Tiny text in modern video games

[llj]

Has this become an issue for any of you in recent years? I don't recall it being an issue of mine until the HD era of consoles, though there were a few PS2 games I felt it starting to push the limit of legibility, at least for me personally.

If so, what games have given you problems? What are your personal solutions when you run into this problem?

[dsparil]

This was the exact reason I never got a PS3. Tiny unreadable text on SD TVs was reportedly a real issue (didn't go HD until 2012). There's only been two games that have given me problems.

The first was Xenoblade Chronicles. That seemed to assume you'd be using a large widescreen TV even though it was a Wii game. I had to sit up close to be able to read anything.

The second was Goetia on Switch. I played it handheld and some of the text was small and in a script font which didn't help. I just had to hold it closer to my face to read it.

[ZenithianHero]

Xenoblade the thread.
Chronicles X was the worse offender there. Not only was it small but it was HUD extensive. Chronicles 2 thankfully has large enough text from what I played so far.

[1upsuper]

Yeah, it's baffling. I think Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on Wii U was the first time I encountered super tiny text. I was dumbfounded. I had to sit right in front of my TV to read the subtitles. I don't know why this is a widespread issue but it needs to go.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Unless I happen to be at my mom's (she has a pretty huge TV), I'm sitting real close to the TV. That's my 'solution'. Though I probably should get glasses, but still.

There's a lot of games from the Wii/PS3/360 era where they made the text size really only readable if you had a bigger, wide-screen TV. Monster Hunter Tri was the first time where I just couldn't read shit unless I walked up to the TV. Nowadays pretty much every game has tiny text to some degree. Now, most people have pretty decently sized TVs too, but I still find that I have to sit near the TV unless I want to be squinting the whole time. With how nice games look these days, I want to be sitting close anyway to soak up the details.

[Apollo Chungus]

I tend to be fairly calm and collected when discussing most things in gaming, but this is one of the few parts of the medium that makes irrationally angry. I genuinely cannot describe how furious I get when I try to play a new game at someone's house or wherever and the text/interface is so ridiculously tiny. I mean, you have acres and acres of space to work with for on-screen real estate; why can't you make things even a little bit bigger for people who don't have absolutely perfect eyesight when their nose is pressed right up to the screen? (Which takes up a surprisingly bigger chunk of the demographic than some graphic designers suspect)

I remember hearing about quite a few complaints in the early PS360 era when most people still had an SDTV of some kind (the original Dead Rising was particularly infamous for it, though I can't remember if Capcom ever got round to patching it - I know Rare patched Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts when complains about that game's font came up), but they died down as the years went by. I don't know why; maybe it's just that most people started getting HDTVs and it didn't become an issue; maybe the mainstream resurrection of PC gaming has helped folks get used to being very close to a screen and they don't see the need for big text? But whatever the case, it's something that really drives me up the wall, especially in my situation.

There's only two TVs in my house: a HD smart-TV that the folks use for Netflix/YouTube, and a fairly small SDTV. I use the latter for playing games down in my room, and while I don't have any new consoles to deal with, I'm pretty much forced to display my 360 in widescreen mode (which stretches the image to fill the entire screen, which is otherwise letterboxed) all the time. Yes, everything looks stretched to heck, but I'd rather compromise the game's visuals to a mild degree if it means that I can actually read the text without hurting my eyes. And even then, that still doesn't work for games like Warriors Orochi 3 or Skyrim, the latter of which had text so small that I had to abandon my planned playthrough of it after ten minutes and go to Oblivion instead. (Also, because of how small my room is, I'm quite close to the TV as is, so the fact the text size for many games is still too tiny is a joke!)

It's inane to me that there isn't some kind of industry standard for font sizes, or at least giving the player the option to change the font sizes to suit their reading ability or general comfort. I'd rather people try to chase after that than making games run in goddamn 4K or 8K or whatever; at least more folks than the rich and the hardcore would actually get the benefit of it! (And now I have to stop writing and walk away - I told you this makes me irrationally angry.)

[llj]

With the tools at their disposal, I always feel like there isn't an excuse now to at least give gamers options to increase or decrease text size. Hell, they actually had these features for some games in past generations.

[chronotigger65]

Good Lord I know! Getting a PS3 and Wii years ago I had a regular TV and it was a pain to play with those really small text for subtitles. There were times I had to lean forward just to read it. Thing became so much better when my parents got me a HDTV for Christmas a few years after that.

This tiny text thing got to be a problem for those who are deaf or hard of hearing and need subtitles to know what's going on story wise. Either they need to get a HDTV or play older console generations.

[llj]

I still think even with HDTVs it's a problem. I don't like to sit close to a TV, I do like to sit at least several feet away on my couch. One shouldn't have to sit 2 feet away at farthest to play video games. I already stare at a monitor or phone for most of the day only several inches from my face at work.

Having said that, as I said the easiest solution to the problem is to give size options.

[Threads]

I had a 360 for a year or two before I got an HDTV but I don't really recall having many text size problems other than in Dead Rising. The text that came up whenever Otis would call you on the radio was pretty much impossible to read and I remember setting waypoints for various missions having no clue whether I was walking into a potential boss fight or a survivor located somewhere in the mall.

[eatersthemanfool]

I haven't had any problems since I switched to an HDTV but then I still have pretty good eyesight. I do think that making font sizes adjustable should be a must for accessibility reasons though.

Now, I got my 360 before I got an HDTV and that was hell at times. Fable 2 was ten times more frustrating when you couldn't read the map or any item descriptions and Dead Rising was near impossible.

But if you want a true bafflingly tiny text game, check out Front Mission 4 for PS2. It's a very good game but given that it was made at a time before HDTV was really a thing, the text is *super* tiny and won't display right unless you have a pretty high-end SDTV.

[kingmike]

I was just thinking about what kind of amounts to an older version of the same problem.
I can remember playing Gradius III as a kid and having to screw with the TV settings to slightly reduce the overscan so I could just barely see parts of the HUD (the score and power-up gauge)
Looking at Salamander on Famicom vs. Life Force on NES, it looks like they noticed a possibility of the HUD getting lost in overscan and moved it up a bit in the localization, but when it came to the next game, nope, didn't adjust it.
(I know the first TV I played my SNES one had some really bad overscan and even cut off some of Super Mario World's HUD, which was already pretty generous.
But no, Konami put the HUD on the farthest "visible" lines which seems like a poor decision.)

[surnshurn]

in my old age, my eyesight has reached a point where small text will make a game unplayable (i'm mostly an rpg guy, so it's a major issue).

I do remember the olden days of fuzzy coaxial images and 8-bit graphics that made things pretty difficult to read (the password system for faxanadu was pretty notorious about this - that and the fact that the password failed sometimes even without typographical errors.)

luckily though - the realm of desktop computer games is usually pretty good about including a text scaler option that makes things much more enjoyable.

[magic89]

Very funny placed in crates Easter Egg in polish FPS game Chrome(2003) Sadly  prequel Chrome SpecForce(2005) had blank crates instead)
Translation from polish to english

We warn you reading very small letters
may ruin your eyesight
We are not responsable for this
You carefree and inquisitive player

Its true if you use improved eyesight(Extra Zoom using ironshights) implant module too long(Blue energy bar on right of HUD) you gonna take damage for overloaded nerve system.

[kingmike]

EGM did that when they reviewed (or I think it was actually a preview) of Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for SNES (I think) and they did a tiny review for the Pac-Man sub-game, in deliberately tiny text. Giving game stats like "MEGS: A few K. LEVELS: A whole slew... THE BAD: Your eyesight if you're trying to read this."