Accessibility and Dreams: One Button Game Jam

One of our priorities at the studio has been making Dreams on PS4 more accessible so as many people as possible are able to play and become a part of our awesome Dreams community. Our vision is that our accessibility leads to even more inclusive games for all players to enjoy.

Going the extra mile

In this day and age, it’s so important to consider accessibility in games. Before Dreams launched, we knew we wanted to go that extra mile to incorporate features to appeal to the broadest audience as possible. As a user-generated content game, we hope to empower creators with the tools we’ve created on the platform so they can make games that are accessible to a wide variety of preferences. 

Community is key

Our community is the key to helping us achieve our goals on this journey to making games more accessible in Dreams. We’ll always be working on ways to make Dreams better and we take feedback from our community seriously. We also seek to inspire our community of creators through activities like Game Jams. Every two weeks, we task our players with creating games themed around specific themes or topics. 

Recently, we hosted a One Button Game Jam with the goal of creating games that can be played using just one button. One of the ideas behind this Game Jam was to encourage games that would be accessible for a wide variety of gamers, because even if they have limited mobility – in general most players are able to press one button. This Game Jam resulted in some wonderful examples of accessible content that quickly became popular with Dreams players. 

Our community inspired us to think about hosting other Game Jams that can do the same, whether that’s a game with no or limited audio, or games with no text. So we’re excited to see what our community comes up with in the future.

Listen and learn

Finally, the best way to build more inclusive games is for developers to listen and learn from disabled gamers in the community. Reach out, connect, and learn about their needs and wants. They will be our best resource to create games that are appealing to the needs of gamers with different ranges of abilities. 

With Dreams, we thrive off of imagination and encourage our users to push the boundaries of what is capable through the power of creation. In this fantastic little pocket of the larger gaming community, we look to welcome everyone to build new and exciting experiences, but as we encourage everyone to embark on this creative adventure, I invite everyone to, again, consider the following: Explore new technology and tools, look at the larger community and think of all your players, and more importantly, listen and learn. The gaming world is a rich community of so many players looking to explore and be entertained, and with Dreams, we are hoping to broaden the point of entry and make sure that everyone is able to play.