Multi-Language

[Scion]

Hi All,

Just wondering what peoples experience is with Multiple Languages for your games. Has anyone released a multi langage game, if so what was the process... what are the gotchas, and any advice?

Does anyone have any information on penetration of PBBG's within the various languages, ie which languages have more players per capita.

[Chris]

Various rumours I have heard about (I do not have any multilanguage game):

- Go for multi-country language. For example English is used by GB, US, Canada, Australia, India AND most gamers in many other countries speak English. Spanish is probably a good choice as well.
- China has insane numbers of visitors (I was contacted once by some local China portal and they claimed to have 50 million registered users).
- Germany is famous for their strong gaming habits (so it might be worth despite low citizens numbers)
- Single-country languages traffic might be poor (I have my game on a toplist listed alongside a game promoted by one of the biggest local country portals, my game gets more daily visitors...)
- Multi-byte character set implementation is not trivial (needed for Asia only?)
- There might be some additional SQL vulnerabilities connected with some character sets.
- Non US based visitors donate more (the explanation is that US is more wealthy so they play WoW and those who can not play browserbased, on the other hand other countries visitors are too poor to pay for WoW but rich enough to pay for browser based - that was an oppinion of a BBG owner who had 2 language game)

[Scion]

Thanks Chris

Personally i was looking at

English & German ...then maybe spanish and portugese...and good point chinese is also well worth considering..

the good thing about my approach...developing something with 2 languages in mind is that it means i can easily extend it to others as the need arises....It means all my display strings are kept in language files.

In Germany its quite common to see browser bassed games advertised on TV and there are certainly a couple of reasonably sized companies with large portfolios in the market, BigPoint, Gameforge, RedMoonStudios.

[Chris]

Sigh, as usual we don't have anyone with real experience on the topic. Let's speculate further then


When you decide on multilanguage game you need to cover these:
- code supporting multiple languages (one time only)
- translation of the game text & help files, you also need to maintain these (per language)
- staff speaking the language (per language)
- ability to make local promotion - votesites, SEO, etc (per language)
- implementing local payment options - you can not expect everyone to use PayPal (per language)

To me the last two are the most tricky, because it is hard to outsource these (especialy with limited funds). How can you promote the game if you don't speak the language? How can you understand the local recuirements (like payments methods prefered in that country)? You will need to register on various sites, register and use local services, need to analyse kewords for SEO... Quite challenging without the understanding of the language

As for number of languages, I'm not sure if it is worth implementing only 2. The overhead caused by the multilanguage code seems quite big, especially for a young game with rapid changes. I can not imagine making changes to language files when you release like 4-8 updates a week, which is quite reasonable volume for a brand new game... I would go for 4-6 languages (so definitely not only those that you speak yourself) to make it worth the additional hassle.


I was thinking about something like that for myself: A simple game with not much text. Developed in English and the development stopped quite soon after release and playable game. Then, rewrite it to support multilanguage. Next ask community (or hire someone) to prepare language files. Next setup several different games (per language, 100% independent, using different national domains for better SEO). After that setup some staff. Then comes the tricky part, need to promote the game and create payment system (I assume I do not need to learn the language since it does not make sense in a long run...).
Hmmm, it does not looks very encouraging so far, writing a new best selling hit in English only sounds so much easier to me

[xBleuWolfx]

I haven't made any multi-language game before, but if I did, I would look up the statistics on what countries the game's current users are from and I would also look into what are the top countries with PBBG players

[Scion]

As for number of languages, I'm not sure if it is worth implementing only 2. The overhead caused by the multilanguage code seems quite big, especially for a young game with rapid changes. I can not imagine making changes to language files when you release like 4-8 updates a week, which is quite reasonable volume for a brand new game... I would go for 4-6 languages (so definitely not only those that you speak yourself) to make it worth the additional hassle.

Which is why im aiming to support N languages....no i dont know what N will be in the furture...at the moment the POC has N = 1.75 (I cant really claim to be 100% fluent in the second)...The point being now that i have shown i can support multiple languages i can continue development with N = 1 as long as i continue to follow the same pattern, in beta i would certainly keep to a single language, it would just complicate and delay the patch cycle doing it in multiple languages. But once that is over then it is no longer an insurmountable problem to add additional laguages.

[Chris]

Top 10 languages:
http://www.conversation-piece.co.uk/widely-spoken-world.htm
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/38349_10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world
http://listverse.com/miscellaneous/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/
http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/10languages.htm

English speaking countries (a surprising huge list):
http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/englishcountry.htm

Seems like there are 5 must have:
English
Spanish
French
German
Portuguese

And if you are fine with multibyte-charater sets add:
Chinese
Arabic
Japanese

[Chris]

Bump

Anyone has any new info about this topic? Anyone went for multi language game and want to share tips?

[Darklandz]

Bump

Anyone has any new info about this topic? Anyone went for multi language game and want to share tips?

Sure, for a client i had to develop a multi language login page. instead of loading the language files external he wanted to have them in the page itself.

so first i did a browser language detection and then it executes taalManager function:

Code: [Select]

<?php
$Btaal = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE'], 0, 2);
taalManager($Btaal);
?>

the function assigns the text to the correct language or if language is not included it defaults to english:

Code: [Select]

<?php
function taalManager($taal){

global $vrtlTekst;

switch ($taal){

case "nl" :

$vrtlTekst['loginTitel']  = 'Inloggen';
$vrtlTekst['gebruikersNaam']  = 'Gebruikersnaam';
$vrtlTekst['wachtwoord']  = 'Wachtwoord';
$vrtlTekst['butLogin']  = 'INLOGGEN';
$vrtlTekst['registraties'] = 'Nieuwe Registratie';
$vrtlTekst['recovery']  = 'Wachtwoord vergeten?';

break;

case "en" :

$vrtlTekst['loginTitel']  = 'Login';
$vrtlTekst['gebruikersNaam']  = 'Username';
$vrtlTekst['wachtwoord']  = 'Password';
$vrtlTekst['butLogin']  = 'LOGIN';
$vrtlTekst['registraties'] = 'Create new account';
$vrtlTekst['recovery']  = 'Lost password?';

break;

default :

taalManager('en');

}
}
?>

then in the html code to display the text:

Code: [Select]

<?php
 echo $vrtlTekst['gebruikersNaam']; 
?>