A few years ago a friend invited us over to watch the Professor Layton movie, which we watched subtitled. I wasn’t having a great time of it health-wise, I’d not slept all that well. I remembere as we watched this movie that some point midway through… I want to say the first act of the story, before the obligatory ‘that’s very odd, Luke’ moment of the narrative, that I’d started having problems reading the words of the subtitles.
Like, really had a problem.
This was really a scary experience – words, which are generally pretty important to me, were suddenly squirming past my grip. It wasn’t just that I was having a hard time making my eyes focus, the words were literally not attaching to meaning in my head. It was like drowning, feeling my world unravel. I reached for words to say what was going on –
“I don’t feel all that good. It okay if I lay down, [friend]?”
“Oh, sure.”
And I went and lay on a bed for an hour and tried to sleep.
That feeling passed, and it’s never come back. But it’s a feeling I remember when I look at words that don’t mean anything. When programmers tweet at one another in my mentions and I’m just so confused by the words. When I look at a card in a game I’ve never played and look at the words.
I wonder if this is part of why I try to make wording on cards clear and jargon-light. I wonder.
Respect your players! Feeling like you can’t understand something right in front of you is really awkward feeling and it’ll disengage people from play! Recognise that you, the designer, have been living with and living in this game’s space for ages now and so ‘it’s easy’ is not an acceptable response when someone tells you they’re confused! If someone is outside, and you’re inside, do not get snippy at them for failing to learn what you already know. Have some empahty for the context and understanding required to really get in.