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[alspal]

I enjoyed reading the text in Zelda Wind Waker occasionaly. although it had an abundance of instances where it felt like I had no choice but to get the text out of the way as quick as possible due to the use of repition. Such as meeting a fish next to every island in the game, who has the same introduction text boxes every time - its okay to read a couple of times but after a while it becomes very boring to re-read text a thousand times.

[Luke]

I use to read tons of text every week, for work and personal interest, so I can say I'm not afraid of few lines in a game.
Said that, I remember skipping every single dialog in Castlevania games as fast as the game let me do it. It wasn't a lazy move, because I knew my pleasure came from the action; often I find myself trying to play a game in my on way, and I thanks those games that leave me do it effortless.

I have to agree with Eres: things work good enough right now, don't alienate those who already enjoy reading with funcy and maybe irritating effects, but obviously give the possibility to skip enterely the "slowdown" of reading text.

Nevertheless, we may give it a try (isn't this the intent of the original poster?), mainly because I'm not as adamant with audience compartimentalisation as him. I believe in produtcs capable to introduce you to genres that you didn't expected to enjoy, simply because of a feature.

[Wander]

I use to read tons of text every week, for work and personal interest, so I can say I'm not afraid of few lines in a game.
Said that, I remember skipping every single dialog in Castlevania games as fast as the game let me do it. It wasn't a lazy move, because I knew my pleasure came from the action; often I find myself trying to play a game in my on way, and I thanks those games that leave me do it effortless.

I have to agree with Eres: things work good enough right now, don't alienate those who already enjoy reading with funcy and maybe irritating effects, but obviously give the possibility to skip enterely the "slowdown" of reading text.

Nevertheless, we may give it a try (isn't this the intent of the original poster?), mainly because I'm not as adamant with audience compartimentalisation as him. I believe in produtcs capable to introduce you to genres that you didn't expected to enjoy, simply because of a feature.

here here - i agree with that.  if the game is super fun and I'm familiar/comfortable with the characters, I stop reading - for instance castlevania/mario vs. allot of other indy games etc.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i myself never skip text until i've read it at least once, because you can never be sure they won't say something interesting or crucial to your progress in a game. if you can't know ahead of time that text will be both useless and uninteresting, it doesn't make sense to me to skip it just because i'm impatient to play the game faster.

the text in castlevania:sotn for instance was fairly interesting, in a b-movie humor kind of way. i mean, why would you skip DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. and WHAT IS A MAN, A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS! -- those are like emblematic lines, and if you skip them you're missing a lot of what makes SoTN so great.

[Gnarf]

i myself never skip text until i've read it at least once, because you can never be sure they won't say something interesting or crucial to your progress in a game. if you can't know ahead of time that text will be both useless and uninteresting, it doesn't make sense to me to skip it just because i'm impatient to play the game faster.

You can get a pretty good idea about what to expect. At some point I'm going to make some judgement based on what I've seen so far. I'm not going to wade through hours of shit just because there might happen to be something good hidden somewhere in it.

In other news, sometimes if I don't like a novel, I don't finish reading it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

that strikes me as quite alien to my experience -- i've never just stopped reading a novel, to my knowledge. no matter how badly it's written, i'd always want to know what happens next and would always finish it

[hatu]

that strikes me as quite alien to my experience -- i've never just stopped reading a novel, to my knowledge. no matter how badly it's written, i'd always want to know what happens next and would always finish it

I've stopped a few around page 200-300. If by then I'm not interested, the writer isn't doing a very good job. Just like if a games first hour is crap, I'm not gonna finish it just because.

I think also static text boxes with long stories don't fit well with action type of games. The fun of the game is being always on the move and well.. actioning.
When you stop that for whatever reason, it's gonna make a negative impression.

[Montoli]

the text in castlevania:sotn for instance was fairly interesting, in a b-movie humor kind of way. i mean, why would you skip DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. and WHAT IS A MAN, A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS! -- those are like emblematic lines, and if you skip them you're missing a lot of what makes SoTN so great.

Actually, that might be a poor example.  I would argue that the text was immaterial in that case.  It was the voice "talent" that made those lines so great.  I'm pretty sure that they could have completely removed the text from the screen in that case, and it would have been just as great.

[j0d1]

Last day I found this website about Kinetic Typography (http://johnnylee.net/kt/). It's not a new idea and it is similar to decorative text, but hey, for a game with a lot of text, it's a great idea. I plan to do an XNA plugin for this and integrate it to my own game. 

[Gnarf]

that strikes me as quite alien to my experience -- i've never just stopped reading a novel, to my knowledge. no matter how badly it's written, i'd always want to know what happens next and would always finish it

Okay.

I'm not sure if you got that impression from what I wrote or if you just used it as an example, but just for the record like, I'm not just talking about bad writing. Like, if I care about what happens next, then it's a pretty good story, and that might make me keep reading even though it is badly written. And vice versa and etc.

[ForteDante]

i myself never skip text until i've read it at least once, because you can never be sure they won't say something interesting or crucial to your progress in a game. if you can't know ahead of time that text will be both useless and uninteresting, it doesn't make sense to me to skip it just because i'm impatient to play the game faster.

the text in castlevania:sotn for instance was fairly interesting, in a b-movie humor kind of way. i mean, why would you skip DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. and WHAT IS A MAN, A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS! -- those are like emblematic lines, and if you skip them you're missing a lot of what makes SoTN so great.

I am exactly the same in this regards. Even if the writing is bad I'm compelled to read everything. I don't think I've ever quit a game for having bad writing either, unless it also had bad gameplay, in which case I'm quitting it for bad gameplay.

That being said I don't think we need gimmicks at all. All we really need is better writing. Writing seems to be an afterthought in most games outside the point n' click genre.

[hatu]

Last day I found this website about Kinetic Typography (http://johnnylee.net/kt/). It's not a new idea and it is similar to decorative text, but hey, for a game with a lot of text, it's a great idea. I plan to do an XNA plugin for this and integrate it to my own game. 

That's looks really annoying to read

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the text in castlevania:sotn for instance was fairly interesting, in a b-movie humor kind of way. i mean, why would you skip DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD. and WHAT IS A MAN, A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS! -- those are like emblematic lines, and if you skip them you're missing a lot of what makes SoTN so great.

Actually, that might be a poor example.  I would argue that the text was immaterial in that case.  It was the voice "talent" that made those lines so great.  I'm pretty sure that they could have completely removed the text from the screen in that case, and it would have been just as great.

well, words are words, the form they're delivered in can affect things, but doesn't usually change too much, it's still conveying the same information. stories used to be entirely oral for example, but they were still stories even without writing

[team_q]

well, words are words, the form they're delivered in can affect things, but doesn't usually change too much, it's still conveying the same information. stories used to be entirely oral for example, but they were still stories even without writing

You are swerving wildly, I think the point of this topic is how to make text more fun to read, not how dialogue or story is delivered.

[mewse]

EDIT:  Ninja'd.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

how about in addition to text? voice acting read over the text can make the text more fun to read.

[Ivan]

I think good typographical practices would be one for starters. It might not make it more fun, but it will make it.. you know.. actually possible. Most games have a blatant disregard for rules of typography, which have dictated how we read text over hundreds of years.

[Montoli]

how about in addition to text? voice acting read over the text can make the text more fun to read.

Actually, at that point, I think you could successfully argue that you're not making text reading more fun - you're actually removing the requirement of reading in order to get the story!

But I do agree that audio delivery is often (or at least has the potential to be) better than straight text.  The problem is just that recording all of your dialogue takes up a lot of disk/memory space, and if you don't have access to quality voice talent, you run the risk of the voices doing more harm than good because they're so annoying.

[Luke]

[...]
Said that, I remember skipping every single dialog in Castlevania games as fast as the game let me do it. It wasn't a lazy move, because I knew my pleasure came from the action;[...]

here here - i agree with that.  if the game is super fun and I'm familiar/comfortable with the characters, I stop reading - for instance castlevania/mario vs. allot of other indy games etc.

i myself never skip text until i've read it at least once, because you can never be sure they won't say something interesting or crucial to your progress in a game. if you can't know ahead of time that text will be both useless and uninteresting, it doesn't make sense to me to skip it just because i'm impatient to play the game faster.

Sure, I use to skip text only because I already know that it's *useless* for my enjoyment of the game. This kind of knowledge comes from the previous experience with that series.
I would be obviously disappointed if I miss a good reading, just because of a preconception, for instance, built game after game.
By the way, it has to be so, because nobody is going to search awesomeness in Castlevania's dialogs and plots. I return to those games for gameplay not for text.
This brings me directly to the principle "know your audience"!

[alspal]

I really enjoyed the text in Castlevania, theres usually only a few moments where you actually get to talk to people so it's quite rewarding for me at least.