Do you turn on subtitles while you're playing a game?

Some people will say yes because they may miss something important a character said, or maybe because a character has a accent that is hard to understand (Little Jacob from GTA IV was hard for me to understand). There can also be bad audio, or bad voice acting. Some people just like to read what the characters are saying.

Some people say it's distracting and can take away from the overall experience.

Personally, I prefer to have them on, so I can get everything from the story.

Honestly, I like to have them on, so that I can read everything that the characters are saying, because I personally have a tendency to hear things wrong. Like, if someone says one thing, I might hear something completely different, and then have to go back multiple times to hear what they actually said. It gets really annoying, especially when I'm in the middle of a combat scene or the like.

Plus, I like to be able to focus on the visuals and not really have to worry about the dialogue or missing anything due to background noise, since I can read very quickly, so that generally just makes the overall experience a good deal better on my end. 

Finally, if I miss something flat out, something could be left out of the story that I miss and I can get confused later on, which, believe it or not, has actually happened to me before on not one, not two, but three completely separate occasions.

Nope.I'm the kind of guy who likes to immerse himself into my games, and the floating words break the immersion for me. Maybe I'm a bit obsessive about it, but, I just can't take some games seriously with the subtitles on.

I honesty would put the subs on its not much of a bother for me. Since I only have one ear deaf on my left and have trouble hearing words on tv so from time to time I have to put it up for my own good. Most of my family members don't do it, and I seem to be that the only person who does since I mostly have a reason too. Plus its easier that way for me so I don't have the volume of the game too loud, that way I can see what the characters are saying.

I leave them off because my eyes always get drawn to the written words and even if I hear them, I still feel compelled to read them.

Sitting there reading takes away from the visually effects of the game. I can't enjoy the beauty of the art, the actual action of the sequence for whatever is going on, and if it's a PlayStation game that suddenly requires me to do whatever actions to save myself (I'm looking at you, Resident Evil 4), I'll get distracted by the words and by the reading and I can't play the game as well as if I left the dialogue off.

I want the story telling elements and not just hurrying through a game. I'd rather listen, be immersed, and enjoy the voice action for what it is: Art.

I like putting subtitles on because I get to read along as they're saying whatever and I start to feel more immersed in the game if I do this, like I'm a part of it, so doing that makes the game more fun for me.

I don't really have a problem hearing what people have to say, but sometimes I do miss hear things and because of that I prefer the subtitles on. Besides they never really bugged me so I had no reason not to have them turned on.

I always turn subtitles on when there's an option. I hate it when I miss any dialogue, even if it's just a misheard word or such that's irrelevant. I also play a lot of games that have either really loud sound effects or a lot of orchestral background music, or both, that drown out a lot of the lines. One thing I really hate though is when the character's lines don't perfectly match up with the subtitles. It bugs me a lot when there will be a word or two added/omitted from what you're reading.

I always turn on subtitles when given the option to do so. I hate to miss any thing, no matter how small or irrelevant it may be. I like it when subtitles for the little bits of dialogue that happen while you're actually controlling the character are an option as well, since even those tiny details are things I hate to miss. I not only do this for games, but TV and movies as well when it's an option.

It doesn't help I have a really bad problem with making out words, no matter how clear the speech actually is. If it wasn't for this, I wouldn't be so worried about being able to simultaneously read the spoken words, but you got to do what you got do to

I pretty much always turn subtitles off. I can understand English perfectly fine, so there's no reason for me to turn them on. If there does happen to be something that I miss it's usually not that important, and having them on gives me another thing to focus on, thus distracting me from what's happening in the cutscenes. They sometimes show up during gameplay too, filling the screen with 'unnecessary' stuff. When large chunks of the game is in a language I don't understand, I might consider it if the game is really heavy on the plot. But even then, I find them more of a distraction than a help, to be honest. Even in movies I like to just turn them off when I can. So I'm not big on subtitles, haha.

I always turn on subtitles.

There are too many times in a game when I'll miss something a character said because they said it really quickly or _{really quietly} or worst yet, they stringallthewordstogetherreallyfastlikethis. Whether that's the character's personality or just bad voice acting, it sucks to have to miss so much dialogue.

It really depends on the game, but typically I have subtitles turned on. Some games have characters with quieter voices, or perhaps you turned the sound down yourself. I also find that I turn on subtitles when games have voice actors with accents (e.g. Skyrim, Portal 2)

I prefer the subtitles on because a lot of times I could usually miss something very important and I don't have to turn up the t.v, laptop or any device to full volume just to hear the characters talk, also thats too loud anyway.

I always have them turned on. Reason being that I sometimes game with low audio so I want to make sure I don't miss anything that's being said. I've also noticed that in some games the music may be loud but the voice really low and if there's no option to turn one up or down I'll usually just resort to using subtitles since it's easier. Then there's also games featuring characters with hard to hear accents. In some games like The Witcher 3 it even picks up characters talking in the background which often isn't clearly audible so that's neat. In any case I find there's not much reason for me to have them turned off so I'll keep them on regardless.

The only case I'd turn them off in is probably in games where they show up long before something has been said on screen. That has the risk of spoiling major plotpoints, which can really make some cutscenes anticlimactic. I know from experience since its happened to me in some older games specifically jRPGs. Nowadays,  they're usually implemented while taking that into consideration so I'll start with them turned on until I notice otherwise.