I suffer from colourblindness on the red-green spectrum. While my exact classification was never confirmed as a youngster, I think I tend to lean towards deuteranopia.While games are becoming better at catering to us colourblind folk, Fortnite offers an interesting take on how to approach the problem.

I haven’t played enough of Fortnite to know whether playing around with the colourblind settings has made any in-game difference, and it was only after talking to my cousin, also colourblind, that I was aware the game had any options for it. Even after playing around with the settings, I don’t know what has been changed in-game. But Epic Games have made a good effort to including those of us who suffer which is 6% of the male population and 0.5% of the female population. They have included six Ishihara colour palettes which change to match the colourblind mode, and strength, that you desire. Let me demonstrate:

It show a great level of awareness of the disability, especially with the colourblind strength slider. The only trouble is, as I indicated earlier, that you don’t get any context for how the changes will affect things in-game itself. Having only played a handful of rounds a few weeks ago, I can’t for the life of me remember what the game was like before I played around with the settings. Maybe the grass is greener now? You can see what the game looks like for me in the videos I took earlier today:

I applaud Epic Games’ effort, as in all honesty, I have all but given up on looking to see if games include anything for those of us who suffer. FIFA is an interesting one, the ball isn’t always visible to me, but by playing around with teams’ combinations of home, away and third strips, I can normally find something which will let me play the game without too much trouble. A fine example of catering to us colourblind folk is Battlefield 1. It has options for the three main flavours of colourblindness, and a custom colour picker. More importantly, it shows you how the change will impact the game for you by changing the team, squad and enemy colour indicators. Interestingly enough, while in Battlefield 1, I get along find without using the filters, in older Battlefield games, it has proven to be a struggle.

I think more needs to be done for those of us who suffer with colourblindness though. In The Witcher 3, trying to follow tracks, or scents, is nigh on impossible outside of a city, while puzzle games have long frustrated me. Dan Griliopoulos wrote a very good piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun back in 2010, and is a must read for those who want to understand what we go through when trying to play games.