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13. Always need to be within the safe caption area
While this is
blatantly a "common sense" point, I have seen some games where the
bottom part of a subtitle has actually been cut off due to being outside the
safe-zone. We need to make sure the positioning is always spot-on -- even on
smaller televisions.
14. Make sure the subtitles matches the speech
This is a guideline
actually helps those people who are actually not deaf.
For players who are
hard of hearing, the subtitles are used more as a reinforcement of what is
being said. When they can hear the
conversation on the screen but the subtitles don't match what is being said
perfectly, then this can be extremely annoying and can make it more difficult
to read.
As a result of this,
the subtitles should match the spoken dialog word for word.
15. Careful when using unusual speech -- like slang
This actually works
both ways, for both the spoken words and the subtitles.
Slang and idioms are
different all over the world, and are especially prevalent in the English
language. For example, would many people understand what the meaning of "to
chew the fat"? Or even a simple thing such as "Dump the body in the
boot"? Here boot is British English for American English "trunk".
Now, if the game is
being released predominately in a single territory, then it may not be so bad.
However, this is often not the case, and while the use of slang is great for
keeping the dialog current, we just need to ensure that players understand what
is being said.
16. Ensure the quality is perfect
This may seem like one
of those "no brainer" things but it is important to ensure that the
spelling and grammar are perfect, as those who rely heavily on the subtitles
will need this to ensure they are able to correctly read the words in the
correct context.
Conclusion
While a number of
these points may appear to be common sense, it is alarming to see how often
they are not adhered to, which results in a somewhat broken user experience.
A good way to look at this
article is as a way for it to serve as a sort of checklist for developers when
they incorporate subtitles into their games. It is all too easy to think that
you've covered everything when you work with something every day, but in
reality there will always have been one or two things which have been overlooked.
These guidelines can be followed to determine that what has been implemented
meets the required standard.
The other thing to
note is that having subtitles in games should not be one of those things which
are added in "because everyone else is doing so" or at the "last
minute" but instead as something which can enhance the player experience;
be they deaf, hard of hearing, or have perfect hearing. If your game has heavy
dialogue, then the quality needs to reflect the rest of the game.
Today we are trying to
create games that branch out into an ever-increasing audience. As more people
embrace video games, more people with specific disabilities will also be part
of this audience. By ensuring we are trying our best to cater for everyone, our
hopes that even more people will be able to enjoy what games have been offering
to millions of people already can be realized.
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Valve's Half-Life 2 is the undisputed leader for subtitles - every single person who has to implement subtitles in their game should play that game with subtitles on and learn!
I am a close captioning advocate, designed the Doom3[CC] mod, which adds captions for dialog, music and sound effects. If anyone wants to see many of the guidelines Gareth suggests put into action please view this video of my mod in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLyKbCjlog
I never knew of Gareth before reading this article, but we follow many of the same guidelines. Just goes to show how good and common sense they are I think.
Note: Subtitles cover only dialog, while closed captions cover the full spectrum of sound, including dialog, music and sound effects.
In games, sound effects are just as important, if not more so than subtitles because they can communicate vital feedback for players.
Keep up the good work Gareth.
I'd like to add one point: use subtitles rather than replacing / redubbing the spoken dialogue, including any movie cut scenes within the game. This is my biggest complaint; there's simply no need to redub in other languages, or at least no need to ONLY offer redubbed voices (not with the technology and space we've had since the late 1990s anyway). Even if the original acting is "bad" I'd prefer hearing the original, thank you. I'm particularly annoyed when Japanese games have their voices redubbed, of course, but this point applies to any language.
Film and TV have finally gotten onto the subtitle bandwagon but it's taken a very long time for them to do so. Imported films, including specific genres such as Japanese anime, have learned good and bad methods of subtitling over the years, and Hollywood and other film bastions have finally made subtitling more the rule than the exception. It would be better for the gaming industry to be much more proactive about this issue.
One example of poor subtitles... Bioshock. (sigh) There's no excuse for such a shoddy job on timing. There's plenty of people out of work (like me) who would be very happy to edit and time subtitles for companies.
We've added CC to our new games (the older ones had subtitles) precisely because of on-point information such as you present here, and from some very useful guidance from Reid Kimball, above.
John Bannick
CTO
7-128 Software
First, I am not a native english speaker, for a long time I could only read and write english, never hear (because I never heard most of the words, thus I have no idea of how they sound like, and in fact there are several words that I still do not heard), thus games without subtitles screwed me, since I had to hear the cut-scene like 3 or 4 times before getting what word was that the person was saying, but since most of the games has no way to replay cut-scenes (Sands of Time I am looking to you... that do not has subtitles too...) I was pretty much lost in the storyline, something sad, since I enjoy VG stories...
After that problem was not a major program anymore, I have another problem: even in my own langauge, sometimes if there are more sounds than the spoken words, my brain fail to understand (ie: I hear everything perfectly, I am not deaf, it is like a auditive dyslexia to heard words instead of written words), and some games are particularly guild of having characters with bizarre accents, or wall of sound in the middle of conversations, and no cut-scenes.
And yes, Mass Effect button was evil... In fact MOST RPGs still use the SAME button to skip dialog (spoken, subtitled or only textual CRPG-like), and to initiate a dialog...
But any game should take care for that sort of unwanted actions to happen, like games that the camera suddenly inverts itself so fast that you get stuck in a infinite loop of going back and forth (with the camera switching too) with the only way to this not happen was take a action that do not need the button pressed for the character cross the line (like jumping or rolling), and such are really common in 3D games (Sands of Time, I am looking to you again, the multiple-door level... ow, and that one was also guilty of the soluting being hearing a certain sound in a certain place, and I was playing with my parents sleeping and turned off sounds, since the game had a tendency of have sound bugs that made sounds in the maximum volume sometimes... Since it had no closed captioning, I had to expend 1 hour to solve that by pure trial and error...)
It was still a bogus design decision though.
Another annoyance was that if you tried to press the skip button near the end of a line of dialog, you might end up accidentally pressing it right after the start of the next line instead. They should have implemented a short window at the beginning of each dialogue line (perhaps 400 ms) during which, if the previous line of dialog finished playing normally (i.e. it wasn't skipped), then the first skip button press during the window would do nothing. That would solve the problem, without preventing people from zipping through dialogue they had heard before.
One of the new games which I find really handles subtitles and cut-scenes very well is Fable 2. Here the user is able to hold down the A button to skip scenes. This is actually very useful because it can help minimise accidental pressing due to button mashing but also give the user control to skip the entire scene.
While I think close-captioning is a good start to inform hearing-impaired players of actions within the game, it inherently a). lacks positionality, and b). can take up lots of screen real estate. Much of this information can be relayed to the player through the interface. Our Project Lead has pointed out Metal Gear Solid 4's threat radar as a good example of a visual- based closed captioning system, where a circle around the player contains peaks of varying sizes based on threats near the player. If there's a large spike behind the player, they'll know they need to turn around as an enemy (or other POI) is there. The possibilities for extending this scheme to transmit other information to the player are immense. Even closed-captioning could be used to communicate positioning data, and that's really the point: to give hearing impaired players the chance to experience the game as closely as we envision for all players.
Our company has developed a technology that can also help both hearing and sight sensitive individuals get back another dimension to their game playing through the additon of Motion. We have created a method of adding motion to games that allows the player to experience the subtle and not so subtle pitch, roll, heave, and intelligent vibrations produced by the game, to get you right inside the action of the game, as if you're really there. In essence, they will be able to feel the effects within the game, instead of having to hear them.
We are very excited about what this new tehcnology to can bring to the gaming experience. Check out our Web site for more details, or to find out how we do it.
The brain process written information slower then oral information (this is why professional TV or movie captioning adapt and shorten lines - keeping main emotions) whereas according to Sony, Microsoft and Sony TRC/TCR, subtitles must match audio a 100%. They should modify their guidelines so we can have something both legible and practical.
More often than not, game subtitle systems are last minute patch-ups (subtitle plays as long as its associated audio file plays) both in terms of tech and layout design. We need to design systems earlier (preproduction).
Last but not least, the polyphony issue: most games use a wide set of AI lines that can potentially play simultaneously; depending on sound engine you can prioritize which lines will play over others. This needs to be accounted for in caption as well, unless you're planning to end up with a lot of on screen text overlapping.
Also check that your font supports all localized languages diacritical characters and have the UI designer think early about subtitle design so it looks good.