4 replies to this topic

[Kaemon]

A discussion on if MW:O should consider adding language specific servers before Go-Live?

The YES argument (using China as an example):
http://en.wikipedia....public_of_China

snippet -
Online gaming in the People's Republic of China represents one of the largest and fastest growing internet business sectors in the country.

With 457 million Internet users currently active in the PRC, the country now has the largest online user base in world, of which two-thirds engage in online game play.

Official Chinese statistics regarding online gaming state that as of the close of 2006 revenue from China's online gaming industry reached 8 billion RMB or around 1.04 billion US dollars, with earnings reaching around 33 billion RMB or 4.3 billion US dollars.

China is now the world's largest online gaming market, contributing one-third to the global revenue in this sector in 2009, or 56 percent of the Asia Pacific total^.

The No argument:
(sorry I don't have a url to link here making any points)
1. Some players are turned off by nonnative speaking players and it can lead to miscommunication in game
2. Creating language specific servers can divide the community and additional resources would be needed for each language (dedicated hardware/forum mods/etc...)

Edited by Kaemon, 07 December 2011 - 11:34 AM.

[CobraFive]

One game I was very big in to, was Company of Heroes. It was a WWII RTS that really broke new ground from RTS, combining elements from both RTS (Base building, resource managment) and RTT (Individual soldiers able to take cover behind obstacles, or craters created by your tanks, which had front/rear armor levels and a basic penetration/deflection/critical system).

This game was very popular in china. In fact, 80% of the users who downloaded the official patches from the official servers, were from china! And guess what: The game was never even released in china.

So there is certainly a huge market there. This prompted the devs to make Company of Heroes Online. It was a f2p RTS game with persistence (leveling up your army, and "loot" took the form of mods for your units like bonus armor penetration or fire speed or cover bonus for a particular unit). However someone at the corporate office didn't like a few numbers on some excel spreadsheet and was wondering "how does a free game make money!?" and they canned all of their F2P games two weeks before CoH:O was launched. Preorder money was not refunded. "Haha suckers!"

So yes. Even if its not at launch- Chinese is a difficult language to translate to or from, here in the west- that is a huge market sector. Plus the business side of things is very difficult, most of the games I've played that release in both sectors need a chinese publisher.

The European languages I think is a no brainer, especially German. I know that BTech is very popular over there. korea is another very popular F2P market as well, of course.

Edited by cobrafive, 07 December 2011 - 01:02 PM.

[Kenyon Burguess]

the languages dont have to be perfect at release. a company can rough in the top 5 languages and then ask the player base to help correct and expand. the "more the merrier" is always the way to go in game design

[Hayden]

I think English initially. Localization is fine, but it shouldn't be "forced" (I.E. if someone lives in Germany, but knows English and wants to play in English then they should be able to).

[Thorqemada]

Start it english only and have all the text and textfiles modular and easy modable, so it can be translated easy into other languages using not more tools than a texteditor!
Offer language channels ingame where people can talk in their native language to each other.