What is it about games that makes me not want to read a lot of text in them?
I can lie or sit down with a book for hours, so I'm definitely fine with reading a lot of text. But the idea of reading the same book on a monitor, at a desk, is a lot less enticing.
Even if I could lie down comfortably and have a big TV to read on, I don't think reading a book on that screen would be a lot of fun.
So it seems like the body position itself is already a big part of it.
But then even if I imagine a small handheld device... I'm really not sure. Perhaps because it's often just 1-2 lines at a time, clicking through text boxes?
Even in games like #DiscoElysium, where I sometimes think "wow, this game has some great writing", going through conversations with NPCs can be a chore, when I feel like I have to go down each dialogue branch with NPC A, then NPC B etc.
Whereas reading a book, it's a constant stream of words from the page to the head, in the order that the author thought made the most sense. So the author can pace and break things up, while the game has all dialogue concerning "NPC B" bunched up in that dialogue tree.
I'm trying to come up with ways for a game to break this up, but I'm not sure if's maybe just a me-problem. ^.^
#gaming #gamedev #reading #showerthoughts
