Thinking of Crowdsourcing Localization for Your Awesome Game? Read This First & Think Again
Gamers are usually so choosy. That’s why localization is a great strategy to make them play your game. It’s been proven over and over again: People are more likely to play a game if it is translated into their native language.
In the video gaming industry, people often talk about localizing and not translating a game. Linguistic localization is basically a process of making a video game or other content resonate with the local audience.
We are all aware that it is cumbersome and expensive to invest in marketing campaigns so many devs have to look for more available ways that will still bring good results.
Here comes localization✨! Hiring a professional game translator to localize your game will help you reach global markets and increase your sales. But the story is not that simple.
Are you ready to increase your downloads, improve your ranking, and get better reviews by localizing your game?
Increase your downloads to increase sales
In 2018, there were 2.3 billion gamers across the globe that spent $137.9 billion on games. If your game costs 1$ and every gamer buys it, you will become a billionaire — if you’ve localized your game into multiple languages. Of course, you might not persuade all gamers to download your game, but you will definitely increase your installs.
So says Google, too: if you localize your game, it will increase your downloads. Having multiple language options in stores will have a positive effect on downloads: Why should one download the game, if he or she cannot enjoy it with friends?
To increase downloads, and therefore sales, one strategy is to broaden the market. It is well said: Going global actually is going local.
In going local we have two choices: Marketing campaigns or broadening the market via localization.
I read somewhere that in the gaming industry, broadening a small market share by 27% has a better return on investment than marketing campaigns. If you look at the top 100 games of the world, the common thing among them is that they have all been localized into multiple languages. I don’t mean if you had your game localized, it will get in the top 100. Only that if you want it to get to the top 100 as close as possible, you’d need to hire a professional game translator. Studies reveal that over 70% of internet users are far less likely to bounce from the website if it is in their native language. This applies to games as well.
I have seen many people struggle with games which are only in English. They would rather pay money to play the game in their native language.
Working with professional game localizers
Localization of games means reproducing the game’s content according to the culture and customs of the target audience.
Cultural connotations and language eloquence that are well-preserved in a localized version and error-free text are what determines whether localization will be a good investment or waste of money:
In the gaming industry, if you have a unique name for the main character and a creative description you are likely to get more downloads in stores. Consider now this.
The main character of your game has a catchy name and dialogues are well-written by you or a pro game writer. It makes for a pleasant gaming experience, and your audience is engaged in the game. But it doesn’t sound as good in other languages it was localized in by fans/volunteers. And your foreign downloads are nowhere near the original game’s downloads.
This is the reason why hiring professionals will save time and money. By working with you in every step of the process and major decision, they will not let anything get lost in translation or produce new unintended meaning.
There is a very tough competition in the gaming industry and every little, if not minute, detail can make or break your business.
Mistakes prevent going viral
In the last football world cup, a German brewing company launched a marketing campaign in which they print each country’s flag on their bottle caps. A problem arose when they printed the flag of Saudi Arabia where alcohol is forbidden. The sales weren’t good, of course.
Some amateur translators and all MT engines tend to give literal or wrong translations. For example, if you give “Resume” to Google Translate, it will translate it to “CV,” and in gaming terminology “resume” has a different meaning if it’s a button. Such errors arise from a lack of context.
To avoid the embarrassment and potential problems, hire professional game localizers who know gaming terms, will ask you to provide context for difficult strings, will spot ambiguities, and will localize your game using an appropriate tone and language.
Having that competitive edge
Localization is not only about conquering the new market and target potential customers. The best use of it is to make it a part of your development process.
Tough competition means similar games are always being developed by someone else. It’s a good strategy to do localization before launching your game to capture the market early before someone else did. If your game is released in multiple languages simultaneously with lookalikes, it will catch that market. Consider another developer releases a similar game only in English. If they translate into some other languages, your game will be already settled in strategic markets like Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
It will work against you if you have not planned for localization from the beginning — you may even need to rewrite the code wasting time and effort. Make localization a part of the development process from the start, so that the release date of the game will not be delayed.
Simultaneous release can also provide you with accurate data about global markets in which you have released your game, and you can plan your marketing campaigns accordingly.
Simultaneous release also helps you to avoid some negative impacts:
1. If you release your game in only one language, dissatisfied gamers may write bad reviews.
2. Planning early will help you not to rush things afterward if you suddenly decide to translate your game to please your fan community or to prepare it for some event or competition. You will not get the time to search for the appropriate game translator or agency, and the final results can be poor.
3. Some publishers will not publish a game if it is not localized to the country’s official language. You can quickly expand to new regions by just factoring in localization from day one.
You can get even more strategic
You might decide to release your game for only one market. That’s fine, but in this scenario, you are missing out on a big market share by not translating your game into a popular language like Russian, Spanish, or Chinese.
Let’s say you decided to create an English-only game for the Western user. There are 41 million native Spanish speakers in the US. It is 13% of the market there. And globally, Spanish is the primary language of 20 countries and the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million. Since you are already working on your game compliance and other legalities, it makes sense to release the game in multiple languages that are spoken in that target country or region.
China, Taiwan, Belgium, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, India, and Indonesia have more than one language spoken. And people often have strong language preferences where they prefer the language of the minority or language that is not the primary, as is the case with Russian in Ukraine.
Final thoughts
We have seen many benefits of game localizers but there’s a disadvantage, too.
If you are a small developer, chances are you don’t have the money to translate your video game into multiple languages. You may not be sure about making such an investment.
In this case, you could try translating your game into one language and see the results. Hopefully, you will return your investment quickly and will be thinking why you didn’t localize your video game into more languages.
Remember, if you don’t get your games translated than you will miss 75% of the market worldwide.
Images by Artem Nedrya
