As English-speakers, we take for granted a lot of things: One, that every game will either be originally published in our language or localised for it (and woe betide those that aren’t…) Two: That the voice acting, if incompetent, will at least sound poorly acted and not read off a page.
Nazi imagery is a big nein-nein in Germany, and the localised version of Wolfenstein was supposed to have removed all of it. A small swastika slipped through, and Activision is said to be recalling the game from shelves there.
After a two-month hiatus, World of Warcraft has resumed full operations in China, where a switchover in local operators had been held up by government regulators and content changes.
UK Scribblenauts buyers won’t have to fuss with our quaint colonial terms, with developer 5th Cell going out of their way to make sure that no one confuses football with football.
One of the coolest things about the Official PlayStation Blog is when they let the people who worked on the games post their thoughts on the process. Take today’s posting by Stephanie Fernandez, the localisation producer on Namco Bandai’s Eternal Sonata for the PlayStation 3, which upon release this week will be the best damn RPG on the system (yeah, yeah). In the post she goes over some of the bigger changes in the PS3 version from a localisation perspective, exploring the new story elements and the challenges presented with recording battle voices for the two new playable characters, Crescendo and Serenade, before they actually had any footage of them fighting. Unfortunately, since we weren’t able to see the characters fighting in the game before we recorded, we had to make some guesses about the way in which lines would be used in battle situations. Sometimes we got it right, but sometimes we didn’t. So, in the end, it was necessary to edit some lines slightly. But, overall, I think it came out sounding pretty good.
The company behind the PC RPG The Witcher is taking another stab at the swords and sorcery gig as Funcom announces a fully localised Polish release for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures to be handled by CD Projekt, due out in the second half of 2008. The Polish developer, publisher, and distributor will handle the localisation and running of the game, including customer service, in-game support, websites and the game’s community, while Funcom handles the back end. Age of Conan will be the first subscription RPG to be fully localised in Polish. Says Michał Kiciński, joint CEO of CD Projekt:
“We are committed to providing a new level of game experience through the use of local game masters, community managers and customer support. For years we have waited for the right MMO game to come along and now it is here, in our hands.”
CD Projekt has worked with Funcom in the past, localising and distributing The Longest Journey, and also localised the Baldur’s Gate series and Planescape: Torment. I’m liking this company more every minute.
