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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

All you have to do is make the size bigger, right? But the truth is not so simple...

"Tchia" is a very unique open world game, the prototype of the game world is the real French overseas dependency, New Caledonia in the South Pacific. As the music plays in the game, players will realize that all character dialogues are dubbed in French and Drehu (one of the oldest dialects of New Caledonia), and that the development team has devoted great enthusiasm to it. However, players may encounter an unexpected thorny problem in the game, that is, they can't see the text in the options menu at all.

In fact, naming and criticizing "Kia" may not be fair, because it provides players with a large number of auxiliary options. But as a new game, Kia's problems reflect a growing trend in the industry in recent years: in the user interface of video games, text is getting smaller and harder to read.

Why did this happen? What's the solution? Accessibility consultant Ian Hamilton and Riley Crane, chief designer of font studio Lettermatic, have their own views.

The menu interface of the host version of "Zia" is terrible for most players, ignoring demand. "in the accessibility experience, players often complain that the text is too small, which is the most common complaint." Hamilton said. In addition to the game industry, some other areas also lack understanding of text typesetting and its applications, and do not follow the basic design principles, but this problem is particularly obvious in game products. Although the game focuses on visual effects, text is still one of the main ways to communicate with players, and if the text is difficult to read, a lot of information in the game may be left out by players.

Hamilton believes that display devices are part of the reason why game words are getting smaller and smaller. "in the past, the screen resolution was not as high as it is now, so 'small text' is not technically feasible." As the screen resolution of various monitors increases, and mainframe players have larger televisions, smaller fonts have been able to render more clearly, and game developers are keen to take advantage of this, but it is also easy to make the text too small, making it difficult for players to read.

Hamilton gives an example: "in a common living room environment, people with normal eyesight use a typical screen device with a text size of at least 28px at 1080p resolution (1px represents a pixel on the screen)."

However, reading is not an objective experience. For players with normal eyesight, 28px-sized text is enough, but visually impaired players may need larger text. For this reason, Crane said, he suggested that more display effects be taken into account when designing UI for games. "typesetting should be adjustable."

Font size can be adjusted in some games, but sometimes the difference between standard subtitles and extra-large subtitles is not obvious. Some people think that this is not a thorny problem, developers just need to make the font size larger. But it's not that simple. Once developers change text size, weight, character spacing, or line spacing, it can have a significant impact on UI-such as aesthetic damage, text popping out of dialog boxes or buttons, or even incomplete display.

During the production of Italian Navigator 2, the development partner Lettermatic's solution was to use multiple fonts (Multiplexed Fonts). Unlike traditional fonts, which zoom in or out proportionally, it takes up the same space, whether in regular or bold. "We are quite satisfied with the cooperation with the developer Double Fine Productions." "in the game, we see typography as a flexible experience that changes according to the player's preferences, not forever," Crane said. "

No matter how it works, Voyager 2 thinks more about UI design. Unfortunately, similar partnerships are rare in the gaming industry, and few development teams turn to organizations that are familiar with barrier-free typesetting for advice or help. With the passage of time, small sizes have quickly become the norm in game products.

"the way contemporary game developers design and build UI is not in line with their intentions," Hamilton said. " Hamilton points out that in addition to a lack of understanding of the basic principles of text typesetting, many developers ignore the simple fact that the environment in which they make games bears little resemblance to the environment in which players play games. "

Developers work in front of large high-definition monitors, but few players play games in such an environment. "A lot of players are using Switch or Steam Deck to play games. PC players' monitors are only four times larger than their handsets, and mainframe players may be better off. Most of them are sitting in the living room playing games, facing about 70-inch televisions, but the distance between players and televisions is 33.5 meters."

The various menus in strategy games are often very complex, and the text is too small to be fatal (pictured as "Civilization 6"). Game development teams often do not fully test these environments. Even on Switch, developers don't put much effort into ensuring that text is still readable in handheld mode. "some studios do have a living room-like environment, but in the past few decades, I've been to a lot of places, only one studio has such an arrangement, and maybe the company doesn't want or don't want to provide such space and devices like televisions."

This means that during game production, the development team basically does not specifically test the text size-in a sense, they throw the task to the players. Designers should fully consider the actual environment in which users use the product, rather than design according to the product development environment, but many industries are making the same mistake. In the printing industry, for example, some designers never even actually print out their work to see the final effect.

"Wizard 3: hunting" is also a difficult font, the early Chinese version because of the use of serif font, the text is even more difficult to see how to improve, so how can game developers improve the status quo? Hamilton advised them to learn from web developers. More than a decade ago, as web browsing became more and more common on mobile, web developers had to find ways to improve their design to ensure that websites were clearly displayed on mobile screens. In order to achieve this goal, web developers use responsive design.

"visit several websites you visit frequently on your computer and try to change the size of the window." Hamilton said, "for most websites, when you enlarge or shrink the window, the page layout will also change and can always adapt to the reading space." Nowadays, the web pages of most websites can intelligently detect the screen width and adapt to different templates, so as to show a better display effect on screens of different proportions and sizes on monitors, tablets and mobile phones. Hamilton believes that game text should also respond to the screen and resolution used by users, so as to cater to the player's more subjective personal experience, rather than blindly improving the so-called objective readability.

Crane added that game developers should consider using barrier-free or responsive fonts as early as possible in the project, rather than waiting until the last minute to remake these things. "because in the layers of towers of visual design, they are located at the bottom and affect the whole body."

Toule web version automatically adapts to mobile reading just like developers, and game media also need to consider text size to help players understand whether the game is right for them and urge developers to make changes in this regard. Hamilton points out that even if reviewers are reluctant to criticize problems such as too small text, they can still show screenshots containing UI in the reviews to help players make informed purchase decisions.

In the gaming industry, everyone should strive to build a more barrier-free future, including developers, player communities and media. In any case, the text size in many games is not good enough, which makes it difficult for players to read the information, which greatly affects the game itself and the game experience.

This article is compiled from: https://www.eurogamer.net/why-do-so-many-modern-games-have-tiny-text

The original title: "Why do so many modern games have tiny text?"

Original author: Geoffrey Bunting

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