Contents 1 Problem Summary 2 Use When 3 Solution 4 Recommendations 5 Rationale 6 Examples

Problem Summary

Players are unable to perceive audio feedback and miss essential clues necessary to play the game. For example, players cannot hear the dialogue between game characters or audio clues such as approaching footsteps of an enemy.

Use When

• Your game provides hints/clues -essential to playing the game- as audio feedback e.g. speech, music, ambient sounds.
• Your game provides audio dialogues which use slang words.
• You want your game to be played by individuals who are hearing impaired.
• You want players to be able to play your game in noisy environments.

Solution

Translate audio feedback into visual feedback

Dialogues are typically visualized using subtitles. Different colors can be used to distinguish dialog from different characters or one could put a name or a portrait of the person talking before the dialogue. Ambient sounds (such as gunfire) can be captioned by texts such that describe the sound being heard e.g. *metallic clunk* or *footsteps*. Sounds can also be literally transcribed *BOOOOM!!" Music is typically used to indicate dramatic tension in games and can be captioned for example by *gloomy music*.

To indicate the spatial location of the source of the sound, positional information can be added to each caption. One can can display captions in different parts of the screen indicating the direction the sound came from or one can prefix each caption with a code such as *Left GunFire*. A sound radar is a non textual form of visualization that renders the source of the sound on a radar; reducing the amount of visual information on the screen. See the Doom 3 video below for an example of a sound radar. When many sounds are being played at the same time, sounds can be prioritized to avoid cluttering the screen.

Below is a simple class diagram showing how closed captioning can be implemented. Implement a closed captioning component which is part of your game's GUI. Assuming your game has some audio component, your audio component needs to modified such that whenever a sound or music is being played it sends a message to the CC component indicating the id of the sound and any spatial information concerning the source of the sound. The CC component then looks up the caption for the sound file and displays a text in the game’s GUI. Usually a GUI widget with an empty caption placeholder can be used to display the caption. Positional information can be used to shape the widget so it can display positional information e.g. the widget could be a radar or the widget can display the caption at specific locations in the screen.

Recommendations

• Avoid overwhelming the user with visual feedback by cluttering the screen with captions as it may increase the cognitive load significantly.
• Make closed captions available as an option within the Audio Settings of the game.

Rationale

Closed captioning may increase user satisfaction as the game adapts to the player when the player cannot or does not want to listen to game audio.

Examples

Half life 2 captions dialog and all sound effects	Doom 3 CC is a modification for Doom 3 which captions dialogue and sound effects as well as uses a sound radar to indicate the source of the sound effect.