Dear Bioware/Electronic Arts,
I am a deaf gamer who have been a loyal customer to your company for many years. I have played many of your games, from Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights to Star Wars: The Old Republic. I run the site, http://www.misspewpew.com- a site mainly focusing on WoW with some coverage on general gaming. It is my wish to eventually include other games, like SW:TOR. In this letter, I am speaking on behalf of myself and many other hearing impaired gamers, as well as non-english speakers.
I finally purchased SW:TOR last night after months of waiting for its release and I was very excited to play it after the downloading was complete. I was severely disappointed when I saw that the computer generated cinematics had no subtitles. I ended up skipping the opening movie because I could not understand one thing that was being said by any of the characters, however fantastic they looked in the movies. I managed to find the options for the subtitles to be turned on later on and tried to watch the movies again. They were still not subtitled, so I have to express my disappointment in seeing a major gaming company not having incorporated these subtitles that are sorely needed by people like me in order to enjoy your beautifully made movies.
Here is an additional link on my website where I wrote about my disappointment when I found out about the movies not being subtitled:
http://misspewpew.com/2012/01/closed-captioning-and-subtitles-are-not-a-privilege
I respectfully request that in your future patches, would you kindly spare some time to have someone subtitle these movies? I would like to see an option to toggle subtitles somehow before the movies are played, or have this option displayed during the cinematics at the bottom of the screen. I think I can speak for many people that this would greatly be appreciated if you could make that happen.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. It is my hope that we can resolve this so that your deaf customers can continue to enjoy your games in the future. In addition to this, for you to have the hindsight to incorporate subtitles in your future games for us.
Sincerely,
Aidrana
January 10, 2012:
I have already contacted some of the PR staff at EA and am awaiting some kind of response. In addition to this, I posted in forums for both SW:TOR and EA. The links can be found here at:
Please feel free to put in your two cents, deaf or hearing- more people need to write to them in order to make them aware of this issue. Thank you for all your support- it is truly appreciated!
January 13, 2012:
I am issuing another update to clarify a few things. When MMO Melting Pot ran my story, I have gotten a lot of responses making suggestions to select options in the user interface for subtitles. I would like to explain that the options in there are only for in-game dialogue (conversations) which is quite different from computer generated cinematics. I am very happy that the option for subtitled conversations are available, however, that was not what I was trying to raise the issue on. Allow me to illustrate my point with the following screenshots I have taken:
preference menu - subtitles for in-game conversations only
Yes, there is an option for subtitles, but again, it is only for conversations in the game, when you engage with NPCs. In the following screen shots, after having demonstrated that I have turned this option on and running the cinematics again:
It's a shame I can't understand the movie, because it looks *really* awesome.
I hope I have answered your questions and clarified the difference between subtitles for the in-game conversations and computer-generated cinematics. Believe me, I have double and triple checked for ways to see if there were any options for subtitling specifically for those cinematics, otherwise I would not have decided to run this story.
I also wanted to say thank you for all your support, and I will be waiting to hear from EA/Bioware whether they will be making these changes happen. I don’t believe that this would take up much resources for them to make it happen. I have yet received word on whether the issue is being considered by the devs, and will be giving it some time before I take any further steps. Otherwise an superb game, I look forward to watching these movies once it finally gets the option for me to turn the subtitles on hopefully in an upcoming patch. Thanks, and stay tuned for updates, folks!
