I see! I mentioned that because the person you were replying to was replying to that perspective. People were reducing the hack to that possibility of something "poser" or "unworthy" etc, and that commenter (Tzelanit) were pointing how sad is the fact they weren't able to consider different realities/necessities.
You say you know for a fact this or that, and I could also say that I know for a fact that "the truth is actually the opposite based on a few PwD I've heard etc", but I won't go in that direction because I think I can't say anything in the name of a social group I'm not in. What I'd say again, is that this is only an option. I don't think that who made this hack, the game journalists you mentioned and Tzelanit would believe that any PwD
should only play the "accessible versions" of any game. It's not about "that games
have to handhold them the entire way through in order to be accessible", but, instead, that games could
have a option to handhold anybody if they feel they need it. In case they decide to deal with their interests or necessities via this hack proposal, it's fine. It they decide to deal with it by other means, fine as well.
(Of course no company should try to seek to cover every possible interest/necessity in the world and the creators artistic visions are important to be respected in the original games, but if somebody in the community wanted to use their time to make a optional mod like this... great, it just adds up!)
That's were I'd completely disagree with your perspective. I believe you are closed in a single approach to video games, which is not the only possible one. Video games are an interactive media, which means the player is a co-author of every meaningful thing that happens in a game. The designers can put all they want and try to control the experience as much as possible, but the meanings will only exist, advance and "complete" itself in a meeting with the player's inputs (not only of command buttons of course, but interpretations, willingness and all that). So there's no correct way to play anything. There's the suggested way, but that's at most only half the way.
That means the "rewards" are not limited to what the game designers initially planned as experience, and nobody would be "lazy" just because they disagree with the initial plans for what and how things could be done in a game.
"If you are not interested in that X thing, than you should just play something else". What if I'm interested in every other A B C D E .... Z things of that game, but not the X? Why
should I play something else if I was interested, for example, in the specific music of
that game, the way it was recorded/programmed/sounded_in_that_hardware? Oh then I should buy the OST and listen to it alone? But wouldn't I be lazy if I listen to the end credits song, or to a boss fight victory fanfare, without actually beat that boss and that game? Wouldn't I be accessing a reward asset without deserving it? And what about the graphics? The art direction? The feeling of the animations when we are moving a character? It can go on. Other games are other games, and a person can be interested in specific aspects of a specific game without being interested in the "main characteristic" expected by designers and by other players who created affection to that characteristic.
Taking me for example, I don't care at all about the challenge aspect of 99% games I play. Unless I'm completely involved with the narrative, absolutely immersed in the place of that character first (which is rare), pressing buttons to solve artificial problems means absolutely nothing to me. So I use tons of save states and rewind playing almost every retro game nowadays, because my interests are now in 47242420 other aspects expressed in this media/art form, and thanks to tools like these I have options of how to access the aspects I'm interested in. It's not lazyness, it's non-interest in some parts of it. Who's saying The Legend of Zelda is "all about exploring" is you, not me. And I wouldn't be wrong for finding different meanings in it than the ones you found or the designers would desire me to.
That's when your quote,
gets suspicious to me. I still think you're not coming from the perspective you mentioned, but I wonder if not from a similar one, more or less like "people who relate to this game in different way than the one I (or the majority of the fans) understand as the valuable one shouldn't play this at all".
Playing a hack like this is already "playing something else", you see? The original Zelda is there. The possibility of a experience similar to the ones you or me had is still there, accessible as well to new people. It made sense the way it was when we played it, in our contexts, but it can be completely different to a person coming from a different context.
If one person identifies with the hack proposal and feels benefited by it (between the 840 downloads at RGT and 453 at RHDN), even though they didn't have at first that "original experience" that you or me could feel that is the most beneficent one, why should our feellings speak louder than theirs?
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