What are some things that just get under your skin about games?
For me, it’s games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don’t all work. If I can’t rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.
And on console, where I can’t refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can’t play.
Excessive reliance on audio recordings and written text for storytelling / world building. Oh look another game where I’m alone in this world and I have to listen to a ton of audio recordings or collect snippets of text throughout the entire game to learn anything about this world and what happened to it!
If anything, let it be audio, not text, I’m tired of reading through often very subpar writing, I just glaze over it. Better yet, have actual (skippable) voice actors read any text out loud. Ideally, weave all that info into the game’s main storyline or side quests, and have it communicated to the player via interesting NPCs. Also, use environmental storytelling more than info-dumps. Show, don’t tell.
Text/in-world notes/memos/books and found audio recordings have a place but don’t let that be the main way of learning about the world or my place in it.
I understand it’s also a budget issue, so I’ll cut indie games some slack.
I’d prefer text over audio, so long as I can skip the text when I am done reading. (Grr argh to the games that have both, but won’t let me skip because the NPC isn’t done speaking.)
Being able to choose either as the primary information delivery would be fantastic.
True, reading is faster. Narrating I find more pleasant, more engaging if done well. But that’s personal opinion. So having an option would be great. And yes to making dialogues or narration skippable. I think most games do that nowadays. To be honest, if I am really immersed and interested and the voice acting is top notch I may not skip at all. But that should be left to the player to decide.
I agree on everything except the audio over text bit. If it has to be anything, let it be text. Let me be able to skim it if I want, don’t make me sit through an audio file to get background lore.
If it isn’t gonna be presented through the actual storytelling of the gameplay, put it in a text file.
Yeah I get it, but I like having the option of having a voice actor narrate the text to me rather than having to read everything. Especially as I mostly game on a TV that was not meant for reading.
Audio processing disorder (AuADHD) so being narrated at is pretty much white noise for me; so can’t relate.
Huh, never heard of this before. Does it affect music perception too?
Not really. It’s less to do with hearing/perception and more how the human brain processes regular speech; neurodivergent people, like those with ADHD and/or autism like myself, process these things differently.
The brain processes singing differently than regular speech and the issue with audio processing disorder is that how we process regular speech makes it hard for us to hold conversation. Like I need people to repeat things a few times occasionally and if I’m not paying direct attention to the person speaking then voices are basically like “whomp-whomp” from Peanuts, so if someone calls for me while I’m doing something I straight up won’t know I’m being called for.
So needing to listen to an audio log takes forever cause I need to replay it a few times to fully process the words being spoken. Especially if they have audio effects like distortion added over the voice.
I see. Happens to me too that I lose focus while listening to an audio recording. But not to the extent you describe. Have always had difficulty separating voices from background noise though, like when a few people talk in parallel or when loud music is playing in the background. I don’t remember what that’s called, but I remember a long time ago reading that it’s a thing. Doesn’t affect my gaming much though if at all. Anyway I’m always interested in things having to do with auditory perception, thanks for sharing.
For me it’s too much sound input makes everything resemble the Peanuts adults talking.
One person talking is ok, two people talking is harder, three is pure white noise.
Drop music or environmental sounds on top of it and I can’t understand a damned thing.
That’s normal. The brain isn’t able to process multiple sources at the same time, it has to bounce around and eventually too many inputs means nothing gets processed.
For those with APD, even a single input is a struggle.
(As a note, I do have APD)
I like the way bioshock did it
I like the way bioshock did a lot of things (1 & 2, anyways)