The Library Has Entered the Game

Apr 24, 2025

The Library has Entered the Game: how libraries can create more accessible and diverse gaming collections and services

By: Michelle Goodridge, MA MLIS

Libraries have a unique opportunity to provide informed access to gaming materials to their patrons and have been for quite some time. One area that could be expanded is the area of providing more accessible gaming collections, programs and services. Most of the research surrounding gaming collections in libraries focuses on creation and maintenance, rather than providing advisory services and a focus on providing services to those with accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion needs. 

Digital Industry Background

Overall, the gaming industry has been inconsistent with adopting and employing accessibility into the design process. Nintendo was the first to release an adaptive controller in the 1980s. The controller was mail in only and not widely advertised for $120 USD, but it allowed users to play hands free. Accessibility game advocate Laura Dayle does an excellent job looking at this specific controller in her blog. That was the only commercially available adaptive controller until Microsoft released theirs in May 2018. The gap in the market for adaptive controllers is still largely filled by non-proprietary companies and they can be incredibly costly. Digital games have been slow to standardize accessibility features. While some standalone games have done creative things such as Celeste(2018) having features to make players invincible and slow down gameplay, there is still no consistency. Many newer releases now from AAA studios do include colour-blind mode, the ability to change text and sound cues, and even some unique ones like in Monster Hunter Wilds(2025) where you can turn on arachnophobia mode which eliminates spider-like creatures from the game. There are no enforced standards outside of the FCC requiring game communication between players be accessible as of 2015. A collaborative effort in 2012 by some studios to create a accessibility guideline garnered attention from the FCC in 2016, but it is not required. 

Tabletop Industry Background

For tabletop games, the accessibility landscape is even more varied with no official frameworks for accessible design. The folks at Meeple Like Us have done a lot of work to breakdown accessibility in tabletop games into key categories including socioeconomic, physical, visual, emotional, and cognitive. Michael Heron who spear-headed this work even wrote a book on Tabletop Game Accessibility. Their website does an excellent job of rating games on their accessibility and includes a recommender so folks can search for games with specific accessibility ratings.  This is an excellent resource for libraries to use when cataloguing or providing reference services to their patrons when they are looking for games to play, but the content on the site is maintained by volunteers and cannot keep up with the thousands of tabletop titles released every year. 

Diversity in the Gaming Industry

The landscape is further complicated by a lack of diversity in the portrayal of characters. In 2018, Tanya Pobuda conducted a survey looking at gender and racial representations in the top 200 board games listed on BoardGameGeek and sadly noted the prevalence of white, male designers and white male characters in board games that is not in keeping with actual population demographics. Similarly, a 2021 IGDA report on diversity noted that approximately 78% of individuals employed in the video game industry are white. Further, in a study analyzing the top 100 video game releases between 2017-2021 noted that 79.2% of main playable characters were male and 54.2% were white male. Some users feel less connected to games if they cannot see themselves represented in play – this is like other forms of media such as television and movies where consumers are asking for more diversity in what they engage with. 

So what does this mean for libraries? Although there is no standardization in design, libraries are in a unique position where we can provide more accessible services and collect more diverse and accessible games for our patrons. By providing these services we are also helping with the very real economic hurdle to access some of these somewhat costly materials we can provide to our users. Examples of areas in which libraries can directly contribute to this include;

1. Having gaming collections to provide access – by providing this type of collection to our users, we are helping with the economic barrier to access. This could include providing the necessary hardware (eg. Gaming consoles) and purchasing more expensive titles

2. Creating more robust cataloguing records and increasing discoverability – the cataloguing of games in existing systems (eg. MARC, LC, Dewey) are not always the most discoverable or intuitive ways to show our users we have these collections. By creating standalone pages or content on our websites or in our physical spaces to encourage discovery we will increase engagement. We also can explore ways to include accessibility notes in our records and training for staff on how to advise users who are looking for these features

3. Purchasing assistive or adaptive controllers when possible – these can be expensive and only certain systems have them, but by making them available we are increasing access to digital games for a specific type of user.

4. Purchasing games in different formats and languages – many games are published in different languages and some even have more accessible versions such as large text or Braille. The more options there are for play, the more users can engage with the collection

5. Purchasing digital games in hard copy rather than digital downloads – this increases the ability to circulate the items and lowers the maintenance of having consoles or systems with games preloaded onto them for the library

6. Using the tools that are available to us – checking in with Meeple Like Us for game accessibility ratings, using websites to check for colourblindness, having discussions around game accessibility and libraries, and reading blogs to stay current such as Access-Ability

7. Collect indie titles and games with more diversity – while big studios and board game publishers do have a large share in the market, there is a growing space for smaller publishers and studios who have more diverse content. One example is the dissertation work of Candie Tanaka to highlight indigenous video games or Pe Metawe games who promote indigenous made tabletop games which allows libraries to find and collect content in areas outside of mainstream releases

8. Running programs with accessibility in mind – highlight the collections, think of ways to incorporate multi-generational interaction, use games to help with second-language learning. The opportunities are endless and there has been a lot of good work done in this area 

Hopefully this provided you with an overview of the current landscape and ways in which libraries can start to play a more active role in supporting accessibility in gaming. If you are curious about games in libraries, looking for program ideas or want a reference to aid you while you build your collection, I will shamelessly point you towards my book, Librarians Guide to Games and Gamers available through Bloomsbury. 

Michelle Goodridge, MA MLIS

Head, User and Access Services

Liaison Librarian, Game Design and Development

Wilfrid Laurier University Library  

mgoodridge@wlu.ca