F.E.A.R. is another game I was greatly looking forward to until I found out it didn't have subtitles:(

I wrote to the National Association of the Deaf regarding this, and this is the response I got:

Unfortunately, there is no law requiring video games to be accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Seems the most we can do at this point in time is write to video game producers and ask that they caption their material and suggest that doing so may increase their sales by up to 10% (the estimated percentage of deaf and hard of hearing people in America). I've seen a few blogs about this, some with information about games that have captions/subtitles or other visual cues. Can't remember where I saw them, but am sure it was through the blog aggregator http://www.deafread.com/

Rosaline

Rosaline Hayes Crawford, Esq.

Director, Law and Advocacy Center National Association of the Deaf

So what should be done? Get a law on the books? Get the game makers to voluntarily standardize subtitles? I'd prefer the latter, as it seem politicians are always on the lookout for excuses to talk trash about videogames as it is.

A petition is not bad idea...but it would seem that since most game companies have such a thick corporate bureaucracy to wade through, getting noticed by the game developers themselves would prove most difficult. What could be done to get the attention of the people who could change things?

While I'm not deaf and do agree with you, a whole lot of games DO have subtitles anyways, at least in English in my experience. Particularly RPGs.

SemiMaster

Thankfully, you are correct. Most games these days do indeed have the option for subtitles. Which makes it all the more infuriating that the option is not standard. I've said it before, I'll say it again: how hard can it be to put text to the words in a game? Ubisoft lost money on me because of that-I canceled my preorder and spend my money elsewhere. I truly hope that Assassin's Creed 2 (as well as Splinter Cell: Conviction) have subtitles.

If nothing else, there should be a place on the back of the box to indicate whether a game has subtitles. If it weren't for an employee at my local Gamestop playing his copy on the store 360 to find out if the option was available, I would have taken my pre-ordered copy home-and been doubly crushed that I had wasted my money on a game I couldn't understand.