🙆🏾 🚫 🧗🏼 Localization of indie games: is the game worth the candle? 🔹 🤳🏼 🚬

After the interview with the indie studio Duck Rockets, we at Alconost thought: how do indie developers decide on the localization of their games? Localization is one way to expand the audience of players, get more downloads and profit. But do indie games always recoup localization costs?

We threw a cry among familiar indie developers and as a result received answers from 4 teams ranging in size from 1 person to 10-12 people. Two studios make mobile games, a third studio and one solo developer - PC games.

Meet the heroes of this article:

Ink Stains Games - St. Petersburg indie studio. The first project of the team is a shooter for PC 12 is better than 6 , which was made by three people. The studio’s next game is Stoneshard, a turn-based hardcore RPG about the adventures of a medieval mercenary, whose work had to expand the team to 6 people. Stoneshard

recently launched Steam Early Access. Interestingly, in 2018, Ink Stains Games conducted a successful Kickstarter campaign for Stoneshard, raising more than $ 100 thousand - three times the amount needed.

Duck Rockets is an indie studio from Chelyabinsk. In 2017, they released the mobile game Bon Voyage and localized it in 8 languages. We talked about this in an interview article .

Bon Voyage is a casual three-in-a-row game available on Android, in social networks VKontakte, Facebook, Odnoklassniki, as well as in local stores of Iran and Japan.

Mountains is an Australian studio founded by Ken Wong, lead designer of the popular mobile puzzle game Monument Valley. The studio’s first work was the mobile game Florence , which was released on Google Play and the App Store in 2018 by Valentine's Day, and on February 13, 2020, the game appeared on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Florence is an interactive love story told in the form of comics in the genre of “everyday life” with mini-games, and it is remembered for its unbanal presentation, cute design and a pleasant soundtrack. The game received many awards in the nomination "Best Mobile Game" from The Game Awards, GDC Awards, BAFTA, and also became the winner of the Apple Design Award 2018.

Alexander Goodwin Khoroshavin is a rather unusual developer. He basically does all his projects alone, starting from the idea and ending with the installation of release trailers. At the same time, Alexander is self-taught, and acquired all the skills in modeling, art, music and the specifics of the engines on the Internet.

Behind the young solo developer are two mobile games on Google Play that went unnoticed, and three games on Steam: Algotica, Mechanism and Selfloss (the release is scheduled for spring 2020). Selfloss is a melancholy adventure about a kind old man and his magical staff in a fantasy setting of Ancient Russia and Iceland.

Alexander is a fan of his craft, and sometimes he develops games for days on end. He also studies in graduate school and teaches Unity and Unreal Engine courses at ITMO University.

Why did you decide to localize your games?

Ink Stains Games: Not all players know English, and the presence of their native language in the list of supported ones is a weighty argument in favor of the purchase. If it is possible to translate the game, it must be used, it directly affects sales.

By the way, you need to localize in general all the text that you have on the page - including the game development plan, the text of the Early Access plate and the description of the Supporter Pack (if any). We translated the Steam page into the languages in which we have localization. We can’t share the exact numbers, but there is an effect - conversion to wish lists and purchases in these regions are noticeably higher than average.

We had an incident with Chinese players: we translated the main description into Chinese, but we forgot the RD plate and development plan. Therefore, many thought that they were buying a completed or almost completed game (and we have, in fact, an open beta) and wrote a lot of negative reviews, not realizing that this is Early Access. Or they purchased the Supporter Pack, believing that this is a full-fledged content DLC. After we hastily re-interpreted all this, the influx of bad reviews dropped markedly.

Alexander: Many developers do not know (or forget) that Steam only features this or that game in countries whose languages the game page is localized in. So, at least, for a very long time. Therefore, translating a game’s page and the game itself into different languages is a quick way to show it to more people.

Duck Rockets: We decided to translate into languages other than English for one simple reason. The release of the first non-Russian version was planned on Facebook, and this platform does not allow you to make soft-launches by country or filter in which countries players see the application. Therefore, we had to close at least the basic minimum for a European audience.

Through whom to translate and how to choose languages for localization?

It can be localized through localization studios , freelance translators, and even with the help of fan translations (crowdsourcing). It is clear that the level of quality of fan translations is quite unpredictable, but for indie games with an established fan community this is a working option. And the quality of crowdsourcing translation can be “combed” with the help of editing and localization testing .

Mountains translated through a localization studio, Duck Rockets through an online professional translation service Nitro , Alexander Khoroshavin and Ink Stains Games used a combined approach: localization studios, freelance translators, and fan translations.

Ink Stains Games:12 is better than 6 translated using a large localization studio. For Stoneshard, they searched for translators individually - mostly they came to us themselves, as they were interested in the project.
Polish localization was made by a fan: we went to meet him, giving access to all the relevant documentation, and then included the translation in the game.

Alexander: Very often native speakers themselves help. So a director of a regular school from Beijing simply helped me to translate Algotika into Chinese - for free. Sam wrote by mail and suggested. I also used the services of a localization studio in the case of the Mechanism, they translated into Chinese and corrected my English and German (a friend translated me into German).

How to choose languages for localization?

The amount of selected languages will inevitably be affected by the amount of text in the game. So, in Stoneshard (Ink Stains Games) at this stage, 40K thousand words, in Bon Voyage (Duck Rockets) - about 5000 words, and in Florence (Mountains) and Alexander Khoroshavin’s games there is little text. For example, in Algotik no more than 1000 words.

* Other languages in which Mountains localized Florence: Arabic, Vietnamese, Dutch, Greek, Danish, Indonesian, Malay, Norwegian, Thai, Finnish, Hindi, Swedish

Ink Stains Games:Stoneshard is still available in 5 languages (of which one is Russian, and another is a translation from a fan), while our previous game was released in 6 languages. It's just that at Stoneshard, even at the current early stage of development, without a storyline, more than 40 thousand words. 12 is better than 6 - almost 3 times less, about 15 thousand. So in the case of Stoneshard, not all languages had enough resources.

It's not just about money - almost every localization for better quality has to be closely supervised, and the more languages, the more time it takes. Playing complex, there are many mechanics, so you have to clarify a lot of nuances. Translators have a lot of questions about the setting, the correct translation of certain concepts of the world. If there are any references, you have to explain them too, so that it can somehow be adapted to another language.

Alconost comment: the difficulties that the Ink Stains Games team describes are a vivid example of the fact that for large projects you need a glossary where you can enter the basic terms, names and locations from the game and explain their essence. Usually, our localization team helps create a glossary for a project.

The platform on which all translation work is organized is also important. The right platform choice is the key to an easy and productive discussion, all issues are resolved quickly. And here, by the way, are the platforms with which we most often work.

Mountains: Like Monument Valley, Florence does not contain much text. In my experience with Monument Valley, localizing a game with a small amount of text is a fairly cheap undertaking. So we started with the most popular languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. This list is recommended by our publisher, Annapurna. In later updates, we decided to add additional languages (note: in total Florence supports 23 languages).

Duck Rockets: First we translated Bon Voyage into the main European languages: we bet that they would be “profitable”. Japanese and Arabic arose by chance, these were experiments. We also tried to translate the application page into other languages, and since there was interest from Turkey and Italy, we localized the entire game in these languages.

Which is better: do localization into many languages or limit yourself to the top 5 popular languages?

Ink Stains Games: In the future, we plan to add localizations to Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and Japanese. Perhaps some more fan localizations will be connected.

We select languages for localization both by the principle of prevalence in the Steam of players from specific countries, and on the basis of data on different regions of our game specifically.

What languages do Steam users speak (data for February 2020)

Alexander: If I see that the game is becoming popular, then, of course, I will try to localize it into all the languages available on Steam.

Duck rockets:We have plans to expand the list of languages in which Bon Voyage is localized, but it depends a lot on the audience. If we have 1,000 installations per day from one country, then it will make sense to localize in the next language.

If your budget allows it, you should cover more languages. Because everyone thinks that it is necessary to translate into the most popular languages, and as a result, competition among games in these languages is high.

Of course, we need paying users in these countries (where they speak popular languages). Most of all revenue is brought to us by users who speak English and German. However, there is also some kind of income from small stores, they should not be discounted, especially considering that they increase the number of downloads and some other indicators.

Mountains: We would like to reach as many players as possible, however, as with any decisions, we have to balance our desire to expand our audience with expenses.

Localization Process and Results

For localization, it is not enough to transfer the text of the game to a table format, translate it and paste it back into the game. It may turn out that the game architecture requires serious alterations for some languages. Fortunately, many developers already know that preparing for localization is better already at the development stage.

Ink Stains Games:We took into account the need for future localizations at the very beginning when we designed the infrastructure of our game, so a lot of effort was spent on optimizing the way we store text. Absolutely all in-game text is uploaded to special text files, from where it is then pulled up by the game without the need to build it again or make any changes on our part. The translator is free to edit and autonomously insert text into the game without our help. It was convenient for both the developer and the translator.

Comment by Alconost:Working with text in tabular format is a possible option, but in our opinion, in the case of large projects - like Stoneshard - it’s more convenient to work in localization management platforms that allow you to store localized texts, communicate with a team of translators, and give context directly in the text. For application localization, customers prefer to work with us in Crowdin , for GitHub projects - in GitLocalize .

Duck Rockets: We didn't have to change anything to translate into European languages. When it came to Japanese, I had to tinker a bit to deal with the display of characters and text positions in the game.

When localizing in Farsi, I had to work quite tangibly, so that the text would normally display from right to left. From the interesting: in Farsi, Arabic numerals have their own characters, so we also had to wrap all the displays of the numbers in such a way that the usual numbers were replaced by Persian ones.

Mountains: We had to find all the captions in the illustrations so that the illustrator redraws them by adding the translated texts to each of the localized versions.

In the process of localization, did you have to redo something, change it in the game?

Ink Stains Games: Yes, every language has its own troubles. For Russian and German, we had to make it possible to indicate the kind of words and pull up the correct forms of adjectives so that the generator of names of objects and dungeons would work adequately in these languages.

Chinese delivered a lot of problems. In the same dungeon name generator, I had to slightly change the algorithm: swap adjectives and nouns. For the correct transfer, I had to rewrite the text parser - in Chinese, as you know, there are no spaces by which hyphens in other languages work for us. I also had to add support for Chinese punctuation marks for the log, since they are also special. In addition, messing around with the font settings - it is pixelated in the game, and this made many characters unreadable.

Alconost Comment: Some game fonts do not have glyphs for all languages. It turns out that for certain language versions you will have to select other fonts. Because if you don’t do this, a bunch of characters like □□□ will appear instead of text. How to check it in advance? There are many great pseudo-localization tools on the Internet. These tools imitate a foreign language interface, including changing the length of the text and "checking" the encoding. In essence, a script is run that simulates the target language and produces a build, which is then verified as during testing.

Alexander: No, my games have a rather low age rating, they don’t have skeletons (skeletons are strictly forbidden in China), so I didn’t have to do any “culture”.

Duck rockets:There was only one such case: a Brazilian carnival took place in the game, and there the heroine was more likely to be naked than dressed. An Iranian publisher asked her to dress up, and we redrawn her.

Did localization pay off and which languages turned out to be the most profitable?

All studios called Chinese the most successful and profitable language. At Duck Rockets, the game is not localized to Chinese: for mobile games, the situation is somewhat more complicated, because without cooperation with a Chinese publisher, a game in China cannot be released.

Ink Stains Games: Yes, all localizations paid off. As practice has shown, the share of purchases in those countries in whose languages the game is available was higher than usual. The Chinese showed themselves especially well - the share of Chinese players equaled the shares of the USA and Eastern Europe.

Alexander: Yes, absolutely. Most purchases fall on the Asian market, especially China. Be sure to do Chinese localization (in simplified and traditional Chinese). This is an axiom.

Duck rockets:We have the most paying countries - USA and UK. Germany is also a decent part of the income. There was no such thing that localization didn’t pay off at all. Revenues from the game cover the development, and still remains for small experiments with translation into new languages.

Of course, we had the hope that we would translate into another language - and get a significant audience growth in the country. But in the current market realities this can only be dreamed of. In reality, we saw a noticeable increase in the engagement and loyalty of the audience, which is also very important, so localization was worth it anyway.

Mountains: Half of Florence's sales are from China. We have more players who speak Simplified Chinese than English.
Localization paid off. In some places, players told us how to improve the translation, but the roughness and minor inaccuracies of the translation were expected. We corrected the translations in the next update.

Alconost comment: Collecting user feedback on localized versions is a good practice. This helps to correct defects in time - for example, send a localized text for proofreading. Or understand that the current artist does not translate very well. As our customers note, “when users don’t say anything about the quality of the translation of our games, we rejoice: this means that everything is in order with the translation.”

Life hacks and conclusions

What can you advise other developers to make localization more efficient (cheaper, faster, etc.)? Do you have any life hacks?

Ink Stains Games: First of all, look for those translators who like the game on their own and who will be interested in working on it. The best translator is one who understands the game and how it works.

Alexander: I adhere to the principle that in games there should be as little text as possible, but it all depends on the project. If you have an adventure, then minimizing the text is quite real. Remember Inside - there are no words there at all, except for words from the menu, and what a hit it has become. In my games, there is little text, and this simplifies the task of localization.

But I do not deny that there are genres in which the presence of voluminous and high-quality written texts is very important. If you have an RPG with a bunch of text, then idealize your standard language to the maximum, so that later you do not overpay for additional translation of new sentences.

If your game is popular, and you have already translated into all the main “playing languages”, then most likely you will be written by players from certain countries asking them to add localization for their unpopular language. If there are such requests, why not. In game development, especially in the indie sphere, it is not so much the profitability of the solution that matters, but its image - it seems to me that this item is often forgotten.

Duck Rockets: If you need to quickly translate small texts, especially into 6-7 or more languages at once, it’s most convenient to translate intoNitro online service .

You can find publishers for local stores, usually they take localization on themselves. So it was with Japanese and Iranian publishers.

Our best life hack, perhaps, is localizing the page in other languages as a way to test the audience’s interest. If a person visits the game page and sees English screenshots, he is not interested, and the conversion rate is small. And when you localize videos and screenshots, the conversion immediately rises.

Often in small markets there are few interesting games (as well as applications in general) in their native language. Therefore, there is lower competition, which means it’s easier to win an audience and earn some money.

We went from Bon Voyage to the Iranian and Japanese sides. In the case of the Japanese, the result was not very impressive, but it brought some money. But the Iranian players liked our game very much, and they turned out to be the most active of our players. The games are different, and you never know exactly how the audience of a particular country will accept your game. It is necessary to experiment.

Alconost comment: In any case, the game must support the EFIGS languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish), otherwise the players will complain 100%. It just so happened that players are waiting for this set of languages by default. But with other languages and markets you can experiment by translating the description into the Google Play / App Store (without localizing the game itself), this is a good strategy.

: - ?

Ink Stains Games: If you can localize the game, then you must use it - this is the most effective way to increase the reach of your game. It makes absolutely no sense to go on Steam exclusively with the Russian language. Gentleman's set - English, Russian and Chinese.

If there is any regional statistics for your community, you should use it. For example, we were guided by the statistics of the countries of our backers with Kickstarter - this was a good way to approximately evaluate the priority of different languages.

Duck Rockets: If the game was created not just as a hobby, but with the goal of attracting a wide audience and as an opportunity to earn a favorite thing, then it’s worth it. The Russian-speaking audience still does not really like to pay, so you need to open your way to other countries.

If the game does not have a lot of text, I think it is definitely worth trying the local side. Everyone wants to succeed on the Google Play and App Store, but few people think about small platforms.

Alexander: Localization of the game in Chinese needs 100% - add the remaining languages gradually according to profitability.

Mountains: Just lay localization in the architecture of the game from the very beginning. And one more thing: I would never release a game without at least the English and Chinese versions, because the Chinese market is so big.

There is very little text in our games, making localization cheap and easy. For games with tens of thousands of words, like RPGs, things get more complicated. But I think that even indie developers need to lay the possibility of localization in any game so that they facilitate this task for themselves in the future. Implementing localization in the architecture of the game in the later stages is much more difficult.

Many thanks to the talented indie developers who agreed to talk with us and shared their experience!

Localize your games, friends - after all, as practice has shown, this does not always mean high costs, and the additional influx of players is never superfluous :)

About the author The

article is written in Alconost .

Alconost localizes games , applicationsand sites in 70 languages. Native translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, project managers 24/7, any format of string resources.

We also make advertising and educational videos - for sites that sell, image, advertising, educational, teasers, expliner, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.

Localization of indie games: is the game worth the candle?

Why did you decide to localize your games?

Through whom to translate and how to choose languages ​​for localization?

How to choose languages ​​for localization?

Which is better: do localization into many languages ​​or limit yourself to the top 5 popular languages?