Game localization

[bithunter.2534]

Hello everybody! I would like to know if the guildwars 2 team intends to regionalize the game for other languages in the future.  I'm Brazilian and i see that several games are bringing regionalization to several countries, including Brazil, since currently the cost for this has decreased drastically due to the new tools available to do this.
The experience is always better when playing in our native language, so it would be great news for many if this is part of Arenanet's plans for the future.

[Pifil.5193]

They have said in the past that they have no plans to add support for any more languages. The text is one thing but it's too expensive for a game with as much voice acting as GW2.

[bithunter.2534]

Yes, they said that in the past, but it's been a long time, and these things change, along with the company's strategies. Translating the text would be great, and the cost to do so is relatively low for a company the size of ArenaNet. I really hope they at least consider translating the text in the near future.

[Fueki.4753]

In recent times, there also is at least one example of doing the opposite.

Wizards of the Coast announced this year that they stop printing MTG cards in Portuguese.

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, bithunter.2534 said:

Yes, they said that in the past, but it's been a long time, and these things change, along with the company's strategies. Translating the text would be great, and the cost to do so is relatively low for a company the size of ArenaNet. I really hope they at least consider translating the text in the near future.

There was one LS chapter that was released without voiceacting, with text alone (during the height of the covid pandemic). It was just bad - once you got used to voice acting, lack of it gets really jarring. Not to mention the whole story presentation is designed around it, and having one language not follow this design would either require some redoing of story only for that language, or end up in flawed story delivery.

[Schimmi.6872]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

There was one LS chapter that was released without voiceacting, with text alone (during the height of the covid pandemic). It was just bad - once you got used to voice acting, lack of it gets really jarring. Not to mention the whole story presentation is designed around it, and having one language not follow this design would either require some redoing of story only for that language, or end up in flawed story delivery.

We already have one language that isn't following the design. Spanish only has text, no audio.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

14 hours ago, bithunter.2534 said:

The experience is always better when playing in our native language

As exemplified by every Kung Fu movie made.

48 minutes ago, Schimmi.6872 said:

Spanish only has text

Now you have me curious how they translated some of the crazy stuff that doesn't really translate to Spanish or French or German.

[Randulf.7614]

13 hours ago, bithunter.2534 said:

Yes, they said that in the past, but it's been a long time, and these things change, along with the company's strategies. Translating the text would be great, and the cost to do so is relatively low for a company the size of ArenaNet. I really hope they at least consider translating the text in the near future.

To be honest it's not been that long and the company have reduced their resources considerably since.

I'd love to see it for those languages who have asked for it, but I think it is very unlikely

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Randulf.7614 said:

To be honest it's not been that long and the company have reduced their resources considerably since.

I'd love to see it for those languages who have asked for it, but I think it is very unlikely

Well, Gayle said it and she's been gone since the 143 Devs were let go.  How long has that been?  Five years? How long before that was it said?

[Danikat.8537]

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

There was one LS chapter that was released without voiceacting, with text alone (during the height of the covid pandemic). It was just bad - once you got used to voice acting, lack of it gets really jarring. Not to mention the whole story presentation is designed around it, and having one language not follow this design would either require some redoing of story only for that language, or end up in flawed story delivery.

The key point here is "once you got used to voice acting". In addition to Spanish always having been text-only there's many players who are either Deaf or play with the sound off for various reasons and if you're used to that it's just, well, what you're used to. It's not always ideal, especially when Anet insist on putting important dialogue in the middle of busy fight scenes or when you're moving between places and it's difficult to keep all the NPCs who are speaking on screen so the speech bubbles are visible, but that causes problems for hearing dialogue as well.

If they did add support for Portugese and/or other languages as text only there might well be some people whose first language is Portugese who decide they prefer whatever setup they were using before, but others would probably prefer it and there's likely to be some people who don't currently play at all because they're not confident using another language who might start, and then of course that would be all they know.

The question for Anet (which none of us can answer) is how many people are likely to buy the game or spend more time/money on it as a result of being able to play in Portugese and would that justify the cost of translation - both the initial cost of translating the current game and the on-going cost of translating everything they add in future.