Topic: Will the PGC E3 2003 DVD have captioning?

[kelleman]

I'm a deaf gamer and a regular PGC reader.  I read the site everyday or at least when my son is sleep.  I would like to know if this year's DVD will have Closed Captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing.   It seems like so many videogames and their developers have yet to catch up with the regular DVD/Video-taped markets.  Almost all of them have some form of Captioning.  Most Television shows and movies have captioning in them.  I'm not saying subtitles, or that they should be on all the time.  Just give us the option to have them turned on when we set our televisions to display the captioning.  
 BTW, C1 is the standard when coding Captions, so when we enable them on our TVs, we always choose C1.  I hope you guys think about this and implement it.  I would have bought last year's DVD had it had Captioning.    

[Grey Ninja]

Sorry to hear that you missed the DVD.  It was quite good if you could hear it.  They haven't mentioned if they are making a DVD this year, but if they do, I'm sure that we can all pester them to include captioning.  I see no reason why they shouldn't.

Forgive me, but I am kind of curious.  I am something of an audiophile in the sense that my picture quality can go right out the window if I have good audio, and the sound and music is one of the most important parts of a game for me.  Does it bother you that you can't hear the game?  Also, I would imagine that many games which most gamers love fall flat with you if you can't hear them.  (Such as Metal Gear Solid, Eternal Darkness, or Silent Hill)  If you don't feel liking answering, that's fine, and I'm not trying to poke at you, I am just really curious.

[kelleman]

no problem Grey Ninja... I don't mind answering the question.  Yes, I've had to miss out on a few games, but i don't feel that ambient sounds in a game or movie are going to affect me too much, since I can't hear them.  It's more the speech in story driven games that gets me.  When I played RS2: RL, I had such a hard time figuring out what to do next, I had to constantly study the screen for clues since I didn't know what my wingmen were saying... I did figure some things out, but for the most part, I had to use a strategy guide I found on another website.  I'm looking forward to Enter the Matrix but, again, this is a VERY story driven game and I don't know if the "Brothers", as they are sometimes called, put in a stipulation that the game have captioning.  I'm going to rent it first to make sure on this point.  For most Nintendo games, I really don't have to worry about this since Nintendo likes including text in conjunction with their voice work.  I'm just hoping things change with game companies and they realize that there are alot of people who cannot hear, i.e. deaf and hard of hearing, who love playing their games.  We all seem to be last in everyone's mind and it blows.  I just hope that if they do make a DVD this year, they include some captioning.  I'm still looking forward to RS3: RS and the various big games like StarFox, StarCraft, F-Zero and next year I'm looking forward to Resi Evil 4.  I lost my hearing and not all deaf and hard of hearing ppl were born this way.  Some of us lose it regardless of how we were born.

   Hey, Ninja, keep gaming and join the cause!  

[Grey Ninja]

Thanks for answering my questions.    I still don't know how you could possibly like Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill without sound, or even Zelda, as it's such a musically driven game, but I guess I just pay too much attention to the audio.

But yeah, don't you worry.  If PGC makes a DVD this year, I won't stop pestering them to make it closed captioned.  

[Zomboi]

I'll do what I can to help you out! I'm not deaf but I can imagine how it couldn't be much fun, in fact I'll e-mail some game companies if you like! I'll tell them to try to add captioning in games that have key instructions that are spoken, I mean it's only decent of them to include this ^_^. Well good luck and keep on gaming!