Ambitious Tekken 8 Colorblind Filter Backfires For People With Impairments

Tekken 8’s highly ambitious colorblind filter, which has been receiving praise all over social media as the new standard in video game accessibility features, is causing nausea, vertigo, and migraine for people with visual impairment. Several people have encouraged others to stop sharing the initial tweet by SJS | Gatterall that demonstrated the striped filter alongside many other colorblind filters present in the game in their tweets. 

Why is no one talking about the color blind accessibility of Tekken 8. Literally no game has done this. pic.twitter.com/i8qdUYwpPP

— SJS | Gatterall (@itwhiffed) December 27, 2023

Twitter/X user Ian Hamilton, an Accessibility Specialist, and Morgan Baker, Game Accessibility Lead at Electronic Arts, have encouraged users to stop sharing the 38-second clip of the striped colorblind filter of Tekken 8. Morgan Baker also revealed that the clip had induced an aura of migraine while urging others to stop tagging them in the accessibility feature clip.

Please stop tagging me in the Tekken 8 “colorblind” stripe filters. It’s already induced an aura migraine for me and I can’t afford to get another one right now, or worse. Appreciate y’all 🤟🏼♥️

— Morgan Baker (@momoxmia) December 27, 2023

Ian Hamilton also replied to a Twitter/X user asking if the filter is useful for colorblind users, saying that “filters aren’t how to approach colorblindness in general.” The Accessibility Specialist emphasized that other colorblind filters, besides the striped one that had been causing nausea and migraine for people, weren’t exactly useful either. 

Not really, if you have achromatopsia then you're sensitive to brightness and contrast. Filters aren't how to approach colourblindness in general, the other filters have issues too, e.g. the tritanopia one changed everything to green and purple with isn't helpful for tritanopia.

— Ian Hamilton (@ianhamilton_) December 27, 2023

Tekken 8 Director Katsuhiro Harada also posted on X/Twitter, defending the accessibility features of the game. The Tekken 8 Director said that very few people had misunderstood the accessibility features through the video instead of trying it out themselves in the game’s demo. Harada emphasized that the accessibility options in-game have a multiple range of adjustments the players can use to adjust it to their preference.

A few people, albeit very few, have either misunderstood the accessibility options we are trying, or have only seen the video without actually trying them out in the demo play.

We have "multiple types of color vision options" for players with different color vision, not just… https://t.co/cEdcUTI8n3

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) December 28, 2023

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According to Katsuhiro Harada, they had been working with several research institutes and communities to develop these accessibility features for a long time. Additionally, people with colorblind impairments are a huge part of the fighting game community, not only limited to the Tekken franchise.

At EVO 2023, one of the biggest Fighting Game events of the year, a blind Street Fighter 6 player, BlindWarriorSven, achieved victory against another player. BlindWarriorSven’s victory was heavily applauded by the crowd, and the clip of his victory went viral online. Note that Street Fighter 6 features excellent accessibility options for people with impairments and Tekken 8 is aiming to do the same.

Blind Evo Player wins set Street Fighter 6!
byu/Flat-Profession-8945 inFighters

Tekken 8 is set to launch on January 26 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC. Players can download the game’s demo free of cost to try out several features of the game. Bandai Namco‘s Tekken 8 comes about a decade after Tekken 7, which was easily the most successful Tekken game of all time.