Video Games Closed Captioning Services

Making your game accessible for everyone should be at the forefront of your development process. Here, closed captions are one aspect that's crucial not to overlook. If you want your game to rank high on accessibility and enjoy widespread international success, adding closed captions is the way to go. Employing captioning services is an ideal option if you want to see your product succeed in the video game industry.

Closed captions are subtitles with descriptions for sound effects. They are text descriptions that accompany the sound and dialogue of your game. They can cue players into knowing what's happening in the game environment or what people say. Ensuring your captions or subtitles are accurate, well-presented, and readable goes a long way toward enhancing the appeal and quality of your game.

About Video Games Closed Captions

Studies from the World Health Organization estimate that over 430 million people worldwide have mild to profound hearing loss. If we were to narrow these figures to gamers, somewhere between 10% to 20% of the 3.24 billion players worldwide are deaf or hard of hearing. That's a lot of people with hearing loss trying to enjoy their games!

Closed captions enter here to save the day. People frequently confuse closed captions and subtitles and use the two terms interchangeably, but their features differ. Closed captions accommodate not only dialogue but also other sound effects. Closed captioning for video games often includes indicators for music or any background noise happening on the screen (gunshots, explosions, screeching tires, breaking windows, et cetera). Their purpose is to give equal access to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

If a sound effect or another critical event occurs off-screen, the caption will notify the deaf or hard-of-hearing player with a written cue. The main advantage of closed captioning in video games is to provide an additional context of whatever is happening to improve immersion and accessibility.

There are games where audio cues play a significant role in gameplay. People with hearing disabilities are at a considerable disadvantage here. It's not uncommon for them not to understand what fellow team members discuss regarding strategies and techniques, or conversely, they can completely miss what the opposing team is doing.

Another thing to remember when implementing closed captioning in video games is that there are gamers out there who don't have access to quality audio or probably need to play in a low-volume setting. It is in moments like this when, for them to understand every single word, you need your captions to be as clear and obvious as possible, preferably with information on who is communicating. For localization purposes, subtitles and captions also play a massive role in making your game easier to understand by different audiences.

The "closed" part comes from being able to turn the captions on and off. It's a way for the entertainment industry to categorize the display of captions. "Open" means they are embedded into the product, and you cannot turn them off, whereas "closed" means you can freely toggle their appearance.

The gaming community has noticed the importance of closed captioning for video games. They are taking steps to make both games and gaming streams more accessible by providing captions or subtitles to everyone. Take Twitch, for example. Twitch is one of the world's biggest social media platforms and communities for gamers and video game culture. Around 10 million visitors use the platform to gather, watch, and talk about video games. The platform also has more than two million streamers offering their content to fellow gamers.

In response to the sizable demographic of gamers that are deaf or hard of hearing, Twitch has implemented closed captioning for some of their events, like Twitch Weekly or TwitchCon.

Do You Need to Translate Subtitles for a Video Game?

Internationalizing your video game by adding subtitles is the first step towards achieving worldwide appeal and success. Being able to convert all your content into another language can bring a plethora of benefits to the reach of your product. Having your game subtitled in another language can launch your brand's name to new heights if done right. We at GoTranscript understand the magnitude of this process and are here to help you with video game subtitling for any genre and platform.

Including subtitles in multiple languages helps your game breach potential foreign markets and become a hit regardless of culture. Now, localizing your game with video game dubbing can be expensive. Instead of localizing, why not go for subtitling instead? In subtitling, the content and dialogue of the characters in your game are translated and subtitled accordingly.

Another fact worth mentioning is that video game subtitling takes into account cultural differences, the character limit, and the timestamps. Professional adapters come into play in every step of the process to translate and adjust subtitles into your game. Representing the content faithfully while simultaneously adhering to a strict set of guidelines is also integral to delivering a quality experience with your game.

Additionally, subtitles aren't only beneficial to those that are hard of hearing or deaf. They can also be helpful to all players in general. Dubbing is great to have, but statistics show that the vast majority of gamers play with subtitles on, especially if their language of choice isn't in the game. Subtitles work splendidly for gamers to have access to important information without having to listen to the dialogue. They also allow them to play with the game muted or in a low-volume setting without missing anything.