized that in playing with toy objects (every item a child encounters is a toy to them) children confer meaning on them by investing these objects with their own images and feelings (Kidd, 2004, Young, 2005). The 82 meaning of the artifact that a child internalizes is not what their caretaker adult would confer on it or would like or expect the child to confer on it – the child does not have the adult’s experience to refer to. It is instead the meaning the child has negotiated through their play and is based on the schema constructed from their experiences of the world up to that time. While adults provide children with opportunities for playing games such as Peg and Pog, Klein’s investigations of symbolization show that children create their own understanding of their game experience. While parents may anticipate that the inclusion of a character in a wheelchair will give their children exposure to the disability, which, will in turn elicit, empathetic behavior, that does not happen on its own. In this game, because there are no explanations, and minimal interaction with the characters, only with parental participation, explanation, and discussion, will children’s schema include empathy. It is when they are playing in this way that children try out new behaviors that solidify their schema. Children will repeat a behavior through many variations, modifying it, exaggerating it, or providing a slightly different storyline to try it out again and again and in this way internalize the behavior and make it their own. Such practice is a unique characteristic of play that helps children develop their skills as problem solvers as well as to master tasks that go beyond their current abilities – whether learning to push a ball and make it roll each time or learning to ma- neuver their way through a new level of a video game (Vygotsky, Mind in Society, 1978). Dreamworld: disbelief isn’t an option For a young child, play and reality are not separate; they are one and the same. Psychologist D.W. Winnicott studied with Klein and explored further how play is key to children’s symbol- ization of the world. He theorized that the process included “the interplay of personal psy- chic reality and the experience of control of actual objects” (Winnicott, 1971. p.41). Winn- icott’s research shows that when young children play, they are completely preoccupied with the activity, neither able to leave it nor able to allow any intrusion easily. Their preoccupation creates a personal space around them that, while it is outside the child, isn’t really part of their external environment. It is rather a construct of their inner reality meeting their exter- nal reality. Play theorist Johan Huizinga called this circle of play the magic circle (Huizinga, 1949)9. The objects and experiences children bring into this circle of play become a part of 9 The concept has been adapted by game theorists who use it to explain game phenomena (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). 83 their personal reality; a reality Winnicott identifies as “dream potential” because, as of yet, young children have no way of disassociating themselves from their dream selves (Winnicott, 1971). They do not have the experience of life as a reference in their schema that tells them something might not be real. When confronted with animals that speak, mermaids, dragons, halflings, ghosts, or superheroes, they do not disbelieve. These entities are a part of their un- derstanding of reality. When they play a game, whether Winnie the Pooh, or Finding Nemo, these experiences add to their schema, not as pretend but as real. While it is given the name “pretend play,” it is not pretend, it is their practice for life. 10 As they practice playing out Win- nie’s concern for Eeyore and for Piglet, they assimilate and accommodate the experience into a schema of concern and caring, bringing the new understanding into their daily life. Societal norms: nuancing the norm cognitive toolsets As children grow, they are socially and culturally indoctrinated into the norms of their society, norms that have been centuries in the making and have been passed down from generation to generation through cognitive tools. Young children’s schema is constructed from their experi- ence and is necessarily set by their society’s norms and view of the world (Egan, 1997, Vygotsky, Mind in Society, 1978)11. Young children’s worlds are confined, their social world limited to their immediate or extended family, an environment where norms continue to reinforce the schema constructed from birth and to which contradictory viewpoints are seldom added. In a contem- porary world, video games often bring children’s first experience in which they engage with char- acters that are different from what is the norm in their society – these games encompass the cultural values of the developers who have made them rather than the cultural values of their own society. As the internet brings global influences through apps on computers, tablets, and mobile phones, nuances are added to the schema children’s minds have constructed. Even with external influences adding new information to a schema, society will continue to temper shifts in the viewpoint that the dynamic nature of schema allows for, but a society may want to resist. 10 As early as Plato’s writings in Laws, educational theorists have encouraged play that reflects reality so they would develop into responsible adults (Madej, Physical Play in Games, 2016) 11 Each child reacts to their experience with an existing internal reference, so no two children will reference their experience in exactly the same way, no matter how similar the external reference. See 2014: What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement: Nature Versus Nurture. (Hannay, 2014). https:// www.edge.org/response-detail/25365 84  The following two games examples show how a schema about a wheelchair user be- comes nuanced for young children. The norm in western society is that by the time children are three, they have had many movie/television/shopping experiences and are familiar with a wide range of animated and live story characters. In the 1990s, the popular retailer Toy’s R Us mascot, Geoffrey, a giraffe, was the third most recognized animation character in the US. 12 The company had its start in 1948, and from 1966 onwards, Geoffrey, his kid helpers, and sometimes his giraffe family, had featured in many ads for the company, whose memorable song “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid” expressed the sentiment of the age. The children depicted in most of the ads were toddlers, preschoolers, and k-2, approximately ages 3-7 (PEGI 3). The 3D adventure video game Geoffrey Goes to the Fair was produced for the company in 1998. The video game does not promote the store nor does it mention it in any way. The main character is Geoffrey, who, with his friends, visits a fair. The devel- opment team was interested in presenting an inclusive environment, and Geoffrey has three female animal friends and three male animal friends. Included in the male friends is Lennie the Lion, who uses a wheelchair. When asked by a corporate executive why it was the Lion, a symbol of strength, who was in the wheelchair, the game designer’s response was: that was the reason. Lennie’s use of the wheelchair is not given a back story and is never commented on as potentially being a disadvantage to Lennie in his activities. There was significant work involved in rigging the character differently (wheelchair movements were not standard) and in reconfiguring a standard environment to accommodate wheelchair requirements, e.g., the stage and haunted house were provided with a ramp as well as stairs, and all arcade tabletops were lowered. This was done to create a seamless experience so that at no point would play- ers experience Lennie’s movements as unnatural or awkward. In the opening scene, which shows Geoffrey and all his friends on bicycles racing along, Lennie the Lion and his wheel- chair are competitive in the race, bicycles and wheelchair race forward and fall back, the wheels of the wheelchair are shown as equal to the bicycle wheels in speed, and Lennie is on equal footing (wheeling) with his friends. While the utopian environment in the game is not reflective of all reality – ramps are not available everywhere – it has the advantage of pre- senting Lennie in his wheelchair as just another one of Geoffrey’s friends. This representation provided a positive perspective of disability to an entire generation of children at a time 12 Information about the development of Geoffrey Goes to the Fair was provided by the president of Apptastic Software Inc., the game developer, in a personal interview (Pratte, 2021). 85 when public perception in the US was changing.13 It added to their schema the image of a wheelchair user being friendly, competent, and competitive. The schema, reinforced by the repetition inherent in playing arcade-style games, added nuances that weakened the cultural norm/stigma associated with disability and wheelchair use at the time. A few years later, children who played Geoffrey Goes to the Fair are playing Backyard Baseball Junior. In this hypothetical situation, children have had little or no other exposure to wheelchair use beyond Lennie the Lion. One of the player choices is Kenny Kawaguchi, a young athlete who, because of a mobility disability in his legs, uses a wheelchair. At the beginning of the game, kids are chosen for each team. When Kenny’s turn comes up, he comments, “Don’t let this wheelchair fool ya’, I can play.” Although Lennie the Lion is in a wheelchair, his ability to be able to race his friends down the street and play arcade games is not questioned and is not a factor in being included as one of Geoffrey’s friends. Kenny, in order to join the team, must persuade the coach that his use of a wheelchair does not hinder his competency at playing the game. Because of Kenny’s comment, the wheelchair schema children constructed from Geoffrey Goes to the Fair needs to accommodate three new ideas: one, doubt about competency of an individual in a wheelchair, two, doubt that someone in a wheelchair can be part of a team, three, the need for someone in a wheelchair to defend their the competency in light of the aid. Kenny is chosen for the team and soon proves his competency (he’s a stellar player). The schema of a wheelchair user playing great baseball is introduced to counter the initial negative reference, which, nevertheless, remains in the schema. After playing Backyard Baseball, the representation of a user in a wheelchair is nuanced: Geoffrey’s use of a wheelchair is a positive image of competency, Kenny’s use of a wheelchair, because it must be defended as not being a liability, then adds to the schema hesitancy about competency. If future experiences of people or characters who use wheel- chairs (stories, images, parental support) are positive, these attitudes will be reinforced. If children go on to experience cultural attitudes, stories, and images that discriminate, vilify, 13 The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 required that “public accommodations and commer- cial facilities” be “readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.” (Cahill, 1995). Until 1974, various cities in the US had laws that targeted poor and disabled people: “any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view” (Schweik, 2009). 86 or disparage, the negative schema will be reinforced.14 Children’s cognitive development – what we know from behavioral psychology The work of the three educational psychologists, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and Lev Vygotsky, underlies this chapter’s discussion of games.15 Piaget’s research in cognitive development in- troduced the concept that the brain progresses through four stages, each of which displays major characteristics and developmental changes and that these stages, while they may vary in length and overlap, are sequential. As they progress through the cognitive stages, children are increasingly capable of more complex functions. Piaget’s second and third stage, which he called pre-operational and concrete operations, correlate to PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 ratings. Briefly, from about two to seven years of age, children move from being involved with playing with objects and becoming spatially aware (earlier sensorimotor stage) to recognizing symbols and beginning to use language more effectively to communicate and to think. They are able to mentally represent their world and enjoy pretend play; toys have life and feelings like a person’s. Their view of the world is self-centric - as it relates to themselves - and they have not yet progressed to seeing it as it is or from the perspective of others. When playing with friends, their own view is the right one; collaboration is in its infancy. Thinking is based on their judgments about situations and is not yet logical. From seven to eleven or twelve years of age, children learn to develop logical thought about physical processes and then construct these operations mentally without the object present. They can think logically much more successfully if they manipulate real (concrete) materials or pictures of them. They begin to move beyond their self-centric view and con- sider how others might think or feel about something. They begin to collaborate and work together. They look around, questioning the world, seeing it more as it is. They begin to think out their own place in the world, pushing the boundaries they’ve known (Piaget J., 1972). 14 A different discussion is the designer’s role in the two video games. Designers in Geoffrey Goes to the Fair were conscientious in their presentation of diversity and disability. One of the design team was a teacher who worked with children with disabilities (Pratte, 2021). Designers of Backyard Baseball Junior show the influence of public bias about competency of wheelchair users. 15 This discussion mentions only most rudimentarily a number of ideas from the extensive theories of the three psychologists. 87  The Review of Games in the second part of this chapter considers the characteristics of these two stages more specifically in its analysis of how representation is perceived by chil- dren in each of the games. Bruner added to Piaget’s theories that while cognitive stages of development are se- quential, they layer rather than supersede each other. This is an important qualifier to re- member when children of the same age bring differing abilities to playing a game, both for understanding content and for developing skills. This is also the underlying reason different ratings are given to the same game or type of game. Being layered, stages have no hard and fast endings; that is, for instance, sensory learning is not limited to babies and toddlers, and does not stop, but is available to any age. Piaget and Bruner both believed children are inherently motivated to explore what is around them and build mental representations by actively engaging with their environment to construct their own knowledge (Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction, 1966). Children use constructivist engagement when they collect to- kens, design their characters, provide them with attributes and send them on their quest, but it is in sandbox games which include both pretend play and construction of worlds in which constructivist engagement is most evident. Bruner placed considerable emphasis on the role of culture and society in children’s development, an emphasis shared by Vygotsky. Vygotsky argued that children could only develop through interpersonal connections with parents, siblings, caregivers, and peers. This is evident when young children are introduced to games by their parents and older siblings, who share their interest and expertise in gameplay as well as their knowledge about the sub- ject of the game. It is within this social context that children construct schemata from their experiences (Vygotsky, Thought and Language, 1985). Vygotsky provides us with an essential explanation of process how children move from one stage to the next by introducing the idea of critical periods. Beginning at birth, children experience recurring periods of stability and crisis. They go through a stage of stability as they enjoy their mastery of the world around them. Then they begin to stretch to gain new abilities: physical and cognitive. Frustration grows when these cannot be reached because the necessary skills have not yet been developed. This frustration leads to a crisis or critical period of instability. Stable age periods are followed by critical age periods at birth and ages 1, 2, 7, 13, and 17, which map to Piaget’s stages of development as well as to PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 ratings. Two factors come into play from within the child’s environment to meet the frustration. On one side, there are cultural expectations, available resources such as cogni- 88 tive tools, and the support provided by adults (parents, siblings). On the other are the child’s age, behavior, and individual capacity. The crisis takes them into the next period of acquiring mastery: this may be learning to use a spoon, reading their first words, using a skateboard, or getting to the next level of a video game. Depending on the society in which a child is raised, the age at which these transformations occur may vary, but their fundamental character re- mains the same (Blunden, 2008). This process of stability/crisis occurs in all activities that require skills and is easily ob- servable in video gameplay which requires players to have achieved certain abilities to prog- ress through a game. When players have achieved the mastery necessary to complete a level, they want to move on to the next level. As they enter the next level, which is designed to be more demanding, they do not yet have the skills to complete the tasks and are frustrated: this is the critical period. They practice and practice to gain mastery and, when they have done so, enter a period of stability. This type of practice is required in arcade-style games (Buster Baxter), simulation games (Overcooked!), and action-adventure games (Sly Cooper: Thieves of Time), in which skills need to be improved to reach faster or more complex levels of action. Narrative based games such as Beyond Eyes, in which the player must learn how to guide the blind Rae on her journey to be reunited with her cat Nani, or Weakless, in which the player must learn to switch back and forth between The Blind One and The Deaf One to take advantage of their abilities, will have moments of frustration in the road to achieving mastery as well. In games that aim to represent struggle when featuring a player with a phys- ical disability (Bentley in Sly Cooper, must learn to use his wheelchair and change his tactics) or a cognitive disability (Jean Thompson in Ether One, must learn to deal with the confusion caused by her deteriorating cognitive abilities) the inherent struggle the player has in gaining mastery echoes the struggles of the character in the game. If the frustration leads to quitting the game or to a negative response, the schema of disability then includes this frustration. Vygotsky includes children’s move away from dependence on adults and towards auton- omous thought and action as a characteristic during their stages of development. Children’s interest in gaining autonomy over their environment is, in Vygotsky’s view, inherent in the development process and is consistent throughout all stages of development from infancy through older childhood. This move to independence is important to our understanding that, as children are growing up, messages provided in games can have an impact different from the cultural beliefs engendered by their society (see also the previous section on sche- ma and nuance). In a globally oriented economy, with a range of games available to almost 89 all societies, children play games in which they engage with characters independently from the influence of parents and society. The stigma that may exist about disability in a culture is countered when children play games such as Backyard Baseball Junior, in which Kenny intro- duces himself with a comment that acknowledges society’s view of his potential liability to the team because he is in a wheelchair, but as he goes on to be a stellar player, he becomes an asset to his team. Because the representation doesn’t only rah-rah Kenny, but also acknowl- edges society’s biased views, children are learning to form opinions and be autonomous as they make up their own mind about the disability by either choosing Kenny as a player or not choosing him (an additional and different argument about Kenny’s comment is included under Representation). As children strive to become autonomous, develop their own views, and find their place in society, they may come to conclusions about disability that help counter the socially acceptable attitudes of concealing, shunning, or bullying of a different generation. Children’s cognitive development – what we know from neuroscience Neuroscience looks at the underlying mechanism that governs development: it examines the child’s brain directly and shows us how “mental functions map onto the brain structures.” Our brain or cerebral cortex consists of many highly interconnected neural networks that respond very rapidly to the demands made on it. The brain develops by making connections, these connections are called synapses, and they can be mapped. Technology such as Diffu- sion Tensor Imaging is “capable of detecting established and new pathways that have been formed in the brain. As new pathways are evidence of learning, this test is anatomical and physiological evidence of rewiring the brain through learning” (Miranda, 2015). Useful knowledge for our game analysis of PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games is that from infan- cy to later childhood, around age 10, children’s brains contain more synapses that connect neurons than at any other time in their lives. Research studies show that synapses grow in the brain very quickly until around age three. At around that time, in what appears to be fundamental to development, the brain begins to fine-tune its synaptic connections: it starts to reinforce and keep synapses that are used repeatedly, and it prunes away synapses that aren’t used. Even when pruned, synapses, like schema, never disappear completely. From three until around age nine or ten, growth and pruning are balanced. During puberty/ adoles- cence, there is another period of exuberant growth that exceeds pruning. Then the synaptic connections begin to settle down to a stable level. The brain most efficiently acquires knowl- 90 edge and skills when synaptic density and experiential fine-tuning are high (Banich, 2011, Bransford, 2000, Bruer, The Myth of the First Three Years, 2002). Positive early interactions help the brain reinforce existing connections and make new ones. Complex or enriched en- vironments cause new synapses to form, and ideas introduced in related contexts reinforce synapses most effectively (Irby, 2007, Sylwester, 1995). Introducing positive representations of disability in PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games takes ad- vantage of recognized periods when ideas become most efficiently introduced as synaptic activity and when reinforcement through repetition will encourage the creation of synapse clusters and avoid pruning. Repeated play of games in which characters with disabilities are represented as competent in adapting to their disability and which show an advantage, such as enhancement of other senses (Beyond Eyes, Weakless), expands, secures, and conserves the synaptic activity around this outlook (Kastellakis & Poirazi, 2019). The same can be said for repeated play of games with the representation of disability as a liability. Previous discussions about cognitive development – building schema, stages of devel- opment, move to autonomous thought, mastery – can be viewed in light of the importance of synapse creation, pruning, and maintenance in children’s cognitive growth from age three to ten/before adolescence. Mirror neurons One last topic in neuroscience, mirror neurons and aesthetics, is introduced to provide added perspective to this discussion on the representation of disability in children’s games. Artists have long known the effect on audiences of depicting emotion and action in their paintings. The renaissance artist and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) wrote: The painting will move the soul of the beholder when the people painted there each clearly shows the movement of his own soul...we weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the grieving. These movements of the soul are known from the movements of the body. In their 2007 article, Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience, David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese outline how humans react to images that represent human action. Citing new studies in neuroscience about the underlying mechanism that links aes- thetic images and empathy, they explain that when people look at an image, mirror neurons are activated in that part of the brain that would normally be activated when doing those 91 actions; this includes all the associated emotions and physical reactions. That is, the brain’s neurons react identically both when a particular action is performed and when it is only ob- served. Even with static images, the brain interprets movement and creates a trajectory that includes before and after the moment. The response is instantaneous; there is no gateway thought, i.e., “I’ll think about it this way.” Mirror neurons have been used for a number of years in practice such as training stroke victims in which movement on one side of the body is affected. Simply explained: for a per- son whose right side of the body has been affected and therapy is being provided to the right hand, a mirror is placed against the person’s left hand, which completes a series of move- ments. In the mirror, it appears as if the right hand is also moving. The brain believes the right hand is moving and begins to reactivate the synapses associated with that movement. As neuroscience substantiates behavioral observation in cognitive development, neu- roaesthetics, while an area of study for only the past few decades, substantiates centuries of observation. This neural basis for connecting empathy and aesthetics has implications for discussions around representation and imagery in all video games but in particular for chil- dren’s games. Drawing a trajectory to video games and representation of disability, the idea that a player will experience disability with the same reactions, emotions, and feelings as the character experiences when realistically depicted, encourages a conscientious and thought- ful approach to depicting a disability. A better understanding of the disability can lead to different creative ways to provide an accurate depiction for different age groups and differ- ent styles of player. The two games Beyond Eyes and Pulse can again be used as examples. In the game Beyond Eyes, the player moves the blind Rae hesitantly towards white, empty space, which symbolizes new beginnings, and the watercolor scenery that emerges is lyrical and evinces a sense of calm beauty. Mirror neurons bring the player into the space with Rae: her sense of hesitancy as echolocation guides her is also felt by the player. For some older children, this may feel slow, with little in the way of exciting interaction, something they have come to expect from games. Pulse provides a faster-paced experience and an aesthetic of the scene emerging from echolocation, which is more dynamic, darker, and at times frighten- ing. The frisson of fear in the tummy is a reflection of mirror neurons at work. Eva is scared. So is the player. 92 Review of games Types of representation This section of the chapter reviews games for types of representation and children’s percep- tion based on the stage of their development. A number of the games have been featured in the previous sections, and discussions overlap. The games Geoffrey at the Fair and Backyard Baseball Junior were discussed at length earlier in the chapter and are not included here. Again for reference, young children are 3-5 or pre-school, middle age children from 6-8 or early elementary, older children from 9-11 or later elementary, which straddle the PEGI rat- ing ages. Physical disability The 2D games, Moving Out (PEGI 3), and Overcooked! (PEGI 7) illustrate a common way in which physical disability is represented by a wheelchair through choice in character or ava- tar design. Moving Out offers the option for all of the movers (people, animals, objects) on a team to be in a wheelchair; Overcooked! has many chefs (animals) to choose from for the cooking team, one of which is in a wheelchair.16 In these two games, the wheelchair appears as a cosmetic addition and in no way changes the action, is an advantage, or is a disadvantage, in gameplay.17 While middle age to older children have probably been exposed to wheelchair use, a younger player may not have seen a person in a wheelchair previously. Yet implicit in its presence is that it is a sufficiently recognizable symbol not to require an explanation. Rep- resentation for those familiar with wheelchairs is a visual reminder that individuals in wheel- chairs are capable of participating in these activities.18 In addition, it is a visual inclusion for 16 Animals have been used as metaphors for people in myths, fables, and fairytales for centuries. An- thropomorphism became well established through animated films in the 20th century and continues its presence in narratives in all media. 17 For Moving Out, this was part of the development strategy for including the wheelchair as an ac- cessory...https://www.gamespot.com/articles/moving-out-dev-on-the-importance-of-inclusivity-an/ 1100-6477261/ 18 Such neutral representation can be seen as a form of erasure. See further discussion in Cole & Barker, 2020. 93 players who are wheelchair users.19 A Steam Community comment about Overcooked! notes, that the wheelchair character, a raccoon, was so well-liked he was called out as a fan favorite on the game FAQs page of returning characters.20 The character has de facto become an en- dearing symbol as wheelchair use has distinguished him in the line of characters. In keeping with new attitudes about inclusion, the online educational site DreamBox Learning Math (5-9) represents different genders, races, and includes a symbol of physical disability, the wheelchair, in its avatar mix. Children choose an avatar as their representative and then go on to complete the activities. The avatar is not involved in the activities and does not affect gameplay. The wheelchair is a cosmetic addition and a visual inclusion for players who are wheelchair users. A game for younger children in which a wheelchair plays a cosmetic role is Peg and Pog (3-5). As discussed earlier in Schema, this is a vocabulary-building game in which Peg and Pog (boy and girl) have four friends, one boy and three girls, join them in learning the names of objects during eight adventures, including on safari, shopping, and at a party. One of the girls uses a wheelchair, and she participates in the same activities that the oth- er children do without exception. Because of the 2D graphics, movements are not very detailed, although it appears that the girl is wheeling her chair and in the grocery store has her basket in her lap. In this game, the representation of the girl in the wheelchair is cos- metic, adding exposure but not information. It reinforces commonly-viewed use without explanation for the disability or accommodation for it in any of the environments. Unlike the scenario of choice in Overcooked!, Move Out, or Toca Life, but as the neighborhood friends in Geoffrey at the Fair, implicit in the scenario of being one of a small group of six friends, is inclusion and affinity. 19 Moving Out developers commented they were influenced by game developer Jan Rigerl who pre- viously released a game called Extreme Wheelchairing. “He had a lot of great feedback from people in wheelchairs saying that the game is really fun and it’s great that they get to look like the hero and thanking him for giving them that opportunity.” See at https://powerup-gaming.com/2020/03/18/ moving-outs-accessibility-options-and-inclusivity-set-a-new-standard/ 20 Another raccoon, Rocket Raccoon, is a key character in the blockbuster movie series Guardians of the Galaxy (2014, 2017). Cross-media fan culture may have increased the raccoon chef’s popularity and set in motion the requests for including the character in the next version. https://steamcommuni- ty.com/app/728880/discussions/0/1735462352463300618/ 94  The Toca Life Series (4+) offers the wheelchair in many colors as a fashion accessory to its cast of hundreds. In this 2D animated sandbox, a child can populate different worlds with favorite people and pretend play on a touch tablet or mobile phone. Initially advertised showing young children, the app became popular with middle age and older children who participate in a large online community with posts and reviews. The characters and scenarios are similar to the Polly Pocket miniature playsets popular between 1989 and 2015.21 Access on a mobile phone is akin to being able to carry the actual mini sets in a pocket, purse, or knapsack. The games include the choice for adding a wheelchair to any character and for choosing the wheelchair style and color. As a changeable element in a character’s life, it ap- pears a cosmetic addition. The characters are front view cutouts, legs are sometimes short- ened to show a character is sitting down (as in the wheelchair), and arms move very slightly when holding something, but otherwise, the front view is not altered whether a character is on a bed or riding a horse (legs hidden behind the saddle). The wheelchaired person moves about and collects items in the same way as do the other children and is placeable in any of the worlds (park, store, home). Younger children use the characters and objects they move around as toys in their pretend play. Without reference for the implications of a wheelchair (i.e., some knowledge), they will not differentiate between characters with or without wheel- chairs. This observation, accurate in isolation, is ingenuous in light of the integrated Toca world and the connected nature of society. Children’s introduction to Toca Life games is through parents or siblings who will inform about the purpose of a wheelchair. In addition, Toca Life stories, which are stories created using the sandbox games that are posted on the official YouTube Toca Boca channel as well as posted on YouTube independently by children, do feature children in wheelchairs. Toca Life stories have usually shown wheelchair users as equally capable: one of a morning routine shows exploration and collection without consid- eration of the difficulties of using a wheelchair. At the request of players on the Toca Boca Twitter channel, one story shows a different perspective. The story is about a girl who danc- es, has an accident, is unable to walk, and must use a wheelchair. She is then rehabilitated through physiotherapy and can dance again.22 This story shows sadness at not being able to walk/dance and the work required in physiotherapy for the girl to dance again. The wheel- 21 Polly Pocket Hospital Set has a wheelchair accessory. 22 Video: Girl in a Wheelchair Morning Routine - Toca Life. From a user: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fgoBiZ-zqNQ. From Team Toca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SMYS5I4_NY 95 chair represents loss and a disability that must be overcome. When creating their own repre- sentation through sandbox games, children reinforce the perspective they play. Social media then plays its part in disseminating such stories widely as suggestions for others to play. In the 3D narrative game Last Day of June, a car crash results in Carl’s wife being killed and is the catalyst for his confinement to a wheelchair. The wheelchair is realistically depicted; Carl’s hands turn the wheels to move through his house. He maneuvers around obstacles and endures the difficulties that normally exist for a wheelchair user in a home, from getting a tin of food from a cupboard shelf to opening a door. Voice sound effects indicate the frustration some of these actions entail, adding to their realism for able children who are unfamiliar with the problems of using such a mobility aid. The representation provides an accurate simulation of a person becoming used to learning and coping with using a wheelchair. In this way, it is more than cosmetic, but it is only incidental, not instrumental to the gameplay of revisiting memories. It represents the tragedy of the car crash and sadness for the loss of human love, with which older children, with their increasing ability to conceptualize, can empathize. The action-adventure Sly Cooper series features one of its main characters, Bentley, in a wheelchair. Bentley’s legs were crushed during the final battle in Sly 2: Band of Thieves by the enemy Clock-Lu’s beak. Sly gets him out of the hospital, and his actual condition (is he paralyzed? could he be cured?) is not known. As even after a year, he is still in a wheelchair, the implication is that this is now permanent (Sly 3). The disability and need to use a wheel- chair appear as a symbol of his determination and ability to continue to help his friends. Sly 3 and later adventures show what using a wheelchair means to an action-oriented character. The wheelchair adds both strengths and weaknesses: Bentley has added to his abilities (jet engine, darts, robotic arms in his wheelchair), but he can no longer sneak across buildings or crawl in tight spaces, and when he is separated from his wheelchair, his paraplegia makes him helpless. Many of his new strengths are far-fetched, but the problems of being in a wheelchair, such as an inability to crawl behind a sofa to hide, are based in reality. In the games which follow, Bentley improves the technology on his wheelchair and continues to be a stalwart friend and helpful companion. As do many video game action-adventure narratives, the story negotiates between fantasy and reality. This comic hero representation is of determination and increasing confidence and skills in the face of odds. Skills required for the first game are at the upper end of PEGI 3; as has happened in other games, the game series begins in PEGI 3 but becomes progressively less appropriate for young children as the violence increases. As children move from PEGI 3 to PEGI 7 and their experiences of reality begin to move them 96 towards differentiating between a dream world and reality, this game provides opportuni- ties to see disability through a representation that, while it is fantasy, is also based in fact. In Bentley, middle age to older children are exposed to a hero character who finds ways to successfully negotiate the world with a disability, at a stage in their development when they are looking to explore their own limitations within the world around them. Marvel superheroes have, between them, a wide range of physical and cognitive disabil- ities: mobility disability, ADHD, depression, blindness. In the comics and movies, Professor X uses a wheelchair. In contrast, in the video game Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013), he uses a hoverchair. Because he does not have a wheelchair that would allow him to switch between two mobility aids, and the hoverchair is sufficiently unlike a wheelchair that it is no longer a reference to a disability (other than in the metanarrative), the hoverchair effec- tively erases Professor X’s disability. Adding a wheelchair to Professor X’s accessories as his means of getting around on the ground, in addition to the hovercraft as air transport, would have ensured a link between the disability and the hovercraft. Although LEGO users made wheelchairs out of existing LEGO pieces at the time, LEGO did not add a wheelchair to its sets until 2016, three years after the game was released.23 A wheelchair accessory would add extra meaning to the gameplay for children as they exchanged a wheelchair for a hoverchair and back. Bringing Professor X into their pretend play and actively making him a wheelchair ensures children have a clearer understanding as such constructivist learning is effective in building knowledge. A disability that is more complex to represent than lower limb mobility disability is blind- ness. Older children are interested in experimenting with different ways of being in the world, and simulation provides them with safe outlets for their curiosity. Two types of unfolding are evoked in two very different games about blindness Beyond Eyes and Pulse. In both these games, a visible environment is revealed as the blind protagonists move forward using echo- location, which is used to perceive the environment by localizing sounds and echoes of these sounds to a specific area. Play in Beyond Eyes, which is in third-person perspective, the player is distanced from the immediacy of the action. They play a young girl, Rae, who has had an accident caused by fireworks at a celebration. She is seen in a hospital bed with bandages 23 Players have taken the initiative to build Professor X in a wheelchair out of parts and shared the instructions. Player created mini-figure https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-52138/g.lego.customs/ wheelchair-professor-x/#details 97 on her eyes; then, sitting on a bench in her garden, her head hung low. This sad demeanor is a representation of the loss of her sight. They will feel sad with her. The graphics are lyrical watercolours, and the space is beautiful and serene. Ray’s companion cat and ally, Nani, disap- pears, and she stands up and finally leaves her bench to go out to find him. She uses touch and sound, both what she feels (the ground beneath her feet, the fence) and hears (birds, water fountain), to find her way. The space beyond her immediate environment is white and empty and, as she walks towards the sounds she hears, is populated with a water-colored landscape – flowers, grass, trees, a path, a fountain – that then remains visible. Rae’s movement forward is slow, hesitant, with few interactions. It is this sense of slowness and hesitancy and the need for repeated forays into spaces to make them appear that seems the essence of the caution someone newly blind would feel. Middle age to older children are exploring the world around them and pushing its boundaries. The representation of a girl who uses echolocation to find her way corresponds to older children’s interest in testing the world. Gameplay in Pulse is first person and more immediate. The game is rated PEGI 7 but 13+ by Common Sense Media. This discrepancy is unusual and reflects how experiencing a first- person visual and sound environment can appear menacing to some and not to oth- ers. Pulse is a survival story of a girl, Eva, who sets out to save her land. She lost her sight in her childhood, uses echolocation to find her way, and can only see what she can hear. This means the player can only see what is revealed directly ahead of them as they move forward as Eva. Echolocation creates wooden boardwalk steps, flowered forest floors, and rock pathways as Eva steps on them; at times, wavery lines signify sound waves across the scene. When Eva stops walking, it is black. Soon the space is confusing, and the sounds of Eva’s footsteps together with the forest sounds, the reverberating sounds of echolocation, and Eva’s breathing create dissonance and add to the growing sense of apprehension. Such a space can be difficult to navigate both cognitively and emotionally. There seems little story to evoke a personal engagement with Eva and provide context that children would relate to. The stark raven image is at odds with the round white forest sprites, and neither evoke an impression of blindness either as part of the narrative or part of gameplay. The echolocation would engage an older children’s interest in experimenting with phenomena. The represen- tation effectively creates the apprehension of walking uncertainly into the unknown, and be- cause of that, frightening spaces, but the other imagery, the skull and bones, the giant gear, the raven, the forest sprites are not referenced in ways that assist children to associate them with the experience of being blind in such an environment. 98  In the game Weakless, the representation is of two characters, each with a different disability, working together in collaboration. The Blind One and The Deaf One, two tree- like creatures called Weavelings, set out to save their planet from a poisonous fog. Children must learn to switch back and forth between them to take advantage of each one’s abilities. When playing The Blind One, the world is filled with melodies while everything around them is black, white, and grey. When playing The Deaf One, the world is filled with vibrant colors while the sound around them is muted. The contrast provides a clearer picture of the nature of the disability as each can only undertake certain types of action. The Blind one can bang his cane on the ground to see his environment by echolocation, and the Deaf One can acti- vate switches that are visible, cause and effect narratives that are remembered by middle age children in thinking about how they will negotiate future events. These two characters can complete the puzzles and finish their quest by working together. This activates middle age children who are becoming more socially aware, begin to work with others, learn to collab- orate, and negotiate successfully. After playing within one world for a time, the sense being used (i.e., practiced) is heightened. If only one disability were featured, although heightened because of extended play/practice, this heightening might not be noticed on quitting the game. When the player must switch to another paradigm within the game, i.e., from color to black and white, or from full to muted sound, the difference that practice has provided for is better noticed.24 An older child will be interested in comparing the two and even experi- menting with the effects. Representation of the two disabilities working together provides a more accurate portrayal of each, shows to advantage how other senses are heightened, and encourages a positive approach to working together as a team while using individual abilities to benefit a quest. Buster Baxter: Lung Defender introduces children to common triggers of asthma. Not often seen in games are health problems such as asthma which can severely limit children’s ability to interact with their surroundings. This game is based on the episode Buster’s Breath- less in the very popular children’s PBS television series Arthur and is intended to be educa- tional. Gameplay is very simple, suitable for the youngest of PEGI 3 players. At the beginning of the game, Baxter says he has asthma, and that means there are certain things in the air (triggers) that make it hard for him to breath. A ship flies into Buster’s lungs to help catch some of these bad triggers and prevent asthma attack. This is a simple scrolling game through 24 See review and walk through at IndieDirect, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r79WCE_wKbM 99 a passageway in which mites appear progressively more quickly, and the player zaps them by clicking. If not enough mites are caught, the lungs constrict, and an inhaler appears. Children can grab the inhaler, which provides a puff that opens up the lungs again. The game shows triggers (cigarette smoke, cat dander) and shows what the triggers do physically (narrow breathing passageways) but does not show Baxter in any situational contexts that clear- ly show the problems caused in everyday life. The agency the game gives children has no relation to what they can actually do about avoiding asthma triggers, although they get to activate the inhaler when it is needed. The game is strongly connected to the video and both need to be experienced for the representation in the game to have the context needed for children to relate catching mites to how the disability affects Baxter. Representation in virtual reality can bring a greater sense of engagement with the charac- ter and the disability. In the VR game Moss, the deaf mouse Quill becomes a positive symbol of deafness as she successfully completes her quest. Her use of American Sign Language to communicate (even though this is not often), together with her engaging personality, strike a chord in players and is particularly noted for its realism by deaf and HoH (hard of hearing) players in their reviews.25 Her disability does not impede her from undertaking the task of a traditional hero: saving her uncle, who has been captured by the fire-breathing snake Sarffog. In the game, the player acts as Quill’s protector, and VR gives them the opportunity to get close to Quill, personally make her healthy again when she has suffered a hit, pet her when she’s tired, and be able to read what she says as she signs. This personal engagement with the cute mouse, and the opportunity to see her using sign language as a hero in this adventure game, make for a representation of the disability that is positive and enabling. The drawing style, is similar to traditional Disney animations associated with heroes of character, adds to the impression it will make on younger players. One set of games that is often forgotten but which has been important in adding to how young children view disability is those based on familiar children’s story characters who have disabilities, particularly characters in Disney films (Resene, 2017).26 Captain Hook in 25 See Accessibility Reviews at https://caniplaythat.com/2019/01/29/deaf-game-review-moss/ review and video posted on Facebook in American Sign Language at https://www.facebook.com/ watch/?v=464470617299523 26 Disney’s history of representation of disability in films begins with Dopey, one of the seven dwarves, who is shown as being intellectually challenged, in the company’s first feature Snow White (1937). 100 Peter Pan (missing hand), Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh (depression), and Dory from Finding Nemo (short-term memory) are featured in games in which their disability is a part of the sto- ryline. Young children, who have first encountered these characters in movies, television, and books, have a view of the character which is cumulatively based on the representations in the different media (see Schema), which, given Disney’s interest in appealing to its audience, are usually sympathetically, if stereotypically, represented.27 Children take the view of the character, how the disability affects their behavior, and how their social environment reacts to them into their gameplay. In Peter Pan, A Story Painting Adventure, and Return to Never Land, the villainous and comic Captain Hook has a hook instead of a hand. He uses the hook very adroitly to aid him in his actions, from pointing threateningly with it to hanging on to rigging as he is fighting. It is an obvious part of him, and although he comments on missing his hand, he uses the hook to his advantage to do many things. It is a representation not so much of his hand, as of both losses of his hand and of his villainousness. Even when seen on its own, as in the introduc- tory credits to A Story Painting Adventure, it has come to herald his presence. It is more a representation of Captain Hook than of a disability. The Captain suffers anxiety when he hears a clock tick because of the circumstances of losing his hand. The alligator, that is said to have swallowed his hand when it was cut off by Peter, has also swallowed a clock, which can be heard as the alligator continues to search for the delectable Captain. Peter teases him by putting his hand up to his ear and saying, “is that a clock ticking?” The Captain’s anxiety is treated in a comic fashion, but it is, nevertheless, anxiety, and Peter teases and bullies him about it. The original book and theatrical presentation were for older children, but the ani- mated version created in the 1950s and the games that were created in the 1990s and early 27 For a discussion of the representation of disability in Disney films: From Evil Queen to Disabled Teen: Frozen Introduces Disney’s First Disabled Princess by Michelle Resene, Disabled Studies Quar- terly, Vol 37, No 2 (2017). From the article, “Although Elsa’s disability is encoded as a magical ice pow- er, the language the film uses to talk about her condition maps on to the experiences of people with physical, mental, and intellectual disabilities in recognizable ways.” The current sandbox Disney Infinity 3.0 includes Elsa and other Frozen characters for which environments and gameplay can be created. There are no other standalone games in which Elsa’s character can be explored (the match-3 puzzle game Frozen Free Fall does not refer to Elsa’s abilities in any way). https://www.reddit.com/r/Frozen/ comments/hyld8t/why_is_there_no_frozen_video_game/. 101 2000s were intended for middle age children and even young children. The representation of disability in these games associates the physical disability with villainy and encourages negation of the anxiety associated with the event that caused the disability.28 In the popular film Finding Nemo (2003), Nemo’s right fin is a little smaller than the typically-sized fin on his left. In the opening scene of the movie, a barracuda attacks Mar- lin and Coral’s eggs (Nemo’s parents). Coral is killed, and only one egg, with a small crack, survives the attack – Nemo. Later in the movie, Marlin explains to Nemo’s friends that he was born with the smaller fin, and it’s called his lucky fin. This is also when Pearl, the little octopus, says she has one shorter tentacle, and Sheldon, the seahorse, says he is H20 intolerant. As is the case with most Disney animated films, Finding Nemo generated many different video games.29 Most are arcade-style games in which, although the fin is shown smaller, there is no explanation for it being that way, and game play does not change be- cause because of it. In Finding Nemo (2003), the video game which has more narrative, Nemo’s dad is constantly asking if it’s ok and Nemo shows disdain for these comments with rolling eyes as he is able to complete all the tasks in the games. The representation of the excessive overprotective father results in Nemo diving down deep into the ocean to the “butt” to show he can. This reflects what middle age and older children, who are becoming more autonomous, would do. Nemo completes all tasks until he needs to es- cape from the tank in the dentist’s office. In the game, he is given the training to use his fin more effectively by Gill before his second, more successful escape. The representation is of learning to use the fin to advantage in a challenging situation, similar to training for the Olympics; it is not a loss of ability. 28 Written at the beginning of the 20th century, when sentiments differed, this comic approach to disability was common. Similar theatrical and film presentations influenced generations throughout the nineteen hundreds. 29 The evolution of Finding Nemo games based on the film: Finding Nemo (GBA), Finding Nemo (PS2, Gamecube, XBOX), Finding Nemo (PC), Nemo’s Underwater World of Fun (PC), Finding Nemo 2 (GBA), Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue (DS, 3DS), Nemo’s Reef (iOS, Android), Disneyland Adventures (X360, PC, XB1, Rush a Disney Pixar Adventure (X360, PC, XB1), Disney Infinity 3.0 (PS4, XB1, PS3), Finding Dory (Android, iOS). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ5dlupP_Xo 102 Cognitive disability Nemo’s friend Dory takes us into the representation of cognitive and social/emotional dis- abilities. As with Nemo, children bring knowledge of Dory’s disability from the movie into gameplay. Dory has a memory impairment and does not embed short-term memory. The representation of her disability is accurate – she can’t remember what she’s just heard. The movie shows her as curious, very positive, and always trying to help others. So that rather than being shied away from or disparaged, she is well-liked. She is one of the three playable characters in the game Finding Nemo and is featured in the Mask Search. The cut scenes between each challenge have her acting forgetfully. “You look just like the fish back there.” Although Nemo’s father reacts to her forgetfulness with exasperation, Dory’s positive re- sponse always negates this. There is no disadvantage to playing Dory, her ability to maneuver is the same as the others. Practice at being skilled, even when having a disability, reinforces the positive in the schema being added to her memory disability: while she may be forgetful, she is nevertheless very capable in other ways. She gets her own game in Finding Dory: Just Keep Swimming, an app made to promote the film of the same name. Dory begins the game but states outright that she suffers from short-term memory loss and immediately displays forgetting her memory. But she’s going to tell you the story of finding her parents, Charlie and Jennie, despite the faulty memory and does so via the cut scenes between games. Rep- resentation is of a positive approach, lack of self-consciousness, persistence, and a confident “I knew I’d find you!” at the end. Gameplay supports this as the player can’t fail. If Dory falls behind because the player isn’t quick enough in giving her swimming directions or bumps into too many walls, Dory will retell that part of the story so that kids can play it again. As Dory is an animated character, a cute Disney one at that, the positive representation of accomplishment is accessible to even young children. It provides to middle age and older children a representation of positive response to cognitive disability by others, an example of social response that, rather than denigrating, encourages friendly engagement. Games that feature Winnie the Pooh and his friends are based on the Winnie the Pooh movies, television programs, and books. Each friend has a distinct personality, and stories include Eeyore’s depression and Piglet’s anxiety as problems that are coped with on a daily basis and that their friends occasionally help them with.30 Over time these characters have 30 Although Pooh’s constant concern with his weight and Tigger’s irrepressible bounciness are also part of the storylines, they are not treated as negative characteristics. 103 themselves become representative of these disabilities. Eeyore is often seen with his head hanging, making comments about how difficult life is, and getting progressively more gloomy throughout the day. This and other ways he acts are accurate portrayals of a depressive disorder. Piglet is constantly flustered and anxious about events, always thinking that they will go wrong. He shakes and is often scared or nervous, and his behavior is an accurate portrayal of an anxiety disorder (Lack, Sarah E. Shea, 2000). In the game Winnie the Pooh Kindergarten, Winnie is intent on giving Eeyore a birthday party. Piglet’s anxiety increases because of the party planning, and, to help, Winnie paints a picture that Piglet can give to Eeyore as a present. The representation of anxiety is in the cutscenes. The games within the story are skill-based and skillfully blended into the storyline so that players can help Piglet by, in one game, painting a picture. These two characters’ personalities are invariable, whatever the media; their behavior is not presented in terms of depression and anxiety but as being of concern and something to help with, the representation that is effective for young and middle age children. Cognitive or emotional/social disabilities such as autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and ADHD, are more difficult to represent, with only a few PEGI 3 games depicting these. Most have been created by individuals who have personal experience with children with disabil- ities or by organizations that advocate on behalf of such disabilities for the purpose of en- couraging understanding of how the disability affects children. Zanny, Born to Run, is a funny interactive tablet story about a young boy who cannot sit still that includes clickable and moveable objects. The text tells about the disability, and each illustration and moveable rep- resents a different characteristic and portrays the feeling and the resulting action that goes with it: not being able to sit still and the need to run around is accompanied by feet twirling in a circle. The book is promoted for special needs children 3+ as helping to show they are not alone in the world. Pre-school children’s self-interest does not evolve to be self-conscious about being different until they are school age and into middle years. Suggesting to very young children (3-5) that they have a problem others share provides a schema of disability rather than competency from a young age. The movables are typical interactive activities and each, while it is intended to be specific to the issue of not being able to sit still, is a common type of activity children are involved in the play. As a representation, the text may be read to guide the interactivity with the purpose of sharing feelings, not educating about a “differ- ence” other children may also have. Children age 3-5 are not able to read the book on their own; they will only interact with the movables, an activity that does not necessarily translate 104 as knowledge about the disability but simply as fun for everyone. Apps are available on tab- lets that will read the story, and these often substitute for parents and caregivers in this role but provide less information as parents will often augment reading text with comments. The representation is accurate for older children and for adults to empathize with. The interactive book Axel’s Chain Reaction provides a different approach: it shares some of the difficulties of being ADHD and then provides an activity that engages an ADHD child and suggests the readers participate in a similar activity. It is for middle age to older children. The story has introductory representational scenes that provide sound effects and move- ment, which reflect the noisy confusion of an environment (basketball court) that an ADHD child might be experiencing. Following the experiential confusion of the basketball court and comments by other students, representation in the remainder of the story is of creative problem solving that can be engaged in as a function of the disability. This is also reinforced by text that poses Axel as a problem solver and by activities that build on the idea of not just competency but creative problem solving as a function of the disability. The representation of the disability as a difficulty in the introduction to the book is then followed by a story of the successful completion of creative projects. This is similar to Kenny’s story in Backyard Baseball Junior: introductory scenes indicate that the disability has some drawbacks, follow- ing scenes show success. Axel’s Chain Reaction provides a positive spin of a representation of a disability by having players participate in the success that can occur when children with ADHD engage in activities suitable to their talents. Games for older children that tackle cognitive disabilities can reflect sensitivity in rep- resenting an experiential world for the player to enter. The PEGI 7 first-person adventure game, Ether One, is a story about Jean Thomson, a patient with dementia. The player engag- es first hand with images from Jean’s mind as “the Restorer,” someone who enters the minds of patients and cures them of mental illnesses by repairing their broken memories. The mem- ories become increasingly disordered and chaotic as details of Jean’s life unfold. The repre- sentation of deterioration is consistent with what is known about dementia and simulates the reality of the disability effectively. The Restorer, as narrator, adds an external view and a comment that searching through memory is an experiment that may have been taken too far: the process of memory searching is questioned. This representation of concern about the process is one the older children would take up in their quest for understanding the world. The first-person play is more experiential than third-person, and the accuracy in representa- tion provides a seriousness and weight to the depiction that influences perception. For older 105 children who may have family in this situation, the game would create a visual representation of a difficulty not easily understood that they could integrate into their schema of dementia. In the game Auti-Sim, the representation of hypersensitivity that some autistic children experience is said to be striking in its authenticity. The player walks through a playground, and as they come closer to groups of children, the noise and visual static increase until the environment is filled with audio and visual distortion that is almost unbearable. Relief comes as the player moves away from the children, and there is a reduction in static until all is quiet again in a peaceful treed area. Because the environment is the one they would have experienced many times – a playground, with children playing on play equipment, running around, chatting – a PEGI 7 player has context for the simulation and is familiar with the way they themselves would participate in such an environment. The startling representation of an environment distorted by static effectively demonstrates for older, neurotypical children someone else’s perspective, one they are able to appreciate because they are at an age when they are interested in what others think and feel. The difficulty of being around other children even for a short period of time when someone has hypersensitivity is something they can, as older children, empathize with as they encounter abrasive static and compare it to what would normally be a pleasant and enjoyable space. Such a representation is also effective in encouraging adults to develop new attitudes towards the difficulty.31 Content rating systems and cognitive development The basis for the grouping of games in this chapter are the video game ratings PEGI 3 and PEGI 7. These indicators provide guidance that a video game’s content is suitable for children as young as three in one case and as young as seven in the other. PEGI is one system among others the gaming industry uses. Education/edutainment games such as DreamBox Learning Math and Granny Prix Multi-Player are not generally rated as they are based on the skill level of the subject matter being studied, which is most often grade-based. Rating systems had their start in 1994 with North America’s Entertainment Software Rating Board system, ESRB. ESRB rating was and still is, based on content rather than skill 31 A study that looked at the effectiveness of the game in changing perceptions indicated, “Engage- ment with the virtual simulation resulted in heightened perspective taking, which subsequently in- creased emotional concern, helping intentions, and willingness to volunteer compared with the obser- vation only or text vignette intervention” (Sarge, Kim, & Velez, 2020). 106 or cognitive development. Initially, ESRB created five age-based ratings that included young- er children: “Early Childhood,” “Kids to Adults,” “Teen,” “Mature,” and “Adults Only.” “Kids to Adults” was changed to “Everyone” in 1998.32 E10+, as well as descriptors such as Comic Vi- olence, were added in 2005 to differentiate between entire family and children 10 and older, and identify why. The Early Childhood rating was retired in 2018. An ESRB Twitter account comment made in April 2019 notes, “Yes, we retired the eC rating last year around this time. There were SO few games that fit the criteria, and the argument could almost always be made that E was also applicable for those titles!” “Few games” is contrary to the many titles created for kindergarteners, preschoolers, toddlers, and even babies every year. Elimination of this age rating also denies the fact that children’s needs and skills, as established by child development research, are different from those of older children, teens, and adults, making the ESRB rating close to useless for parents seeking guidance for games suitable for young children. Different rating systems were created because of individual society’s approaches to child development and, correspondingly, the appropriateness of content for younger age groups. Also, video games increasing prevalence and de facto inclusion in many societies’ cognitive toolset has motivated the creation of ratings more culturally acceptable for different norms. In 2003, the Interactive Software Federation of Europe introduced the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) system with 3, 7, 12, 16, and 18 as category markers. PEGI replaced ex- isting ESRB and other local systems and is currently used in 35 European countries. PEGI age ratings more directly map on cognitive development theory than do ESRB age ratings and, by implication, are a more useful guide for parents who are interested in the suitability of a game for their child’s age. Content rating systems can be opaque, leaving parents questioning how a rating was arrived at. In the US, parent-based advocacy consumer groups such as Common Sense Me- dia began to provide ratings to fill what they saw were gaps in ESRB ratings. Common Sense Media provides a rating system (0-2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.) that includes a rating by an expert panel, one based on parent’s reviews and another based on kid reviews. The actual parent and kid reviews are provided for reference. Common Sense Media has a secondary five-star 32 “Video game ratings are great for today’s games, but may struggle with gaming’s future.” Brian Crecente. Sep 22, 2014. https://www.polygon.com/2014/9/22/6828699/video-game-ratings-are- great-for-todays-games-but-may-struggle-with 107 rating for Educational Value, Positive Messages, Positive Role Models & Representations, Ease of Play, Violence, Sex, Language (Bad), Consumerism, Drinking, and Drugs & Smoking. TamingGaming.com, a family-oriented video game database, has included a skill rating (simi- lar to the Common Sense Media Ease of Play) which adds a useful category when considering how a child is likely to interact physically with a game at a specific age of development. An example of how ratings may not accurately show suitability for an age group are two games similar in their gameplay, Overcooked! and Moving Out. • Overcooked! ratings are PEGI 3, ESRB Everyone, Common Sense Media 8+, Taming- Gaming skill rating 7-13. • Moving Out ratings are PEGI 3. ESRB Everyone. Common Sense Media 8+, Taming- Gaming skill rating 6+. The ratings are a challenge to understand when trying to decide how suitable a game is for a specific age. Overcooked! online reviews say it is a fun, very fast-paced game that speeds up very quickly and is stressful even at lower levels. Moving Out speeds up but is never as fast or as stressful.33 An analysis of the two games identifies several reasons why it is not as fast or stressful: the busyness of the activity (number of actions that are necessary to accomplish the task), familiarity with the objects and activities, and familiarity with the process. A cooking environment, which requires many small items to be acquired and moved quickly, is inherently busier than that of moving a home which includes the manipulation of a variety of different sized, some quite large, objects. Choosing ingredients, preparing them by chopping, assembling them onto a plate is a complex schema. Three-year-olds pretend play in their toy kitchens. The purpose of play in Overcooked! is not pretend play but speed. Cognitively young children are not prepared for such an activity. By the time children are sev- en, they have been exposed to demands of speed through competitions, kindergarten, and early grade training and are cognitively ready. On the other hand, even children three years old are familiar with the objects in a home such as a lamp, rug, or sofa, and especially smaller items like paper, boxes, and especially their toys, many of which they have already had ex- perience moving from room to room. Cognitively they are prepared for such an activity. The same qualifier about speed can be applied here as for Overcooked! Pretend play is occupied with creating a narrative, not how fast that narrative can be completed. Competitiveness and 33 https://www.psu.com/news/hands-on-moving-out-is-house-removal-overcooked-without-the- stress/ 108 speed enter the picture closer to age seven. Both games, in particular Overcooked!, speed up and move players to a higher level of complexity quickly. There is an assumption that lower levels (fewer choices, slower play) deal with the needs of younger children, who should then be able to play these levels comfortably. This is not the case. Younger children may simply not have the cognitive and physical ability to take on the different tasks required and can become overly frustrated in their attempts to master these tasks. TamingGaming suggests 7-13 as the skill rating for Overcooked!, which suggests a PEGI 7 rating is more suitable than the PEGI 3 rating. An additional feature of Overcooked! is cooperative play, which is reviewed as being “more fun.” Each child’s ability to play cooperatively is based on their experience of such play and is a skill children begin to develop as they move from a dependent home environment to a more autonomous and social school environment, usually beginning ages 5-7. Even the less frantic cooperative play in Moving Out may be out of reach for those who have not had the opportunity to play with others this way. Cooperative play comes into its own with older children. Does the depiction of a wheelchair have any effect on the rating in these two games? As the wheelchair does not add to the characters’ ability, it does not add to the game content or play and does not affect the rating. Are the ratings any use to someone who is looking for guidance in purchasing these games? The skill ratings map closest to cognitive abilities. Using the PEGI 3 or Everyone rat- ing as a guide to purchasing the game for children age 3-5 is likely to result in its not being played after a couple of frustrating tries, even by those children who have been exposed to many games by that age. The assumption definition of disability in this chapter is that it is a variant of the norm. Phys- ical disability may include difficulty with or the inability to see, hear, speak, or move in nor- mal/standard ways. Cognitive disability includes an inability to act within an accepted norm cognitively, emotionally, or socially. Representation of disability in video games can differ significantly in what it references. Whether for PEGI 3 or for PEGI 7, games can be cosmetic and neutral, providing exposure but not gameplay utility as in the games Moving Out and 109 Overcooked! It can be incidental, used as a device that provides purpose for the narrative, as in Last Day in June, or it can accurately represent the disability and show how the charac- ter copes with their disability, as in Weakless, Sly Cooper: Honor Among Thieves, or Beyond Eyes. The most valuable type of representation provides players with exposure and engage- ment that adds understanding and meaning about the disability represented. How represen- tation is perceived by children depends in large part on where they are in the cognitive devel- opment process. Are they still in their magic dreamworld with pretend play that is all about Eeyore and Piglet? Are they beginning to socialize outside their home and family and thinking about including Kenny in their next baseball team? Are they questioning the world and figur- ing out how they fit in it when they are experiencing Jean’s confused thoughts? Whichever stage of development they are proceeding through, the dynamic schema that helps structure their experience of the world assimilates and accommodates new information about the many kinds of physical disability and cognitive disability that games now show, deafness in Weakless and Moss, blindness in Beyond Eyes and Pulse, autism in Axel’s Chain Reaction and Auti-Sim. Each new exposure and engagement external to the cultural norms that mold young children nuances their schema and moves it farther away from those cultural norms, especially as children aim to be autonomous and no longer dependent on their parents’ ideas as they progress through later childhood towards adolescence. The representation in the games identified in this review, first exposes children to the disability, identifying its exis- tence, then it encourages them to engage with the disability through different game genres, and finally, it provides a learning experience through repeated play. The old adage all adver- tising is good advertising can be applied here. Yes, there are issues in how representation of disability is at times simply cosmetic, or is not accurate, or is linked to characters parents may find violent (like Bentley), or told in frightening stories (like Pulse). Today, more so than at any other time in existence, each attempt at representation has a social world of reviewers and critics to mitigate its value. But the deaf person who creates a video in which she notes that Quill really only signs a few times nevertheless praises Moss for the breakthrough approach of including a mouse protagonist who signs in American Sign Language.34 Not all games require, as was stated at the beginning of this chapter, that “…representa- tion of disability in children’s games should provide players with exposure and engagement that adds understanding and helps them create meaning about the disability represented.” 34 Moss Facebook review in sign language, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=464470617299523 110 Arcade-type games with sprites, some of whom are represented in a wheelchair, is one way to be inclusive of the diversity in our society. While it is important to acknowledge and to embrace all moves forward, future work that progresses from this brief overview of PEGI 3 and PEGI 7 games is necessary to assist game designers, educators, and policy-makers with ideas about best practices in the representation of disability. Examining more closely how representation has changed in games since the 1990s and analyzing societal reasons for change would round out historical information. Understanding whether representation has changed societal attitudes, and in what way, will require looking at changes in games in parallel to changes in representation in other media such as television and social media news, films, and videos. Having more information on how representation of disability is viewed by children with these disabilities would provide context for the authenticity and accuracy of the experience. A program of research based on these directions will provide a solid base for developing a set of best practices. Chapter 5. Qualitative games content analysis One of the main goals of our research project was to analyze representations of disability in video games. Seventy-nine games were selected for this purpose and became the basis for our study. The main variable determining whether a production would be included in the research sample was even a small range of disability representations. Our team did not want the entire sample to consist of obvious games in which problems with disability or diseas- es that may lead to it can be observed, such as games within the serious games segment; therefore, we addressed mainly games that aim at providing entertainment for users. Games of this type accounted for 83% of the analyzed titles. Such a selection of a research sample seems nonobvious, as games designed for therapeutic or educational purposes usually re- main the main subject of research in the scientific discourse. The analysis of such a research sample of games was threefold. The first level concerned general information about the games, the method of their distribution, accessibility for spe- cific age groups, genre characteristics, and accessibility understood as the possibility of us- ing games by people with limitations resulting from illness or disability. The second level of the analysis concentrated on the characteristics and styles of heroes and heroines with disabilities. The selected demographic aspects, such as gender and age, were analyzed; the categories and types of disabilities of male and female characters were studied more thor- oughly with a focus on their visual representations. The second part presents the data on the narrative layer in the research sample under study. The role and functions of characters with disabilities in the narrative structure were characterized. Models of plot development and ways of communicating disabilities through stories presented in games were also defined. The third part considered the relationship between disability and the layer of gameplay me- chanics and pointed to the degree to which these mechanics reflect the specificity of a dis- ability and the general nature of the simulation. We chose to use triangulation in our study. In terms of the qualitative analysis, we con- centrated on a thorough discussion of the threads related to representations of disability at all three levels. The quantitative approach allowed for the presentation of the scale of dis- ability representation on the basis of a wide range of variables. 112 General information on the research sample The foundation of the analysis was the profile of games. The PEGI system was used for this purpose: Figure 1: Classification of games according to the PEGI system35 (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 30, every ten units, the horizontal axis—a scale from 0 to 18, irregular; bars from the left: 28%, 16%, 18%, 13%, and 25%) The majority of games in which disability representations are present in the sample un- der study include ultimate categories. Games intended for users aged 3+ constituted 28% of the research sample, while those for 18+ adult users accounted for 25%. Games within the 12+ (18%), 7+ (16%) and 16+ (13%) age categories did not exceed 20% each. The data showed that the game developers do not associate a decision on disability representation with the age category, which may be encouraging as each of the groups identified in the PEGI age rating system is likely to find certain disability representation. Even the two leading age categories, which surpassed other variables, namely 3+ and 18+, did not dominate the scale substantially to prevent other age groups from encountering games in which disability representations occur. The genre analysis of games was also significant; it allowed for the identification of the dominant narrative conventions. As the figure shows, two genres evidently dominated, namely adventure (35%) and ac- tion-adventure (30%) games. It is noteworthy that these genres provide the developers with 35 Sources of the figures our elaboration. 113 more extensive opportunities to create characters. Open worlds where a player can meet numerous characters identify games within these segments—this facilitates implementations of representations of interest. Furthermore, they contain various storylines connected to the main plot line or to side episodes potentially related to the issue of disability. Shooter games were the third most popular genre. When it comes to the narrative aspect within this genre, it primarily concerns the tragedy of war or various conflicts, which enables the presentation of characters with disabilities. Heroes lose their limbs and suffer psychological trauma during fights; thus, the developers are able to present physical or, less often mental, disabilities in such games without numerous narrative descriptions. Interactive books and simulators (both 5%) were the final types wider represented in our research sample. It should be emphasized that games within these two genres commonly combine entertainment with the therapeutic or educational purpose; therefore, they go beyond the entertainment trend and are a proof of deliberate actions of the game designers who aim at the introduction of the subject of disabil- ity to players. It is noteworthy that the list did not include certain genres, for example, sports games. The absence of this particular type indicates that certain topics related to the environ- ment of people with disabilities, such as sports, are entirely overlooked in video games. Figure 2: Classification of games according to the genre (Alternative description: A pie chart by genre; from the bottom: adventure game—35%, action-adventure—30%, interactive book/movie—5%, simulator—11%, RTS—1%, shoot- er—3%, hack’n’slash—2%, fighting game—4%, survival/horror—5%, sandbox/survival—3%) The analysis of narrative conventions, which are often the main driving force of the gameplay, was also important in this context. 114  The most frequently used narrative convention for games that incorporate representa- tions of disability was fantasy or fairy tale (39%). This convention, like science fiction—the third in the ranking (22%), allows for great discretion setting creation. Such creative freedom may also result in interesting opportunities for the game developers who decide to present characters with disabilities. Such an example is the presentation of Taimi featured in Guild Wars 2—despite problems with her lower limbs, the heroine does not use prostheses but a huge mech (a two-legged robot with a seat), which has become her alternative means of transportation. The second most popular convention was the realistic style (30%). Contrary to games implemented in the most popular narrative conventions, games of this type often attempt at presenting disability in their narration in a way similar to the realistic one, which stems much from the simulation nature of a game and setting it in the present. The least popular were horror (8%) and historical (1%) conventions. The minor presence of disability representation in horror-type games may somewhat be misleading for two reasons. On the one hand, many of such games present opponents with various body deformities. In a sense, they could also be referred to as characters with disabilities; however, it is difficult to attri- bute human traits to many of them. Nonetheless, if we concentrate more on the representa- tion of “human” characters with disabilities in games within this convention, the lack of such heroines and heroes can also be explained by fear to combine the subject of disability with the aesthetics of blood, horror, and fear. According to our focus group participants, these concerns are not fully justified. Figure 3: Classification of games according to narrative conventions (Alternative description: A bar chart describing the classification of games according to the plot; the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 40, every ten units, the bars are named; from the left: science fiction—22%, fantasy/fairy tale—39%, realistic—30%, historical—1%, horror—8%) As indicated in the introduction to the chapter, entertainment was the most common pur- pose of the analyzed games (84%), followed by educational (14%) and therapeutic (3%) purposes.) 115  Figure 4: Classification of games according to their main purpose (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 100, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: therapeutic—3%, entertain- ment— 84%, educational—14%) Furthermore, the game mode deserves attention. According to the analysis results, the developers most often included representations of disability in single-player games (84%), and only 5% of the analyzed titles were multiplayer games. In terms of modes, 10% of the entire sample used both single- and multiplayer modes, which is frequently expressed, for example, in the option of a cooperative game on a split screen, as in Overcooked 2. Figure 5: Classification of games according to game modes (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 100, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: single player—82%, multiplayer— 5%, both— 13%) Single-player games seem to be the most favorable to portray disability as their pace is often slightly slower than multiplayer games. The slow narration allows the developers 116 to focus on a more accurate presentation of disability, as confirmed by “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice”. The work on this game was based on, among others, numerous consultations with psychologists or people with cognitive disabilities in order to best present the problem of psychotic episodes with which the main character struggles. On the other hand, the imper- ceptible presence of disabilities in multiplayer games means that the potential to interact with characters with disabilities, controlled by other real players, has been wasted. This leads to situations in which these characters are either protagonists controlled by a player or her- oines and heroes controlled by a computer. There is no third option that would allow players to notice that characters with disability in the gaming world do not have to be controlled only by them or an algorithm. The further part of the analysis addressed the financial and organizational aspects of production. The first aspect concerned the game distribution platform. Figure 6: Classification of games according to the most popular platforms (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 40, every ten units, the horizontal axis—five named bars; from the left: mobile game—8%, PC—29%, console— 5%, PC/console—54%, PC/mobile—4%) More than half of the analyzed games (54%) were available for both personal comput- ers and consoles. This is a positive aspect due to the fact that both console and PC players have a chance to observe representations we investigated. Within the sample, 29% of games could be played only on computers (PC), 8% were games within the mobile games segment, and 5%—typical console titles. Games available for both personal computers and mobile de- vices accounted for 4 percent of the research sample. A small share of games with disability representations in the mobile market is appealing. If we assume that this market is domi- nated by casual games, which do not require a lot of effort and commitment, then perhaps 117 the specificity of these games makes their developers avoid the topic of disability as difficult and uncomfortable, which, according to them, would necessitate special preparations and a greater amount of work. When selecting games for the sample, we kept almost on the equal division between AAA and Indie budget segments, with the advantage of one AAA game. Range/budget of a game AAA 51% Indie 49% Table 1: The budget range of the studied games The distribution model of games included in the research sample was also analyzed. Figure 7: Division of games according to a form of distribution (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every ten units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: physical copies—52%, digi- tal—41%, free-to-play—9%) It is noticeable that the most commonly adopted distribution model was physical copies distribution (52%), which was surprising, given the current demand for digital media. It may be due to the fact that the research sample also included games that were produced before the advent of digital game distribution platforms. It should also be remembered that games sold in physical copies, in the majority of cases, have their digital counterparts offered in online stores. Data revealed that 41% of titles were distributed only digitally, which confirms the 118 popularity of this business model. Only 8% of games were offered within the “free-to-play” model, that is, free distribution with the possibility of purchasing goods within the application. Characteristics and presentation of characters with disabilities In this part of the chapter, we sought to show in what way the developers present characters with disabilities or diseases that may be their source. In the research, attention was paid to the basic variables describing each virtual character, such as gender or age, but also char- acters’ role in the gameplay: whether they are a protagonist or an anti-hero. The last issue investigated in this chapter was the way of visualizing characters in the virtual world. Gender and age of a character Figure 8: Character’s gender (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 80, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: male—75%, female—18%, to be chosen in a character creation screen—8%) Analyzing the gender category of characters with disabilities in video games, it can be stat- ed that male was definitely the dominant (75%), while the representation of women with disabilities accounted only for 18%. We did not manage to find any transgender characters among the investigated games. Customized characters comprised 8% of the sample. The majority of them are generated in the so-called creation screens implemented mainly in RPG games. They allow for building own character at the beginning of the game, using a variety of modifiers related to appearance (for example, build, skin color, face shape), as well as skills and character. While the research sample incorporated numerous RPG games, only a minor part of them included character creation screens, which would allow for gender selection. On the other hand, the number of games allowing for the assignment of a disability at the stage 119 of the character creation was even smaller (which has been discussed later in the analysis). This low percentage is a serious drawback of games, as indicated by players with disabilities who took part in our focus interview. Subsequently, the age category was analyzed. Figure 9: Classification of characters according to age (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 40, every ten units, the horizontal axis—10 named bars; from the left: 0-10—11%, 11-20—14%, 21-30—10%, 31-40—6%, 41-50—6%, 51-60—5%, 61-70—3%, 71-80—3%, 91-100+—5%, not stated—37%) As it can be noticed, 37% of the developers did not decide to determine the age of char- acters in games. 63% of virtual avatars were of a certain age, or it was estimated, hence the cafeteria based on age ranges. The fact that the age of characters may change during the gameplay requires consideration. Characters with disabilities in games were most commonly adults. Nonetheless, a large representation—over 20%, comprised children and adolescents with disabilities. It seems that the presence of female and male characters with disabilities in all age groups is a favorable aspect as it makes disability in games an age-independent variable. Types of represented disabilities Types of disability were the first element analyzed. All three types of disability appeared in the studied sample, namely motor, intellectual, and sensory. 120  Figure 10: Types of disability (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every ten units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: sensory disability—18%, motor disability—57%, cognitive disability—25%) The most common group of disabilities represented in games were those that affect the character’s motor system (57%). This type of disability is undoubtedly one of the simplest in terms of a visualization in the virtual world. On the other hand, those disabilities which seem to be more complicated when designing interaction mechanics, that is, cognitive and sen- sory, accounted for 25% and 18%, respectively. It seems that disabilities of this type appear less frequently also because the game developers are afraid of this topic; that is, they doubt whether they are able to present it in an appropriate and acceptable manner, not only for the community of people with disabilities. The table below lists the types of disabilities present in the studied productions. Type of disability/illness Occurrence in the sample Paralysis of a limb or limbs 24% Lack of a limb or limbs 16% Visual impairment (including blindness) 14% Unformed body parts 6% Mutilations 6% Psychosis 5% Loss of consciousness 5% Memory loss 4% The autism spectrum 2% 121  ADHD 2% Intellectual disability 2% A disease that limits motor capabilities 2% Hearing impairment 2% Speech impairment 1% Asthma 1% Depression36 1% Coma 1% Dementia 1% Table 2: Types of disabilities in games Visualization of characters with disabilities In the visual analysis of characters with disabilities, the research team concentrated on sev- eral aspects that determine the way they are presented. The first of them was the type of graphics. Figure 11: Types of graphics in games (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: 3D (Game Art)—67%, 2D (Game Art)—28%, Pixel Art—5%) 36 According to “The Global Burden of Disease” report, unipolar depression is the world’s leading cause of adult disability (Murray and Lopez, 1996), quoted after (Zielska, n.d.). 122  Graphics 3D were the most common (67%). The 3D technology allows for obtaining a much more precise image of various types of physical disability. In the analyzed games, 28% used 2D graphics/art; there were numerous productions with arcade elements or ad- venture games in general, which frequently present the gameplay in two dimensions. Pixel art was the least common (5%). The visual style was investigated due to its significance. Figure 12: Main visual styles in games (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60 every, ten units, the horizontal axis—four named bars; from the left: realistic—32%, cartoon—57%, gro- tesque— 10%, other—15%) More than half of the games presented both characters and the setting in a cartoon style (57%), which undoubtedly is not synonymous with the casual theme of games. The cartoon style is a popular procedure that is often used by developers to make a game stand out. For instance, in the case of the Borderlands series, which does not resemble a fairy tale or cartoon in the narrative layer, its style is embedded in this convention. Realistic was the second most common visual style (32%). It allows for the presentation of disability in an almost veristic way. Grotesque is a style that appeared in 10% of produc- tions; it was often present in horror as well as adventure games. The exaggerated characters allow, for example, for showing their tragedy, as in the case of Fran Bow. Other styles (1%) included the presentation of characters in the form of the so-called stickmen (composed of lines) present in educational games in which the content is more important than the visual layer. 123  Picture 10: Sir Hammerlock featured in Borderlands 2 (Alternative description: The picture shows a saluting elderly man with a metal prosthetic right hand. A man is wearing a lord’s outfit. He has a bushy black mustache, a monocle on his left eye, a hat on his head, and a brown vest with claret lapels. The character is in a win- ter seaside environment. There are car tires and boat debris scattered all around.) Another detailed aspect of the visual characteristics was the color scheme of characters. Figure 13: The color scheme of characters (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: dark—27%, natural—67%, player-dependent (a character creator screen)—6%) 124  Due to the fact that the clothing of characters in games differs extremely and the di- vision of the color scheme would reach the categorization of 40 or 50 variables, we distin- guished only three categories. A natural color scheme was chosen most frequently (in 67% of cases). According to our distinction, it is a range resembling real colors, as well as light colors of characters—in both cases they do not evoke negative emotions. Dark colors (present in 27% of games) appeared as a sign of a pessimistic atmosphere, fear, or hostility. The player’s choice of color scheme was the least common option (only 6%). When analyzing the visual aspects of a character, the measurements of the body were also taken into consideration. In 78% of cases, these were characters of natural height. Short characters with disabilities in games appeared less often—only in 18% of games. On the other hand, the research sample did not comprise characters with sizes significantly exceeding the typical ones—there were no giants and colossuses among them.37 As in the case of color schemes, the player could also decide on the size/height of the character (in 4% of games). Figure 14: Character’s size (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 80, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: natural—76%, short—18%, player-dependent— 4%) 37 Enormous characters with disabilities can also be found in the selected games. In addition to the studied sample, there was a large group of characters featured in Dark Souls who are opponents of the player-controlled hero. Their body size significantly exceeds the protagonist. 125 Narrative contexts of characters We sought to discuss the results of the quantitative analysis of the narrative layer of the studied games. Numerous contexts related to the role and functions of characters with dis- abilities in the stories told in games were presented. This part focused on the analysis of the ways of communicating disability in the narrative structures of games and forms of narration related to it. All these issues can indicate how schematic characters with disabilities are in games, as well as the entire plots associated with them. The scope and nature of the participation of characters with disabilities in the plot. When investigating the role of characters with disabilities in the plots of games, both the nature of this character’s participation in a game, as well as the related narrative functions, deserve mention. The fact whether we deal with a protagonist, a side character, a minor character, or an opponent significantly indicates the character’s influence on the story; therefore this aspect was analyzed first. Figure 15: Classification of characters according to their role in the gameplay (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every twen- ty units, the horizontal axis—four bars; from the left: main character—61%, side charac- ter—18%, Non Player Character (NPC)/minor character—10%, opponent—11%) More than half of characters representing disability played primary roles in video games (61%). The key protagonists are always main characters in a game that a player controls. Side characters were represented in 18% of cases of all virtual avatars. Their presence in a game is most frequently marked by functions such as a donor, a mentor, or a helper of the main character. Opponents in games accounted for 11% of all the characters analyzed, which 126 is a considerable number, with regard to the fact that there are fewer main antagonists in games than good or neutral avatars. Minor characters/NPCs (10%) most often try to support the main character with advice or send him to certain places to complete a mission. A subsequent aspect under study concerned the character’s narrative functions. The analysis of the structure of Vladimir Propp’s fairy tales has been employed for the typologi- zation. Figure 16: Classification of characters according to their narrative functions (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—five named bars; from the left: main character—62%, opponent— 11%, donor—13%, helper—11%, sender—3%) Characters with disabilities were most frequently presented as main male and female protagonists (62%). This fact should be positively assessed because it demonstrates that the game developers are not afraid to consider a character with a disability as the protagonist. A donor, that is, a character who put a protagonist to the test and assigns the missions, was the next most frequent function (13%) of disabled characters. Commonly, the donors are old men who are paralyzed or struggle with other age-related diseases. Their wisdom helps the main character throughout the majority of the plot; they play the role of mentors. The third most popular functions among characters with disabilities were the helpers and the oppo- nents. The helpers (11%) are characters that are often encountered during the gameplay, advise the protagonist, or ultimately become, for example, a part of the hero’s fellowship and, regardless of their disability, help them in difficult times. The opponent (11%) is a type of a character whose goal is to prevent the main character from completing a quest. In this context, disability is often aimed at reinforcing the bad intentions of a character, for example, by presenting him/her with an experimentally deformed body as in Very Little Nightmares or 127 Tormented Souls. The most infrequent representation was that of the senders (3%); however, we meet briefly such characters in games; thus it is good that heroines and heroes in the remaining groups appear in the gameplay for longer periods of time. The morality of a character was a significant variable from the perspective of perceiving representation of disability in games; in relation to the research sample under study, this variable was very diverse. Figure 17: The morality of characters (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—scale from 0 to 60, every ten units, the horizontal axis—five named bars; from the left: good—57%, evil—10%, neu- tral—9%, player-dependent—9%, ambivalent—15%) More than half of the characters analyzed were the ones of good or even noble nature (57%). As the majority of representations concern key protagonists, who are main characters of games, such a method is not unusual. Some of the characters with disabilities were distin- guished by negative features (10%). In this case, each of them was an opponent of the main character, not controlled by a player. Characters with an unstable attitude to good and evil were defined as characters of the “ambivalent” morality in our study. They constituted 15% of the studied sample. It is noteworthy that this ambivalence is related in certain cases to heroines and heroes’ disability—it causes their frustration and depression, which may lead to reprehensible acts. The morality dependent on a player’s decision (9%) was, in turn, a noteworthy variant of the character’s ethical profile, which does not occur as often as would be expected. The player’s ability to create the morality of heroines and heroes with disabilities is an option that inspires interesting observations and conclusions if we compare the morality of these characters with this of able-bodied characters. It seems that in the future, it would be worth- 128 while to devote a separate study to this issue, focusing on the attitude of players to the ways of shaping the morality of characters with disabilities during the gameplay. Characters with neutral morality (9%) were mainly donors; that is, heroes who assign tasks often take the role of the mentors who do not influence the decisions of their apprentices (players) due to their neutrality. Impact of disability on the plot The following important issue is the role of disability in game plots. It was presented in the communication perspective. We aimed at establishing the background and ways of revealing the causes of disability in the plot of a game. Figure 18: Background of represented disabilities (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis— a scale from 0 to 100, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—two named bars; from the left: disability acquired prior to the plot— 81%, disability acquired during the gameplay—19%) The most common narrative technique used by the game developers was to transfer the moment of occurrence of a disability prior to the game plot (81%). Such a technique can be considered quite convenient because the developers do not have to provide players with information about the health of a character. Such a move is often motivated by the fact that the developers do not want to show a brutal accident or experiments on a character. Occa- sionally, even though disability is acquired by a character before the plot begins, the story designers decide to show this fact in retrospect. Disability was acquired during the gameplay much less frequently (19%). Various strategies appear here; for example, when a whole series of games based on the same universe is published, in one part, a given hero acquires a dis- ability in order to function as a character with a disability in another. In this way, for example, 129 Bentley the turtle has been presented in the Sly Cooper series. In the final mission of the second part, the hero suffers injuries, the consequence of which is moving in a wheelchair in subsequent parts of the game. In games in which the circumstances of disability are communicated in the gameplay, they are rarely portrayed in a brutal way; however, it is possible to find such instances. This is the case of Malik featured in Assassin’s Creed. Malik, along with his brothers Kadar and Altaïr (controlled by a player), have set off to the Temple of Solomon to get a treasure for Al Mualim, his mentor. Malik has warned Altaïr not to break the rules, kill innocent people and act inconspicuously; however, Altaïr starts fighting the Templars there. Malik has been injured in this fight but won and obtained the treasure for Al Mualim. Unfortunately, his other brother died, which Malik cannot forgive Altaïr. After returning to Masyaf, a base of opera- tions of the Assassins, he bleeds heavily. Later he has undergone a hand amputation. Altaïr is relegated to the rank of an ordinary assassin as a punishment and has to carry out various missions that are assigned to him by Malik in the office of assassins. Malik’s nature and his attitude to disability are reflected in his dialogues with Altaïr. Narratively, the circumstances of the character’s acquisition of a disability seem to be a ploy, showing the loss of an arm as a punishment, but this time not directly attributable to a character with a disability, but the player-controlled character. Figure 19: Ways of communicating the background of represented disabilities) (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every ten units, the horizontal axis—three name bars; from the left: interactive moments during the game- play—52%, cutscenes and intros—32%, supplementary materials (trailers, films/videos and peritexts, not featured in a game)—16%) 130  In addition to the background of disability, we also analyzed thoroughly in what ways the developers attempted to communicate to players the moment when a disability or a disease occurred. Most frequently, a player learned about the background of disability in the course of the proper gameplay from dialogues or notes in game logs (52%). These are interactive moments that require more effort from both a developer who has to prepare such a gameplay situation and a player directly confronted with the poor health of a character. It must be remembered that it is often a player’s character who takes part in the incident that affects his/her con- dition so that players can experience the effects of disability represented in the game. The in-depth analysis of such instances has been included in the qualitative chapter. Title (character) Disability Type of message The stories circulating around the game Borderlands 2 (Sir setting, as well as Sir Hammerlock’s state- Limbs loss (arm and leg) Alistair Hammerlock) ments, tell how he has lost his limbs during a fight against the Old Slappy—a monster. Disco Elysium (Harrier In the initial phase of the game, a player Du Bois) Memory loss learns that Harrier has lost awareness of who he is after consuming too much alcohol. The dialogue of the main character with Joker. It illustrates an open way of com- municating the disease, pride in being the Mass Effect (Joker) Severe bone fragility best pilot of the Alliance Academy, even better than his instructors—talking about the disease is combined with communicat- ing his professional excellence. Table 3: Interactive messages concerning the background of a disability (Source: own elaboration) 131  The second most often applied way of communicating disability were cutscenes or games’ intros (32%). In this case, a player is denied any possibility of interaction with the existing communication situation; however, it is still a part of the gameplay, and a player, as the recipient, experiences the presented story, which in certain cases allows for better iden- tification with the character. Let us compare the examples below: Title (character) Disability Type of message In the initial cutscenes with Munch, he is Lower limb mutila- caught in a trap; it resulted in a lower limb Oddworld: Munch’s tion injury, a consequence of which is the use of Oddysee (Munch) a wheelchair. Another cutscene shows a med- ical experiment, during which sonar is planted in place of a removed piece of Munch’s skull. Loss of conscious- The game’s intro shows the main character Graveyard Keeper ness returning home at night; suddenly, he is hit by (the main character) a car, which causes him to lose consciousness and transfer to a fictional world. Table 4: Messages concerning the background of a disability in games’ intros or cutscenes (Source: own elaboration) The subject of the background of a disability appeared the least frequently in supple- mentary materials, such as trailers and other visual and audiovisual materials (for example, comic books) or other peritexts created by the game developers (16%). It should be noted that these messages are not a proper part of the game; that is, they do not appear in the gameplay but on websites as commercials or on a developers’ website. Examples of this type of activity are three peritexts related to Tormented Souls, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, and Overwatch: Title (character) Disability Type of message A developers’ website presents visual- Tormented Souls Mutilation ization and a short story describing the (Wheel Monster) moment of mutilation of the character. 132  We learn about the situation in which Lego Marvel Super the main character suffered damage to Limb paralysis Heroes (Professor X) health from comic books dedicated to the Marvel universe. We learn about the background of the Overwatch (Rein- injury in combat from an animated video Eye loss hardt) dedicated to the character, which en- riches the game universe. Table 5: Messages concerning disabilities represented in supplementary materials (Source: own elaboration) Figure 20: Scenarios of the gameplay related to represented disabilities (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 80, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—two named bars; from the left: disability as “a problem to fix” during the gameplay (medicalization)—27%, becoming accustomed to disability—73%) The scenarios of coping with disability were another analyzed variable. The most com- mon method was the one in which the character slowly gets accustomed to his/her own limitations (73%). Such an approach in presenting this type of heroines and heroes can com- municate positive values because players, both able-bodied and with disabilities, see a will of self-acceptance and a willingness to face adversities. Characters with disabilities are thus associated with motivation to overcome difficulties of a very different nature. Characters in games are much less frequently subject to medicalization, which seems to be a positive phenomenon, as it would mean that the paradigm of “fixing” disability was not as popular as it might seem (27%). The medical approach to disability is presented in games within our 133 research sample from two perspectives. The first is taking medications or using therapy to heal or return to fairly stable health, while the second perspective adopted by the game de- velopers is a technological enhancement, most frequently as prostheses and exoskeletons. Nonetheless, the game developers do not intend them to be used as assistive technology but rather as a weapon to defeat the protagonist controlled by a player. It is noteworthy that this form of enhancement technologies strengthen the image of people with disabilities as imperfect, requiring correction. Technologies found in games ensure a perfect return to the group of normates by characters who use them—their control mechanics are mostly indistin- guishable from mechanics of other characters. Another problem emerged from the analysis of becoming accustomed to a disability or an attempt to medicalize it: in what way characters or narration in video games valuate a giv- en disability. Figure 21: Valuation of represented disabilities (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 50, every ten units, the horizontal axis—four bars; from the left: disability as a “weak- ness”—46%, disability as a “force”—32%, valuation of disability does not occur—27 %, disability as a punishment— 6%) Disability as a “weakness” (46%) was the most common valuation metaphor appearing in game productions. Nonetheless, this variable deserves more thorough consideration. It needs to be highlighted that it often appears as a weakness that motivates characters to be better, as in the case of Joker featured in the Mass Effect series. Joker is a pilot of Normandy spacecraft, the most important ship in the galaxy. Its crew, led by Commander Shepard— controlled by a player, has been assigned a mission to save the galaxy from the invasion of the Reapers—machines destroying all life. Joker is confined to the captain’s bridge due to his mobility problems but exhibits aviation skills well beyond the capabilities of a typical 134 spaceship pilot. He performs impossible maneuvers and helps Shepard during his mission. While on the ship, Shepard can talk to Joker listen to his opinion about the crew and the latest mission. The hero treats Shepard as a friend, even though he does not spare him ironic comments. Their friendship is highlighted by a scene at the beginning of the second part of the game when Normandy has been attacked and destroyed. During the evacuation mission, Shepard has returned to save Joker, who cannot walk, but dies himself. Nonetheless, Shep- ard’s body and personality have been reconstructed, and he is assigned a new spaceship. Shepard’s principals decide that it should be navigated by the best of pilots. It is Joker. The hero is therefore valued in his profession, even though he does not actually appear anywhere else than the captain’s bridge. With time, EDI, artificial intelligence embedded in the body of a female cyborg, becomes his partner and develops a deep intellectual relationship with him. EDI makes Joker’s abilities grow even more, which allows him to control the ship even better. A disability defined as a kind of “force” of a character appeared in 22% of cases, in games such as Title (character) Disability Character’s force Losing an eye was a deal for a character. After Lack of eye donating a part of his body, he was able to Valheim (Odyn) drink from the wisdom well, which allowed him to discover many hidden secrets. Bentley’s disability is not fixed, but technol- Sly Cooper 2: ogized—the hero equips the wheelchair with Band of Thieves Limbs paralysis more and more sophisticated mechanisms and (Bentley) weapons, and it becomes not only assistive technology in the strict sense but also a weap- on of the protagonist. Table 6: Disabilities understood as a force It is also striking that quite a significant part of games (27%) did not include the valu- ation of disability. This may be due to the fact that it is the so-called cautious approach to the phenomenon of disability, and the game developers can avoid accusations of inadequate axiologization. Also, the developers might simply not pay attention to the fact that disability 135 plays any role in their production. Table 7 presents instances of games that have approached valuation this way: Title (character) Disability The reason for the lack of valuation Character’s lost hand is replaced with its Guilty Gear 20 Lack of limb mechanical counterpart, which does not (Baiken) change the mechanics of the game or its storyline in any way. The character has been presented as quite nervous and active. Nonetheless, the game, Spyro Reignited pertaining to the arcade genre, is based on ADHD Trilogy (Spyro) constant movement. The very behavior of Spyro is therefore not linked by players to the disability context at all. Table 7: The reasons for the lack of valuation of represented disabilities (Source: own elaboration) The last evaluation method employed by the research team was perceiving disability as a punishment (6%). A clear example of such a punishment is the fate of the brothers— two princes, Lothric and Lorian, featured in Dark Souls 3, whose disabilities are the result of a curse on their family, imposed for shameful deeds and bargaining with dark powers. Disability vs. game mechanics Another aspect of the quantitative research on disability representations in games was the analysis of mechanics and the overall structure of the game. This part of the analysis con- cerned both the way disability is represented and simulated in the game mechanics layer and whether it is credibly presented as well as the results and observations on how disability affects the mechanics of games constituting our research sample. In 51% of games, disability varied in terms of scope and intensity of impact on the game- play, which can occur both in relation to mechanics and the plot. In the case of 49% of games, no influence on the gameplay was observed—heroine or hero’s disability was only a visual emblem or a prop with no impact on the game setting. A subsequent example could 136 be a wheelchair as an element of the game environment, a kind of furniture that is part of a visual ornament. Figure 22: Impact of character’s disability on the gameplay (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every ten units, the horizontal axis—two named bars; from the left: disability with no impact on the gameplay— 49%, disability with impact on the gameplay—51%) Selected examples of the impact of disability on the gameplay have been presented in Table 8: Title (character) Disability Impact of disability on the gameplay During the gameplay, a player learns that Sig- urd has lost his hand. This is related to the plot line in which the character becomes the rein- carnation of the Norse god, Tyr, who, accord- Assassin’s Creed ing to Norse legends, lost his hand trying to Valhalla (Sigurd Lack of arm tame a mythical wolf—Fenrir. The acquisition Styrbjornsson) of a disability by Sigurd is; therefore, a contri- bution to the continuation of the main plot of the game. 137  Chernobylite (a mineral) caused the charac- ter’s psychosis; however, he gained the ability to teleport to chosen places in the Chernobyl Chernobylite Psychosis zone and other skills, for example, spreading (Boris Glukhov) harmful radiation. This influence is defined as the development of combat mechanics with the main antagonist. The main goal of the game is not to fight dis- ability but to fulfill the last wish of the hero. The disability that comes with a coma is a tool To The Moon Coma to achieve the goal. The character connected (John Wyles) to a special apparatus “lends” his memories, which scientists (players) can access, trying to fulfill John’s last dream. Table 8: Impact of disability on the gameplay (Source: own elaboration) The scope of using simulations to present selected forms and aspects of disability in games and a discussion on the credibility of disability mechanics represented in games were summarized in the final part of the analysis. Figure 23: Simulation of the perception of the setting conditioned by disability (Alternate description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 60, every twenty units, the horizontal axis—two named bars; from the left: present—35%, absent—65%) 138  As much as 65% of the games analyzed by the research team did not attempt to simulate a disability in a game. Nonetheless, considering how often characters with disabilities are equipped with prostheses or other technologies to reduce the effects of disability, this result is not surprising. Disability is only declarative in this case—it is actually a pseudo-disability. The remaining 35% of games involved simulating indication of disability in virtual universes: a motor disability, and in a few cases also cognitive and sensory disabilities were represented. The table below exemplifies certain simulations: Title (character) Disability Simulation of setting The heroine suffers from blindness, and just like her, players cannot see anything on the screen until they hear something. The more sounds Pulse (the main heroine) Blindness a given object makes, the clearer its shape appears in the protagonist’s head, which is shown on screen as a slightly glowing object. Since the character was born deaf, a player is also unable to hear the dialogue lines and tries to acti- The Quiet Man Hearing loss vate the lip-reading skill. Ambient sounds are muffled and a player is encouraged to adopt a perception of the world of deaf people. Table 9: Types of simulation of the setting (Source: own elaboration) After discussing the scope of the disability simulation in the mechanics layer, attention was paid to one of the equally important aspects of games, which can enrich this simulation even more. In the games analyzed, we aimed at investigating in what way they present pros- theses and other assistive technology that, for example, allow characters with functional motor limitations to move around. 139  Figure 24: Shape of prostheses, implants (Alternative description: A pie chart showing classification by implant shape; from the bottom: not applicable—52%, hospital bed—1%, mask/helmet—3%, wheelchair—23%, so- nar—1%, sword—1%, lens imitating an eye—3%) Apparently, it seems that more than 50% of the game developers did not pay attention to the appropriate representation of disability, as they did not choose to show the characters’ prostheses. Nonetheless, nothing could be further from the truth. The variable “not appli- cable” (52%) referred to characters who either do not use assistive technology due to the specificity of their disability or purposefully do not use such improvements (for instance, The Quiet Man’s the protagonist does not use a hearing aid). Such a situation is primarily associat- ed with disabilities that cannot be repaired or stabilized prosthetically, including all cognitive disabilities and certain sensory limitations. When analyzing what kind of assistive technology appears most often in video games, it turned out that it is a wheelchair that aids 23% of characters in games. The following most popular aids were various types of prosthetic limbs (16%). Other forms of prostheses includ- ed helmets or masks (3%), which hide mutilations of characters or let see and hear better. Lenses aiding the blind comprised 3% of representations. Other very unusual prostheses indicated only once in a game included sonar implanted in the skull, used by a character to solve puzzles, or a sword, which constitutes a prosthesis of a limb of a character who has lost the bodily form in an unknown way. The last point which allowed for quantitative research of the ways of representing dis- ability in video games concerned the degree of advancement of disability mechanics in rep- resenting motor aspects. 140  Figure 25: Motor credibility of represented disabilities (Alternative description: A bar chart, the vertical axis—a scale from 0 to 50, every ten units, the horizontal axis—three named bars; from the left: advanced disability-related me- chanics— 25%, selective or scarce disability mechanics—29%, lack of reflection of disability mechanics—46%) Advanced or selective mechanics related to disability appeared in more than 50% of titles. Games in which no mechanics reflecting the health of characters were observed ac- counted for 46% of the research sample. The deficiency of representation of disability could be noticed, for instance, when a character had a mechanical limb, which only served as an attractive visual element. Such a prosthesis was not only not reflected in game mechanics in this case but was not even the subject of the characters’ dialogues. Selective or scarce images of limitations resulting from disability were found in 29% of cases. In such situa- tions, representation of disability in the mechanics layer was limited to minor motor modifi- cations—a character is placed in a wheelchair but does not even make pushing movements with their hands; in other case a character moves in a wheelchair but rides it in an unrealistic way, for example, the wheelchair climbs a steep platform, and so on. Motor credibility at an advanced level (25%) was noticeable in virtually every simulator that would reflect a disabil- ity. For instance, in Wheelchair Simulator, a player using the virtual reality headset adopts the perspective of a character in a wheelchair who moves around a bustling city. The game discussed is one of few that use VR technology or haptic interfaces. The research sample comprised only 4% of games that applied these solutions. 141 The data collected and analyzed in this chapter show that representations of disability in vid- eo games are the resultant of the complex structure of the medium, design choices, as well as the genre and plot of the game. An important role in the ultimate shape of these represen- tations is also played by users who complete the appearance and actions of characters they control in a “final” way. In such a situation, it seems particularly important to provide players with the opportunity to independently create heroes and heroines, taking into consideration the context of disability, as well as access to active characters, for whom disability is not an obstacle for becoming interesting male and female protagonists for players. The sample of games analyzed in this chapter should be set in the context of a vast num- ber of other titles produced in the world, in which the subject of disability does not appear. Undoubtedly, it does not always need to because it is difficult to expect that simple logical or arcade games would show any broader social context beyond simple mechanics of play. Nonetheless, players may react to these images through fixed stereotypes about disability, which can be addressed and criticized even in simple forms of digital entertainment when the visualization and simulation of disability appear there. In view of the underrepresentation of disability in the world of games on the macroscale, the microscale of the presented quantitative research can only narrowly determine what dis- ability representations appear in games and what they should look like. In the studied sample, the topic of disability is present in a narrow group of genres, and the game designers most frequently decide to represent only functional motor limitations. Games that show disability in rather a cliché manner, sometimes limited only to specific episodes or characters, prevail, and the titles which, in an in-depth way, create mechanics reflecting the nature of specific disabilities are relatively few. Meanwhile, these simulation possibilities of games and the op- tion of creating deep disability mechanics seem to be their untapped potential. Even though simulation is not seen as the most favorable practice within cultural disabilities studies, it can be an advocate and play an educational role in games, as well as be part of identity building. Chapter 6. The analysis of conducted focus group interviews Additionally to the quantitative analysis, the research team decided to conduct a focus group interview with players with various disabilities, in order to supplement the analysis of dis- ability representation in video games with the opinions and experience of the players with disabilities, in accordance with the interpretivism and participatory model of research. The primary principle of interpretivism states that in order to understand the segment of reality under research, it is required to rely not only on existing data but also to immerse in the studied community and learn about the studied problem directly from those affected by it. A focus group allowed not only for collecting players’ opinions but also for exchanging these views and confronting them. Anecdotally, it can be stated that the surveyed players expressed quite similar views on showed representations; however, they were quite different from theoretical assumptions described in the scientific literature. Beliefs shared by the par- ticipants further strengthened their opinions on the issues discussed during the interview. From the entire spectrum of video games analyzed, we decided to choose six titles: three each from AAA and Indie segments. We kept an equal division as for the divisions from which the games originated to establish whether the interviewees identified any differences in the developers’ approach to presenting disability. The way of representing disability was a sig- nificant issue in the selection of the titles, which is why our focus group was based on the following topics for the discussion: disability as power, unwanted medicalization, breaking down barriers, types of simulations, and demonizing disability. We also posed more general questions. It is worth beginning the analysis of the focus group with one of the viewpoints concerning the representation of disability in general: There might be a problem with that because there is a common tendency in the me- dia that people generally don’t want to watch things which are uncomfortable, and disability is uncomfortable; on the other hand it would be worth showing it, because it is something that just exists. [Respondent 2] Disability as power The first title selected for the discussion was Ninja Theory video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sac- rifice. It tells the story of a Nordic warrior who has chosen to travel to Helheim—the Nordic 143 hell, in search of her loved one, where facing the demons of the past and present, she is try- ing to find a person important to her. The biggest demon, however, appears the disease that affects the heroine. These are psychotic states, in particular attacks of schizophrenia, which turn out to play a crucial role in the game mechanics. It is noteworthy that the developers of Senua put great emphasis on accurate representation of the psychosis from which the main character suffers. Consultations with psychiatrists and psychologists, and more importantly, with people with such mental problems, allowed the game developers to almost perfectly recreate certain aspects of the diseases that affect the protagonist. This representation was also noted by the players participating in the study: I played “Senua” and I greatly liked it because it was also done wisely; because when I looked later at the carpet, I saw these different faces etc. [...] Yes, it was very well re- flected, because I couldn’t stand it for more than an hour while playing in headphones in a dark room, because I already felt that too much was going on. [Respondent 3] This view was confirmed by another participant, who came across Hellblade. In his opin- ion, such productions demonstrate problems that are related to a specific disorder and dis- ability that may result from it: So if you don’t have this kind of disability [psychosis], you could actually feel like that. [Respondent 4] When analyzing Senua’s disability in the context of her power, it is noteworthy that the heroine gains two skills as the result of her psychotic states, which become one of the game’s major mechanics. The first is the ability to see runes, which allows a player to open secret doors (compara- ble to the Detective Mode of “The Batman Arkham” series). The second skill consists in slowing down time during the fight with an enemy, which allowed for a significant expansion of the combat system presented in the game. The focus group almost unanimously stated that such presentation of disability is a promising direction for the future. Depicting disability as something that develops the hero, and does not detract from his capabilities, allows the recipient to become accustomed to a greater degree to the problem of disability. Disability is frequently perceived as a taboo subject, something men- tioned carefully or not discussed at all but commonly considered a taboo by the able-bodied. One of the respondents said: “and the disabled is not some other species, this is also human,” 144 which is why representing disability is crucial; and showing it in a manner Ninja Theory did in Hellblade received positive opinions from people with disabilities. Picture 11. Senua seeing runes—a skill resulting from psychosis (Alternative description: The picture shows a Nordic warrior, Senua (third-person perspec- tive), with long hair in dreadlocks. She has a faded tattoo on her right arm. She is standing on stone steps in front of a huge gate made of wooden poles. There are ancient runes on the gate; they are a manifestation of the power of a warrior. The runes are red and sur- rounded by a golden circle.) Well, I like such an idea too because it can be an example how to do it on a large scale [...] There are many possibilities here, ideas where gameplay can present a disability in a good light. [Respondent 1] It was great that she was so strong in a positive way. The story continues the way she […] fights the demons of the past, and that’s generally cool. [Respondent 3] Positive views on this representation developed into a discussion of what disability can do for people in the real world. The players stated that, on the one hand, disability has changed some part of their lives or limited their activity, for example, by making them unable to walk, contrastingly—it showed them another aspect which today they consider a kind of power presented in the game discussed during the panel. 145  In my opinion, it’s quite accurate either way, because we experience these disabilities, we see a spectrum of other features which we probably wouldn’t pay attention to if we had power over the whole body or if there were no difficulties; for example, in my case: if I hadn’t had a stroke and hadn’t lost control of almost the entire left side of my body, I wouldn’t think about becoming a psychologist because I wouldn’t have some interesting problems that need to be taken care of. [Respondent 2] This viewpoint was not formed by chance. Becoming familiarized with six short fragments of games in which disabilities were presented in various contexts allowed the players to re- flect on their own problems and discover a certain parallel with the fate of the heroes. Repre- sentation of disability conveyed by Senua not only illustrated that disability may appear to be something partially positive, but also that it can bring a kind of enlightenment and motivate to seek other ways to find or regain happiness or life balance lost as a result of disability. Rejection of help Using the RPG game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we wanted to learn the participants’ view- points on ways to “remove” or “fix” a disability, which is not always desired by people who ex- perience it; the game was presented to the interviewees as the second. The main protagonist, Adam Jensen, lives in a utopian version of reality, where bionic implants, also known as pros- theses, cure-all disabilities and diseases. Adam opposes people’s modifications and belongs to that group of inhabitants of the utopian world who cannot imagine improving their own bodies. He is employed as a bodyguard for the director of one of the corporations managing body modifications; however, he believes that it is work like any other. Once, during an attack on the aforementioned corporation, he has been fatally wounded. Adam’s management has decided to save him with bionic prostheses and life-support systems to make him a powerful tool in the corporate machine. The cut-scene we shared with the respondents showed the moment of “saving” Jensen; the player sees the suffering of the main character during the im- plementation of new limbs or setting systems inside the body. The entire surgery is probably carried out on a completely conscious hero, as illustrated by screams while cutting his skin. The respondents also noticed that he is a tragic figure. They stated that help offered to a dying character deprives him of his humanity even more. On the basis of this piece, each prosthesis implementation looks from the protago- nist’s perspective as if he was losing some part of his humanity. [Respondent 2] 146  Picture 12. Adam Jensen during surgery (Alternative description: There is a man screaming in pain (Adam Jensen), lying on the oper- ating bed. The man has wounds on his chest and abdomen. There is a mechanism that al- lows for the fitting of a mechanical limb in place of his missing right arm. In the background, there are robots operating on the man.) I can see it this way, I didn’t play, I only saw this trailer, as if he had it implanted be- cause they save him, and not because he wants it, whereas it is generally shown in games that the characters modify themselves, because that’s what they want to gain something more and they generally agree to it, then it’s so unwanted here. [Respon- dent 3] One of the interviewees pointed to the positive aspect of frequently equipping game heroes with prostheses. He emphasized that he is a fan of Warhammer 40,000, the plot of which presents modifying the human body as something remarkable, but noted that medi- calization of disability presented in the game deprives the protagonist of something instead of helping him. This demonstrates that Eidos studio, the game developers, made an effort representing Adam Jensen’s disabilities. I don’t know why, but I like Deus Ex, but I am a child of “Warhammer” so I can be skewed about this thing (laughs); here the narration is dark and it’s not just like now he’ll be better off, but in fact he loses something, this is like a quid pro quo. [Respon- dent 1] 147  Several focus group participants expressed important opinion about prostheses and their use outside the virtual world. Somewhat, they agree with the views of the protago- nist of Deus Ex series that prostheses should not only serve as “reinforcement on demand.” Games should demonstrate that, just like in the real world, prostheses allow you to return to previous abilities; they do not make patients stronger but rather restore their condition to the pre-disease state. The main character in “Cyberpunk” is all about supporting himself. To me, when it comes to this, there is a big minus that he has lost something and then gained some- thing thanks to these implants and without getting into how he views it, and from a psychological point of view there is such a big minus about disability and then if there is a plus, it is a return to normality, not an upgrade. But how to show it in a game which has several hours of storyline and will that be attractive at all? [Respondent 4] Furthermore, the players indicated positive aspects of using prostheses. Each of the respondents, alongside other problems, experiences various motor disabilities. They felt that they would be pleased if they had the opportunity to use such prostheses. Nonetheless, they cautiously pointed out that a prosthesis is not always something definitely positive. It would be nice if there were such prostheses. [Respondent 2] I also think that it would be great, but if everyone thought it was great, we still know that disability is two things: how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. And the latter very often affects us and it seems to me that “Deus Ex” it is precisely the narrative of how others can perceive someone like that rather than how to benefit from these prostheses. [Respondent 1] Breaking down barriers To portray characters with disabilities who overcome their own limitations to help others, we chose the pilot Jeff “Joker” Moreau from the Mass Effect series. Despite the fact that the game takes place in a technologically advanced world, where a leap between planetary sys- tems lasts only a moment, technology has not been able to cope with all the health problems that characters from this fictional world may experience. Joker suffers from Vrolik’s syn- drome, which results in extreme fragility of bones of the lower limbs. With persistence and a desire to become the best, Joker is eventually assigned to pilot the most modern spaceship humanity has ever seen. Being the “home base” and the main means of transportation for the 148 characters of the series, this spacecraft is fundamental for the game plot. Joker’s tenacity is best illustrated by the scene in which the ship has been attacked by a hostile race of alien— Collectors. Although the pilot is not the main protagonist, he appears in the production as an independent character and is controlled by the player for a short time. Despite his bone fragility, Joker rises from behind the controls to play an essential role in saving the crew of SSV Normandy 2. This part of the game received positive feedback from the respondents. It’s probably positive, it’s a kind of moralistic motive... No, I don’t like it (laughs). Such a very nice moment, but I generally like such moments in games, not only when dis- abled people have it, but generally, and I like it even more here. [Respondent 1] Another issue noticeable for the players was the manner the game developers portrayed Joker’s walk. Due to his illness, the hero has to step on the spacecraft’s deck cautiously to avoid an accident. It is worth noting that Joker does not use any prostheses or crutches in this stage of the game to maintain a stable and safe position. It’s very nicely presented that he has to step carefully so as not to break his legs. [Re- spondent 2] Picture 13. Animation of the way Joker moves (Alternative description: There is a man (Joker) wearing a black uniform with white ele- ments. There is an orange logo of the organization (Cerberus) on his shoulders. The charac- ter is leaning, which indicates movement limitations. The man is shown in the same posture from four perspectives, starting from the front and rotated every 45 degrees (the perspec- tive changes in the picture from left to right.) 149  Joker’s heroic character, on the presentation of which BioWare concentrated while cre- ating the character, gained recognition from the players watching this part of the gameplay. Moreover, the presented situation was characterized by the fact that the crew of the space- ship at certain moments wants to protect Joker: its members call him to hide behind fit sol- diers and wait the attack of the enemies out. Nevertheless, Joker turns into another section of the spacecraft to get to the security systems, even though he has no technical education and is not familiar with such an advanced space A.I. Like every hero, he puts at stake not only his health but also his life, so that the entire crew may live to see a better tomorrow. I don’t know, but in the dialogue they say: “Come on Joker, we keep you save,” but they were also worried about him, it wasn’t like “Joker, you are supposed to do it and you got a job to do and that’s it,” but there was such a part that he may not be able to cope and there is no such thing that he is standing like the rest of the soldiers and has to do the job, there was also a cover over him. [Respondent 4] And he ran in a different direction to help, that’s one, and the second—it’s great that they have shown that a person with a disability can break down their limitations. [Respondent 2] Different approaches to disability simulation The subsequent two titles are almost fully concentrated on presenting the problem of disabil- ity; however, in each of them, it is executed distinctively. The first, entitled Wheelchair Sim- ulator, is a game covering physical disabilities. On the one hand, this production recognizes the seriousness of diseases and spatial limitations related to the need of using a wheelchair; contrastingly, it refers to a convention that could be characterized as comedy. The game takes place in virtual reality with the application of devices such as Oculus Rift, which aims at making the simulation of using a wheelchair more realistic. Before presenting the game to the interviewees, our team wondered if a satirical approach to the problem of physical disability would be too upsetting for them since such an approach may seem inappropriate to outsiders. Unexpectedly, the views concerning this comedy representation were posi- tive. One of the respondents, who himself uses a wheelchair, stated that reflecting certain gameplay elements, even though sometimes exaggerated, can help make people realize and remember what wheelchair users have to struggle with on a daily basis. I can rate this game, it’s epic for me and this is how my life looks like (laughs), I have it every day, thank you (laughs). Maybe from this perspective I’m not able to see a deep- 150  er idea, but I’m sure that I’d have fun in this game, but apart from this comedic ab- straction, because if there is something, a stick on the road, you won’t ride over it, but I like the idea that it’s shown in such an old arcade style and it’s made for fun, but it looks cool and I like it. Seemingly a base gameplay, that is, collecting points and level completion, but a little bit, and actually it is to show that limitation is only in people’s head. [...] The player will surely remember about those sticks on the way (laughs). [Respondent 1] The satire and arcade-style (as the interviewee mentioned) are certain foundations of Wheelchair Simulator. Picture 14. Arcade approach to simulating wheelchair riding (Alternative description: There is a man (third-person perspective) wearing a red T-shirt and a white helmet on his head; he is riding on the road in a wheelchair with a red back. There are many obstacles on the road in front of him. The one closest to the rider is a worker wearing a white T-shirt and a yellow helmet— he is coming out of the sewage drain. There are tree branches and boughs scattered on the road. There is a construction site and yellow diggers around the character.) The focus group pointed out that the presentation of disability should be accomplished by means of a “small steps” method in order to familiarize media recipients with it in an un- obtrusive way. As stated by the interviewees, the problem of disability is something normal and not hideable in the social reality. The players compared this method to the way of imple- 151 menting brutality in video games, where elements such as blood or attacking virtual people were slowly introduced, and in today’s reality, brutality in games has become something that we do not take note of anymore; we do not treat it as a taboo. Honestly, in my opinion, these should be just such small steps; like in the first shooters in Doom you shot at aliens, and then at people. It seems to me that such a complicat- ed problem like disability and such an approach to it can also change this perception. Before the first shooters they hit their brutality level, there were as if carton boxes dropping,38 and also here I think it’s just “there you go, complete the level and collect all the coins, and some are hidden then you have to find them,” the tour is a bit more casual and appropriate form of presenting this topic than if it was a real story that someone had an accident and now places are blocked and so on, and as if on a smaller scale, but with progress and to slowly bring this problem closer to people. [Respon- dent 1] I like the fact that games, instead of creating martyrdom around this disability, show it in a humorous way, so that you can get used to the fact that it exists, because in the conservative perception of many groups of people disability is something which is practically not the case. [Respondent 2] The second title focusing on disability simulation presented to the respondents was Per- ception. Unlike Wheelchair Simulator, it is much darker and more serious. Perception tells the story of a blind woman who gets to an abandoned house. There she wants to solve the mys- tery haunting her dreams. The developers of the game implemented mechanics to simulate the phenomenon of echolocation. Each step of the protagonist or the sounds of tap of her cane and the surroundings allow for noticing the objects on the screen for a brief moment. The mechanics employed allow the player to feel, at least to a small degree, what people with visual impairments face on a daily basis. After watching a part of the gameplay, a discus- sion began among the players participating in the FGI as to whether methods of presenting disability in games should be largely dependent on the type of disability. It certainly depends on a disability, because making an easy-going game about some illnesses, mental problems might not work out, because someone might come to the conclusion that this is mocking. [Respondent 1] 38 The respondent implies that the virtual characters resembled shooting targets. 152  Yes, that’s just it, as if, for example, psychically, in fact, this world was more colorful, this brightness can also make it possible that for such a person we perceive [reality] wrongly, [we believe] that this person is worse off, but both of these people see the world in these colors; but such disorders, you have to approach differently, because you have to choose [approach] well, because if we have such a topic as in shooters, you won’t make a good Sunday game [casual game] with POW camps, then it will already be too much for the average gamer. [Respondent 1] Picture 15. Simulation of echolocation in Perception (snow shows the heroine the way) (Alternative description: The picture shows a large wooden house with a porch in a snowy blizzard. The road leading to the house is paved with stones, and there is a low stone wall on its sides. There is blue mist in the picture, which simulates echolocation.) Contrasting the two presented forms of disability simulation in games, the interviewees pointed out that the recipient at whom a given production is aimed is equally significant; hence, in the case of casual players who look for pure entertainment in the game, a con- vention of Wheelchair Simulator would be proper, while a player looking for some depth in a video game presumably reaches for games with solutions implied in Perception or in the previously presented Hellblade, which also emphasized serious representation of disability. In my opinion, it all depends on the target and what we want to achieve with this; we can, if we want to overcome a disability, show what it is, what it is about, we will 153  also target people who are looking for something more in games, like deeper experi- ence and then by showing a disability such as psychosis from “Senua,” we will aim at the deepest possible representation of it; and if we aim at such entertainment just for fun and, not nicely speaking, as if for such a not very demanding recipient, then we can go towards comedy and we can do “Wheelchair Simulator.” [Respondent 2] Well, it seems so to me and if someone plays and is a casual player and runs a more ambitious game, it will make it clear to him that this is a difficult topic, but if is it a casual player who gets a foolproof game then he’ll deduce that this is a casual topic. [Respondent 1] On the other hand, you can’t do something like “WS” if you take the topic of OCD or schizophrenia, because then it’ll come out too mockingly. [Respondent 2] Demonizing disability The last title that appeared during the meeting with the players was a horror game entitled Tormented Souls. The game consists in exploring other halls of a huge mansion, full of traps and enemies, in which two children have gone missing. The opponents, because our pre- sentation concerned them, are shown in the game as deformed monsters, combining the bodies of former patients of the center and doctors working there with deadly mechanical implants and upgrades. It is problematic to call these characters human; however, they have clear signs of disability—they have sinister prostheses, they are in wheelchairs and have no legs. We considered these monstrous deformities of the opponents that the player meets on the way to be representations of disability, but before starting the discussion, we thought of this case as an instrumental use of disability, which is mainly a pretext to scare recipients and make them feel uncomfortable. Unexpectedly, the players participating in the interview did not consider these images to be exploitation. They indicated two important aspects: the developers of Tormented Souls used disability as a “scaring technique,” and they obtained something like dulling vigilance of the game user, because, as the respondents stated, due to their condition, the disabled characters are not considered a threat. This is such an interesting scaring technique because, for example, we aren’t afraid of little girls or dolls, and a horror can be like that—the dolls scare, and we don’t expect the disabled to go at us and attack us. [Respondent 4] 154  Picture 16. One of the monsters in Tormented Souls (Alternative description: There is a monster (human) sitting in a wheelchair. He is on a ventilator attached to the back of the wheelchair. There is an oxygen mask on the mon- ster’s face. His lower limbs have been cut off, and his right hand has been amputated and replaced with claws. In the background, there is a photograph of a psychiatric hospital.) It is like that, because in fact it is something that we don’t expect, and it really is this wheelchair and hence the fear element. [Respondent 3] Nonetheless, it was the second group of views on this game that surprised us the most. The players found that such representations like disabled monsters should appear in games or movies more frequently. They argued that, for example, in the case of the narratives of fictional zombie epidemics, everyone, including people with disabilities, should be among the infected and turn into mutants. As specified by the focus group, a film or game without a zombie with a noticeable deformity that occurred before the mutation, for example, as a result of disability or disease, would make them feel omitted as disabled people. As one of the respondents stated: A disabled person is not some other species, this is also a human being, and he can be bad, he can be good. [Respondent 4] 155  On the other hand, as you gentlemen mentioned this demonization. I think it’s a bit like that, but when there is any other zombie or a ghost of a little girl, we have no problem with that and the question is whether this is that fine line, OK, it’s highly con- troversial, but shouldn’t we implement it in pursuit of normalization? [Respondent 1] I also think it’s OK and it seems to me that if there are characters who are bitten and walk, a zombie may well be a person who is in a wheelchair and has no legs, no arms and turns into this zombie; and if I was playing a game in which people only normally walk and there are no others, then a topic is omitted and that’s why I think it’s [the presented game] actually cool. [Respondent 3] In summarizing the findings of the focus group, it is worth noting that, in addition to gather- ing feedback on the video games analyzed by our team, we gained added value in the form of important recommendations for the game development industry proposed by the inter- viewees. The proposals which we seek to present in this section of the report shall address in what way, according to the players with disabilities, disability representations should look like, and what direction the industry should take when creating an appropriate image of both people with disabilities and impairments themselves. One of the most frequent issues raised during the FGI was the use of disability as game mechanics. The first example of such application is taking into consideration disability at the initial stage of building and modifying the hero in the so-called character creation screen. If a player decides to create a character with a disability or with a disease, the focus group postulated that this character’s attributes need to fully reflect this choice, for example, by increasing or decreasing a certain indicator, providing the hero with a unique set of skills or items. In, I don’t know, “Cyberpunk” [a player] now has the most extensive charac- ter creation options, where you can choose practically everything and, for example, choosing impairment or some specific thing that would affect something else, it would be great to choose already while building a character that, for example, we cut off the leg and insert an implant and, for example, a mechanical leg gives us +10 to agility. [Respondent 3] 156  And for example, facial paralysis that’s -20 to interpersonal contacts, but someone has to guess what our emotions are, because you don’t show them. [Respondent 1] That’s what I thought, it reminded me that when we have a combination of a char- acter with a prosthesis and a character without a prosthesis, then if someone has a mechanical arm, then technically shouldn’t he get some bigger armor on that arm? Because he doesn’t feel pain in this arm, because it is mechanical, so even such simple mechanics, because he is the only one [such character], he doesn’t have this arm and this is a substitute. A character in a wheelchair can be resistant to physical damage to legs, 10 out of 10, 100% of realism, and within team utility 100% damage relocation (laughs). [Respondent 1] Another recommendation regarding gameplay mechanics concerns the introduction of the comparison mode. One of the interviewees illustrated it using the example of the game Medium. It does not focus on the problem of disability, but the main character, Marianne, sees the world in two versions, real and spiritual. Interestingly, the mechanics appear on the screen simultaneously as a split-screen. The players indicated that such a mode in terms of representation of disability would be worth implementing in some productions, for example, in various situations, the player may use echolocation, as in Perception, which would allow for finding a hidden segment of the game, and in others seeing as if the character had fully functional sight. Another example was the option to choose between the ability to walk and move in a wheelchair. The game “Medium” has such comparisons, admittedly there is no disability, but this main character sees two worlds: one terrible, spiritual and the other, a normal one, and there were also such interesting mechanics that there was a screen divided and you could see the same place, but from two different perspectives, and I have always liked it: showing worlds from different perspectives; and it seems to me that in such a perspective of disability, whether mental or motor, we will complete the same level with a character who has a problem with walking, or a character who walks normally and for me it has always been very interesting to have such comparison, so that the audience can deduce that it more difficult and realize it. [Respondent 3] The last postulate related to technical aspects of the game was to provide greater ac- cessibility to players with disabilities. The respondents concentrated on competitive games. Using the example of RTS games, they discussed the need to equalize opportunities for 157 players with disabilities so that they could perform actions uniformly, quickly, and efficiently with their manual limitations. In the case of competitive games, it would be nice if they introduced some reaction time boosters, because there are, for example, RTS games, when you play “Warham- mer: Dawn of War,” then there is a bit of an obstacle (another player confirmed) and when you quickly click the building icon and you set it, it takes seven seconds, and if someone does it with a keyboard shortcut, it takes three. [Respondent 1] In the case of MOBA games, the players indicated that one of the methods of com- pensating manual limitations of players with disabilities during the gameplay is playing the so-called glass cannons, that is, characters that cause a lot of damage but are susceptible to attacks. Glass cannons can be created through the so-called builds, a unique combination of character skills and item properties. A glass cannon has only such weapons in their inventory which allow for inflicting maximum damage at the expense of items that provide protection. Therefore, the respondents postulated providing the access to a bigger number of items and characters allowing for build creating in MOBA games. The focus group pointed out that even though the phenomenon of the so-called glass cannons exists, they are introduced by players rather than developers. In all MOBA games based on character building there are popular builds, the so-called glass cannons, which means, that these are characters who have such a low level of life that they practically bite the dust immediately, but also get opponents in one shot. [Respondent 2] This is actually already happening, not from the developers’ side, but from the play- ers’. [Respondent 1] After seeing such different representations of disability, the interview participants ex- pressed insights on the very approach to presenting characters with disabilities in games. They indicated that it would be advisable to present disability in a broader context: The main character in “Cyberpunk” is only to support himself, as to me, when it comes to this, there is a big minus that he has lost something and then gained through these implants and without getting into how he views it and there is such a big minus about disability from a psychological point of view, and then if there is any plus it is a return to normality, not an upgrade. But how to show it in a game which has several hours of storylines and will it be attractive at all? [Respondent 4] 158  Apart from the development of plot lines related to the story of the ailments with which the virtual character struggles, the manner of presenting disability is equally crucial. As stat- ed by the players, in order to do this properly, it would be best to implement methods that Ninja Theory has chosen to employ to represent Senua’s psychosis. Representation of men- tal illnesses received special attention in the statements. In the opinion of the players with disabilities, a serious convention should be applied to such severe cases as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or other such diseases. It certainly depends on disability, because making a more casual game about some diseases, mental problems might not work out, because someone might come to the conclusion that this is mocking, but it probably depends on the creator how he wants to approach this problem. And this is players who choose how to approach it, as it was in “This War of Mine” or perhaps as in “Call of Duty” that you get a gun and have fun with it. It seems to me that these two trailers are different narratives, but I would have a lot of fun with both of them, in the second— “Perception” I like sharper narrative. [Respondent 1] The last view nearly seems like an appeal to the game developer community. The players pointed out that disability should not be marginalized in games, and it is simply not to be feared. If I were to give some ideas to developers, we are now even moving into such a stage of developing in which taboo topics are broken and these topics are dealt with, more outlined, and it seems to me that disability is such a minimalist topic raised in gen- eral both in the negative and positive [context], it’s generally not discussed and in my opinion developers shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it in any way, like the topic of gays, lesbians etc. Because these are such topics that people have to be cautious about, but in my opinion when you talk about it, it’s already a great success and we shouldn’t marginalize it. [Respondent 1] To summarize the focus group, there are a few ideas that we should regard as both game and disability researchers as well as game developers. The opinions collected during the study surprised us more than once; however, they were rather of positive nature. The players invited to the meeting were content that there are the creators who are not afraid to show disabilities in the games. Certain games, which we thought of as negative examples of dis- ability representation, were assessed differently by our reviewers. The surprise that we have 159 indicated further reinforced our belief that the interpretative nature of the research should become the domain of studies on the role of video games in the lives of users. During the presentation of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, the interviewees appreciated the way the mental illness of the heroine has been presented and the fact that despite the diffi- culties associated with it, the developers were able to convert this problem into her power. The interviewees did not concentrate on the fact that these powers develop the mechanics of the game; for them, the most important aspect, in this case, was that the main charac- ter has become stronger, and this strength allows her to overcome further adversities on the way to finding her beloved husband. An interesting aspect that the players highlighted was that, not only in games but also in life, a disability could show a person some new skills and opportunities that can eventually be converted into their own power, for example, after a neurological incident that resulted in disability, one of the invited players became interest- ed in psychology to understand his problems and help others as well. According to the focus group, prosthetic support for a person with disabilities does not always have to be associated with positive aspects of medicalization. Frequently, prostheses in works of culture, including video games, are treated as an improvement of the human (for example, in the utopian vision of Deus Ex); however, the players we spoke to denied such a statement. They believed that the essential benefit that a prosthesis can provide to a per- son with disabilities is the return to the previous ability. Joker from the Mass Effect series was for the participants a great example of breaking down the barriers related to disability. Representation itself gained recognition from the in- terviewees due to the attempt at making real the way the character with disabilities moves. Wheelchair Simulator and Perception, two simulation games, allowed for determining ap- pealing conclusions, which, in particular, should be acquired by the game developers. The players noted how important it is to take into consideration the type of disability when rep- resenting it. In the case of Wheelchair Simulator, where the problem of using a wheelchair is presented in a comedic way, this superficial convention is still acceptable to the respondents. Nonetheless, they pointed out that it is a known condition and, more importantly, under- stood. With regard to conditions such as blindness or mental illness, the developers cannot afford such simplified representations. A satirical approach could result in disgracing/ridicul- ing of the disease and the sick. Another consequence of a trivial gaming convention would be pushing a disease into the background. 160  Analyzing Tormented Souls, the players stated that “scaring with disability” should not be perceived as an instrumental treatment of various ailments. Furthermore, the whole group agreed that disabilities should not be forgotten when talking about epidemics presented in games because everyone can be affected by such a disease, both the able-bodied people and those struggling with a problem of disability. The lack of such representation in this type of games implies, in their opinion, nothing but another discrimination against people with dis- abilities for the sake of not addressing a controversial and problematic topic. Disability should not be marginalized or ignored because it is inconvenient, and due to a slow method of “small steps”—the implication of disability topics in video games—it may cease to be a taboo subject, as stated by one of the players: The disabled is not some other species, this is also a human being and this is how we should look at the problem of disability, being aware of its limitations, but not rejecting the awareness that ultimately each of us is human. Conclusions Representations of disability appear to be particularly important in games due to the essen- tial social and cultural role of games. Their character is also much more engaging, also physi- cally, compared to the reception of film or literature. As one of the industry representatives, Harvey Smith, pointed out: “in a game, when you ‘play a character,’ you are either adopting a role, taking on the predetermined characteristics of a mock person developed by some- one else, or you are expressing your individual selfhood, acting by the compass of your own identity.”39 Therefore, watching people with disabilities in movies or reading about them in literary texts is not the same as playing them and interacting with them in an immerse way within a video game. In his book, “Play Matters,” Miguel Sicart indicated even a wider context of games and claimed that “to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human” (Sicart 2014, p.1). Therefore, frequent playing characters with disabilities is virtual being them, which is beneficial in both directions. Through games, people with disabilities can feel represent- ed, while able-bodied players can learn about the world of people with disabilities almost with their senses (with the limitations related to simulating a disability, which Siebers wrote about). This context of manifestation of rights and dignity is particularly visible in the actions undertaken by players, both able-bodied and those with disabilities, to enrich the world of the game Sims with characters with disabilities. The full-fledged and more common presence of characters with disabilities in games appears to be a great opportunity to better understand the needs and the specificity of this community; it would also contribute to eliminating mental limitations within the large com- munity of players, who often perceive disabilities in a stereotypical way and as sources of fear, rather than removing barriers for people with disabilities. Certain games seem to use this potential. The report has indicated examples of games focused on disability or diseases that may lead to it, such as Hell Blade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Ether 39 https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131798/player_character_concepts.php?page=2 162 One, Perception, Wheelchair Simulator, The Quiet Man, and others. Making disability the start- ing point for these games, whether in the narrative layer or in mechanics, demonstrates that a consistent reference to a deep level of experiences, feelings, and forms of reality percep- tion by people with disabilities allows for the creation of unique games that are appealing to players and have a high social impact. These bold attempts are not always effective—some- times the game’s mechanics, narrative, or interface solutions are clunky, burdensome, and discouraging; still, the use of disability as the basis for the construction of games deserves great recognition. The problem turns out to be the fact that most of such games are creat- ed by independent developers. Therefore, it seems that large commercial game studios are afraid of venturing into “risky” topics. Our research has shown, first and foremost, that the topic of disability in games is mar- ginalized. As the participants of the focus group interview pointed out, while representatives of various minorities are able to gradually strive for a greater presence in mainstream games, there is still much to be done in terms of representing disability. The main “crimes” of the gaming industry related to the following aspects: 1. The game developers frequently use what can be described as “transhumanist cam- ouflage.” In theory, a large group of games shows characters with disabilities, but this disability is fully “fixed,” compensated by futuristic implants, prostheses, and exoskel- etons. 2. In the gaming world, there is a deficiency of disability representation in selected game genres. Sports games are an example where, first and foremost, characters with dis- abilities appear infrequently, and second, there are virtually no games that feature sports disciplines done people with disabilities.40 3. “Awkwardness of the subject”—the game designers often avoid the topic of disabil- ity in games, on the one hand, for fear of offending the community of people with disabilities by introducing unacceptable, schematic characters into games, and on 40 In the course of the analysis, we have only found a comment by a known Polish commentator— Dariusz Szpakowski, in FIFA 2018 about the Wroclaw Disabled Supporters Association and a baseball player in a wheelchair—Kenny Kawaguchi, featured in Backyard Baseball Junior; currently (2021) Big Karma is working on Phenoms, an original sports manager in which the player’s task is to train several Paralympic athletes. 163  the other hand, the developers are aware that working on sophisticated disability mechanics requires more work and financial resources, as well as a non-standard approach to their development. 4. A fairly common problem appears in game plots; it has previously been identified in literature and film and is related to the use of disability as “narrative prostheses”— the focus group participants indicated that one of the most common ways of using disability in games is to present it as a punishment for various faults and misdeeds of a character. In addition, there are other “easy” narrative clichés such as showing disability as a result of wounds sustained in combat or, for example, as an expressive trait and visual indicator of villains. 5. Representations of disability featured in games are dominated by portraying disabil- ity of the locomotor system, the external sign of which is a wheelchair. Many forms of disability, especially sensory and cognitive, are overlooked because of their visual unattractiveness. The suggestions for the game industry, indicated by the participants of our focus group interview, concerning the representation of disability in games, were primarily related to the need to increase the possibilities of self-construction of characters by players. In this situation, disability is a choice to consider, but it also has a specific impact on the gameplay. The game characters may evolve into expressive emblems of inclusive diversity in this way. On the other hand, such appropriately constructed characters may become a reflection of the newly understood idea of inclusive design, which will focus not only on the accessibility of games for people with disabilities and respond to the special needs of users, but provide diversity at the level of representation. If games are to be considered a culturally mature medium, they need to show various social issues in a nuanced but sensitive manner, as well as construct complex psychological profiles of characters. Unfortunately, this media is still lagging behind when it comes to rep- resenting disabilities. Therefore, the question about “fragile avatars” contained in the title of our report, par- adoxically, should apply to the question about the possibility of sensitive representation of disability. More “mighty” avatars are not required anymore when this “mightiness” is most often an expression of ableism, medicalization, and choosing the soft option concealed in heroes with pseudo-disabilities. Avatars that are “vulnerable,” that is, those in whom disabili- 164 ty is humanity, a distinctive value, an encounter with something different, but still the same, are required. The two main postulates addressed to the industry of the game producers/developers by players with disabilities are, above all, greater courage and a willingness to go off the beat- en design paths and go beyond the established patterns of creating game characters. The second point emphasizes the active role of characters with disabilities. According to the focus group participants, and the authors of the report, characters with disabilities should play active roles in the game settings so that they do not reinforce preju- dice of their developers against the community of people with disabilities, and thus they are not only spokespersons of this community, but simply attractive heroes treated equally at all levels of the elaborate construction of this complex medium that is video games. Acknowledgments Our research team would like to thank everyone who contributed to this report. We are grateful to the Board of the State Fund for Rehabilitation of Disabled People (PFRON) for financing the research. We wish to express our gratitude to the personnel of the PFRON’s Office for Analyses, Forecasts and International Cooperation and the Department for Co- operation with NGOs. During the implementation of the project, we could count on the support, guidance and openness of Dr. Natalia Pamuła, Ms. Agnieszka Drewniak—Deputy Director of the Office, Ms. Ewa Graczyk-Goławska from the Accounting Department, and the favor of many other people. We also thank all the participants of the focus group interview who contributed numer- ous valuable comments to our research and shared their gaming experiences. We could ben- efit from them not only when working on the focus group conclusions but throughout the report. We wish to thank the reviewer of the report—Prof. Piotr Siuda from Kazimierz Wielki University. The report would not have been feasible without the assistance of the university officials and the personnel from several departments at the University of Lower Silesia: Rec- tor of the ULS—Prof. Ewa Kurantowicz, Deputy Chancellor of the ULS—Ms. Magdalena Fit, Ms. Monika Karciarz from the Project Office, Ms. Magdalena Karciarz—Director of the Sci- entific Publishing House of the ULS, and Bursar of the University—Ms. Barbara Trojanowska. Special thanks go to the young volunteers — Pola, Łukasz, and Szymon Stasieńko, who worked with a tremendous commitment on the development of the survey questionnaires and the variety of other tasks related to the game analysis. 166 The games used in the study Release Title Producer, Publisher PEGI Date Assassin’s Creed 2007 Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft 18 Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 2020 Ubisoft Montréal/Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft 18 Auti-sim 2013 Games For Change 3 Axel’s Chain Reaction 2013 Laura Allison, Pomenta Badolato 3 Backyard Baseball Junior 2004 Humongous Entertainment 3 Beyond Eyes 2015 Team 17 3 Biomutant 2021 THQ Nordic Games 12 Blind Legend 2016 Dowino, Plug in Digital 12 Borderlands 2 2012 Gearbox Software, 2KGames 18 Born to Run 2011 Extra Special Kids 3 Buster Baxter: Lung Defender 2004 PBS 3 Camp Frog Hollow 1996 Don Johnston 7 Chernobylite 2021 The Farm 51, All in! Games 18 Cyberpunk 2077 2020 CD Projekt RED 18 Dark Souls 3 2016 From Software, Namco Bandai 16 Deus ExHuman Revolution 2011 Eidos Montreal, Square Enix 18 Disco Elysium 2019 ZA/UM 18 Disney’s A Christmas Carol 2009 Disney Interactive 8 Dragons: Dawn of New Riders 2019 Climax Studios 7 Dream Box Learning Math 2008 DreamBox Learning 3 Dying Light 2015 Techland, Warner Bros Entertainment 18 167  Edna and Harvey 2008 Deadalic Entertainment 12 Elex 2017 Piranha Bytes ,THQ Nordic 16 Ether One 2014 White Paper Games 7 Finding Dory: Just 2016 Avalanche Software, Disney Interactive 3 Keep Swimming Finding Dory Toy Box: Dory’s Quest To Remember 2016 Avalanche Software, Disney Interactive 3 What Her Quest Was. Finding Nemo 2003 Traveller’s Tales, THQ 3 Fran Bow 2015 Killmonday Games 18 Frozen: Freefall 2013 Disney Interactive 3 Geoffrey Goes To The Fair 1998 Apptastic Software Inc 3 Granny Prix Multi-Player 2008 Multiplication 3 Graveyard Keeper 2018 Lazy Bear Games, tinyBuild Games 16 GTA 5 2013 Rockstar North, Rockstar Games 18 Guild Wars 2 2012 ArenaNet, NCsoft 12 Guilty Gear 2019 Arc Work System, pQube 16 Guilty Gear 2014 Arc System Works 16 Hallblade Senua’s Sacrifice 2017 Ninja Theory 18 Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996 Disney Interactive 3 Joe Rock and Friends: Book 3 2007 BoggieNoggin Media 3 Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream 2012 Square Enix 12 Drop Distance Last Day of June 2017 Ovosonico, 505 Games 7 Lego Marvel Superheroes 2013 Traveller’s Tales 7 Life Is Strange 2015 Square Enix 16 Lisa 2014 Dingaling Productions, LLC 16 168  Tarsier Studios, Bandai Namco Entertain- Little Nightmares 2 2017 16 ment Lucid Dream 2018 Dali Games 3 2007- Mass Effect (trilogy) Bioware, Electronic Arts 18 2012 Max, an Autistic Journey 2016 Professional Imagination, GPAC 3 Moss 2018 Polyarc 3 Moving Out 2020 Dev M Games, SMG Studio 3 Neversong (Once Upon a Coma) 2020 Atmos Games, Serenity Forge 12 Grasshopper Manufacture, Marvelous En- No More Heroes 2007 18 tertainment Oddworld Munchs Oddysee 2001 Oddworld Inhabitants 12 Overcooked 2016 Phil Duncan, Team 17 3 Overwatch 2016 Blizzard Entertainment 12 Per and Pog 2018 KeniKeni 3 Perception 2017 The Deep End Games 16 Peter Pan a Story 1993 EA Kids, Novotrade Software 3 Painting Adventure Peter Pan Return To Neverland 2020 Disney Interactive. Sony Interactive 3 Pulse 2015 Team Pixel Pi 18 Quiet Man 2018 Human Head Studios, Square-Enix 18 Comcept, Xbox Game Studios/Microsoft ReCore 2016 12 Studios Sally Face 2016 Portable Moose 18 Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Computer Sly 2: Band of Thieves. 2004 3 Entertainment Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Computer Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. 2005 7 Entertainment Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Computer Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. 2013 7 Entertainment Spyro (trilogy) 2018 Toys for Bob, Activision Blizzard 7 Star Wars The Force 2 2010 Aspyr Media, Inc, LucasArts 16 169  Starcraft 2 2010 Blizzard Entertainment 16 1998- Thief Series Looking Glass Studios, Eidos Interactive 18 2004 To The Moon 2011 Freebird Games 12 Toca Life Series: Farm, Hospital, 2016 Toca Boca 3 Town+ Tormented Souls 2021 Dual Effect-Abstract Digital Works, pQube 18 Transistor 2014 Supergiant Games, Supergiant Games 12 Valheim 2021 Iron Gate AB, Coffee Stain Studios 16 Very Litte Nightmare 2019 Alike Studio, Bandai Namco Entertainment 7 Weakless 2019 Punk Nation 3 Wheelchair Simulator 2018 ViRa Games 12 Winne The Pooh Preschool 1996 Disney Interactive 3 Wheelchair n.d. Xenoblade chronicles 2010 Monolith Soft, Nintendo 12 Zanny, Born to Run 2011 Extra Special Kids, LLC 3 170 List of Pictures, Figures, and Tables: Pictures Picture 1. The image of grown-up Theresa Picture 2. Blinded Philippa Eilhart Picture 3. The image from “Lucid Dream” Picture 4. Malik as a Rafiq with the main character of the game, Altair Picture 5. Promotional image showing Adam Jensen with prostheses Picture 6. The image from the game, Craftsman in the middle Picture 7. The image showing the gameplay interface Picture 8. Lester Crest while assigning one of the missions to the player Picture 9. Image from the game depicting Chloe in a wheelchair Picture 10: Sir Hammerlock featured in Borderlands 2 Picture 11. Senua seeing runes—a skill resulting from psychosis Picture 12. Adam Jensen during surgery Picture 13. Animation of the way Joker moves Picture 14. Arcade approach to simulating wheelchair riding Picture 15. Simulation of echolocation in Perception (snow shows the heroine the way) Picture 16. One of the monsters in Tormented Souls Figures and diagrams Diagram 1. The area of cultural studies on disability Figure 1: Classification of games according to the PEGI system Figure 2: Classification of games according to the genre Figure 3: Classification of games according to narrative conventions Figure 4: Classification of games according to their main purpose Figure 5: Classification of games according to game modes Figure 6: Classification of games according to the most popular platforms 171 Figure 7: Division of games according to a form of distribution Figure 8: Character’s gender Figure 9: Classification of characters according to age Figure 10: Types of disability Figure 11: Types of graphics in games Figure 12: Visual styles in games Figure 13: The color scheme of characters Figure 14: Character’s size Figure 15: Classification of characters according to their role in the gameplay Figure 16: Classification of characters according to their narrative functions Figure 17: The morality of characters Figure 18: Background of represented disabilities Figure 19: Ways of communicating the background of represented disabilities Figure 20: Scenarios of the gameplay related to represented disabilities Figure 21: Valuation of represented disabilities Figure 22: Impact of character’s disability on the gameplay Figure 23: Simulation of the perception of the setting conditioned by disability Figure 24: Shape of the prosthesis, implants Figure 25: Motor credibility of represented disabilities Tables Table 1: The budget range of the studied games Table 2: Types of disabilities in games Table 3: Interactive messages concerning the background of a disability Table 4: Messages concerning the background of a disability in games’ intros or cutscenes Table 5: Messages concerning disabilities represented in supplementary materials Table 6: Disabilities understood as a force 172 Table 7: The reasons for the lack of valuation of represented disabilities Table 8: Impact of disability on the gameplay Table 9: Types of simulation of the setting 173 Bibliography Aarseth, E. (2003). Playing Research: Methodological approaches to game analysis. Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Melbourne. Aarseth, E. (2010). Metodologia zabawy: Metodologia analizy gier. In M. Filiciak (Ed.), Światy z pikseli: Antologia studiów nad grami komputerowymi (pp. 12–36). Wydawnictwo SWPS Academica. Al Zidjaly, N. (2015). Disability, Discourse and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan UK. Alberti, L. B., Grayson, C., & Alberti, L. B. (1972). On painting and On sculpture. The Latin texts of De pictura and De statua. Phaidon. Albrecht, G. L., Seelman, K. D., & Bury, M. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of disability studies. Sage Publications. Bailey, C., Pearson, E., Gkatzidou, S., & Green, S. (2006). Using video games to develop social, collaborative and communication skills. EdMedia+ Innovate Learning, 1154–1161. Bakhtin, M. M., & Holquist, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press. Banich, M. T., Compton, R. J., & Banich, M. T. (2011). Cognitive neuroscience. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Barbareschi, G., Carew, M. T., Johnson, E. A., Kopi, N., & Holloway, C. (2021). “When They See a Wheelchair, They’ve Not Even Seen Me”—Factors Shaping the Experience of Disability Stigma and Discrimination in Kenya. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(8), 4272. Barnes, E. (2016). The minority body: A theory of disability (First edition). Oxford University Press. Bartlett, F. C. (1995). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (2nd edi- tion). Cambridge University Press. Bayliss, P. (2007). Beings in the Game-World: Characters, Avatars, and Players. Proceedings of the 4th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment. 174 Beauchamp, M., Chung, W., & Mogilner, A. (2015). Disabled literature: A critical examination of the portrayal of individuals with disabilities in selected works of modern and contemporary American literature. Universal-Publishers. Benford, S., Bederson, B. B., Åkesson, K.-P., Bayon, V., Druin, A., Hansson, P., Hourcade, J. P., Ingram, R., Neale, H., O’Malley, C., Simsarian, K. T., Stanton, D., Sundblad, Y., & Taxén, G. (2000). Designing storytelling technologies to encouraging collaboration between young children. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1145/332040.332502 Berressem, H., Ingwersen, M., & Waldschmidt, A. (Eds.). (2017). Culture - theory - disability: Encounters between disability studies and cultural studies. Transcript. Bierre, K., Chetwynd, J., Ellis, B., Hinn, D. M., Ludi, S., & Westin, T. (2005). Game not over: Accessibility issues in video games. Proc. of the 3rd International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction, 22–27. Blumberg, F. C., & Fisch, S. M. (2013). Introduction: Digital games as a context for cognitive development, learning, and developmental research. New Directions for Child and Adoles- cent Development, 2013(139), 1–9. Blunden, A. (2008, July). Vygotsky’s unfinished theory of child development. Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/vygotsky-on-de- velopment.pdf Bogost, I., Ferrari, S., & Schweizer, B. (2010). Newsgames: Journalism at play. MIT Press. Bransford, J., National Research Council (U.S.), Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning, National Research Council (U.S.), & Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Na- tional Academy Press. Breugelmans, J., Lin, Y., Mourant, R. R., & Iversen, M. D. (2010). Biosensor-based video game control for physically disabled gamers. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 54(28), 2383–2387. Bruer, J. T. (1997). Education and the brain: A bridge too far. Educational Researcher, 26(8), 4–16. Bruer, J. T. (2000). The myth of the first three years: A new understanding of early brain develop- ment and lifelong learning. Free Press. 175 Bruner, J. (1983). Play, thought, and language. Peabody Journal of Education, 60(3), 60–69. Bruner, J. S. (1961). The process of education. Vintage Books. Bruner, J. S. (2002). Acts of meaning (10. print). Harvard Univ. Press. Brzozowska-Brywczyńska, M. (2017). Why wear a prosthetics when you could become a su- perhero instead? Dzieci, protezy i kilka uwag o tym, jak słownik krytycznych studiów nad niepełnosprawnością może wzbogacić język nowych studiów nad dzieciństwem. Prze- gląd Socjologii Jakościowej, 13(4), 14–28. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.13.4.02 Butler, J., Gambetti, Z., & Sabsay, L. (Eds.). (2016). Vulnerability in Resistance (Illustrated edi- tion). Duke University Press Books. Cahill, S. E., & Eggleston, R. (1995). Reconsidering the stigma of physical disability: Wheel- chair use and public kindness. Sociological Quarterly, 36(4), 681–698. Cairns, P., Power, C., Barlet, M., Haynes, G., Kaufman, C., & Beeston, J. (2021). Enabled play- ers: The value of accessible digital games. Games and Culture, 16(2), 262–282. Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces.—1st. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Carr, D. (2013). Bodies, augmentation and disability in Dead Space and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Context Matters, 31–41. Carr, D. (2014). Ability, Disability and Dead Space. GameStudies, 14 (2). Carr, D. (2020). Bodies That Count: Augmentation, Community, and Disability in a Science Fiction Game. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 14(4), 421–436. Cassell, J., & Jenkins, H. (2000). From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and computer games. MIT press. Chang, Y.-J., Han, W.-Y., & Tsai, Y.-C. (2013). A Kinect-based upper limb rehabilitation sys- tem to assist people with cerebral palsy. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(11), 3654–3659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.08.021 Cole, A., & Barker, D. (2020). Games as Texts: A Practical Application of Textual Analysis to Games. CRC Press. Consalvo, M., & Dutton, N. (2006). Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games. Game Stud., 6. 176 Corker, M., & Shakespeare, T. (Eds.). (2002). Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory (1st edition). Continuum. Corrales Astorgano, M., Escudero Mancebo, D., González Ferreras, C., Gutiérrez González, Y., Flores Lucas, M. del V., Cardeñoso Payo, V., & Aguilar Cuevas, L. (2016). The Magic Stone: A video game to improve communication skills of people with intellectual disabilities. Proceedings of Interspeech 2016, 1565–1566. Corrales-Astorgano, M., Martínez-Castilla, P., Escudero-Mancebo, D., Aguilar, L., González-Ferreras, C., & Cardeñoso-Payo, V. (2018). Towards an automatic evaluation of the prosody of people with Down syndrome. IberSPEECH 2018, 112–116. Costello, R., Lambert, M., & Kern, F. (2019). How Can Accessibility for Deaf and Hearing-Im- paired Players be Improved in Video Games? International Journal of R&D Innovation Strategy (IJRDIS), 1(1), 16–32. da Silva, R. L. (2020). Designing a Digital Roleplaying Game to Foster Awareness of Hidden Disabilities. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 11(2), 55–63. DAGER System. Video Game Reviews for the physically disabled. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2021, from https://dagersystem.com/ Davis, L. J. (2013). The disability studies reader (4th ed). Routledge. DrBozzyBee. (n.d.). Recreated my wheelchair, love that they included this in the game! Red- dit.Com. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalCrossing/ comments/i0oooe/recreated_my_wheelchair_love_that_they_included/ Eder, J. (2010). Understanding characters. Projections, 4(1), 16–40. Egan, K. (1997). The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. University of Chicago Press. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2020). Understanding video games: The essen- tial introduction (Fourth edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Ellcessor, E., & Kirkpatrick, B. (Eds.). (2017). Disability media studies. New York University Press. Ellis, K. (Ed.). (2019). Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: Looking towards the future. Rout- ledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 177 Ellis, K. (2020). Disability and Digital Television Cultures: Representation, Access, and Reception (1st edition). Routledge. Ellis, K., Garland-Thomson, R., & Kent, M. (Eds.). (2019). Manifestos for the future of critical disability studies: Volume 1. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Ellis, K., & Goggin, G. (2015a). Disability Media Participation: Opportunities, Obstacles and Politics. Media International Australia, 154(1), 78–88. Ellis, K., & Goggin, G. (2015b). Disability and the Media (2015th edition). Red Globe Press. Ellis, K., & Kent, M. (2011). Disability and new media. Routledge. Engel, S. (1995). The stories children tell: Making sense of the narratives of childhood. Henry Holt and Company. Ensslin, A. (2011). The Language of Gaming. Macmillan International Higher Education. Eskelinen, M. (2001). The Gaming Situation. Game Studies, 1(1). Esposito, N. (2005). A Short and Simple Definition of What a Videogame Is. http://www.digra. org/diglib-export-item.php?export=bibtex&item_id=64727&post_type=diglib_item Farris. (2020). The Player and the Avatar: Performing as Other. Storytelling, Self, Society, 16(2), 177. Fizek, S. (2014). Pivoting the player: A framework for player character research in offline computer role-playing games. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 6, 215–234. Fizek, S. (2015). Od Pacmana do Lary Croft: Jak badać postać w grach wideo? [From Packman to Lara Croft: How to analyze a video game character?] Kultura i Historia, 27. Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical play: Radical game design. MIT Press. Flanagan, M., & Nissenbaum, H. (2016). Values at play in digital games (First MIT Press paper- back edition). MIT Press. Foss, C., Gray, J. W., & Whalen, Z. (Eds.). (2016a). Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narra- tives. Palgrave Macmillan UK. Foss, C., Gray, J., & Whalen, Z. (2016b). Disability in comic books and graphic narratives. Springer. GabrielMS. (2020, December 10). CYBERPUNK 2077—Wheelchair NPC glitch / bug (PC). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ixh97oQfY 178 Gałuszka, D. (2017). Gry wideo w perspektywie potrzeb osób niepełnosprawnych. [Video Games in the perspective of the needs of people with disabilities] In Oblicza niepełno- sprawności w teorii i praktyce (pp. 327–355). Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Gałuszka, D., & Żuchowska-Skiba, D. (2018). Niepełnosprawność w grach wideo – omówie- nie na przykładach wybranych wirtualnych postaci. [Disability in video games: the analy- sis of selected virtual characters]. Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej, 14(3), 92–112. Games featuring physically disabled protagonists. (n.d.). Reddit.Com. https://www.reddit. com/r/gaming/comments/p78ms/has_there_ever_been_a_disabled_videogame_char- acter/ GamingShift, (2019) How Many Video Games Exist?, Accessed 4.12.21, from https://gaming- shift.com/how-many-video-games-exist/ Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American cul- ture and literature. Columbia University Press. Garland-Thomson, R. (2009). Staring: How we look. Oxford University Press. Garland-Thomson, R., Pamuła, Natalia, Fundacja Teatr 21 (Warszawa). (2020). Niezwykłe ciała: Przedstawienia niepełnosprawności fizycznej w amerykańskiej kulturze i literaturze. Fundacja Teatr 21. Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (1st edition). Palgrave Macmillan. Gibbons, S. (2015). Disability, neurological diversity, and inclusive play: An examination of the social and political aspects of the relationship between disability and games. Load- ing..., 9(14). Gips, J., & Olivieri, P. (1996). EagleEyes: An eye control system for persons with disabilities. The Eleventh International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, 1–15. Goodley, D. (2011). Disability studies: An interdisciplinary introduction. SAGE. Goodley, D., Hughes, B., & Davis, L. J. (Eds.). (2012). Disability and social theory: New develop- ments and directions. Palgrave Macmillan. Goodley, D., Lawthom, R., & Runswick Cole, K. (2014). Posthuman disability studies. Subjec- tivity, 7(4), 342–361. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.15 179 Goodley, D., & Runswick-Cole, K. (2016). Becoming dishuman: Thinking about the human through dis/ability. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.930021 Goorimoorthee, T., Csipo, A., Carleton, S., & Ensslin, A. (2011). Language Ideologies in Vid- eogame Discourse. Forms of Sociophonetic Othering in Accented Character Speech. In The Language of Gaming. Macmillan International Higher Education. Hadley, B., & McDonald, D. (Eds.). (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media (1st edition). Routledge. Hall, A. (2015). Literature and disability. Routledge. Halsall, P. (1998, August). Modern History Sourcebook: John Locke (1632-1704): Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1692. Fordham University. http://legacy.fordham.edu/ halsall/mod/1692locke-education.asp Hannay, T. (2014). What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Edge. Accessed 15.11.21, from https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25365. Henley, S. (2021, April 28). BioWare is wrong, Dragon Age doesn’t need to replace its dis- abled protagonist. Eurogamer. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-28-biowa- re-is-wrong-dragon-age-doesnt-need-to-replace-its-disabled-protagonist Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture. Beacon Press. Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI, 4(1), 1722. Irby, B. J. (2007). Rhymes, Songs, Stories and Fingerplays in Early Childhood Classrooms. Texas A&M University. Ivory, J. D. (2020). Video Games as a Multifaceted Medium: A Review of Quantitative Social Science Research on Video Games and a Typology of Video Game Research Approaches. Review of Communication Research, 1, 31–68. Jenkins, N. (2017). Disabled Protagonists: Where Are You? Game Skinny. https://www. gameskinny.com/w9y8s/disabled-protagonists-where-are-you Juul, J. (2003, January). The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness. Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings. 180 Juul, J. (2019). Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity (Illus- trated edition). The MIT Press. Kastellakis, G., & Poirazi, P. (2019). Synaptic clustering and memory formation. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 12, 300. Kidd, K. B. (2004). Psychoanalysis and children’s literature: The case for complementarity. The Lion and the Unicorn, 28(1), 109–130. Konami helping engineers create bionic arm for amputee with ‘The Phantom Limb Proj- ect.’ (2015, November 10). Metal Gear Informer. https://www.metalgearinformer. com/?p=23187 Konzack, L. (2002). Computer Game Criticism: A Method for Computer Game Analysis. CGDC Conf. Lack, C. (n.d.). Major Depressive Disorder. Abnormal Psychology. http://abnormalpsych.wikis- paces.com/. Ledder, S. (2018). On dis/ability within game studies: The discursive construction of ludic bodies. In Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability (pp. 30–44). Routledge. Linderoth, J. (2005). Animated game pieces, avatars as roles, tools and props. Aesthetics of Play Conference Proceedings. https://www.aestheticsofplay.org/linderoth.php Madej, K. (2016). Physical Play and Children’s Digital Games (1st ed. 2016 edition). Springer. Madej, K. (2017). Taking on Serious Topics in Children’s Entertainment Games. Computers in Entertainment. https://cie.acm.org/articles/taking-serious-topics-childrens-entertain- ment-games/index.html Madej, K., & Lee, N. (2020). Disney stories: Getting to digital. Springer. Malkowski, J., Russworm, A. P. of E. T. M., Everett, A., Soderman, B., Dewinter, J., Kocurek, C., Huntemann, N. B., Trepanier-Jobin, G., Chien, I., Murray, S., Hutchinson, R., Patti, L., Ruberg, B., Wood, J., Chang, E. Y., & Nakamura, L. (2017). Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games. Marascalchi, D. (2020, February 12). Where Are the Disabled Sims? First Person Scholar. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/where-are-the-disabled-sims/ 181 Meekosha, H., & Shuttleworth, R. (2009). What’s So Critical About Critical Disability Stud- ies? Australian Journal of Human Rights, 15, 47–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/132323 8X.2009.11910861 Miranda, F. (2015). Digital EEG and Evoked Potentials Assessment (DEEP). Bright Minds Insti- tute. http://www.brightmindsinstitute.com Mitchell, D. T., & Snyder, S. L. (2001). Narrative prosthesis: Disability and the dependencies of discourse. University of Michigan Press. Monaco, A., Sforza, G., Amoroso, N., Antonacci, M., Bellotti, R., de Tommaso, M., Di Biton- to, P., Di Sciascio, E., Diacono, D., & Gentile, E. (2019). The PERSON project: A serious brain-computer interface game for treatment in cognitive impairment. Health and Tech- nology, 9(2), 123–133. Mou, Y., & Peng, W. (2009). Gender and racial stereotypes in popular video games. Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education, 922–937. Murdock, M. (1990). The heroine’s journey (1st ed). Shambhala; Distributed in the U.S. by Random House. Murray, C. J., Lopez, A. D., & Organization, W. H. (1996). The global burden of disease: A com- prehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries, and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020: Summary. World Health Organization. Newzoo Global Games Market Report 2021. Free Version. (2021, July 1). Newzoo. https:// newzoo.com/insights/trend-reports/newzoo-global-games-market-report-2021-free- version/ Nocella, A. J., George, A. E., & Lupinacci, J. (Eds.). (2019). Animals, disability, and the end of capitalism: Voices from the eco-ability movement. Peter Lang. Norden, M. F. (1994). The cinema of isolation: A history of physical disability in the movies. Rut- gers University Press. O niepełnosprawności: Definicje. [About disability: definitions] (2018). Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia de Cultura, 10(1), 13–29. Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding Disability. Macmillan Education UK. http://link.springer. com/10.1007/978-1-349-24269-6 Pamuła, N., Szarota, M., & Usiekniewicz, M. (2018). „Nic o nas bez nas” [Nothing about us without us]. Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia de Cultura, 10(1), 4–12. 182 Parlock, J. (2020, January 8). Video games and disability: Looking back at a challenging de- cade. Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/8/21056713/disabilities-vid- eo-game-characters-inclusion-accessibility-decade-in-review Piaget, J. (2013). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. Routledge. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child’s conception of space. FJ Langdon & JL Lunzer, Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1972). The psychology of the child. Basic Books. Pratte, W. (2021, August 17). Geoffrey Goes to the Fair (K. Madej, Interviewer). [Personal com- munication]. Propp, W. (1976). Morfologia bajki [Morphology of the Tale] (W. Wojtyga-Zagórska, Trans.). Książka i Wiedza. Quayson, A. (2007). Aesthetic nervousness: Disability and the crisis of representation. Columbia University Press. Resene, M. (2017). From Evil Queen to Disabled Teen: Frozen Introduces Disney’s First Dis- abled Princess. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(2). Rideout, V., & Robb, M. B. (2020). 2020 The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight. Retrieved from Commonsense Media: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ sites/default/files/uploads/research/2020_zero_to_eight_census_final_web.pdf Ruberg, B. (2020). The queer games avant-garde: How LBGTQ game makers are reimagining the medium of video games. Duke University Press. Sakharkar, V. S., Tayade, A. A., & COET, P. P. (2019). Brain Computer Interface: An Overview. International Journal of Engineering Science, 20754. Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press. Sarge, M. A., Kim, H.-S., & Velez, J. A. (2020). An Auti-Sim Intervention: The Role of Perspec- tive Taking in Combating Public Stigma with Virtual Simulations. Cyberpsychology, Behav- ior, and Social Networking, 23(1), 41–51. Schank, R. C. (1995). Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Northwestern University Press. Schröter, F., & Thon, J.-N. (2014). Video Game Characters. Theory and Analysis. DIEGESIS, 3(1). 183 Schweik, S. M. (2009). The ugly laws. Disability in Public. New York University Press. Shaffer, D. W., Squire, K. R., Halverson, R., & Gee, J. P. (2005). Video games and the future of learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 87(2), 105–111. Shakespeare, T. (2017). The Social Model of Disability. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (Fifth edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Shea, S. E., Gordon, K., Hawkins, A., Kawchuk, J., & Smith, D. (2000). Pathology in the Hun- dred Acre Wood: A neurodevelopmental perspective on AA Milne. Cmaj, 163(12), 1557– 1559. Shell, J. (2021). What Do We See: An Investigation Into the Representation of Disability in Video Games. ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2103.17100. Sicart, M. (2017). Play Matters (Reprint edition). The MIT Press. Siebers, T. (2017). Disability and the Theory of Complex Embodiment: For Identity Politics in a New Register. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (Fifth edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Silvers, A. (2003). On the possibility and desirability of constructing a neutral conception of dis- ability. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 24(6), 471–487. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:me- ta.0000006924.82156.5b Stiker, H.-J. (2019). A history of disability. University of Michigan Press. Swink, S. (2008). Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation (1st edition). CRC Press. Sylwester, R. (1995). A celebration of neurons: An educator’s guide to the human brain. ERIC. Taylor, C., Montford, K. S., & Jenkins, S. (Eds.). (2020). Disability and animality: Crip perspec- tives in critical animal studies. Routledge. The IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2021, from https://igda-gasig.org/ Tomasini, F. (2019). Vulnerable Bodies: New Directions in Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31899-2 type2cryabetes. (n.d.). Has there ever been a disabled videogame character? Reddit.Com. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/p78ms/has_there_ever_been_a_dis- abled_videogame_character/ 184 United Nations (n.d.) Factsheet on Persons with Disabilities, Accessed 21.11.21, from https:// www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/resources/factsheet-on-persons-with-dis- abilities.html Upton, B. (2021). The Aesthetic of Play. The MIT Press. Venom Snake’s bionic arm. (n.d.). Metal Gear Wiki. Retrieved October 27, 2021, from https:// metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/Venom_Snake%27s_bionic_arm#cite_note-5 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978a). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978b). The role of play in development. Mind in Society, 5, 92–104. Vygotsky, L. S. (1985). Thought and Language (E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar, Trans.). MIT Press. Walters, S. (2014). Rhetorical touch: Disability, identification, haptics. The University of South Carolina Press. Weybright, E., Dattilo, J., & Rusch, F. (2010). Effects of an interactive video game (Nintendo Wii) on older women with Mild Cognitive Impairment. Therapeutic Recreation Journal, 44, 271. Whitebread, D., Basilio, M., Kuvalja, M., & Verma, M. (2012). The importance of play. Toy Industries of Europe, 1–55. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality London. Tavistock Publications, 11, 271–291. Wolbring, G. (2009). What next for the human species? Human performance enhancement, ableism and pluralism. Development Dialogue, 54(Aug), 141–163. World Health Organization (Ed.). (2001). International classification of functioning, disability and health: ICF. World Health Organization. Worrell, T. R. (2018). Disability in the media: Examining stigma and identity. Lexington Books. Woźniak, T. (2018). Metoda w szaleństwie: o badaniach mowy osób chorych na schizofrenię. [The method in madness: about speech studies of people suffering from schizophrenia] Psychologia w Praktyce, 8. https://psychologiawpraktyce.pl/artykul/metoda-w-szalenst- wie-o-badaniach-mowy-osob-chorych-na-schizofrenie Wright, R. (2019, March 27). Why We Need Disability Representation in “The Sims 4.” The Mighty. https://themighty.com/2019/03/characters-disabilities-sims-4/ 185 Young, R. M. (n.d.). THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM. HUMAN NATURE. http://human-nature. com/rmyoung/papers/pap127h.html Zielska, L. (n.d.). Depresja a niepełnosprawność. [Depression and disability] Strefa Psyche Uni- wersytetu SWPS. https://web.swps.pl/strefa-psyche/blog/relacje/18296-depresja-a-nie- pelnosprawnosc Zola, I. K. (1989). Toward the necessary universalizing of a disability policy. The Milbank Quar- terly, 67 Suppl 2 Pt 2, 401–428. Zornosa, L. (2020, November 20). Meet the actress blazing a sign-language trail in new “Spi- der-Man” video game. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/ story/2020-11-20/miles-morales-spider-man-video-game-natasha-ofili-hailey-cooper 186 Questionnaire Template Used in the Study Analysis Questionnaire: Game title Prod/publisher/ year PEGI Everyone Type Fantasy/ Other Convention Science Fiction Realistic Historical fairytale Aim of Game Therapeutic Entertainment Education Platform Mobile Game PC/Mac Console Social Media Other VR Yes No Comments: Haptic interface Yes No Comments: (motion control) Game Range/ AAA Indie Game Budget Business Digital Model Form Box sale Free to Play Free distribution of Distribution Game Mode Single-player Multiplayer Comments: Characters with Disabilities First name/last name/nickname Gender Age Type of disability Prosthetic Type and cause of . disability Fictional {narrative} context 187 Nature of participa- Primary character Secondary Episodic Opponent tion in the game character character Story function (eg., according to Propp’s classification) Circumstances of Existing disability Disability acquired the occurrence of (acquired prior to during gameplay disability game start) Additional remarks and description of circumstances Means of commu- Additional materials (trailers, films, and Interactivity during Cutscene nicating circum- texts by producers that are not part of gameplay and intro stances of disability the game) Autonomy and decision-making of characters Character morality Scenarios of the Disability as a „prob- course of the game lem to be fixed” Taming Other related to the dis- during the game the disability ability (medicalization) Disability as Disability as Valuing disability Other a „weakness” a „power” Comments Visual aspects of the character Graphic game style 3d 2d Pixel art Other Visual style realistic Cartoon grotesque Other Character coloring Character size Shape of dentures/ implants Simulation of the Conditioned Absent perception of the Comments by disability game world Is the character Yes Comments with a disability No modifiable? 188  Character mechanics Selective or resid- Advanced disability ual reflection of No reflection of disabili- Motor credibility Comments mechanics disability mechan- ty mechanics ics Character interface and controls Impact of disability on gameplay The authors of the report address representations of disability in video games at several game layers such as linguistic, visual, narrative, and structural. At the same time, they are not mistaken that the subject they have discussed is omitted from academic considerations about video games. The most frequent questions researchers pose concern how gaming may assist people with disabilities, what is the educational dimension of games, and how they can aid rehabilitation, learning, and everyday life. Much space is devoted to the development of games to adapt them to the needs of people with disabilities, that is, “special controllers, function- alities and interfaces,” as the authors put it. The issues of “decent representation” in games are usually overlooked. The research presented is groundbreaking in this regard. The empirical aspects of the project, the combination of various approaches (a textual analysis of games, a quantitative analysis of the research sample, focus group interviews) are commendable. This type of research procedure allows for ensuring that the topic under consideration is justified, as well as for evaluating it in various respects—the use of focus group interviews seems particularly valuable, as it allows not only for an illustration of the importance of the lack of represen- Lower Silesia tation of disability in games, but also for formulating University practical Press for game guidelines developers. Piotr Siuda Ph.D. Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Communication and Media Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz Lower Silesia University Press Publication prepared in accordance with WCAG 2.1 standards. Lower Silesia University Press Lower Silesia University Press 190