Falsely accusing the devs of Cyberpunk 2077 of viciously, maliciously inserting flashing lights specifically hoping to inflict seizures in people is maybe the most reprehensible thing I've heard this year.

They can be accused of ignorance, no doubt, but not malice of forethought

They can also be accused of being lazy, unimaginative, and unambitious vision.

Malice? You're seriously accusing them of trying to kill people. This shit is not helping epilepsy awareness. It's straight-up lying.

I know an entire crowd of people finally "woke" to epilepsy awareness yesterday. Hello! I've been working at this for 10 years. Guess what? This isn't new. This has been an issue for YEARS.

Games constantly do stuff like this. Here's Bloodstained: https://twitter.com/IndieGamerChick/status/1060842454172131328

Note:
1. There's no option to disable it.
2. It actually adds NOTHING to the gameplay, to the atmosphere, to anything in a positive way.
3. There were multiple BETTER solutions that could have been done there.

Now, I'm not asking them to remove it. I want it to be optional.

I can't stress enough: I've been working with hundreds of developers for a decade now on this issue, and I want to assure fans of these type of effects: the main people in epilepsy advocacy WANT THESE EFFECTS TO REMAIN IN THE GAMES!

We simply advocate that they be made optional.

The world's foremost advocate and expert at gaming accessibility, @ianhamilton_, and myself, and others fighting this good fight are not trying to "make" anyone change anything about their games.

We ADVOCATE for options called "Effects Intensity Options", a toggle for players.

We also advocate for OPTIONS for color blind players, single-handed players, players that have trouble reading small text, players on the cerebral palsy or MS spectrum.

Nobody is forcing anyone's creative vision to be compromised. We don't go for that. We advocate for OPTIONS..

And we've had incredible success. Accessibility isn't just trendy now. The creative geniuses who make the games we love want as many people from as many walks of life to be able to enjoy their work. People make games to be played, not to be watched from a distance.

And accessibility is a slow process by the nature of it because there's so many things to consider. It's not like these effects are a single line of code in a game. Making them optional, especially if it's retroactively via a patch, is very time consuming, resource consuming, etc

And accessibility doesn't end with epilepsy. There's so many things you would never think about, that *I*, an insider on these scene, never thought about.

You know games where you have to mash buttons super fast? What if the person has carpal tunnel, or other hand-based issues?

Bet you never thought about that, huh? But health issues that effect your ability to button mash effect over 10% of adult men and over 15% of adult women, and has onset earlier in women than men.

You don't think "accessibility" when you think "press A as fast as you can" do you?

For a not-insignificant portion of the population, that is literally painful to perform, and might even be futile. And that's JUST hand disorders, never mind people like @djf1107 who have cerebral palsy who go to sit and play non-action games only to be told to mash a button.

So, here's my message to everyone: I am SO HAPPY that epilepsy in gaming has become a major topical news item for the first time ever. This is historic.

But, accessibility is a very complex issue and demands of instant results are not productive. Are you taking up EVERY feature?

Because there's literally thousands of things that can prevent people from playing games. Instead of reading a few tweets and then christening yourself as down with the accessibility, read @ianhamilton_ Game Accessibility Guidelines:
http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ 

This is an issue that requires study and lots of consideration.

What it doesn't require is complete distortion of the truth and false accusations of a developer of a major game trying to hurt or even kill players. You're not helping anyone's cause. You're in fact making it worse

While I'm part of the scene, I'm not an expert. My function has been making contact. There are experts in this field. Those experts know how to help devs make these changes. I don't. You don't. Those experts ARE DOING THEIR JOBS, that's why more and more games have accessibility

If you want to help, the #1 thing you can do is donate money and time to charities that work to EDUCATE the public on medical conditions and limitations such as epilepsy.

You can also support game developers who do include these features, and signal boost when a game has options

And to the game dev community, if you want to talk about what you can do (and can't, because you can't cover every possible condition), I'm always around to talk about this. We can discuss options, and if you're ready to commit, I can connect you directly to experts in the field.

This is the first time game accessibility has trended on Twitter, and I don't want to let a bunch of people who actually don't stand for anything, who do not put in the time or work, turn this into a toxic subject by making disgusting lies about how stuff like this happens.

BTW, Game Informer DID NOT SAY that anyone was trying to hurt anyone. People with a total lack of reading comprehension skimmed half a paragraph, did the math, said 1 + 2 = MURDER and decided that the devs were somewhere laughing about giving people seizures.

It's libelous.

Someone on the dev team who did NOT have the best time making the game to begin with was besides themselves with grief thinking they had anything to do with potentially hurting someone.

This wasn't malicious. Nor was Rise of the Skywalker, Incredibles 2, or Spider-Verse.

Epilepsy is not a well known or well understood condition. People who take up causes for the sake of appearing virtuous can't believe it, but in reality, most game devs and film makers were previously unaware people with my condition played games or watched sci-fi/action movies.

Yes, these days it's much more rare to have someone say "I didn't realize people with epilepsy play games!" And you can look all over Twitter today to find the hot takes of "people with epilepsy SHOULDN'T play games."

But yes, good-natured people can be unaware of this too.

You know, sort of like the phonies were until yesterday.

If you want to learn more about my real life as a gamer with epilepsy, the good people at @epilepsyaction invited me to tell my story in their May, 2020 issue, and it was published online. I can't thank them enough, and the entire epilepsy community! https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/news/news/my-journal-cathy-72915

Just to make clear: management acted lazy. I wasn't accusing the hardworking programmers who had NOTHING to do with this and made no decisions as lazy.

I personally think most uses of flashing lights are just very unimaginative. A lazy way of disorienting playing.