Subtitles Are Changing, Don't Be Left Behind

[Music] hello my name is Ian I'm an accessibility specialist and I'm here to talk to you about subtitles and I'm gonna start with a little bit of audience participation because I know everybody loves that so I'd like to see a show of hands of how many of you played with subtitles turned on that's that's a healthy slow to the ground Emma Ashley tallies up with usage data there's a game a few of you might heard of called Assassin's Creed origins Assassin's Creed origins actually tracked usage data on how many of their players played with subtitles turned on and it was average across all platforms just over 60% of their players so this is have all kinds of reasons I mean I know there's at least two people in the audience here who are deaf or hard F and the hard of hearing I bet there are a lot of people who aren't as well people your subtitles because they're playing in a noisy room because they're playing

on low quality audio hardware because audio mixes and games are unpredictable you never know when there's going to be an explosion at the same time is important exposition also because your baby's asleep the only chance he gets to play is when your babies are sleeping you read them on the way come up so you play on me there's all kinds of reasons why people use subtitles so they can have a really really profound impact on how enjoyable the experience of your game is for most of your players so obviously justifies doing good job of them but nobody does there are no good subtitles in the games industry and I do you mean in all of your games so Who am I to be here judging your games I'm sure there's people for the in defensive right I probably haven't even well I may not played you again but I'm actually not talking from my perspective I am quoting gamers so this is a selection of quotes just from one single neogaf thread

so most gaming subtitles are ass I think he heard remedy so was it people complaining about well the compelling book stuff like this so there is going to be quite a bit of this in this presentation there are going to be quite a few examples of games that are doing thing I'm not doing things so well I'm not going to name these games even if you do recognize them even if they are a game you worked on I don't want to do anyone down at all you know there's reasons there's there's production issues there's lack of awareness if you're doing this kind of stuff you're not a bad person at all and just kind of give you some information so you can do better a feature so if this is the kind of things people complaining about there's there's three main issues above all else that people complain about its size contrast amount of text that's on the screen it's really really not rocket science to soil this is this an example of more what you should be aiming for as

a base level so you can see here there's a clear easy to write easy to read font there isn't too much text on the screen it's easy to distinguish from the background and the reason why I said as a base level is because there's actually different use cases for subtitles right so some people are deaf I need to understand every single word that's on the screen and leave them to be as clear and obvious as possible other end of the spectrum people who just have subtitles on to glance at occasionally just in case like I said earlier an explosion goes off in the middle of some exposition he won the subtitles to be really unnoticeable until that moment they glanced at them so much they each one of these examples is the preferred approach for a certain group which gives you a bit of a problem right which one do you choose well the joy of digital media including games is you don't have to choose you can just provide options and let people choose themselves so as I go through

these practices keep that in mind to the principle of options I'm going to revisit the principle of options at the end as well so I'll give the move on to practices now there's a whole bunch of good practices you can use a lot of these are just from other industries you know from like TV and film we've been doing this stuff for decades and people have been talking about these good practices in the games industry for a long time so why am I here now in 2019 talking to you about this stuff it's because the industry is changing it's because finally after all that advocacy where so many people CDs are starting to do this stuff subtitles are beginning to evolve from terrible to bad soon there'll be good seem to be great and when games like spider-man like assassin's creed's like shadow shadow the team Raider heaven which other team really like when big trip line n games

like that do stuff like this people notice other developers notice and copy them gamers notice and their expectations change so I'm sure Evans familiar with whoa and with Spyro it doesn't just apply to whether or not you got some titles they it goes into the fine details so when assassin's creed orange origins that i showed when that came out a couple years ago it had options for text size are the options for backgrounds that have options to speak a name it won awards because without fast water today metrics this comes out we actually for the community yeah cool it kind of does what we expect so experts hanks expectations change it changed quickly so i can guarantee you that if you're a starting work in the game now there are things that are not even seen in games yet that will be expected by the time the game launches so that's what i'm hoping from this that this is a good time to revisit all those principles and hopefully allow you to get a bit ahead of that curve and rather than fall victim to those changing expectations actually be the people setting these expectations so as you can

see three basics also some best practices and if we got time as well a couple of closing thoughts on some other related things basics number one size size obvious problem here and the thing is that kind of text size that can look entirely reasonable to you when you are developing on your nice big screen about foot away from your face even if people have got no kind of vision loss whatsoever if you're sat 10 feet from a 40 inch screen that's a very very different story so this is more what you should be aiming for this is from Falcone done there is actually size design too as well so again if you look outside to other industries if you look at Amazon's 10 foot UI guidelines if you look at China for subtitling guidelines this kind of stuff is already defined so this

is the figures work to at least 46 pixels at 1080p I'm sure there's people in the room here imagining some interesting discussions with art directors over including texts of that size but again options if something wants to have tiny tiny subtitles in their game let them let them design that but at least offer the option so that people who can't read that can bump it up like this so yeah basic number two contrasts again this is an obvious issue so there are a few techniques you can use to get around this so you could try putting an outline on the text to give it a drop shadow on the text but those approaches themselves have issues particularly for dyslexia so there's a lot of people who if there's some kind of imagery behind the text that interferes with letter shapes and makes it really difficult to read so if you

are forming outlines if you are offering drop shadows great but also offer something like this in spider-man so they have the option to turn on a black box behind it which has got letterboxing and ideally allow people to adjust the transparency of that as well basic number three the amount of text per subtitle and this relates to two things really the first one is the amount of text that is in a single line like this it also relates to the number of lines that are in a subtitle that is again it you can see from the reaction that these seems like obvious problems but they still appear and this is what she'd be aiming for instead so this is an example from the witness and you can see here as well as having a reasonable amount of text per line a reasonable number of lines it's also got a sensible line break in the middle that that texturing has been manually broken a

point that makes editorial sense and again from looking at other industry just looking slightly sideways other screen based industries he can finds guidelines to work too and this is what should be maximum of two lines per subtitle maybe three sometimes trying to avoid it though and the maximum of thirty eight characters per line so that's the basics those are the things that you really really have to be considering and you can see from those examples if you don't consider those things what you have really isn't subtitles they are not functional so next thing I talked about some good practices so this is the ways to go a bit above and beyond and me from beyond functional subtitles to actually usable subtitles enjoyable subtitles subtitles that are useful and pleasant to read and the first one is pack curacy make sure that your subtitles actually much what's being said you can't rely on your voice actors having perfectly stuck to the script and people really do notice and

you can guarantee as well as it being a painter using guarantee that every single typo there'll be some of the posting a screenshot of it correcting the typos in there you can look up examples from most of us if you really want to so yeah make sure the racket you really need to do a QA pass on your subtitle text to make sure all matches up second one comprehensive makes sure that everything is actually subtitled seems kind of obvious but often you see games where either the game plays subtitles in the cutscenes on or vice versa or a really really common one the opening cinematic isn't subtitles often that can be because the options turn on the subtitles isn't available to get to the option screen which doesn't pay until after the cutscene so based on the usage data I was talking earlier about earlier you know Assassin's Creed origins 60% of their players playing the subtitles

turned on the user's data actually supports having subtitles turned on by default but if you don't at least allow people the means of doing so like an infamous so then famous as seen as or just before the first person starts speaking the opening cinematic you get that little prompt to about people to turn them on number three central put your subtitles at the bottom in the middle not up the top not down at the bottom right so I don't mind using this example of Forza because actually John Knowles gave a talk on Monday highlighting the same thing and telling people don't do what we did so things our latest number four add them from the bottom this doesn't actually come up very often it came up here so in this example you can see there's two different people speaking actually with

indication of which speaker is which which is nice but in this game they were aiming at consistency so when each person spoke they tried to keep the position consistent so they tried to keep speaker two always at the bottom speaker one was at the top really really confuse people so generally speaking most of the time you'll only have one subtitle on the screen that's how most subtitle systems work if you don't if for some reason need to have lots on there like in the division two or way back in left for dead but you have lots of subtitles just keep scrolling them up from the bottom and looking top enough number five indicates who is speaking let us say this example from the start simply putting the name of the speaker on there and there's other games that have kind of variations on this sometimes showing the little portrait next to the name as well some games are

going back to the last example do it by using color to separate the speaker's color can be really preferential for some people it's an instant quick recognition but people use subtitles and though there's likely to be colorblind than anyone else so if you are taking this approach at least give people the options I have the written speaker names as well number six indicate direction this is something that is very very rarely seen in games but in other media it standard like if you watch the TV in the UK at least if you watch a TV programme on the BBC anytime there is a speaker he was out shot it shows a little arrow next to their name points in to their direction where they are an example of a game that does this is minecraft so you can see here that little arrow to the left and to the right to show you which direction something's in the Minecraft actually in

the early stage of the development they had a much more complex comprehensive approach than this they basically had like a 3d compass showing exactly where the sound effects were they actually took that out and stripped it back on the basis of competition they figured out that if people are playing online that level of information there's actually way way more accurate than we get from sound so they scaled it back a bit to basically make the amount of information you get through the text equivalent to what you get through stereo speakers but not every game strips it back like that and Division two has this and it's a little bit hard to see from the screenshot but Division two basically does exactly the same thing as the early prototype of Minecraft so their captions actually update to show you exactly where in 3d space they're coming from number seven give people enough time to read the subtitles so this on the

surface of it seems pretty straightforward don't have them flowing past really quickly but the reality of it is that people speak quickly you are going to be in situations where there is just loads of audio going on at the same time and then those circumstances meeting these guidelines can be tricky and what you need to resort to in those circumstances as editing the subtitles there editing the subtitles is something that shouldn't do unless it's a real last resort wherever possible it should always match exactly what's being spoken but in those circumstances where there's lots of stuff going on you can edit for example if someone's saying like no no no no no like either that down to just one though that kind of thing can just about get away with it's a bit of an art there are actually professional captioners who do this kind of stuff day-in day-out who know exactly how to do this stuff if you can hire one of those people amazing if you can't check out the BBC's

guidelines that's actually where these these guards themselves come from but they also have a ton of good information on exactly how to do all those tricky bits of editing and these they're guidelines and even just in general please check out these guidelines there's a ton of really really good stuff and like I said this is an industry that's been doing subtitling for decades there's a lot of good information behind this so please please read this this log is stuff he can take out that for your games number eights clear font this is where we started getting into into interesting discussions with art directors again about things like this so in this game the reason for this text was to keep it on brand this was a text that was used throughout the rest of the games

interface it was keeping it consistent with the feel but that clashes directly with it being easy to read especially using full caps if you using full caps that means that you lose out on word shape everything is just as is just like a plain rectangle the outline of the word which is quite a big deal if you're expecting people to read it out speed and also it's a bit hard to tell in the screenshot is a bit low resolution sorry but that's actually in copperplate font which is like a serif font as well so this is we should be aiming for clear sans serif font and in sentence case not full caps and again like I said this might lead to some interesting discussions without directors like if I talked is really want to do this kind of stuff and you know those people who literally obviously is their job to ensure like branding insist it's a year they're emotional impacting that kind of stuff you know if you've got people in your team who want to do this to kind of stuff let them do it but also have an option so that people who can't read

that can that customize it to something that suits their needs number nine this is biggie captions so the the definitions the terminology vary a little bit from country to country but in most places the difference in terminology between subtitles and between captions is that subtitles relates to speech specifically and that can be for localization as well as accessibility captions refers to audio as well it refers to translating everything that you needs to be able to hear into text things like this this room shadow13 really seem ready you can see where it says wind screaming there so this is something that's been really really rare in games not another media

so in TV cinema honestly in when you're flying back from I'm seeing most of you flown back from GDC turn on the movie watch it you'll see a lot of the things that I'm talking about here decent text size speaker indication closed captions for background sounds are there I just need to bring it across into this industry as well there had been some examples early pioneer of this was valve and valve it was kind of reactive so the first half-life game it had no subtitles at all and this was in the days before social media in the days before reddit so they didn't have lots of only people on social media they had people writing polite letters to them saying you know I'm deaf do you have a transcript of her half-life it's got a good story I'd love to know what they're saying so valve liked knowing that okay forget transcripts from now on we are going to do this properly and from that point just ensure that anytime they do user research they include people with hearing loss in their easy research that

resulted in them having closed captioning for all the background sounds in the half-life 2 important in Portal 2 really pushed the industry forward there's only no other we're starting to see more games doing this say shadow team read it really nice example division to another really in this example so he showed that screenshot earlier of those captions with the direction arrows on Ubisoft are doing really nice work on this I'd also recommend checking out farcry new dawn that has similar functionality to a Division two and just tons of really good accessibility stuff in general so for a really nice showcase just those two Ubisoft games I don't have big up you so too much there's loads other people didn't get to get things but division to Falcone dong please check him out and there's something else that's really really nice here that I've only seen a few games do which is at the bottom it actually shows you an example of what's going to look like shows you a preview of the actual presentation the actual size so that people can see it in city with that and see trial and error of going back and forwards so please do that as well and

that kind of brings me on to the last one neatly which is options so in all these various different ones that I've been talking about options talking about customizing this is an example set of the kind of things that you can offer and in some industries this kind of stuff isn't optional so if your are actually it may apply to games I don't want to say I won't ever apply to games because suddenly someone's gonna have some idea about shoving broadcast video into games they're basically if any TV fits if any video footage is previously in showing on TV and is then shown digitally there is a set of features quite similar to this which is actually required by law for the playback so that's why if you open up the settings have you cheap you open up the settings of Netflix you see the settings very similar to this you also see it within the system options of the Xbox Playstation iOS Android I don't

know if that kind of stuff will come to game someday but it's sensible to think about this kind of stuff just in case it does it's also sensible to think about this kind of stuff because it's good for your players I think something is worth up were mentioning when it comes to options and this applies to accessibility options in general is that the more you add that is actually the accessibility barrier in itself like navigating configuring is for some people difficult and confusing and presets come to the rescue so if you are starting to put in lots of configuration options just think of it in the same way that you would do with controls so the controls you might have like default bumper jumper custom custom let CD remapping just think of subtitles in the same way so I have famous leche so I talked about VR does anyone want me to talk about VR yeah okay right so VR VR presents some some interesting issues firstly because

in all other media what are saying about putting the subtitles at the bottom in the middle in VR there is no bottom there is no screen also in other media the subtitles regardless of what happens within the game in the actual physical world subtitles are exactly the same depth as the gameplay footage or the TV footage anything else in VR that's no longer in issue they're actually floating in the virtual space that results in problems where'd you put them you could have them floating in front of your face in roughly the same kind of position as they would be if you're licking your screen that means to avoid occlusion like where subtitles are here I'm in front of mic the mic is now in the middle of subtitles right so you knees put them really really close to your face that means that the subtitle themselves and the thing making the noise there's a big difference in depth between them so if you like go like this and like focus on your two things in front of you shift focus near far it's strange your eyes really quickly so

you're risking the same thing in VR and you really don't want to give people a strain in VR that's a good way to induce simulation sickness so that option has problems so what else can you do next thing people often think about is maybe I could attach them to the source of the audio so if so where's a speaker here we go so the sounds from my voice coming up from that speaker physically attached a subtitle that speaker which is great that the textures are the same depth as the source of the audio then I turn over here and I can't see the subtitles anymore so that that issue has that approach has issues as well so that's something that I think that there is going to be a nice solution that has come to you I don't think we're there yet the most promising solution I've seen so far is a modal approach something that switches between the two so something that's attached to the audio source when it's within your field of vision when you move away it attaches from that and snaps into your vision you do get that issue with having to face or something close to you but at least if it indicates where it is

you know to then turn back so it's not back to the right depth again so like I said this is theirs that's like an early approach to it that's something that I think is gonna go in the vault but if you want to see that in action have a look at a game called virtual virtual reality that's good example of that approach in it so I'm gonna finish on this question reinventing the wheel that's what everybody is doing in the moment every example I've shown you these are all bespoke custom rolled solutions despite the approaches being the same across all these different games that's wasted work people shouldn't be repeating this work all the time so wouldn't it be nice if there was like just a centralized tool that took care of this stuff for you like this so this is a twenty dollar unreal plugin it includes most of the accommodations that I've been talking about so far it also includes some other ones as well

so things like the like at the sorry what the appropriate gap is to have in between each subtitle to avoid simulation sickness room them flicking it and so this is available for unreal plenty of people the room aren't using unreal on that page he also links to a free PDF which details the full specification you built it to so you can take that and apply it to your in game as well so great plug in $20 low barrier to entry but this is not where it needs to be this is where it needs to be built directly into the engines I mean saving the $20 don't be nice but the real benefit is this on by default so if within unity and unreal in particular particular unity because of so much gained above sure most of people in the room are aware of what percentage of games are built in unity like if unity had a nice subtitling system baked in did took care of these requirements you get people who just be like I've got put subtitles of my game call unity has

a system I'll use it and then without ever even having thought about accessibility they'd have a home of good stuff in their game so that's the thought I will leave you on the call to action please please please if you want your life to be easy with subtitling harass these guys get their engine level if you didn't see an unreal er in the rim sorry for getting peoples and Rassi but they kind of so quick summary basics size contrast them our text best practices accurate comprehensive central up from the bottom indicates peaks and direction let people have enough time to read them use a clear form of captions and the four options thank you [Applause]