Illiterates can't play karaoke, what about other games?
by Kyle Orland 
{ Dec 20th 2006 at 4:00PM }
From the BBC comes a report on how the sad state of literacy education in Britain affects something we all care about: Karaoke!
Research from the Get On literacy campaign estimates that 17.8 million of the roughly 60 million people in Great Britain can't follow along to the quickly scrolling karaoke lyrics in songs like "I Will Survive" and "Mustang Sally." The situation might not be much better in America -- while over 99 percent of American adults are technically literate, up to 15 million Americans may be functionally illiterate and unable to process complex written sentences or math problems.
Besides the obvious examples of games that rely on reading lyrics, there are many other games that might be completely inaccessible to these functionally illiterate populations. While many games these days feature full voice acting for every character, games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess still require a lot of reading to move the game and story along. Other games that rely on written puzzles or complex written instructions might be out-of-reach for millions of adults and children. Then again, these types of games can also provide great motivation for players to improve their reading skills in order to move on.
Are game makers neglecting illiterate gamers by not including more accessible direction, or should basic reading skills be considered a prerequisite for gaming (as they are for living in a modern society)?
[Via We Make Money Not Art]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Unimental @ Dec 20th 2006 4:07PM
I think you may be reading into this too much.
Ernest Alba @ Dec 20th 2006 4:23PM
And people were criticizing Twilight Princess for having text. tsk, tsk.
shivr @ Dec 20th 2006 4:08PM
yeah.. I think playing OoT on my old n64 and not understanding what was going on, without grabbing his sister to read the words for him, made my little brother actually -want- to learn to read more than anything else...
Beaudry @ Dec 20th 2006 4:08PM
This is a stupid topic for Joystiq. Submitter deserves a kick in the groin.
I come here for video game news, not stories about the literacy rate of England and trouble singing karoke.
mattharvest @ Dec 20th 2006 4:09PM
If you're illiterate, you need to learn to read. Stop wasting your time playing video games and get some help. I love playing video games, but I don't let it keep me from staying healthy. A person who chooses to indulge in any hobby or vice - be it games, drugs, sex or anything else - instead of fixing gross personal defects cannot claim that it is anyone else's fault.
If you're illiterate, I hope you get help and I hope it works. A man who cannot read is isolated from most of the world. Just don't pretend like the rest of us should abstain from reading, to make you feel better.
Zack @ Dec 20th 2006 4:12PM
I think Dead Rising has demonstrated that literacy is less important than legibility. ;)
But come on. The kind of person who cares about reading text in video games doesn't play the kind of game that requires you to read lots of text. There's no neglect here. And I certainly hope nobody tries to dumb down games in an effort to reach an illiterate audience.
GlitchCog @ Dec 20th 2006 5:20PM
If you can't read, you've got bigger problems than not being able to play most video games.
Also, I nominate Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the game with the most text ever.
John @ Dec 20th 2006 4:11PM
the english are thick lol!
I live in northern ireland and our school system kicks ass compared to the english one, theyre actually cutting back on funding to bring us in to line with the rest of the UK
apparantly Scotland has a better school system than the english as well!
so when referring to England, make sure you refer to England and not the UK generally!
lol!
:)
KaiserW @ Dec 20th 2006 4:12PM
What are you talking about? They do make games for illiterate people.... It's called manual labor!
D @ Dec 20th 2006 4:12PM
When I was real young I loved King's Quest, I loved it so friggin much but I couldn't do a damn thing because I wasn't able to read. That game pushed me to learn...and look at me now. I can write on the internet!
Scythe @ Dec 20th 2006 4:13PM
#4 Are you writing to people that can't read? Because really that would be pointless since they won't be able to read what you just wrote. Also why would they be here? I'm sure it's not for the pretty pictures or lack there of.
JD3 @ Dec 20th 2006 4:16PM
I couldn't imagine playing Zelda without the scrolling literature across the bottom. Personally voice acting means absolutely nothing to me because I hate trying to decipher a key component of a game's plot from some actor's stale dialogue. So i hope that games don't change on account of those who either can't read or are to lazy to try to get better. Society compromises the majority for the minority on too many occasions and i hope this isnt one of them. And no i dont care that im being mean to those illerate millions, its not like they would be able to tell anyway.
Corbo @ Dec 20th 2006 4:18PM
I guess there's a lot more people excluded from video gaming than you'd think. Joystiq had an interesting article a while back which talked about the problems of colour blindness with certain games.
I wouldn't say that game makers are "neglecting" the illiterate because that implies that they're doing it deliberately. They just assume it's a basic skill that everyone has (or in a perfect world, should have). Most things in life require some degree of literacy and I think it's a little unfair to say that games or even karaoke are the problem. Illiteracy is a problem, but it's not a permanent or incorrectable one, like many disabilities. Sure it may be hard and require commitment from the person learning and probably some kind of outside body but it can be overcome.
There are other problems out there which are far worse, simply in gaming terms. I remember reading an interesting letter in a games mag once from a deaf person who was worried about the inclusion of voice overs in games to the exclusion of text that he could read. That could be a problem.
Mr_Macphisto @ Dec 20th 2006 4:30PM
Slow news day.
graft @ Dec 20th 2006 4:31PM
Are authors neglecting illiterate readers by only writing words?
what a shamefully self-pious line this article closes with
grody
Amos @ Dec 20th 2006 4:32PM
Illiteracy is not a handicap, it's a fucking stupid way to be. If you can't read, learn. There's very few "illiterates" with medical reasons for not being able to read, and those few usually have more problems than not being able to play through the latest Zelda on their lonesome.
moominsean @ Dec 20th 2006 4:39PM
i'd imagine that someone who is functionally illiterate isn't going to be playing the moby dick of video games...i'm sure pretty much anyone can pick up gta or some nba game and figure it out. i played the first 4 n64 games as imports and didn't know any japanese and had no problem getting through all of them. if literacy was all that important in games, we'd still be at "You are in a dark room. What will you do?" "Turn on the light." "You are not near a light switch."
and this was a pretty dumb article.
raging_evil @ Dec 20th 2006 4:43PM
Hey, you guys need to back off the illiterate. I'm illiterate and after reading all of these posts you people are just ignorant and full of hate. Just because you are literate, does that make you better than me? I don't believe it does. These game developers need to closely examine their full audience and understand the consequences and repercussions.
I'm illiterate and proud.
Illiterate means we need glasses right?
Yeah, slow news day #13
RamenJunkie @ Dec 20th 2006 4:43PM
There was a billboard here in town that advertised "Connect with Deaf People over the phone". I'm kinf od reminded of that.
They took it down before I managed to take a photo.
Richard @ Dec 20th 2006 4:44PM
Im from northern Ireland too John. Your right in saying our education system is the best in the uk. My uncle is a maths teacher in scotland and teaches in a private school, he says its depressing how stupid his pupils are. I have even noticed myself(i am doing GCSEs this year) that the english examination board have very low expectations for higher tier exams than the northern ireland examination board.
Yeah i also hate it when they talk about the whole of the uk being stupid. The United Kingdom is a group of countries not just one country.
Nicolas Redfern @ Dec 20th 2006 4:46PM
In case non of you realised the UK has joint highest literacy rate in the world see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
Daniel Davis @ Dec 20th 2006 4:56PM
OMG,
Are game makers cutting a large part of potential amputee gamers by making their games require the use of your hands? In the future maybe we should see more games that function entirely on speech input?
"Run left, jump, no not that way, the other, shit."
Amith @ Dec 20th 2006 5:01PM
My little brother and sister actually learned to read from "Diablo", they saw me and my brother playing and wanted to join in but soon realized we coulden't always be there to read the item discriptons so they just started figuring it out on there own.
Allen @ Dec 20th 2006 10:16PM
I agree with everyone that said this was a stupid article. I'm all for an immersive experience in my video games, so voice acting a-l-l t-h-e w-a-y!
Miguel @ Dec 20th 2006 5:11PM
Wow, theres a huge difference between 30% of your population not being able to read scrolling kareoke, and 5%.
endejas @ Dec 20th 2006 5:20PM
If you can't read, you've got bigger problems than not being able to play fucking kareoke.
Learn to read. Then proceed.
Thad @ Dec 20th 2006 5:28PM
Here's a radical solution: how about, instead of trying to better accomodate illiterates, we try to improve literacy?
Also, I think it bears noting that most of the people here who have said insulting things about the intelligence of illiterates' seem barely literate themselves. A little insecure, guys, or just completely lacking in self-awareness?
John @ Dec 20th 2006 5:35PM
#19
I did my gcses two years ago and got a C in french despite not knowing anything about it lol! mainly because i went with aqa (english exam board) instead of ccea!
wer bouts in NI u from? im in Bangor lol!
Chocolate Starfish @ Dec 20th 2006 5:45PM
All your base are belong to us!
Eaode @ Dec 20th 2006 6:12PM
ah, the good ol' days when you got a new pokemon game and on the back it said "Basic reading skills required to enjoy this game"
Lol.
Paul @ Dec 20th 2006 6:39PM
Well, there's always the other side of the problem. English isn't my first language, but I know enough to survive in London for six months.
How did I learn? Playing games; the first and the one who taught me most being Ultima VII.
Judd @ Dec 21st 2006 3:34AM
"Illiteracy is not a handicap, it's a fucking stupid way to be"
Wow, you guys are all haters. Some people have serious reading problems, and it's not for lack of trying. I know my little sister wishes more than anything that she could read and write as well as everyone else, unfortunately she is dyslexic. There was an article in Joystiq about games that inhibit the color blind,
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/30/colorblind-gaming-or-table-tennis-is-impossibly-hard/
and just the other day there was a story on epilepsy.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/19/epilepsy-and-games-a-closer-look/
I'm not suggesting that illeteracy is a serious illness, but some people just find reading tough. It can't be explained just like how some people aren't good in science or math.
This message board also could have gone into how text in games might be detrimental to the playing experience of the literate as well. Cinematics move from one line to another, as opposed to many games where you have to hit the "A" button after EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE. Or how as an opposite of what JD3 said, if a game has good voice actors, it could add a layer of drama and a deeper meaning than simple text.
But no people can't talk about topics like these, they just have to shoot the messenger. I don't know why I'm always suprised by the ignorance of people on these message boards.
Laurens Holst @ Dec 21st 2006 5:46AM
I can’t read sheet music very well, I always have to do that very slowly.
Doesn’t mean I can’t play music, or that having sheet music in front of me is not helpful when playing a song… There’s still guidance in the sheet music, even though I can’t read it fast enough to follow the normal pace of the music.
~Grauw
KilgoreTrout XL @ Dec 21st 2006 9:55AM
Um, the Typing of the Dead?
Trevor Longino @ Dec 21st 2006 3:16PM
I would contend that, illness or not, stupidity or not, most people who can't read are probably not going to be in the income bracket to enjoy video games. The less education you have (according to Time Magazine, now; I'm not pulling this out of my butt) the longer hours you work. Figuring that illiterate equates to something less than a 5th grade education, time magazine suggests you'll be working something like nine and half hours a day. How would you find time to play games?
Of course, writing this I contemplate the irony of discussing longer work days for the less educated when I am working ten hour days myself most of this holiday season. Ah well, I don't have time to play games either.