Video Game Localization // Should you Translate your Game?
204Video game localization is a great way to increase the reach of your game. But is it worth it for all games? In this video I will go through what game localization is, what are the benefits, what are the downsides and most importantly: should you localize your game.
⚔️ Mortal Glory 2: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2216660?utm_source=yt
➤ Chambers of Devious Design: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1650860?utm_source=yt
➤ Mortal Glory: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097530?utm_source=yt
➤ Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RedbeakGames
➤ Patreon - Support to gain perks: https://www.patreon.com/redbeakgames
How much does it cost to make a game? // List of game development costs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn34cfKDkSc
0:00 Intro
0:46 Translation vs Localization
Localization and Translation are two terms that often get mixed up so let’s also quickly look at the difference between those. Translating is turning your text from one language to another. Simple. Localization on the other hand is a much broader subject, but again in simple terms it’s about trying to make something understandable and enjoyable for another person in a different culture. This includes translation but can also include things such as changing units of measurement, switching a joke to a more understandable one or altogether removing some culturally sensitive subjects.
2:34 Localization Benefits
Localizing your game will increase the size of your potential customer pool, essentially making it more likely that your game will sell well. If we look at Steam survey data on languages, we can see that only 39% of Steam users have English set as their main language. It’s an important thing to consider as Steam’s algorithm won’t even offer your game to those that don’t have one of the game’s supported languages included in their own Steam languages. By supporting additional languages, you are increasing the potential visibility of your game on Steam.
The second benefit of localization is that it will increase the player satisfaction as many players will now be able to play the game with a language they are most comfortable using.
4:11 Localization Downsides
So why wouldn’t you want to localize your game? Well simply, because it takes time and money. Also from the technical point of view, if your game is almost ready and you’re thinking about localizing it, it can be a real pain in the backside to get your game to support localization.
That said, it’s not really that hard to have your game support localization. It just takes time. In my case I released Mortal Glory without localization or any support for localization. After a successful launch, I decided I wanted to localize the game and started working on that. So it’s definitely possible to modify your game to support localization, even after your game is already finished.
Okay. So that’s time as one of the downsides. What about the other? Localization takes money and can get very expensive depending on your game. How expensive? The prices can vary a lot based on the language-pair of the translation, how complicated your text is, who you order the translation from and most importantly how many words your text has.
You can use this site called ProZ to check what the average rates per word are for translators. On average it’s somewhere around 10 cents per word for most languages. You can get translations for cheaper too. But when you try to seek good deals, there’s always a higher likelihood of getting someone who will just put your stuff into google translate and expect to get paid for it.
8:44 Should you Localize your Game
It’s still hard to give a definite answer. But, if you expect your game to sell well even without localization, the answer is most likely “yes”. If you are not sure if your game will sell at all, the answer is “maybe” or “it depends”.
You will need to consider how many words your game has and how easy your game would be to localize. How much money and time would it take to localize your game? How much would your expected sales have to increase to make up for the cost? Do you have a platformer with 500 words in total? That’s an easy “yes” to localization. But if your game is a niche story-based game with hundreds of thousands of words, it might not be worthwhile to localize it.
10:34 Benefit from Localization on Steam
An additional benefit of localization is that it will increase the chance of your game going viral on Steam. How, you are probably wondering. I’ll let you in on the secret. The new and trending tab on the front page of Steam is region-specific. Meaning that the games on that list are different based on which country you are looking at the list from.
Localizing your game before release is essentially giving you more chances to win the popularity contest on Steam. And this contest comes with very real cash prizes so it’s worth participating.