Monopoly Accessibility Spotlight

news.ubisoft.com:

Monopoly launches on September 26 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, Amazon Luna, and PC through Steam, Epic Games Store, and Ubisoft Connect. This edition brings the classic board game to life in new 3D ways, with players able to knock other tokens off the board, explore the 3D city (and spy on their opponents while they do it), and even flip the board when a round doesn't go their way.

In revamping Monopoly's digital gameplay, the development team wanted to ensure as many people could play the game as possible. To learn more about Monopoly's accessibility, we spoke to Maxime Ritter, Senior UI/UX Designer at Ubisoft.

What was your approach to accessibility on Monopoly?

Maxime Ritter: Monopoly was developed by an external studio called Engine Software, and we've worked with them on several games, including Monopoly Plus on Nintendo Switch and Monopoly Madness.

For this new Monopoly game, we really wanted to push the game accessibility further than any other Monopoly game we've released.  It was challenging given the constraints we were working with, like tight deadlines and limited resources for these features. Fortunately, Engine Software has experience with accessibility, so it was easier to plan our strategy early in the project. It was also important for us to look at previous Monopoly games to see what had been done before, what worked, and what could be improved, and to try to add more features where needed. We wanted to make this game more accessible than any Monopoly game we've previously released, and we're proud to say we've improved that aspect quite a bit!

Monopoly is a classic board game. Did making a digital board game accessible present any unique challenges?

MR: Working on a brand like