Ruobing(Ruby) Yang
How the transformative magic happened

UXer's Take on Localization of Games#

 

 An UXer’s Thoughts on Localization of Video Games

It’s been a while since China has produced a game worthy of international players’ attention. Black Myth: Wukong had not only just garnered in my attention but also many game vloggers’. As humble as the producers are, the game shows promising signs to be a breakout for the Chinese gaming industry in the global market.

I took some time scrolling through the comments of the Black Myth: Wukong reaction videos just to see the overseas reactions. Amongst the most liked top comments of these videos, one theme consistently appeared: explanations of Wukong, Journey to The West, and some Chinese history. I have suddenly realized the demanding job that the Game Science studio carries if they were to release the game outside of China. On the one hand, you have the Chinese audience who know the story of Journey to The West by heart from age six to ninety-six. On the other hand, you have foreign players who barely know anything of Wukong other than Dragonball Z. On top of this, Wukong, as an IP, has been over explored in the Chinese video game industry. How does the Game Science studio give all players a satisfying experience if they were to release it overseas? Should Game Science try to appease all and possibly reinventing the story, or should Game Science release a Chinese only version, then wait and see?

 
Black Myth: Wukong Webpage

Black Myth: Wukong Webpage

 

In a multinational company like Amazon, satisfying multiple consumer segments means hiring many UX researchers, designers, and writers. These researchers, designers, and writers are tasked with localizing the entire website, strings, contents, and processes to fit the local customs, regulations, and needs while achieving some cross-border consistency. Not an easy feat. Massive localization like this inevitably will change some core parts of the eCommerce experience. For video games, this may even mean changing some part of the story. Localization of video games is very much both a strategic and an implementation problem, especially for big titles. Localizing certain dimensions of the game but not others could create a confusing experience while localizing too much will create inconsistent player experience across borders. Additionally, players might want “authentic” experience in ways that they define “authenticity” for a particular game. How do gaming companies preserve this “authenticity” when it is not clearly defined while doing localization? Building a good user experience is about balancing the needs of the many (Goodman et al., 2012). Below I will take a stab at listing a few considerations when it comes to the localization of video games. This article does not seek to provide an exhaustive list but is meant to give some thought starters.

From the player perspective:

  • Cultural Storytelling: A considerable part of best-selling games these last two years had been moving storytelling. Stories have contexts, backgrounds, and emotions. The “feel” of the contexts, backgrounds, and emotions is built on the multidimensional feedback of a game. Unfortunately, these three aspects are experienced and expressed differently across borders and ethnic groups. The same settings can conjure different emotional responses between players across borders. Localization means that the teams need to find out all the cultural experiences, expressions, and other dimensions, then addressing them as needed. Leaving out the “cultural odor.”(Iwabuchi, 2002) Animal Crossing Wild World tried to solve the “cultural odor”(Iwabuchi, 2002) issue by cutting away all culturally related speech, cultural-specific architecture, festivals, and voices from the start leaving an experience neutral gameplay(Polygon, 2020). The downside is that players may not experience as much of the familiar storytelling and communal warmth through sharing similar-to-self cultural processes. Thus, for a game that requires community connection, this “neutral approach” may not be the best execution. All in all, there is no one-size-fits-all solution here. Companies need to research their intended audience to decide.

  • “Authentic experience”: players want to experience the game in ways that they consider “authentic.” Players are looking for “genuineness, truth, and reality.” (Grayson and Martinec, 2004; Rose and Wood, 2005, as cited in Yuan et al. 2015)” What is authentic is defined very differently across cultures (Spooner, 1986, p.225). This is where companies should think about how censorship can impact a player’s feel of the “truth.” The Fire Emblem Controversy (Silent, 2016) is one of the examples in which fans were less pleased with the localization changes due to censorship and efforts to adapt to local culture. Both were by players as “robbing” them of their truthful experience at the time. Thus, research needs to be done to understand to what degree do players no longer experience the “genuineness, truth, and reality” (Grayson and Martinec, 2004; Rose and Wood, 2005, as cited in Yuan et al. 2015) of a game through the localization process.

  • Consistency: Is the core part of the gameplay experience consistent across countries despite the localization?  For Animal Crossing, the interactions of the community, which are comprised of NPCs and other players in the game, is the core part of the gameplay that should be consistent across borders. Language is, again, a big challenge for establishing such connections. Animal Crossing New Horizons dealt with this by using a localized “Animalese” in part of their franchise by having a consistent “gibberish” in all versions of their games.  Because what is considered “gibberish” is defined differently depending on the language the players speak, “Animalese” sounds differently in different regions while still transmitting the familiarity and warmth needed for this game (Polygon, 2020)

  • Price and value: players in different countries have different price sensitivities, affordability, and personal value structures. Localizing price and price discounts is also an important part of localization. As Doucet’s(2014) analysis shows, some regions such as Japan, Korea, and Russia are likely to have higher price sensitivity and higher response to discounts. Sales doubled when price drop 90% for Defender’s Quest in these regions. When releasing the game, consider adjusting your price and financial forecasts based on the local affordability and value.

  • Multiple dimensions of change: Even more so than eCommerce sites, video games create their player experience driven by a multidimensional “cultural process”(Bogost, 2007). As our understanding of society and human minds is still in infancy, we may not be able to accurately dissect the drivers of “cultural process” and player experience. However, within the dimensions that we can understand, there are still many aspects that need to be reconsidered during the localization process. A full localizing of experience potentially means considering changes more than like dubbing, subtitling, and visual. Neglecting the full spectrum of players’ experience can cause the players not able to embody the story, the character as fully, resulting in inconsistent player experience. This attention to player’s multi-dimension experience is even more critical when it comes to AR and VR games.

From the studio/company perspective:

  • Simultaneous launch or Later-date Localization: “Sim-ship” can help recover financials fast (Dietz, 2007). However, the localization process becomes more complex and error-prone (Bondarenko, 2018). The parallel approach also increases the cost (Bondarenko, 2018), which companies aimed to recover quickly by “Sim-release”. Financial analysis and internal analysis of team management capability can help determine the possibility of “Sim-ship.”

  • Cost: The most obvious and important factor to consider here. Localization is not cheap. As massive amounts of the cost of making a video game are incurred upfront, the cost could be a significant deterrent. Rigorous research into your potential audience size and size-of-prize is a must before localization starts. Game fans are often very vocal; however, that does not necessarily mean that there will be enough players willing to buy your game at full price. Nintendo had to make the tough call to not localize Captain Rainbow despite fan requests, due to the low actual potential player base (Pranger, 2015, as cited in Ashley, 2015,).

  • Team capacity: Some teams like to be super involved, kicking back the ideas back and forth with the localization agency, while others are extremely hands-on. Most studios are very much short on time, which means you need to budget capacity very wisely. Will the input of your team’s capacity and time translate to business or player gains? Regardless of the answer to this question, Localization agencies tend to prefer teams at least giving them good background information about the studio’s ultimate vision and background setting for the game (Kemp, 2016). Regardless of the strategic capacity decision you make, the onboarding time for the localization team should not be shortened.

  • Ratings Board: As we all know, the ratings board is the gatekeeper of publishing. Being rated AO means almost no sales from the mainstream players in the U.S. A huge part of the localization team and PR team’s job is to satisfy the ratings boards’ requirements. However, most of the changes to appease may not be in-line with the vision for the game. Some last-minute changes are not only hard technically but also can cause many unpleasant consequences. Grand Theft Auto’s “hot coffee” incident (See Parkin, 2012) would be one lesson here. During dev stage, it would be incredibly helpful to keep the local ratings board in mind while materializing the concepts and make changes accordingly starting at that stage. Make the strategic decision to take or avoid the ratings board “punishments” before the last-minute headaches hit.

  • “Pirate Translation”: Your players are very talented. If they love you enough, they will do some work for you. This is true in terms of translation as well. In Defender’s Quests case, Russian translations are published by fans way before the official Russian translation release (Doucet, 2014). Even though Doucet(2014) noted that the sales impact of the fan translation did not match the sales impact of the official translation, the case does indicate a possible choice for some game makers. For the game makers who want to preserve absolute authenticity or lack the resources, capacity to do localization: that is to make a good enough game that fans will try to translate themselves. However, the quality will vary. For example, translation from other major languages to English will have a higher degree of accuracy than others. The Chinese translation to English for Black Myth Wukong blog posts and PR posts are done by fans of the game and verified by IGN. For other studios, this could be a viable “localization method”, albeit with unpredictable outcomes.

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