Game localization basics explained by Crowdin

Many of us know the games like Minecraft and Pac-Man. From the early days of computer games and the first versions released by Nintendo and Sony PlayStation, technology evolved significantly, and so did video games.

Now video game sector is incredibly large, there are over three billion gamers worldwide. It’s 38% of the world’s population.  So if you’re a game developer, you have a great chance to succeed. But almost always, releasing a game is not enough.

Localizing games allows you to improve your sales, increase the number of downloads, satisfy your international players, keep your place in a competitive market, and boost your App Store rating.

Enter a Global Market By Localizing Your Game

With a localization strategy, translation team, resources, and the right tools, you can reach a global market and increase sales and, most important – satisfy your players (target audience).

The golden rule of great game localization is to keep your game players in mind. Since online gamers are worldwide, having a game translated and localized into several languages means a broader audience, more players, and more countries ​​where you can sell your game.

Release a Game That Speaks Your Players’ Language

Remember that a good localized version keeps the context, tone, jokes, and hidden meanings of the texts and visuals. You can’t succeed with mediocre wording or clumsy translations made by a machine. Your best critics – your game players will notice each of these mistakes, which will probably make playing less enjoyable.

Make sure your localized version feels for players like the game was developed in their native language.

”Localization is done best when it goes unnoticed – when our players from different regions and cultures don’t even realize the game was not created in their own language and/or culture; when it feels familiar and “local” to them. Certainly, the game’s core features need to stay as they are (so when we make a fishing game, it is still a game about fishing after being localized),” says Localization Team Lead at Ten Square Games.

Content to Include in your Game Localization Strategy

Localization is more than simply translating the text within your game. Not a surprise, the content of the games varies a lot. Every game is different in style, tone, terminology and, of course, the genre.

Game localization includes a great number of buttons, plots or characters’ text localization. But there are still a lot more components to consider. Aside from the linguistic localization of the words and their meaning, localization can often further include visual appearance localization (graphics, visual digital artwork, fonts, colors).

A successful localization strategy involves localizing the entire user experience, including:

• the user’s needs research
• creating local personas
• running playtests with participants from different cultures
• carrying out localization A/B tests

In some cases, when talking about large-scale products and big audiences, It may even require some gameplay redesigning or UI and UX changes.

Localizing Games with Crowdin

With Crowdin localization softeare, you can localize PC, console, mobile, desktop games, and additional content like:

• UI, captions, subtitles, in-game text files
• marketing content: banners or posters, in-print, digital, and email advertising
• websites and landing pages
• app store texts
• assets

The localization team can work directly in a cloud-based translation editor, collaborating with the client and other project contributors. You can set a notification to alert them about new content and benefit from all the tools – translation memory, glossary, context material, and machine-translated suggestions. To make the process much more streamlined, you can integrate your favorite tools from the Crowdin Store (include 250+ apps).

For example, some games like House Party, Minecraft, Kingdoms Reborn, and Eco by Strange Loop Games have their public projects on Crowdin, where their players can help translate or proofread their favorite games.

Localize your game and reach a global market with Crowdin localization software.