Civilization VI is looking to increase its (already fairly impressive) inclusivity in this iteration of the franchise.
“It’s cool for me to be a part of [Civilization VI’s development team] because I’m colour blind,” Associate Producer Sarah Darney told Stevivor recently in Sydney.
“I’m a colour blind gamer, and it’s good to have that representation on the team. All of the artists are so receptive of it. As we were doing the terrain, I had those guys come into my office every day, asking, “hey, can you see this?’
“It’s cool that we’re thinking about these things and that we have people who can help.”
Firaxis decided against toggles for different types of colour blindness — Darney is red-green colour blind herself — in favour of smart design.
“Because there is such a broad spectrum of color vision, it’s very challenging to plan for each one,” she said. “That said, whenever we use color language, it is almost always paired with shape language to keep everything easily distinguished at a glance. Additionally, the time of day system could provide an opportunity for users to find terrain settings that pair well with their particular vision.”
Moves toward further accessibility and inclusive don’t end there.
“As an industry, we’re moving towards making games more inclusive of different races and genders,” Darney said, quite pleased. “Civilization’s always been a game that did that, but it’s cool to be part of a group choosing to have more female representation as well.”
Said representation applies to both Firaxis and Civilization VI itself; at the time of writing, three of the game’s eight named leaders are female.
Civilization VI heads to Windows PC on 21 October.
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