Why Subtitles in Games are Necessary

It's usually not a problem. A good ninety percent of video games have subtitles, possibly more, but when they don't, in this day and age, it's not right.

For one, in games with no (or bad) subtitles that also have loud background noises, like Halo: Reach (For the non gaming types, it's a futuristic war game about genetically modified super soldiers. Sort-of. I have never actually played it.), you can miss large parts of the dialog even with a louder volume or while wearing headphones. If you are hard of hearing this may totally ruin your experience. 

The worst situation is, of course, when no subtitles are provided. This occurs rather infrequently now, but when it does, it is bad. It's really unacceptable. All televised material must be captioned, with few exceptions under federal law (http://www.fcc.gov/guides/closed-captioning). If the budget is an issue, you can petition to bypass this rule. A similar law should be placed involving commercial video games released by large companies. Small independent games circumvent this due to budgeting (Most dialogue would be subtitled instead of voiced anyway), but the majority of games need to be subtitled. Refusing to subtitle a game alienates parts of your audience. There is a large community of deaf gamers, and they will lose all dialog, ruining the experience. As such, subtitling has to also be done well, and should be a direct translation of the spoken word.

Its very common to find a game without subtitles in certain parts, such as cut-scenes, which can be annoying for those relying on them. One, lesser issue, is that people playing with a low (or no) volume may have to turn it up, which could be annoying, or even rude if done at night.There may be some people who can read a language, but not easily understand it's spoken parts, and become quickly confused. Remember; Not all gamers are American, and not all games have multiple languages, which are significantly harder to provide than subtitles. The deaf, of course, will lose the dialog each time this happens. However, short stints without subtitles are usually not going to stop someone playing a game. Often, you can get the meaning of the conversation later, or, if you look, could probably find a transcript or such online with the words provided. However, the mild effort required to subtitle the rest of the game would have been relatively easy for the developers, and provided support for gamers outside the normal range.