In the past decade, many video games have overtaken the global gaming industry. Mentioning PUBG might seem cliché as we have already overly used this example. However, PUBG is not alone in the list of viral games. There are many, and the gaming market has enormous potential. Your players would love spending hours playing your game if it contains all the necessary components. That’s why you can’t emphasize more on creating a localized video game experience for each target region.
Here is a checklist of video game localization, and make sure you don’t miss any steps.
What Goes into Video Game Localization?
As the number of gamers increases, there are several opportunities for mobile game developers and publishers to make fantastic games and earn significant profits. As a game developer, you can use the following tips to localize your game for various markets successfully.
Start With Game Internationalization
We live in an era of globalization leading to massive business opportunities, and missing out on localization is not an option. Therefore, it is crucial to consider localization when developing your game. Getting your game ready for localization is known as game internationalization or i18n.
For instance, instead of hard coding your content into code, you keep them outside the code and retrieve them later. It makes it much easier for your translators to translate a game’s content for multiple regions without wasting much time extracting the content from the code.
I18n saves your team from unnecessary hassle and allows you to reduce the time to launch your game significantly.
Do Proper Dubbing and Subtitling
The translation is probably the most critical and significant part of localization that will take most of your time. All user-facing text must be translated for video games, such as dialogue, character descriptions, subtitles, and menus. You must ensure that the material is in the target region’s native language for each new area you are targeting. It will optimize your players’ game experience regardless of their linguistic background. The translation process will be pretty seamless when your game is internationalized. You can also partner with a language service provider platform to manage your game translation project.
Create Resonating Design
To fully localize your game, you must look beyond translations and modify the design and layout to the target culture. From color schemes to cultural symbolism, you have to ensure that everything reflects your audiences’ core values. Similarly, no element of your game offends the target community, and nothing should do against the best interest of governments. Like in China, PUBG has to change the format of its game a bit and avoid depicting violent ideas. So, the design choice of your game for every marketplace plays a significant role in enhancing the game’s user experience. Also, ensure that your game design perfectly fits the translated content into languages.
Adjust Formatting
How you format different game elements, such as date and time, should be adjusted to target user preferences. The idea of game localization is to make your user feel a sense of belonging and resonance with your game. You must pay attention to tiny details to optimize the user game experience. Similarly, depending on their preferences, payment methods and what kind of information your registration form asks for must be modified for every region.
Invest In Advanced TMS Tools
To localize a large-scale gaming project, you must sign up with a reliable cloud-based localization management platform. A professional translation platform will make things easier for you to manage. Through their integration option, you can import the functionalities of the design and development tools into one single platform. So, you don’t need to switch between different apps to take care of the game’s translation, design, and development aspects. Moreover, a cloud-based localization management platform also contains advanced collaboration tools to manage remote teams, and you can easily monitor your groups through real-time performance analytics tools available in most TMS platforms.
Double Check All the Changes
Once you are done with all the changes and your game is fully localized, it’s time to do quality assurance to ensure everything is on point. It is normal to have quality issues like errors in game scripts, translation mistakes, and design problems when you do localization. Audit your game to ensure that all elements are in perfect harmony. Test your game with different devices, users, and regions to confirm that it’s functioning correctly and is ready to launch.
