"Teahouse of the Gods"—Harness the energy of qi to save the world!

[jippsynmlt]

I’m sorry, but anybody “playing” a role-playing game without fully immersing themselves into the world of the story is not actually playing the game. They are just going through the motions and reading words on a screen. If you don’t understand what I mean, there are plenty of YouTube channels out there where groups of people play role-playing games as intended.

Again, it is fine if one wants to say that a story isn’t for them. But that is not the author’s fault or responsibility. Their goal is to offer us a world full of characters we’ve not encountered before and experience new experiences with them. If every story was a happy little romance, then what is the point? We would just be reading the same stories over and over again. This is something new and different and full of a culture that many are obviously unfamiliar with. The fact that this story has made many feel uncomfortable tells me that the author achieved their goal.

[jippsynmlt]

@FabricSeat

Of course, as you say, nothing critical to understanding is gated behind an knowledge of Chinese. I think people might be more upset if that was the case. Still, I don’t think what some are having a problem with is that they can’t figure out what is going on. They just don’t like that if they want to fully experience certain aspects of the game, they are required to be literate in Chinese logograms or actively translate for themselves. In that sense, something is missed out on.

Okay, this is what I don’t understand. If you are not truly missing out on anything relevant to the story, what is the player missing out on? How is this not 100% characteristic of IRL? If I am in the bodega and hear the person behind the counter speaking to another customer in a different language, do I need to be included in their conversation to be able to live my life? The intent is clear, and it has been stated repeatedly in this thread. I genuinely don’t understand how this is so difficult for people to wrap their heads around.

[Eiwynn]

Please focus on the game, and the relevant issues involving the game.

Shifting the focus to “how” others experience or interact with the game is a path that leads to off-topic deflection and possible derailment of the discussion involving the game.

There are other threads that exist to discuss “how” people experience interactive fiction; use this space to focus on the game itself.

[FabricSeat]

It’s not that people don’t understand the intent.

It’s simply that in the game, there is an option to play a character who understands Chinese, but this is only fully available if the player themselves understands it. This, suffice to say, is an unusual decision. People tend to buy a CoG assuming that all of the available content will be easily accessible to English-only speakers. In another universe, perhaps the game might have been made so that people who did not understand Chinese could yet still play a character who did not feel like an outsider to Chinese culture, of course while preserving the ability to be an outsider if they so desired. Presumably, this alternate version of the game would not have engendered the complaints about language.

As it is, some people may feel like they are being told that they are only allowed to be fully Chinese in the game if they meet the necessary qualifications in real life. Maybe this is a valid position. I do not consider it void of merit. Perhaps it is not right for a game to allow us to impersonate members of groups we do not belong to in reality (although exceptions might be made for fictional groups; I doubt there are any issues with, say, a game that lets people pretend they are Jedi).

I don’t think the author was wrong to handle the language issue as it ended up being handled, but it is also understandable why not everyone was satisfied with it.

[Barroth_the_Mage]

You’re welcome. Mt. QingCheng is one of the places in China I’d love to visit besides Chengdu and Xi’an (aka Chang’an) when the pandemic has gotten better and international travelling isn’t such a hassle as it is now.

@jippsynmlt

If I am in the bodega and hear the person behind the counter speaking to another customer in a different language, do I need to be included in their conversation to be able to live my life? The intent is clear, and it has been stated repeatedly in this thread. I genuinely don’t understand how this is so difficult for people to wrap their heads around.

To add on this, IIRC the author said in their WIP thread that the choice to select whether or not the MC can communicate in Mandarin is for the benefits of the reader(s), not the MC.

The Mandarin dialogues are for bilingual or multilingual players who know Mandarin. If you, as a reader/player, don’t know Mandarin, it’s ok, you can play this game (almost) entirely in English and you won’t miss out on anything.

I hope this clears the confusion of players who feel penalised for not knowing Mandarin.

[nacarat]

To concerns about missing out on content, I just ran some math: less than 0.4% of the game’s characters are Mandarin. Of that number, most is encoded as follows, with direct translations:

@{(mandarin) Xiao Hu|Xiǎo-Hú|小胡}

While rarer, non-direct translations can also support comparable experiences. (Eg. When a non-Mandarin/Pinyin player learns a few sentences, the Mandarin/Pinyin version has a few sentences of related conversation as opposed to nothing. If a joke only makes sense in one language, I’ll use different jokes so all versions are funny.)

The non-Mandarin/Pinyin option also includes additional information that the Mandarin/Pinyin doesn’t, often to provide context on language quirks. (Eg. Explaining Chinese names’ meanings beyond translating their sound.)

If people want my opinion/translation of a specific Mandarin fragment, feel free to ping~

[lil_g]

Wow I don’t agree with a single thing you just said. Let’s agree to disagree have a nice day.

[Arghya_Raihan]

@Barroth_the_Mage

I think this intent needs to be clarified in-game, so that the separation between player and character is maintained. As it is, it reads like the decision is meant to be for the character, and not the player.

@jippsynmlt

Strongly disagree. Especially since the issue many have is that they can’t immerse themselves into the world because of the metatextual theme of linguistic and cultural alienation/integration. The problem isn’t exploring that theme; I find that a very exciting line of exploration. The problem is that many people are bouncing off of the immersion because of the confusion over what exactly knowledge of Chinese means for the player vs for the character.

Also, as someone who enjoyed this story, for a CoG story, it’s fairly linear. Best exemplified by the list of Achievements - you get the majority of them just by playing through the game, not as a result of specific choices.

@AletheiaKnights

Was that character Xingtu by any chance?

[nacarat]

Quick poll

Poll closed as of Dec. 1st—responses have been consistently in favor of Alternate 1, which will go live in the next patch. Thanks to everyone who voted!

Original:

Alternate 1:

Your response will determine the appearance of Chinese dialogue. The world may try to accommodate your language ability, but characters will be limited by their own language skills.

• The player can read Chinese characters.
• The player is comfortable with romanized Chinese, or Pinyin.
• The player prefers minimal Chinese text.

I prefer:

• Original
• Alternate 1
• Other (ping me and I’ll add options)

[Clary_Fray]

feels very good to be able to read chinese

[Oceana_47]

So is the game finished or Is Xingtu the only romanceable character in the game because I’ve played this game three times trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong or why I can’t get the A’Li or poly route with Victoria

[Barroth_the_Mage]

To answer your questions regarding romance, I’ll just quote what the author said previously:

@nacarat

As there have been many questions on relationships, I’ve added a new option toward the end of Chapter 14, “The individual I’m interested in isn’t available,” which will give you hints on each of the relationship options.

@MadDF15 @freelance On relationships with Victoria: A Midsummer Gala event with Victoria requires a player character who identifies with the Spirit of the Mountain or as a reincarnation.

@Divine On relationships with Xingtu:
Xingtu is the only relationship option who can propose to (and marry) the player character in-game.
A further hint on their relationship stats: Xingtu’s most important relationship stat is hidden. Your likability is less important to them than your usefulness. A player character who ceases to be useful will be dropped immediately with minimal explanation.

@Fianue @resuri08 @Barroth_the_Mage On relationships with A’Li:
I’m not aware of writing that the best way to romance A’Li is via polyamory—happy to correct this if I did. On A’Li’s “best option,” I did write on a May tumblr post that “the healthiest in-game relationship with him can be interpreted as non-romantic.” More on him below.

On relationships in general:
I’ve mentioned to my editor that the main NPC’s can be interpreted as “anti-love” interests. Players can dislike Victoria enough to try and kill her. Players may question whether Xingtu is capable of love. A’Li may be the most “romanceable” character in comparison, but due to his past history, the full development of a relationship with him would have to occur outside the brief half-year covered in canon.

[snowgoose]

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m a multilingual person of Asian identity. I know three languages from pretty radically different language families, fluently enough to read novels and watch TV and hold conversations and do whatever in them (I’m not fluent enough to write prose in my third language, alas—or rather I could, but the writing style would suck). And I feel immensely put off by how this game designs its way around languages. No, it’s not just because Chinese isn’t one of my three languages. If it’s done with one of those three, I’d still be put off. Hell, if it’s one of the languages I know, I’d be more than put off. I’d be very angry.

It’s this whole idea that being multilingual deserves a reward, or that there deserves to be some things that are only conveyed to people who know the language involved. That when presenting a story set in a culture to another group, there deserves to be some secrets only given to an in group who’d understand it without explanation, that can’t be reliably looked up without losing meaning. Maybe it’s only 0.4%. Okay, that’s great. It still puts me off on principle.

I’m not a fan of everything being localized and turned into English ‘equivalents’ when none exists, mind you. But I’m also not a fan of leaving in text in another language unnecessarily, with no explanation, and simply wanting some people who’s not in the correct in-group to not understand it. I’d rather the text be rewritten as ‘someone talking in Chinese that you don’t understand’, with perhaps some sort of pinyin replacement if you’re really hell bent on having actual Chinese in your game, if the the MC is someone who doesn’t understand it. And then translated to English dialogue if the MC understands Chinese, with some notes about special terms that need to be kept to maintain the authenticity of the setting.

I know I sound harsh and normally I try not to be so when criticizing games. I love this genre. But this decision by this game rubbed me really, really wrong.

[oyqy]

I found a few typos, but I’m not sure if they are intentional

小草休扈 请勿扛搅

你见过长得与我一摸一样的人吗?

[nacarat]

The latter is my error which will be fixed next patch.

The prior is intentionally erroneous. See the sign from here.

[oyqy]

Oh haha I get it now. I see tons of poorly translated signs every day, but usually it’s the other way around.

I love the way you wrote Xingtu’s dialogue. I can practically hear their Beijing accent.

[Wilma_Wang]

我重开了三次游戏，一次因为决斗时的莽撞被杀，两次想追求星图但都失败了，但这些都是非常有趣的经历。作为中国人，我有些惭愧地意识到由于我不住在四川附近，我对青城山的了解甚至不如作者多，玩游戏时我还特地打开了青城山的百科页面。我非常喜欢游戏中描绘的青城山的氛围，在传统和现代中带着虚无缥缈的感觉，而在中文的使用上，星图的~语气让我完全能想象到他刻意拉长的充满淘气感觉的句尾。期待着作者的下一部作品！

[PtmChopper]

To contribute to the discussion, I’d like to say that I very much like the idea of a story where you can play as a character who does not know the language of the place they are in and has to experience life as an outsider, or where you can fit in and understand the language. That is not an experience any CoG game has really tried in my experience.

However, I don’t think the way that’s done here achieves that. A lot of people have complained that, not knowing Chinese, they cannot experience the game from the selected option of “I am a native person who understands this language.”

I’d like to point out the flipside instead; if you DO speak Chinese, you can’t really play that game in the way that the monolingual people are experiencing it. You can select that your character does not speak Chinese, but the words will still be there and you, the reader, will still understand them. At best you can just try to quickly glaze over them and pretend you don’t know what it says.
The experience of feeling lost or confused or out of your depth will not be there for you in a believable way, and you will be missing out on a story that was explicitly written with that in mind.

I kind of feel that if a player selects that they do not understand the language, then it should be impossible to do so. Looking up the sentences in google translate certainly shouldn’t be an option people feel the need to try! That isn’t something the player could be doing in the context of what’s happening in the story (unless they have an eidetic memory and perfect recall to repeat the sentence later into their phone, or something!), and it defeats the point of the experience that’s being aimed for. Additionally, by making some players feel like that’s what they’re supposed to be trying, it will add a huge amount of friction to their experience.

Perhaps there should be an “immersive” option where if you select that your character speaks Chinese, the dialogue is translated, if you say that your character does not speak Chinese, the dialogue is completely emitted and just says something like “they say something in Chinese you do not understand”, and some sort of middle option if you have limited Chinese skill.

After all, if I do not speak any Chinese, why is there a perfect Chinese sentence written there that I can look up? Realistically it would sound like nothing at all to me and I would not be able to repeat it back later or even make a guess at what is happening.

[Forsaken_Algonquinia]

I personally appreciate content where spoken or unspoken languages (thinking about Amaya in dragon prince) are presented as they are without a translation, because not being included is an actual life experience that many people do live, and it’s not always negative. I didn’t find myself put out of the immersion because of the Chinese characters, it reminded me of many instances of being a stranger and relying only on hand gestures and a nice attitude I haven’t played as a Chinese speaker though, but I wouldn’t anyway because knowing a language even as a foreigner doe shiver you an insight into a culture that I personally don’t have and it’d be difficult for me to roleplay as such a character. I hope there’d beore multilingual games here in the future.

Overall, I liked the game, I’ve never read or watched anything set in this type of universe, sometimes it was difficult to grasp but it was a fun experience, i did lol from time to time.

[TheMogician]

Had my eyes on this game for a while. I’m currently going through the game as a native Chinese speaker. I really appreciate the author actually using Chinese characters and Chinese idioms.
However…

Here, the usage of 天高皇帝远 seems a bit off. This usually refers to being far from the center of power so you have a degree of autonomy. I don’t think the usage here is accurate.

In the end here, “你记住，山里人都叫他老外” which means “you remember (as in more of a you should remember thing), the people living in the mountains all call him laowai”. It is said in an imperative manner, which seems to be odd.

Here, “祝你今天生意好” is a bit off too. It might be better if she says something like “祝你今天生意兴隆”.

I think “喂？今晚有空的单间吗？” or just “喂？今晚还有单间吗？” would be better. Since you are asking for a room for a single, it is kinda implied that you are asking for a vacant one.