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Developing game with some foreign language
Kopogero
Member UncommonPosts: 1,685
One thing I don't get is you build a game for profits, success...yet you choose to make it on some language that a fraction of the world uses, when it's crystal clear English is the global language I and most learned to use.
So, I see Russian, Korean and other asian games being pumped on their own language....and I simply don't see how is this helping their product. What's creating is just more work for translation/patching as well as more delay before they reach other market....essential time they are losing and allowing their competitors to release better products by the time they are finished with the language.
Blade and Soul, Phantasy Star Online 2 and other great games that have come and coming out recently are the reason why I had to bring this issue. Do they really have developers so uneducated that they don't know English or do they have other agendas behind this?
So, I see Russian, Korean and other asian games being pumped on their own language....and I simply don't see how is this helping their product. What's creating is just more work for translation/patching as well as more delay before they reach other market....essential time they are losing and allowing their competitors to release better products by the time they are finished with the language.
Blade and Soul, Phantasy Star Online 2 and other great games that have come and coming out recently are the reason why I had to bring this issue. Do they really have developers so uneducated that they don't know English or do they have other agendas behind this?
Comments
Also anime is made for the Japanese market and it is subsequently brought to other markets and translated. These are created for the Japanese market initially. A lot of the complaints about the type of art and content is often also as a result of cultural differences when these forms entertainment is brought to the West.
Blade and Soul is a Korean game that is again made for their market that has a large following for these types of games. Why would they develop the games in English when their primary market is Korean and Asian ?
When there's a demand for these games to be imported is there a need to translate them . Even today you still play many Japanese RPGs in Japanese with fan based translation because they are just not available and if you love the Japanese CRPG and other games you accept that this is the only way to get access to them. You'll grow old waiting for them to be translated and finally accessible to the English speaking market so many of us settle for fan based translation of well loved titles.
And these countries are so third world that their population don't even understand English? Is that the other thing this developer is trying to say by your statement for choosing to release it in a language the fraction of the world uses, over releasing it in English, that would speed up the process in releasing it everywhere else.
All these countries study English in schools too at even a primary level. So not understanding English isn't the reason at all.
If you're talking about localizing for the greatest market success, then Chinese or Korean should be one of the first languages to develop the game for.
One criticism where translation goes wrong though, aside from just poor linguistics, is UI design is seldom done with the thought of how different languages are going to fit within said UI. German for example requires around 50% more space than English does, and has been used as the benchmark for enterprise software at places like Oracle for knowing what to do for their UI elements so that it doesn't cause later issues when translating to different languages.
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I am from Asia and I had to learn 4 languages in primary school. Don't assume that we third world countries don't get a proper English education.
Most Asian games feature only Japanese and/or Korean, making an additional language a far greater part of the total development, especially if the languages are not related but completely different. And it's a wasted effort if it's never released in the west, as they certainly want to have Japanase/Korean, as thats the main market.
Another thing: They do not develop games in a foreign language. Thats the whole point. Japanese/Korean is their mother tongue, and English is the foreign language. And until the internet really took off, which isn't all that long ago, the average person was far less fluent in English (and other foreign languages, but English especially), making it not really useful to have it available in English outside of English speaking countries.
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Every development decision is linked to profits. Translating a game is no exception. They crunch the numbers and if it is profitable enough, they translate it. Any AAA product likely has the budget to translate it to multiple languages.
I agree with you that English is the universal language. I am not a native speaker, yet I prefer having everything in English. At the same time, I am an exception among my friends. Most of my friend love it when a game is localised into our own language - voice acting especially. Warcraft 3 comes to mind. It had particularly memorably voice acting which made the game extremely popular at home.
My guess is, the main reason games are localised, is to beat competition. If Warcraft 3 was the only strategy game out there, would my friends still play it in English? Definitely. Now imagine three strategy games come out at the same time - one of them being localised in my country with flawless voice acting. Chances are majority of my friends will pick that game up over the others.
I was really suprised that League of Legends is localised, fully voice acted, into many languages. They have to voice act every new character they add. But when you think about it, the price it costs to voice act everything (only a fraction of the development costs) is probably worth it. If this move makes sure 10% of players who would pick up Dota2 pick League of Legends instead, it will pay back big time.
Suppose you worked at a company and they told you that all your work had to be done in a different language?
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Also the western markets tend to be more competitive and less lucrative(for a variety of reasons) on a per game basis.
FFXI is the only game i have ever seen that actually created a "translator" so that all languages could play together and communicate as well.Now of course they don't deserve full praise as that was a needed move since the servers all ran out of JPN.
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I wish there would be global language. Would help a lot so people understand each other. Be it English, Hindi, Russian whatever.
Second there are other markets than the western one which are quite huge too, even bigger than those in the west. And then there are those regional differences. Not every product which sells well in one region has the same success in other parts of the world. Strange, isn't it ?
E.g. asian MMOs are quite often a success in the east but not so much in the west. Which has nothing to do with the language.
Thanks to games being brought on English in my very small country back then...they helped me to pick up English and educate me basically for free. So, I'm very grateful I wasn't born in one of those countries where most is translated to my native language, and when something else is in this "foreign English" I would never get to fully enjoy or even hear about.
It would also completely suck if I was 20+ year old learning basic English. Much much easier to learn it from when I was 5-6 year old. So, I'm very thankful again and proud of my country for what it did for me.
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