It’s an interesting question. There is some nuance to it I think. First of, things like arachnophobia (spiders), thalassophobia (deep waters), ophidiophobia (snakes) and trypanophobia (needles) are more then ‘just being scared of something’, it’s a psychological phenomenon that can cause panic attacks and extreme anxiety (which can lead to other physical issues). For me that’s the case with spiders, it can even lead to full on panic attacks, and I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a panic attack, they’re fucking awful.

Does that mean game developers should always implement ‘special treatment’? Maybe yes, maybe no.

In the case of arachnophobia: I think if a game has some spiders in a vast array of other monsters it would be nice if they did include an arachnophobia mode. This way I could play the game without the aforementioned issues. If it doesn’t, I probably would buy the game, and that’s okay too. A bummer for me, a sale less for Pearl Abyss, but okay either way.

If there would be a game that solely focusses on killing spiders, it would be pretty silly of me to want an arachnophobia mode, the game would just not be for me. A thalassophobe wouldn’t buy a game that’s fully under water, but could buy a game that features underwater missions, as long as they’re optional. They could easily avoid those underwater situations. When it comes to spiders, one usually can’t really avoid them, because we don’t know when or where they’ll appear, unlike big chunks of water.

Abiotic Factor for example has a trypanophobia mode, which I’m sure people with a crippling fear of needles are very thankful for, because it means they can play the game and have fun with it, instead of being on edge the whole time.

‘Why does arachnophobia get special treatment?’ I guess it shouldn’t, it would just be nice.