I find that if subtitles are on, I'm distracted reading them and not focusing enough on the game.
For this reason I'm often turning them off. I can read very quickly, but I'm easily distracted by the tiniest things.
I find that if subtitles are on, I'm distracted reading them and not focusing enough on the game.
For this reason I'm often turning them off. I can read very quickly, but I'm easily distracted by the tiniest things.
I have them turned on since I am not a native english speaker and want to understand everything correctly.
I used to practice my foreign languages by having the dub vs sub be different languages, worked well enough imo.
I always use them whether playing a game or watching a film; definitely if I'm watching a documentary.
Can't say I'm surprised. My partner both do this for movies and games, because we either can't hear the dialogue or freak out our dogs with the sound effects
I prefer subs even when playing video games and watching movies/TV in my native language. However, I think part of why gamers prefer it is movies are at least scripted to the point where it's unlikely that a loud noise will go off in the middle of an actor's line. In a video game, there could be dynamic sound effects at any time right in the middle of a line.
For videos I try to turn subtitles off if possible, I find that they do distract me from watching other details on screen. However a lot of times I find myself switching subtitles back on because the dialogue is hard to make out over the background sounds and effects.
Sometimes after watching, say, a TV episode of some show I go online and check the discussion, when I would come across a question somebody asked and I would wonder "Why would they ask that? It was so clearly stated in the show" and then I realized I had subtitles on and was able to read it clearly, whereas another watcher could have missed / misheard those dialogue if he/she didn't turn on subtitles.
Apparently I'm in the minority here.
Subtitles drive me insane, and I always turn them off. My eyes always get drawn to the subtitles so I miss what's happening onscreen. I also read faster than the dialog is spoken, but my brain gets interrupted by the spoken dialog while it's processing what I just read, so I get the same information twice but struggle to retain the actual meaning. I have no idea how anyone can tolerate subtitles unless they actually need them.
I tend to watch everything I can with subtitles these days, watching old stuff again it's amazing just how much I was missing, either through sound design issues or just zoning out momentarily. The only issue is when the subtitles get ahead of the dialogue and you end up with a bit of a spoiler, albeit only by a few seconds.
I've also discovered some absolute gems of sounds/music being subtitled, one of my favourite ever being from the TV show Taskmaster, the sound effect of [he strums balalaika tunelessly], which added so much more than just hearing him strum tunelessly did.
The only issue is when the subtitles get ahead of the dialogue and you end up with a bit of a spoiler, albeit only by a few seconds.
This is the only real criticism of subtitles that I'll agree with, since you'll sometimes have a joke juimed because you'll read ahead of the dialog, but I'll take that any day over missing bits of story or jokes and either repeatedly rolling back to try to hear/understand something (and ruining the experience) or just not enjoying what I'm watching.