German Translations ignored?
Hi,
where are the german Translations of all your Products? As i see the Announcement of Monkey Islands Comeback today at Steam i can't believe that there is no german Translation. I am shocked!
In Fact:
1. German Language is the second greatest market to sell Games (Germany, Switherland, Austria, Parts of the Benelux States) after the english Language. Otherwise you are ignoring over 100 Million potential Customers.
2. Germany was allways known (since the 80's) for the first and greatest (!!!) market to sell Adventures and Strategy Games.
3. There is no Movie, Book or Game that can afford it to ignore the german Language at the Market including a complete Translation (Text and Speech). A german Translation is a absolute must!
4. There is a wide range of German Actors, Speakers working on Translations for Movies and Games for a payable price at high Quality. It is a very great Industry at Germany in comparsion to other European Countrys like Spain, France, Italy etc.
5. Subtitles are the absolute minimum!!!
6. Even the first Fanprojects is to create a new Lucas Arts like Adventure (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones etc. - i guess you know them well so no Link seems to be necessary) where started by the german Community in german and (!!!) english language. If Amateurs can do it - a Company can't do so?
If you don't believe me watch for several marketing Statistics over the last 10 - 20 years or the sell Statistics from Lucas Arts at their old original Adventures.
I understand that the cost of Translation for Adventures like your Products is very high - but after watching and knowing the Facts - there is no reason to don't do it.
where are the german Translations of all your Products? As i see the Announcement of Monkey Islands Comeback today at Steam i can't believe that there is no german Translation. I am shocked!
In Fact:
1. German Language is the second greatest market to sell Games (Germany, Switherland, Austria, Parts of the Benelux States) after the english Language. Otherwise you are ignoring over 100 Million potential Customers.
2. Germany was allways known (since the 80's) for the first and greatest (!!!) market to sell Adventures and Strategy Games.
3. There is no Movie, Book or Game that can afford it to ignore the german Language at the Market including a complete Translation (Text and Speech). A german Translation is a absolute must!
4. There is a wide range of German Actors, Speakers working on Translations for Movies and Games for a payable price at high Quality. It is a very great Industry at Germany in comparsion to other European Countrys like Spain, France, Italy etc.
5. Subtitles are the absolute minimum!!!
6. Even the first Fanprojects is to create a new Lucas Arts like Adventure (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones etc. - i guess you know them well so no Link seems to be necessary) where started by the german Community in german and (!!!) english language. If Amateurs can do it - a Company can't do so?
If you don't believe me watch for several marketing Statistics over the last 10 - 20 years or the sell Statistics from Lucas Arts at their old original Adventures.
I understand that the cost of Translation for Adventures like your Products is very high - but after watching and knowing the Facts - there is no reason to don't do it.
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Comments
I'm sure they'd love to be able to do language support now but with the current size of their company it's just not feasible.
That is generally not the case with the free DVD you get with the season pass.
Anyway, you've got to realize how Telltale works, and that you can't compare their releases to the standard big, worldwide releases that companies like EA or Ubisoft (or even LucasArts in their old days) put out. Telltale is a relatively small company that uses all of its resources to put out a high quality episode per month (basically without time to take a breath inbetween). Localizations are secondary when it comes to making profit from the games, and with English being such a "universal" language in the world, it already reaches quite an audience without translations. And the success basically proves, that - no matter how bold and underlined you put it - German versions of their games are NOT a must.
Also, 100 Million "potential customers" is quite an exaggeration, since it would mean that every single person in the German speaking territory would be interested in the games, which is ridiculous. Taking into account the demographic that owns a computer and is actually interested in adventure games, the number of games on the market (compared for instance to 1997, when CMI got released - and sold 100,000 copies in Germany) and the number of people, who actually DON'T "need" a translated version (and already got the English episodes) I'd say you'll end up with something around 30,000 potential customers (which is around the number of copies the German best-selling adventures "The Book of Unwritten Tales" and "The Whispered World" sold... and both of them cost twice as much as any Telltale season).
What do you mean by "market"?
The language spoken by the most individuals as a first language is Mandarin. The language spoken as a first language in the most countries is Spanish.
So, you can read and write english?
What about the other Germans who are Adventure Game fans?
I think most of them know that the translations will never be 100% accurate (at least they should know since Le Chucks Revenge). Some jokes cannot be translated and still be funny.
But unless they never played a good game in it's proper language they might not really know what they are missing.
They are used to bad voiceovers and unless they ever get to hear the original version they will not even complain about it. (In some rare cases the translation might even be better than the original)
I played dubbed versions for years but since I played the first original language version of a game I am asking myself how in the world I got through that without serious brain damage.
English, however, is the language of business, and despite the fact that certain countries, whose first language is not English, are quite heavily populated, I would say it's a safe bet that English is the most widely dispersed language.
My parents went on a month-long trip throughout Europe and the Holy Land recently, and they said that no matter where they went, if someone they talked to didn't know English, then said person knew someone else who did know Englsh.
Yes, that's why I said it depends what you mean by market. And specified "first language". English is definitely spoken the most as a second language or overall (first+second).
The reason that Mandarin has the largest number of speakers is because China has such a huge population. By no means is it the most widely spoken language - when you talk about Chinese speakers you're usually talking exclusively about people who are from China. When you talk about people who speak English, however, you aren't just talking about people who are from England.
These sorts of games might not be very marketable to a Chinese audience.
That's what I do....
I could very well be wrong, but I doubt that either China or any Spanish speaking company tops the world in adventure game sales. I'm not saying Germany is second, but it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.
Are you new to these forums or something? Pretty much everyone here feels entitled to whatever they want.
That's one of the reasons I haven't been as active lately.