Five tricks required for every modern game.

1. Add spider sense. Ever game needs to have a button that makes the world monochrome and highlights everything the player can interact with.

2. Dora the Explorer. Every modern game requires a character who talks constantly and narrates everything going on. Don't let your players solve puzzles themselves, instead put a bitch in their ear telling them exactly where to go and what to do. If your player dares to explore off the main path, make sure to nag them constantly so that's its too annoying to go anywhere but forward. And if you don't have another character in budget, just make the main player character into a schizophrenic who talks to himself constantly.

3. Yellow Paint. Add decals guiding the player forward, could be signs or you could design an elegant scene to show the way, but it's cheaper to just add yellow paint on the objects, walls, floors and ledges.

4. Make the entire game into a tutorial by having controls on the screen constantly. It doesn't matter if they've played for 1000hrs, make sure you stamp "Press X to Open" in the center of the screen whenever they approach a door. Make sure to have the main objective in bold. And don't expect your players to remember the common controls either, keep them on the screen at all times. "Move: (L) - Look: (R) - Jump: (A)"

5. Abolish any remaining challenge. After highlighting things through walls, placing paint showing where to go, adding an annoying character telling exactly what to do, and having the UI forever display controls and objective; there will STILL be players unable to beat your challenge / puzzle / obstacle. Instead of letting them play the game normally, just warp them forward if they spend too long. Make failure impossible.

How do these tricks make money? It comes down to one word: ACCESSIBILITY

1. Spidy sense mode is in every game to appease the colorblind. Some gamedevs will add a colorblind mode, but it's easier to copy the spider sense script into every game. Who cares if it makes no sense or completely breaks the lore!

2. Adding Dora the Explorer to nag your player is to appease the even more visually impaired. The nearly blind. They can't see what's going on so they need a narrator.

3. Like spidersense to appease the colorblind and the narrator trick is to appease those who are even more visually impaired, yellow paint is to appease the deaf. They can't hear anything, they can't even hear Dora, so all audible queues must also have corresponding visual queues.

4. The cluttered UI is to appease the gamers with cognitive impairment. These are the people who have trouble with memory or attention. So just treat all your players like dementia patients and it'll be fine.

5. And the last group we must make the game accessible to, after we have appeased the blind, the deaf, and the ADHD folk; is the dumb folk. That's right, expect your players to be retarded and cater your game towards retards. Many of your players will be dimwitted idiots who are going to return the game if they can't beat the first few levels.

Where's my money??

By making your game accessible, you will immediately gain millions of potential customers. Colorblindness affects 8% of men and 0.5% of women. And about 28% of people have some sort of vision impairment but are not quite blind. About 5% of the population is hearing impaired, but most (350m/430m) are elderly so it's more like 1.4% for gamers. About 2% of people have memory disorders, 0.7% dementia and 1.3% MCI (mild cognitive impairment). Self reports of memory and attention problems is 9.7% for ages 18-39 which is a 90% increase from the 2013 report of 5.1%. And with the spread of the internet into the third world, the number of low IQ players has risen rapidly and is still increasing.

It's a no-brainer at this point. You alienate those customers by not making your game into generic modern garbage. If your game doesn't have the accessibility tag on Steam, it's won't be considered by millions of potential customers.

Bonus tip: Have your main character be androgynous and hope that you get a letter from sweetbaby offering you $$$ to make the character and storyline gay. Cha-ching!