I’ve been a video gamer for over 20 years, starting out with classics such as Diablo I, Diablo II, Grim Fandango and Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. While I did not always game as much, I’ve been getting back into gaming for the past couple of years with games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Valheim, Wasteland 3, etc. However, I noticed that I’m not as young as I used to be. 20 years ago, I didn’t really have issues playing video games, but these days, the number of games that I can actually play has become somewhat limited for me due to two main issues that I have with video games: dark mode, and first person perspective. In this post I will talk about dark mode, while in my next post I will write about my issues with nausea when gaming.

I’m one of those few people who never use dark mode, which (much to my annoyance) seems to be becoming the standard on many operating systems, and has been the standard in gaming since pretty much forever. When I try to read text in dark mode, after only a few lines, my vision will start to flutter with the imprint of these lines on my eyes, and if really bad cases it can even make me dizzy. I’m more susceptible to this due to my higher risk of migraines, which I get around 1-3 times a month. Due to this, I also sometimes suffer from palinopsia more than the average person. While it’s normal to sometimes see an imprint of what you saw in front of your eyes, for me it’s sometimes extreme and lasts up to a few minutes, especially, for example, when driving at night—or when reading text in dark mode.

The argument that dark mode is better for your eyes has been debunked by scientists anyway, as elaborated in a number of different articles at Vice, Wired, and Medium. Especially for people with astigmatism, it’s actually worse, and what most people have judged as making light mode worse for eye strain, actually comes from the blue light emitted from screens, not from light mode. I’ve been using “night light” filters with warm colors on all of my devices, all day long for years now to combat eye strain1.

So what does this mean for video games? While most operating systems and applications thankfully allow users to switch between dark mode and light mode, video games usually do not have such accessibility features. The vast majority of video games value aesthetics over accessibility, and for them dark mode is the only choice, because obviously that’s what gamers want, right? Well, unfortunately this gamer had to stop playing a few games because they did not offer alternatives to dark mode. One such game was Pillars of Eternity, which is supposedly one of the best CRPGs out there, which is one of my favorite genres. Well unfortunately most of the game happens in big chunks of dark mode text which you have no choice but to read, because there’s no voice acting for it like for example in Divinity: Original Sin. For this reason, I stopped playing Pillars of Eternity (but I was able to play Divinity: Original Sin2 by relying on the narrator instead of on reading the texts).

Other parts of the game happen in the parchment style light mode, which is must better, but still not enough for me to really be able to enjoy the game. Dark mode is not only an issue for me in smaller games like these, but also in most AAA games. For example Horizon: Zero Dawn / Forbidden West also make extensive use of dark mode in the little text bits that you can find allover the world, which can get straining for me to read (which is why usually I just speed read them instead of really appreciating the little story details they add).

To summarize, I wish that video games would make less use of dark mode, or find other ways to make games more accessible to gamers with issues like me. Offering an option to turn on light mode, or offering an option to have text read out to the player, would go a long way to making games more accessible.

If you’re curious to learn about other accessibility issues with video games, check back my post on nausea when gaming 🙂