Here’s a thought: Make sure your game has the option to enable subtitles.
I consider myself pretty proficient at English. My spoken English is lacking in the accent department, I admit, but I understand the language quite well and I write it even better. Despite this, I still use subtitles on all my films and games. I find that I have a much harder time hearing what’s said in games than in most movies – the audio tends to be less meticulously balanced and timed, and often things will be exploding and guns will be firing while a character is trying to tell you something important.
A couple of recent games have succeeded in frustrating me with their lack of subtitles. Assassin’s Creed managed to make several long dialogue sequences completely incoherent to me by having the voice actors use more or less authentic generic middle-eastern accents and placing the characters in large rooms with terrible acoustics as if in a conscious effort to obscure the words even more. Stranglehold exclusively features characters with difficult accents, primarily Chinese or Cantonese or whatever it’s called, since it takes place in Hong Kong. Yun-Fat Chow (or is it Chow Yun-Fat? I can never remember) is a fine actor, but his English is terrible.
Bioshock is a good example that subtitles aren’t always as easy as they seem (in the Xbox version and the PC version prior to the latest patch, the subtitles were really badly timed to the audio), but if you design your dialogue system around it from the beginning, surely it’s not that much extra work – just make sure your writers are typing their lines into the game at the same time as they’re writing the script for your actors, or hire an intern to type them from the script into a spreadsheet or something. Almost no games are localized in the Nordic languages because publishers (correctly) believe most Scandinavians have a good grasp of English, but if you don’t include subtitles, you’re making it harder for us than it really needs to be.
And if you really want to go the extra mile and be a right champ, make sure you support closed captioning for the hearing impaired like Valve do. Just please seperate the two so those of us who like our English games with subtitles don’t have to put up with the silly [Explosions].
I usually watch my movies with english subtitles, so that I read what is being said, instead of an interpretation of it. Games not so much, I haven’t been playing very recent games but most of the games I play have crisp clear audio, luckily
Unfortunately there are lots of movies and games with subtitles that are quite different from the spoken words at times. Also it’s far from satisfiying when you have to read all the time while watching and hearing a movie. It distracts from the most important element of the medium. Personally I try to use the subtitles only in combination with the rewind-function when I really don’t understand a specific part without them. It breaks the atmosphere/immersion but luckily it doesn’t happen too often.
Once you get used to subtitles, you only really use ‘em as a guide. Mostly you watch the picture, but if you fail to catch a word, your automatically dart to the subtitles to see what you missed and then back to the picture. It takes a split second and you’d have to be damn unlucky to miss anything important in that time.
I use Danish subtitles when they’re available because I read them even faster than English, so they distract even less. Usually I can hear the audio when there’s a difference, no matter what language the subtitles are in. So sorry, you’re not gonna impress me by not using subtitles
“sorry, you’re not gonna impress me by not using subtitles
”
Um…yeah…damn. How about me using secret subtitles? Invisble ones?
But yeah… I guess one can get used to the subtitles. It’s not very aestetic to have them on overlapping the movie.
That’s the benefit of letterboxing on a 4:3 screen – the subtitles are below the picture
Apart from that, you’re right, but still – I’m used to it, I don’t mind. And yes, special secret subtitles would really impress me.
I also use subtitles on everything, moslty because im danish, and danish actors can’t speak clearly, that’s a huge problem in danish movies, also let us not forget the fact that Casper is deaf to most female voices
I have never experienced any problems with missing anything in a movie because I read subtitles, since your started learning Danish and watching English movies, you have learned to read them in split second.
In fight club, Brad Pitt was Edward Nortons brother, right?
You have trouble with female voices? That’s odd, most men are very good at paying attention to feminine voices.
And yes. Yes he was.
…right! lol
Yeah, that’s a huge problem, Lisa from our High School class, when she speaked I only picked up about half the words she said. That’s maybe why she doesn’t answer my text messages…
Bioshock really bugged me with the subtitles. I tend to have them on for the same reasons you said. Too much chance of random explosions and gun fire covering up something important or funny or whatever. Bioshock was astonishingly bad and how it got through testing (esspecially on the Xbox as I know the guys who do Europe’s Functional Testing who really should have picked up on it).
I have friends who have subtitles on on films, but tbh I think thats just being lazy.
Actually, I read very recently that men somehow have a natural resistance against female voices, it’s easier to ignore them than to actually try to understand what they are saying.
Strangely enough I have the same problem with all voices, but that can be attributed to my lack of interest in the person saying something.
I like english subtitles, because actors somehow always make sure that you only JUST can’t understand what they’re saying. This problem is hugely alleviated by watching a german dub, because they record their lines crisp clear in a studio and are mostly easier to follow than the english originals.
I disable subtitles when I can get away with it (and even sometimes when I really shouldn’t, there’s always that line you can’t seem to hear for whatever reason) not because I want to test my hearing so much as it seems to take away a small degree of immersion factor for me in a lot of things (not if the game/movie is letterboxed though, or at least that’s why I think I’m fine with DX). I’m also pretty ADD, so my eye is usually drawn to subtitles even when I have no reason to read them.
EER: I gotta admit there are few things I find more terrible than dubbing. Especially German dubbing. I saw Batman Forever in Austria once, with German voices. It was frightening beyond all reason! Never again. I also by far prefer to watch Japanese films in the original language with English subs (because they’re never available with Danish subs, but that’s okay).
NVS: How did you feel about Mass Effect’s subtitles? They’re right on top of the picture and everything.
Oh, and Daniel: As far as I heard the subtitle timing in Bioshock was fixed in the latest patch, but yeah they bugged the hell out of me too
Bioshock has excellent German dubs. I actually like them better than the original ones. That was also the case with SS2 but they’re both exceptional in that department. As for Batman and other movies: I think it’s just a matter of how used you are to voices (that usually also get used for other movies with the same actor). And of course it sounds strange when something is dubbed in a language you don’t hear often. As native speaker I actually liked the German version of Batman Forever but in general I think it’s better to watch a movie with it’s original voices since that is how it was intended from the director. I am simply too lazy to try it with every movie/game/book and sometimes I really like the dubbings way better.
Jonas I only tried subtitles in Mass Effect subtitles like… once. I definitely found them distracting but I didn’t try to get used to them I guess.
Fox: When I was a kid of course I saw all the cartoons and children’s movies with Danish dub, they’re generally pretty good at matching voices to the characters over here, but as soon as I was old enough to read the subs, I stopped watching dubbed films. We only dub children’s films and I definitely prefer to hear the original actors’ voices. Even if it means they don’t always speak clearly.
I think dubbing is more acceptable on cartoons and in games, but I still prefer the original voices by far.
NVS: Yeah I reckoned you would’ve turned it off then. To be honest I was a bit annoyed by the placement myself for a while, but I got used to it. Of course if you can understand everything they say, there’s no need to get used to it in the first place. I prefer letterboxing like in Deus ex or most Bioware or Obsidian games.
How about just the ability to turn them on and off with a single controller button. I like to have subtitles on certain games as well especially when they are going over important details but they are extremely annoying most other times. How hard is a subtitles button like on a tv remote to incorportate on a controller
Well sure, if you happen to have a controller button to spare, but a lot of games pack those bastards pretty tightly with functionality