That’s actually what I meant: not open to training themselves. Kids nowadays require handholding and lots of encouragement in order to figure out a game. They just won’t pick up a manual or explore the environment to figure it out.
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It’s not being entitled, it’s expecting the developer to have the slightest understanding of their target audience. A mobile game is intended 99% for people who play on the go. The default setup MUST be "you can enjoy the game without having to explicitly turn up the volume or explicitly click on show text ".
That would be like NOT offering an in-game option to turn off audio just because “it’s the 21st century and all that” so one can just turn off the OS volume. No, it doesn’t and shouldn’t work like that.
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I agree with you but you have to consider, that
a) nowadays much more people are playings games. Back in the 80s we were a small group of -hm- nerds. 
We loved computers and we were open to experiment with new games for hours. Today most people (including the kids) just want to play. They haven’t the time nor the motivation to dig into manuals or big tutorials. For them computer games haven’t the same high status they had/have for us nerds. If you want to attract these people, you have to “suck” them into the game from the first minute - for example with an exciting and thrilling story and/or simple controls.
b) the games in the 80s were much simpler. For example in Turrican the hero runs left, right, up and down. If you press the button on the joystick, he shoots. That’s all you need to understand how the game works. Now start a modern action game like Modern Warfare, Far Cry or whatever. I can explain my father the controls of Turrican in a minute, but he won’t never be able to learn the WASD/mouse controls of a modern action game.
(btw: We haven’t read the manuals in the 80s too… 
)
If I understood Ron right, the only way to achieve that would be to activate sound and text from the beginning (because as a developer you can’t figure out if the player has muted the device - at least on iOS).
I disagree, I play games on my iPad at home, like my wife, some of my friends, and countless other iPad owners. It’s an iOS version, not a “mobile game.”
When I take my iPad to Starbucks, I may disable the sound – but I consciously know what I’m doing and then can look for mute or text options for the game. I never assume the game will just know and do magic.
How does that square with your assertion? 
P.S. I think a touch tablet like the iPad is the most perfect platform for these sort of games. I think it should be optimized for this platform, on which it can shine the brightest.
Why are you arguing this point? Is it a language issue? Because the entire thread has been about the problem of modern kids being hard to reach because they don’t understand (or are not interested in learning about) adventure games, and us trying to figure out how to reach them.
I think we’re both in the same side.
my 2 pence: when I play a game on my phone or tablet, most of the time I am in a situation where I cannot hear audio well enough to understand speech. There is noise in the background (other people watching tv, or other family members having conversations, things like that)
That’s fair, but you are aware of that and you know that it is your situation. I think it’s presumptuous to assume that the same is the case for me at home, playing a game on my iPad in my living room or porch.
Or for the kid wearing headphones on the train.
I think there should be proper options to support all cases, but I also think that the default should be the actual modern, ideal, multimedia experience that the game was designed for – with affordances to let others set their volume/text options as necessary.
The problem, like Mr. Gilbert says, is when people don’t know they are missing something. That’s a separate problem which should be addressed in a different way.
Just assuming that case as the default is, in my opinion, shortsighted.
dZ.
Then I think this could be a case where there is no sensible default, and therefore you need to present the user a choice: text, speech, or both. Honestly I can’t imagine anyone being confused by this choice. (I could be wrong)
It may be the case… but _how_to offer those choices may require a more creative solution than simply a pop-up message or an instruction card, for it is also the case that most people will not read it or miss it in some way. This was brought up before in this thread already.
dZ.
Exactly. And I am trying to refute some of your arguments. For example …
… this just isn’t true. They don’t require handholding and encouragement. If a kid would like to play an old school adventure game, it will figure it out. (So maybe we don’t need necessarily a new UI or simpler tutorials.)
In my last post I wanted to argue that the kids haven’t changed since the 80s. The kids today aren’t “dumber” as we are. We just have more players so we have more different interests - and it’s getting more difficult to satisfy them.
Argue all you want, that’s your prerogative. Experience shows differently.
Case in point, we played adventure games and explored the environments to learn the mechanics and figure out the games. In contrast, try to sell Thimbleweed Park to an audience of mostly casual gamers without the introduction tutorial. I don’t think it would get very far.
By the way, I never claim that kids are “dumber.” In fact, I’ve argued above, if you care to read my posts, against others for precisely making this assumption.
I claim that kids nowadays have different priorities and motivations than we had back when video games were new, most of everything was a new experience, and we had at most a handful of games to play for several months until our next birthday or Christmas, etc.
Surely you can see that.
dZ.
For this reason, you go with the case that covers all possible combinations.
Sound AND text on by default.
If you don’t offer text on, you’re causing a problem to the part of audience that can’t hear sound.
On the contrary, you just have something… “extra”, which some people might want on anyway (I had the text on, for example, even if I was playing with sound).
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Or a more common example: listening to a song with the lyrics in front of you. For non-native English speaking, this is really helpful (or the only way to understand). For example King’s quest V is voice only, and there are parts I just can’t make out even after listening to them the 20th time (potentially missing a clue). I started playing TWP and after the first introduction cut scene with Boris at the gate, I went into the options to enable Text “subtitles” and restarted just so I could understand what the hell he was mumbling about (although the German/Austrian accent might have contributed to it being unintelligible)
And some of Ransome lines are funnier in script.
And text only reminds of MM and MI
And voice-over was a stretch goal. Not the other way around.
So in short: if you can enjoy voice only, all the better for you, but I wouldn’t want to miss the text and I find it non-intrusive (I only look at it when I missed a word in the voice-over or quickly scan it way faster than Franklin or Ray have spoken their first word)
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Grimm Fandango had it too. Although it does become VERY lengthy very quickly, so the next request might be search function
Not really. Music is processed differently by the brain. Most people can enjoy a song, and even sing along the words, without actually paying attention to their meaning.
This is the reason why we can sing and enjoy songs in other languages (sometimes repeating hilarious interpretations of the phonetic sounds of the lyrics), yet we can’t really quote foreign movies unless we really understand the meaning.
Subtitles in games and movies are very useful when necessary, as a compromise when otherwise we would not be able to follow along due to hearing impairment or not understanding the language. They can be very distracting in any other situation.
dZ.
I wasn’t talking about the music: I was talking about the words being sung. Reading along the lyrics while listening to a song is not overloading the brain (at least mine) with too many inputs as has been suggested here when having both voice and text turned on in a game.
Anyway, I just found it to be more common example compared radio drama (who listens to those nowadays?) but apparently this forum quickly turns from a game loving platform to pseudo-neuroscientific statements of TRUTH. Whatever…
About not finding the key in MM: lets be fair.
- nobody would nowadays even think to hide a key there while a few decades ago this was ‘common’ practise. So youngsters might nit know that
- also the original MM game contained a poster with a hint about the key (if i remenber correctly). So even then it was considered that some hand holding in the beginning could be necessary.
Yes, please! 
I know what you meant. Reading lyrics and singing them are different mental processes. This is the reason why you sometimes need to sing the whole song or verse in order to recall a specific point. Song processing (music, words, singing, etc.) works differently from reading or even hearing a conversation.
People sometimes sing along and don’t even know what they are saying – even in their own language. It’s a strange quirk of the human mind, but it’s there.
There are also studies that suggest the brain processes lyrics and music in the same way at first, which leads to a sort of subconscious processing of both, and that only when you try to think of the lyrics, do they get separated from the “song” and processed as language.
If you don’t do that sencond effort, it doesn’t happen. When you do, you sometimes have to go through the entire song in your head to get to the lyrics since they have not been separated.
dZ.