5 top first person shooter games of 2016 fail seizure safety guidelines test

None of the five video games picked by a Forbes reviewer as the year’s best first-person shooters meet safety guidelines for reducing the risk of visually triggered seizures.

The fast-moving, flashing images in these five games could provoke seizures in people whose seizures are triggered by visual stimuli, due to a sometimes hidden condition called photosensitive epilepsy. I tested image sequences from these popular games using software designed for checking the adherence of images sequences to the seizure reduction guidelines. All five failed:

Forbes’ Best 5 First-Person Shooter Games of 2016 all failed to adhere to guidelines for reducing seizures.

Game developers could — should — use this same technology to build products compliant with the guidelines! The application I used to test the games for compliance isn’t a consumer product; it’s intended for developers. Instead of building games that comply, many developers simply place seizure warnings on games and consoles. People with no history of seizures don’t pay much attention to seizure warnings, though. Why would they?

Reason #1 consumers don’t know they may be at risk 

This bright flash is seen during a DOOM image sequence that doesn’t meet seizure reduction guidelines.

Photosensitive epilepsy most often develops in adolescence and remains hidden until it’s activated by particular stimuli and circumstances. If earlier in life visual stimuli didn’t trigger an event, how does one know that’s no longer true?

According to one study, 74 percent of individuals with photosensitive epilepsy first learn they have the condition when they experience a seizure in the presence of flashing lights or another visual stimulus. This study was based on the histories of hundreds of children who had seizures during a 1997 Pokémon cartoon broadcast in Japan.

Sometimes the first seizure triggered by a video game can have life-changing consequences. A Navy pilot who played Oblivion, had a seizure that produced injuries and resulted in permanent loss of his flight clearance. Think of the medical testing he underwent before he was trained to fly–obviously his seizure vulnerability had not yet developed.

Reason #2 consumers don’t know about their risk

A problem sequence in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is created by the flicker effect of alternating background light in this scene.

Some seizures aren’t noticeable. This means that included in the 74 percent who (think they) never had a prior seizure, there are some people who may already be experiencing them without realizing it. Subtle seizures involving no body movement may not draw the attention of others nearby, either.

People with no history of seizures aren’t aware that undetected seizures exist and therefore may dismiss any unusual physical or mental sensations while gaming. If the seizure causes a loss of awareness for a few seconds, the person will not be “present” at that moment to recognize what’s happening or remember it later. For more on undetected seizures, see the section “Research shows people often don’t detect their own seizures” in this post.

Note that undetected seizures as well as more obvious events can bring on a range of disabling physical and cognitive after-effects and mood changes that can linger for days.

Reason #3

This screen capture from the Harding Flash and Pattern Analyzer, which I used to assess guidelines compliance, shows test results above the horizontal pass/fail line.

Not all video games violate the image safety guidelines. Even though video games typically carry seizure warnings, the warnings don’t reflect the seizure risk of any particular game. Unfortunately, consumers have no way of knowing which games are in compliance and which are not.

Let’s say you’re an informed consumer, aware that some games can pose a seizure risk and you’d prefer not to take that risk. You understand that a game with lots of bright flashing is more likely to be a problem, but you can’t really know whether a specific game that you want to play is more likely to trigger seizures. How can you play only games that meet guidelines and avoid only the noncompliant ones? (This is where the testing I can do can identify certain cases of noncompliance.)

Also…

• The vast majority (97 percent) of people diagnosed with conventional epilepsy can play video games without risking a seizure because their seizures aren’t triggered by visual effects. These people don’t want others questioning their fitness for gaming.
• Want to know more about how I test video games? About the image safety guidelines? Read here.
• For the record, Forbes states that opinions of contributing writers (such as this guy who picked the five games) are their own, not the magazine’s.

---