A Full Guide To Game Localization In 2022

The game industry has evolved fast to reach and satisfy a larger target. We all know that people across the globe love games, but they use different languages and belong to specific cultures. You can win their trust and achieve the desired exposure when your games can touch their cultural aspects. 

Many game localization services are available to take you closer to your dream. Whenever you realize your games lack the desired exposure, you can plan for game localization testing and find improvement areas. The experts can make changes to boost the visibility of your games for particular regions. Hence, you can expect more returns from your investments.

What Is Game Localization? 

Game localization is a way of improving your game for a specific target. It will add regional, cultural, and linguistic intricacies of target locations. Game localization services make changes in games to meet the media laws and satisfy the cultural norms of specific areas. They will change the packaging, legal and cultural aspects, art assets, and other things to use the most appropriate content for a target market.

Many game developers cannot distinguish between localization and translation and translate the content of games instead of localization. As a result, they cannot get more visibility for their games. However, localization and translation are different concepts. When translation translates the content to a target language, localization will make changes based on the legalities and cultural understanding of that locality.

You can expect more benefits from localization since it will connect you with the local people. Gamers will feel like you have developed the game for them, and they would love to explore more. However, you can consider adding the following things to maximize the benefits.

• Change the phrases to meet the regional and cultural intricacies of that location.
• Improve the slang to make them more appropriate for local people. 
• Change the date, time, and format based on the local condition.
• Change and remove unnecessary storylines.
• Edit the content to meet the legalities of the target location.
• Change the music and audio for local people.
• Edit the user interface and menu to accommodate local languages.

While adding localization effects to games, you can act like developing a game for local people. You can achieve this with a proper understanding of local culture, ethics, and phrases. Localization will require more effort than translation since translation will only translate the content, but it won’t adapt your product to the cultural specifics.

What Are the Styles of Culture Localization? 

Culture localization follows different styles to add localizing effects to games. However, the first style is not focusing on localization or no localization. 

When a developer designs and releases a game, the expert pays minimum attention to localization, this is the style of no-localization, and it can only inspire a particular group of gamers.

Another style is documentation and box localization. In this step, developers translate the box and manuals for the target language. However, they do not translate games and do not experience any negative impacts when the target gamers know the original language. 

The third style is partial localization which adds partial cultural aspects. It goes a step further than the documentation and translates the content of games. The developers translate content, but they ignore rerecording voice-over files. As a result, they can inspire their targets partially.

The last style of cultural localization is full localization. The benefit is that it offers maximum benefits. In this style, developers translate and rerecord all the files for a target audience. Therefore, you can connect with your target audience and achieve the desired exposure. 

What Are the Benefits of Cultural Localization?

You can reach your targets, connect with them, and win their trust with the help of localization. All these will contribute to long-term benefits. However, you will miss a broad market if you avoid game localization. Here are a few benefits of adding localizing effects to video games. 

• More Profits

The objective of developing games is to reach gamers across the globe. However, you cannot fulfill this objective without changing the content and cultural aspects for local people. Many believe the English language can reach all, but only 5% of people speak English natively.

You cannot reach others when your focus is only on the English language. In addition to the language, you can add cultural aspects, date and time format, and phrases based on the location. All can connect you with global gamers regardless of language and cultural barriers. 

• Better Exposure 

Once you localize games for your target market, you can get better exposure. Gamers will know about your brand and show interest in your games. Therefore, you can expect more benefits. You can localize the content and other aspects to achieve better exposure and make more from your endeavor. 

• Appropriate Content

Translation can offer adverse effects when not done right. Poorly translated content can cause embarrassment, and you might not win the trust again. Some translation services translate sentence by sentence, and it does not convey the intended connotation. Hence, you can consider localization to make the translation most appropriate for local people.

How to Achieve Game Localization? 

As mentioned earlier, localization and translation are different. Localization will make cultural changes in games. Experts will edit the game based on cultural sensitivity. As a result, the game will not have insensitive and controversial content material after the release.

Experts can double-check the content before releasing it to the targeted market. First, they can research the target market, legal requirements, and cultural sensitivity, and then they can make changes to make the game suitable for local gamers.

While redesigning a game for the target market, developers can be specific about cultural aspects and phrases. Cultural additions can make a significant difference. Also, they can focus on other things, including layout and whitespaces, and add localizing effects conveniently.

Wrapping It Up

Adding cultural effects to games means redesigning a video game for your target market. The game might appear new after making the desired changes, but it will grab the most attention. Localization will connect you with global players, and you can make more from your games.

More importantly, localization will ensure that your game complies with local rules and laws, and you will not go through legal complexities.