Because I’m not interested in doing so. Certainly not for free. I stick to pointing out quick fixes in the more competent WIP’s.
At the end of the day its no skin off my back if a game is atrocious - I just don’t buy it and move on, its the authors’ responsibility to ensure their product is fit for sale.
Guys, not much I can say here. The market for these sort of games, especially on this site and on Steam is mostly international and somewhat American-heavy from what I can see in these forums. Games with local themes from our country (or any country) are not the sort of thing people would have the context to understand; you can still make them, sure, but you should make the context as clear as possible.
For the publisher there’s not enough reason to try to publish a game in another language, especially if the game’s theme is more likely to cater to a specific country. Say they published a game in a local language with local themes to try to attract players from this country and then the author has no interest in making further games. Why go ahead and make just one game like that and then risk leaving this new audience in the dark soon after? Or why have all the effort for little in return if the game fails to attract the people of these countries?
They said they translated Choice of the Dragon but it was very unsuccesful; that was for Spanish, one of the most used languages on the world. That was a short game with a non-country specific theme and it cost them quite a lot to do for almost no return.
English, usually considered as the “international business language”, is the clear choice to try to attract the most customers from different countries.
Even me as a brazilian understood that there is little incentive to make a PT-BR translation; I’m making my game in English with no plans to translate it. There is a part of the game set in brazil that can address some themes you say, but even then that really isn’t the theme of my game. Translating the game myself would be a lot of work; I’m not sure I’m up for that. I did show some of it to friends and they did like what can be achieved in ChoiceScript, but the language barrier was too much for them.
You said that games such as those that have graphics over narrative are more popular because brazilians “are casual gamers”, but you’re simplifying it. In some games the language barrier can sometimes be too much; games that you just go and shoot people like Call of Duty can be played by someone with no English knowledge, but games that are dialogue/history focused like Mass Effect can be impossible to play if you cannot speak the language. Text games have to convey everything by using text; if you can’t understant it, you can’t play.
Then kindly stop sounding as if your ideas of a good thing are the ultimate get go.
Either help without wanting anything in return when you feel you must talk like this or cease it for good and get out of the way of those trying to lend a hand if needed and wanted.
One of the first points I made.
Agree, but but that was never in debate.
Not in debate.
And that’s ok, I just pointed out that it would be nice if people were allowed to make their games available in more than one language.
Most of the world is composed of casual gamers. I’m not blaming poor sales or reception on tha, I’m just stating what I consider to be a fact.
And that’s exactly why I made my point of “it would be nice if people could release their games in more than one language without CoG having to pay for it.”
About a game in a brazilian setting, you might be getting the wrong vibe because this thread has been split in two and my original post might be in the other one, My initial argument was that the international public probably wouldn’t have the context to understand the kind of crazy brazilian shit we deal with. And that if we as authors want to test those specific waters, we should do it ourselves using Twine or something like that instead of asking for CoG to do a risky endeavor for us.
Of course, as I said before, a compelling narrative could always break the cultural barriers.
So, to make it clear, here are my two points:
1 - Perhaps there could be a way for people to release games in more than one language if they deal with the logistic consequences via contractual obligations(revision, support, etc). The same app, just multilanguage.
2 - I believe Brazil has a lot of potential as a setting and a good narrative game in this context should be made outside of CoG to see if that’s true.
How is my feedback any less valid than yours? Why must I or anyone else sacrifice our time for nothing in return? Authors here are trying to make some kind of income so I will expect to be compensated if I do more than provide obvious quick fixes in WIP threads.
CoG has already shut down translation of their games as unprofitable. Given that most of the people here with English as a second or additional language are competent enough at English to be able to play the English games it is unlikely that they’re going to care that the games are in English and are just as unlikely to want to give their significant portions of their time away for free to a person trying to earn an income from their games.
In summary, I think you have unrealistic expectations of the time and effort required to grammar check and edit games whether written in competent English or terribly broken English. On top of that, you want to add translation, grammar check and edit in additional languages? Not happening for free, and if a person does offer it for free I’d not trust them as competent at the job.
If you want free grammar check there’s grammarly.com or Microsoft word or Libre Office Writer.
let’s put what you just said into simple terms:
I expect people’s english to be perfect otherwise I will not pay for it. In addition I will expect the people whose games I will not buy to pay me to bring their games up to my standards, because clearly them trying to make ‘some kind of income’ must mean they have the money to pay me.
On the note of translation: Various professional translators have offered their service for a severely reduced price if not for free because they want to make the game accessible, but so far the logic on CoG’s side seems to have been ‘if you don’t charge for your work it can not be good’. (this might change at some point who knows)
This is ironic. When authors started taking their projects private and interacting only with those willing to collaborate with them, I saw you complain. I’m struggling to understand why an author should share their work with people in a public feedback thread that generates very little feedback?
I respect your time and effort as a tester but if you refuse to provide feedback, then its obvious that you fail to respect my efforts and time sharing my work with you.
I’m just not going to sign up for every closed test. I’m already on one whose progress has stalled. I will browse through all the public wip’s and provide feedback as and when I feel like it - usually that is determined by whether or not I enjoy the WIP and additionally whether an author is acting on corrections posts.
There are a few WIPs I’m very seriously considering offering a more substantial offering of my time on to edit but given the glacial pace of progress on them and the fact that the ones I’m looking at have been through re-writes, I’m going to wait and see.
I expect the English of people selling English games to be at the point that it doesn’t require herculean effort to fix their English on the fly. There’s a point where by I’m not immersed in a story, I’m immersed in a word soup.
If a person chooses to give their time for free to a professional project that is their choice but I’d be investigating deeper into their credentials and competency.
This is not true.
Translation of a game has to meet certain industry standards in order for QA to be met. As a business, CoG would want to talk to those offering their services and see their bona-fides. 90% of those offering translation services are non-professional and sometimes voluntary.
To reach the QA necessary to be successful, in my experience, it costs a lot. Which is why many studios/developers go to translating servives in Eastern Europe where the pricing is often 1/3 what is found in Western Europe and America.
Volunteer translation projects can work, given time and a lot of attention, on the other hand, such projects are usually not viable for publishers and developers.
Then I apologise. This is how I understood it when I asked Jason about it (more precisely “fan” translations, albeit done by professionals and semi-professionals, and only for a couple of games the people in question lost their heart to. (Hero Unmasked in my case, but by now Choice of the cat for a friend (Bachelor in english and german), and heart of the house for a polish friend (english teacher)))
These last few days, I was reading the commentary part of the HG and COG games on the play store. I noticed that many French people require translations of HG AND COG into their language. Most French people don’t speak English, couldn’t we translate them? Maybe a few to see the result?
Short answer: they tried. It didn’t work out.
Iirc, it’s too expensive when compared to the amount of profits it receives.
Impossible. Imagine an average game of 100,000 well you have to at least translate and write 2 versions and for Cog 3. Masculine Feminine and nb. As a latin based as mine own language Spanish all abjectives and adverbs are gender based so that also means if a RO is swapping you have to writing 3 DIFFERENT TEXT for that romance. And in base of your romance and your genre change romance scenes. That means gay scene lesbian scene etc… different.
I calculated what requires translation to Spanish several games made by my friends here and world account was more than tripled original. Doesn’t deserve the effort
Similar discussion is here,
Maybe the author who speak french can do it. It will not be expensive. It will be like writing any other game but just in another langiage.
Terrible Expensive. Has would at least Tripled the amounts of time writing the game . For maybe a 14% of revenue. I mean I am talking both my own experiences trying translate my own working and resulting of Cog own Translation of Choice of dragons to Spanish then the big problem as many latin based languages hasn’t an official way to adressing nb that will cause rewrite almost entire text. Phrases of 20 words in English could with variables become easy 120 in any romance language. Then you need native editor and native texting to a more complex beta… totally a waste of resources
Though a question: How would it be if the author themself translate a game. Would that be possible? How would it affect the price? The performance?
Do the german has gendered based adjectives and everything like latin based Languages? If so I don’t think would be practical.
Itested it with my wip a chapter of 5,000 words become 10,000 and it was the intro also the addition code and extra work totally not worthwhile