First a meta comment: Yeah, the game could be more clear about that. I suspect that the reason why the game doesn’t explain this detail is that explaining details in-game requires language, which requires translation to a ton of languages, which is costly for a small developer. So indie games instead lean on existing intuitions, on nonverbal communication, and on players figuring things out by trial and error.
It’s possible that this is indeed the reason that the developer would give (I really couldn’t say, so let’s assume so)—but if so, it would be a very lazy excuse. Nothing prevents you from putting in icons and text! (Indeed, that’s the standard approach to such things, in UX design.) And then, if translating/localizing said text is too much work (which is likely), you can just… not translate it. Anyone who doesn’t speak English can rely on the the icons. But most people who’ll be playing the game do speak English, so this would be strictly superior, and massively so.
This seems uncharitable. The real world is more complicated than that, so things are almost never strictly superior. (Usually the answer to “why don’t people pick up this free 20-dollar-bill on the ground?” is “it doesn’t exist”.)
Specifically with regards to translations, a dev tells Steam which languages their game is available in, and then Steam displays this game only to customers who both understand these languages and have told Steam that they want to see games in those languages. (I suspect other app stores have similar policies?) So you either fully translate your game, or lose sales, or lie to a store that could kick you off for lying. In case of Understand, the dev chose to make a game with basically no in-game text, and a fully translated store page.
But most people who’ll be playing the game do speak English
This is possibly true, but not necessarily so. For instance, here is the Steam language user survey for August 2021. The direct English-speaking proportion is only 33.6%, and I don’t know what percentage of Chinese- or Russian-speaking Steam users can also speak English.
Finally, if most people on Steam spoke Chinese rather than English, I suspect you would not advocate for games to display icons + Chinese text, if translating stuff was too cumbersome.
If Steam policy is as you say, then we can certainly blame Steam for the UI being bad—we can say “Steam policies enforce bad UIs”—but in no way whatsoever does that make the UI less bad, nor does it make a hypothetical UI just like this one except with English text any less strictly superior.
I do not agree that “things are almost never strictly superior”. In my experience (and UX design and software development is what I do for a living), things are often strictly superior. People’s reasons for not doing the strictly superior thing are bad reasons much more often than they are good reasons.
I’d definitely prefer just icons to “icons plus text in a language I don’t understand”. The text would be visually distracting, and I’d be wondering what it meant and whether it was trying to tell me something I hadn’t yet figured out.
This is an easily solvable problem: allow the user to toggle the text labels off (but default to them being on).
Folks, these are not new UX design challenges. On the contrary, they are long-solved problems; they’ve been solved for decades. There is no reason to suddenly reinvent the wheel, or to start violating established best practices. Doing so will just result in confused and annoyed users—as it has here.
Honestly I don’t think that would solve it for me? For one I need to find, without text, the way to turn the labels off. For two, even if I succeed, it won’t be visually distracting any more but I’ll still be wondering what it meant and whether it was trying to tell me something I hadn’t yet figured out.
Briefly commenting on this part:
It’s possible that this is indeed the reason that the developer would give (I really couldn’t say, so let’s assume so)—but if so, it would be a very lazy excuse. Nothing prevents you from putting in icons and text! (Indeed, that’s the standard approach to such things, in UX design.) And then, if translating/localizing said text is too much work (which is likely), you can just… not translate it. Anyone who doesn’t speak English can rely on the the icons. But most people who’ll be playing the game do speak English, so this would be strictly superior, and massively so.
This seems uncharitable. The real world is more complicated than that, so things are almost never strictly superior. (Usually the answer to “why don’t people pick up this free 20-dollar-bill on the ground?” is “it doesn’t exist”.)
Specifically with regards to translations, a dev tells Steam which languages their game is available in, and then Steam displays this game only to customers who both understand these languages and have told Steam that they want to see games in those languages. (I suspect other app stores have similar policies?) So you either fully translate your game, or lose sales, or lie to a store that could kick you off for lying. In case of Understand, the dev chose to make a game with basically no in-game text, and a fully translated store page.
This is possibly true, but not necessarily so. For instance, here is the Steam language user survey for August 2021. The direct English-speaking proportion is only 33.6%, and I don’t know what percentage of Chinese- or Russian-speaking Steam users can also speak English.
Finally, if most people on Steam spoke Chinese rather than English, I suspect you would not advocate for games to display icons + Chinese text, if translating stuff was too cumbersome.
If Steam policy is as you say, then we can certainly blame Steam for the UI being bad—we can say “Steam policies enforce bad UIs”—but in no way whatsoever does that make the UI less bad, nor does it make a hypothetical UI just like this one except with English text any less strictly superior.
I do not agree that “things are almost never strictly superior”. In my experience (and UX design and software development is what I do for a living), things are often strictly superior. People’s reasons for not doing the strictly superior thing are bad reasons much more often than they are good reasons.
I’d definitely prefer just icons to “icons plus text in a language I don’t understand”. The text would be visually distracting, and I’d be wondering what it meant and whether it was trying to tell me something I hadn’t yet figured out.
This is an easily solvable problem: allow the user to toggle the text labels off (but default to them being on).
Folks, these are not new UX design challenges. On the contrary, they are long-solved problems; they’ve been solved for decades. There is no reason to suddenly reinvent the wheel, or to start violating established best practices. Doing so will just result in confused and annoyed users—as it has here.
Honestly I don’t think that would solve it for me? For one I need to find, without text, the way to turn the labels off. For two, even if I succeed, it won’t be visually distracting any more but I’ll still be wondering what it meant and whether it was trying to tell me something I hadn’t yet figured out.