Localised game versions

Hi,

i wanted to ask how many of you put effort into localisation for a game (online distributed, offline played) and which languages do you support?


Regards,

taumel

German is definately one you want to support.

German, French, Spanish and Italian. In that order.

Wär ja auch schade, wenn's fehlen würde; bei der schönen Sprache! ;O)

So the typical ones: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese,...?
How about the eastern symbol languages?

Are there any links which show some market shares for these type of games according to the languages? It would be interesting to know how much it increases sales if you add a special localisation and how much this depends on the type of game.

Do you think that, after downloaded, a english selector would scare away people before they get presented their localised ingame texts?

Have a screen with clicky flags on - no text of any language until they click one.

A lot of Germans have bought my Easter and Xmas Bonus games. They are the ones I get support emails from but seem happy with the responses too :-) Mind you someone from Turkey bought Xmas Bonsu mid march lol. Also I've seen it on an Italian site.

@GfK
Can't change the selector...

@Grey
Have you done a german localisation for the Bonus games?
Maybe he/she was on holiday in germany and saw someone palying there and as soon as he/she was back home... ;O)

If you can't change the selector, why did you ask? :)

The flag thing Gfk mentions is the best/usual way of doing language selection.

Mainly because i wanted to know how important such a thing could be. If it's very important then somehow there always is a way...

If the bigger distributors think it's worth it then I reckon it's worth a punt : http://bigfishgames.de/

Well, there are blitzers on this site who speak all the main languages, natively, so getting your text translated should be easy enough. :)

*big10p wishes he could speak/read/write Japanese

Wot GfK sez ;)

be sure to use the most confusing flags. such as Canada, Brazil, and Vietnam. That way no one will know what language it will pick.

taumel: No it's all in U.K. It's not simply a case of translation for many games, it would mean remaking the menus etc which are all graphics. Also some translations may result in bigger/smaller words that need repositioning/sizing/centreing etc.

Sure it's extra work. That's why i was asking if it's worth the effort.

Reminds me of cd-rom productions where came in languages like russian or similar things where the text has to be dynamic, so no precalculated images. Testing such stuff is real fun! ;O)

I just think the rest of the world should buckle down and learn English! :P

/me ducks for cover.

using flags is probably the most user friendly. If you do use written text to select between languages, I would recommend that you use the native spelling of the languages in question.

Nothing more annoying than accidentally hitting Chinese, and then being completely unable to find the setting to switch back to english since you have no idea what the Chinese word for 'English' looks like.

So... instead of picking between "English, German, French" make it "English, Deutsch, Français"

I guess it depends if your game has any text in it ;-)

I hadn't honestly thought about providing languages in a game.