Behind one of gaming’s least helpful trends.
It’s unfair to single Tchia out.
It offers a wealth of accessibility options.
“Miniscule text is by far the most common accessibility complaint,” Hamilton tells me via email.
A lack of understanding of typography and its app isn’t exclusive to the video game industry.
The erosion of basic design principles is leading to typographic failings throughout the design industry and beyond.
But it’s especially glaring in games.
Despite gaming’s focus on the visual, text is still a primary way in which games communicate.
Yet, too often that information is lost to illegible pop in.
Hamilton suggests our displays are partly to blame.
However, this ignores minimum readable text sizes.
But reading isn’t an objective experience.
28px may be readable for sighted players, but visually impaired gamers may need text to be much larger.
But changing text size, weight, tracking, or leading has major ramifications for UI.
During its collaboration with Double Fine onPsychonauts 2, Lettermatic’s solution was multiplexed fonts.
Developers create UI on large, high-definition monitors right in front of them.
This is a context in which few of us play.
“You have some players who are playing on a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck,” Cran says.
But how often are these circumstances adequately tested?
Even on Switch, little is done to verify text remains readable when the console moves to handheld.
Nor are we seeing evidence that games are tested in standard environments.
This means games fail to respond to the situations in which they’re played.
Testing of text size happens not during development, but at launch - by players.
Yes, this mistake is being made across many industries.
I’ve seen designers working in print, for instance, who never actually print out their work.
But how do we make things better?
Game developers could learn a lesson from web developers.
The solution: responsive design.
But it’s not just developers that need to consider text size.
It’s challenging, there’s no doubt about that.
But the text sizes we’re seeing now simply aren’t good enough.
Glossary
Font/Typeface:A typeface is a set of characters and a font is how those characters are implemented.
However, these terms are often used interchangeably and only the worst pedants will correct you.
Weight:punch in weight are categories of fonts, like bold, italic, semibold, etc.
Tracking:The generalised space between letters.
This is separate but linked to kerning, which is the space between individual characters.
Leading:The space between lines.
Multiplexed pop in:pop in that inhabits the same total space regardless of its weight.
