作者：Peter Angstadt

我们在《Cannon Brawl》中向玩家展示角色对话和文本时，一开始就做错了。人们通常会因为自己跳过或忽略的文本内容而困惑。但我们的游戏中却并没有太多文本内容！

经过大量测试以及对其他游戏的研究之后，我总结出了一套如何让人们去阅读游戏文本的方法。我希望这有助于你更好地向玩家传递信息。

1.如果你可以在没有文本的情况下，通过视觉或音频来传送达信息，那就先试试这种方法。

2.当文本出现在屏幕上时，游戏中的一切都要暂停。这听起来很再明显不过了，但我第一次就搞砸了这一点。人们一次只会专注于一件事。

3.尽量最小化玩家睛球必须在屏幕上移动的范围，即最小化你所呈现的内容。所以一句话不要超过8-10个文字。如果你有多余的字词，就要将其放置于第二句话。知道为什么小说的字行距都很狭窄吗？这是为了便于你托住书本，也更便于你浏览文本。为了更好地说明这一点，我们在此举一个来自《Banner Saga》的例子：

banner saga(from gamasutra)

他们设置了极为冗长的文本句子。我的眼睛从角色的脸转移到文本的距离相当远。这会让玩家阅读得更慢，并且更难以消化故事。相反，这里还有一个来自《Fire Emblem Awakening》的例子：

fireemblem(from gamasutra)

他们的文本较短少（并且覆盖在说话角色之上）。我的眼睛几乎不需要移动，我的大脑也可以毫不费力地消化这些文本。这8-10个字词分为两行的规则适用于游戏中的所有文本，道具描述，任务简介等，它并不仅仅局限于角色对话。

电影字幕也存在与游戏相同的问题（游戏邦注：人们必须阅读和查看图像），它们通常也遵守8-10个字规则。

我建议你一次不要呈现超过2行的文字。如果你的文字超过了2行，那就依次显示。玩家会快速忽略文本墙，他们更可能阅读一次只呈现两行的文字。

4.对话文本一次只呈现一个字词，以充分的时间呈现完整的对话。根据我们的经验，逐字（但要迅速）呈现文字可以激发玩家的一点好奇心，让他们更愿意去看文字。当然，要一直为他们提供一个摁下按钮就可以看到全部文字的选项。

5.如果你想通过文本传递一些信息，那就要将重要的文字用不同颜色标注出来。我们在测试《Cannon Brawl》的过程中发现为相关文字添加色彩时，玩家的理解能力就提升了。《塞尔达传说：风之杖》中就有这样的例子：

zelda(from gamasutra)

最后要说的是，这些规则均适用于我们游戏《Cannon Brawl》。我们努力向玩家传达他们能够绕过掩体射击（而不是试图击穿它）这种玩法。在我们运用这些规则之前，没有人尝试从掩体包抄过去。但在之后，大多数人都这么做了。

cannon brawl text(from gamasutra)

希望本文能够让你更有效地通过文本向玩家传递信息！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How to Get People to Read Text in Your Game

by Peter Angstadt

This was originally posted on our website where we occasionally share what we’ve learned while making Cannon Brawl.

We started doing everything wrong when showing character dialogue and text to players in Cannon Brawl. People would often get confused by something that was explained in text they had skipped or ignored. We didn’t even have that much text in our game!

After a lot of playtesting and studying other games, here’s what I’ve learned about how to get people to read in your game. I hope to this can help you better communicate information to your players. Here we go:

1. If you can do it without text through either visuals or voice acting, try that first. Otherwise…

2. Everything must pause in the game when text is on the screen. Sounds obvious, but hey I messed this up the first time. People can only focus on one thing at a time.

3. Try to minimize the amount the player’s eye must move around the screen to process what you’re showing. So, do not put more than 8-10 words on a line. If you have more words, drop them on to a second line. You know how the pages of novels are pretty narrow? That’s not only to help you hold the book, but also to help you eye easily move through the text. To better illustrate this, here’s an example from Banner Saga:

bannersaga

They have very long lines of text. My eye must travel pretty far from the characters faces to the text and pretty far to read the text itself. This makes it slower to read and harder to digest the story. In contrast, here’s an example from Fire Emblem Awakening:

fireemblem

They have short chunks of text (and it’s overlayed on top of who is actually talking). My eye barely has to move and my brain has to do little work to digest the text. This 8-10 word 2 line rule applies for all text in a game, item descriptions, mission briefing, etc – not just character dialogue.

To further drive this home, subtitled movies have the same issue as games (people must read and look at the visuals) and they too generally follow the 8-10 word rule.

Going further, I’d recommend that you don’t show more than 2 lines at a time. If you have more than two lines, show them sequentially. Players quickly ignore walls of text, they are more likely to read it if it’s presented in two lines at a time.

4. Show dialog text one word at a time, revealing the full block shown over about a full second. In our experience, revealing it word by word (but quickly) sparks a fraction of a second of intrigue from the player, and makes them more likely to read it. Of course, always allow them to reveal the full block with the press of a button immediately.

5. If you are trying to teach things in text (which we do in Cannon Brawl), color specific important words differently. Comprehension went up in playtests of Cannon Brawl after we started inline coloring words. Zelda games do this a lot, here’s an example from Wind Waker:

zelda

And finally, here’s all those rules applied to our game Cannon Brawl. We’re trying to communicate to the play that they could try shooting around a shield (instead of trying to pound through it). Before we applied all the rules, no one tried flanking shields. Afterwards, the majority of people try it:

cannonbrawltext

Hopefully this helps you get text information across to your player more effectively! If you have any other tips, lets hear them in comments!（source：gamasutra）