localisation essay

Targeting a local audience for a game is a key importance when it comes to marketing a game. This is because in order to market the game it must aim at a key audience. This can involve different age categories; it is very hard for a game to target all age groups apart from maybe Fifa. However if the game has a age category to aim at this helps as it can focus its marketing at that age category. It is also important to aim at certain countries and cultures. This is because some countries or cultures may be offended by the content of certain games. This is the case in Call Of Duty where it displays the Nazi symbol; in Germany the Nazi symbol is illegal so obviously this could not be displayed on the game in Germany. It is also important to cater for all cultures and countries before launching the game in that country, this is because not only many some cultures take offensive to the games content it also needs to understand the game. This means the language of the game needs to be altered in order for foreign people to understand the game. Also people in different countries wont purchase the game if they cannot understand it.

Local audiences change the products introduced into such as China, they do not allow game consoles, as they believe they are a bad influence on the youth. Nintendo have made the game cube to sell to china, the GameCube was not selling well in America and was reduced to $50. Nintendo have created a special version of the game cube for china to protect it from being copied and made and sold cheaper. Nintendo are planning to create super Mario bros in Chinese language and the Chinese online game market is estimated to be worth £250 million this year. The actually games that are released in numerous countries also change their products in order to fit in with the country the product as been released too. They do this by changing the language so the people can understand the content. They can also make some basic changes such as Fifa may change front cover of players from that countries league to fit in better with the country it is being sold in.

Game localisation or game globalization refers to the preparation of video games for other locales. This adaptation to the standards of other countries covers far more than simply translation of language. There are different areas, such as linguistic, cultural, hardware and software, legal differences, graphics identity and music. Game localisation is done to maximise sales in different countries. This is done so people in the different countries purchase the game as they are highly unlikely to download the game if they cant understand the language or if there is content in the game, which is liable to offend them.

Marketing a game is a key process when creating a game; this is because it is no good having a superb game that no one knows about. Game localisation also features when marketing as the marketers have got to change language of the types of marketing (e.g. posters, adverts). It has also got to remove certain content in the area selling and marketing the game that is likely to offend the people living there.

Overall I think the production side of game localisation is the most important, this is because without the production mass money is being lost. However game localisation is a very important factor in the production of games, and some games today may not be ass big as they are without it. This is because game localisation allows games to feature in different countries; game sales would also not be as big if they only targeted an audience of one country. So in conclusion game localisation is a massive feature in the gaming industry.