Localization from an Indie Game Production Perspective – Why, When and How?


Toftedahl Marcus Backlund Per Engström Henrik
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

This paper investigates the process of game localization from an indie development perspective. The global nature of the digitally distributed game industry gives opportunities for game studios of all sizes to develop and distribute games on a global market. This poses a challenge for small independent developers with limited resources in funding and personnel, seeking to get as wide spread of their game as possible. To reach the players in other regions of the world localization needs to be done, taking language and other regional differences into consideration. In an AAA or big-budget game production, these questions are handled by separate entities focusing solely on the localization process – but how do small independent game developers handle this? Indie game developers in Sweden, China and India have been interviewed to investigate the research question of how indie game developers handle localization in the development process. The results point to a widespread use of community- and fan translation, and that only basic localization is done i.e. culturalization aspects are not considered. The results also show that the reason for localizing can be both business decisions but also to spread a specific message using games.

 

Global Influences on Regional Industries; Game development in Nordic countries, China, and India


Toftedahl Marcus Marklund Björn Engström Henrik Backlund Per
2016 Chinese DiGRA '16

The game development industry has historically been strongly associated with a few particularly dominant actors, namely Japan and the US. As a result, video game development processes and game content that have originated from these actors are often used as a benchmark for what game development is and can be. Discussing the games industry from these perspectives can, however, gloss over important nuances that make other game development regions unique. With this in mind, this paper intends to discuss the ways in which different cultural and regional contexts are reflected in the structure of local game development industries and, to some extent, in produced game content. To inform this discussion, the authors use the foundation and growth of game development practices in three different regions: the Nordic region, India, and China. These three regions serve as specific exemplifying cases of how video game industries and praxis can take different shapes depending on what resources and components they have available. The paper concludes that all regional games industries and game development practices are heavily influenced by the precedent set by historically dominant actors. This results in game content and development practices that often mimics pre-established standards. But, over time, the conditions surrounding the formation of regional industries manifest themselves in more locally unique content and development processes.

 

Mobile Gaming with Children in Rural India: Contextual Factors in the Use of Game Design Patterns


Kam Matthew Rudraraju Vijay Tewari Anuj Canny John
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Poor literacy remains a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. We make the case that “serious games” can make an impact for these learners and highlight that much remains to be learned about designing engaging gameplay experiences for children living in rural areas. Our approach revolves around game design patterns, which are building blocks that can inform game designs. We argue that patterns are beneficial because they facilitate the reuse of existing knowledge about successful games, and can capture contextual information such as domain applicability that has evolve through iterative testing. We describe the design of three mobile games based on patterns and report on a field experiment with rural children in India that evaluated these games against games that were not designed with patterns. We found that patterns are decontextualized design tools that can both help and hinder good designs. We distill lessons on the contextual factors that designers must consider when using patterns to design for this user group. These factors include designing for fun by focusing on the gameplay process and not only the winning conditions, and taking the power structure in local communities into consideration in the game designs.