My goal for this post is to discuss about the techniques used in game to localise it.
| Things that were implemented in the game. |
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Animation For Storytelling purpose
Most of the animation for story was done within Unity. Whereas the FollowCar script was written to automatically fall the movement of the car.
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| FollowCar Script |
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| In addition, Animation Manager Script was written to manage the animation scene and its timing. |
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Due to age ratings being finalised a final persona was created from research. It was hard to find primary research without having to pay on this persona as it revolves around young gamers. However i have done some research on friend’s siblings and a couple of their friends. Along with statistical research online I was able to create this persona.
UPDATE 11/12/15: newest version is above named user journey with comments. Comments from users have been added.
This chart was created a couple of weeks back but it wasn’t completed due to age ratings being unknown. This chart influenced the decision to have the language selection/region selection at the very start of the game. It also influences future decisions concerning settings options.
The chart demonstrates from user research including interviews, discussions and questionnaires, the flow from awareness to buying to playing a video game. The research was done focusing on our target market, which is related to the personas.
The most important information to view in the chart are the coloured circles. From the legend you can see that from research averages, I have displayed how each Persona would go from becoming aware of the game to buying and to playing. The faded out circles are REAL individuals who have filled out questionnaires and participated in interviews.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0skoraKEChKRE45YzNNOTF1eWc/view?usp=sharing
The other very important bit of information is displayed by the yellow lines. These are individuals who do not speak english as a first language or not very well. The chart shows that these individuals research into the language the game is translated to and also it shows that these individuals instantly head to the settings to change the language of the game.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0skoraKEChKa0xhVjFXQ0QxSXM/view?usp=sharing
“Age ratings systems are used to ensure that entertainment content, such as films, videos, DVDs, and computer games, are clearly labelled by age according to the content they contain. Age ratings provide guidance to consumers (particularly parents) to help them decide whether or not to buy a particular product.” (Pegi.info, 2015)
In order to localise our game, research had to be done regarding age rating in the territories we targeted for release. And, if necessary, change certain aspects of the game, to better align it to a specific rating in a region.
Rating is always taken into account when designing a game because the developer’s aim is to be able to market to as wide of an audience as possible and receiving certain ratings, such as the “AO”( adults only ) rating in the US or the USK 18+ in Germany, may result in low to non-existent sales in that particular region.
As an indie developer this is even more important, because of the tight budgets when it comes to production and marketing. Every sale counts when you’re a small studio, losing sales because of the age rating can really hurt your game and your studio.
Our game is an isometric zombie survival/shooter with very stylised graphics. The player takes control of a human character and is tasked with shooting shambling zombies that are attacking him. When aiming for a rating I took several factors into account:
Taking the previous factors into account I reached the conclusion that the ratings our team should be aiming for are as follows:
PEGI 16 for Europe
T for Teen in the US
USK 16 in Germany
Aiming for these ratings would allow us to keep the game vision intact. Changes had to be made to the German version of the game because the rating body of the country is more strict. In order to meet the USK 16 requirements all the depictions of blood in the game had to be changed and as a result the colour of the blood in the German version is green.
Bibliography:
Esrb.org, (2015). ESRB Ratings. [online] Available at: http://www.esrb.org/ [Accessed 10 Nov. 2015].
Pegi.info, (2015). PEGI Pan European Game Information – Welcome. [online] Available at: http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/952 [Accessed 10 Nov. 2015].
Usk.de, (2015). USK: Herzlich willkommen bei der USK. [online] Available at: http://www.usk.de/ [Accessed 9 Nov. 2015].
Wikipedia, (2015). Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterhaltungssoftware_Selbstkontrolle [Accessed 9 Nov. 2015].
– Marius Anton – Design Lead
While going trough the game again, the team found another detail we initially missed, but could affect our localisation work. That little detail was represented by the small “coins” the enemies drop after being dispatched by the player. They had a “$” sign on them, an innocent item it may seem, but at the end of a stage the player gets a score counter based on the amount of coins he collected.
The issue that arose is that the player might get confused by the “$” sign on the coins, especially since there is no internal economy in the game and the purpose of the coins and the final score is to give the player feedback on how well he played the level and incentivise level replays.
An internal debate started on whether we should localise the coins to mirror the currency of each locale or have something more generic that could apply to all regions.
The final decision was made to create a generic looking coin because their singular function in the game is to track the score.
After discussing the topic with our Game design lead, we have come to the decision that the currency icon will need to be changed as it’s currently a dollar sign on a coin. As this is primarily used in the US, we’ve decided to go for a star icon in the coin as it is universal and will resonate with all cultures
Before: After:
Green icons for german localization
The logo for the game had been changed so that the text “DND” would not have to be translated to the local languages.
So a common logo was created.
This logo will appear before the player chooses the region of the game.
A work in progress, but this logo will be used in all the regions the game will be localised in:
As the textures of the Police Officers changed, the textures of their cars also changed, according to the region:
(The cars on the top left corner are the police cars)
France.
Germany.
Great Britain.
Italy.
Poland.
Portugal.
Russia.
Spain.
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