How to remove the frustration of reading in games
Working on games featuring a lot of text can be challenging.
Regardless of whether you’re making a role-playing game, a visual novel, or a text-based adventure, you’re constantly trying to convince players that what they’re reading is important or worthwhile. And while you may presume a strong story or premise is enough to get your readers’ attention, unfortunately, that alone often isn’t enough.
Think about it: when was the last time you put aside some elaborately-written piece of lore in a game in favor of finding an abridged version online or skipped through lines of perfectly okay dialogue in order to try and save yourself some time?
It doesn’t take much to lose a player’s interest, and that is why strong editing, clever narrative design and intuitive UI is so important. There are a number of ways to make text in games more approachable, from cutting down on the amount of words you have on-screen at any given time to experimenting with different types of presentation.
To find out how different developers approach text in their games, Game Developer spoke to staff at Failbetter Games, 3-Fold Games, and Inkle. They told us more about the unique challenges they face as interactive storytellers, the designs that have influenced them over the years, and the importance of removing unnecessary barriers to reading.
Weighing the cost/benefit of reading
When it comes to narrative studios, Inkle, in particular, has gained popularity for its excellent adventure games: from adaptations of existing source material like Sorcery and 80 Days to original projects like Overboard and Heaven’s Vault. But, although critics and players have been fond of Inkle’s output over the years, its creative director Jon Ingold says this wasn’t always
Read more on gamedeveloper.com
