History

As people living in the 21^st century, at the digital era, in a world that is highly interconnected and where everything, from video games to burgers, is tailored for specific publics and needs, we have trouble believing that only a few decades ago, games were mostly in English or in Japanese and they were much less varied and popular. Yet, the video game industry, and the localisation industry alongside it, have evolved rapidly over the past few decades. Taking a step back, we shall have a look at how different things were in the gaming area not so long ago. Following Bernal Merino’s historical section (2015, pp. 157-175), we will explore the developments of the video game and localisation industry through five major steps, starting with the 1970’s. One may also stress the fact that some academics like O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013, pp. 46-63) suggested a slightly different chronology but with similar steps, namely birth (early phase), growth, development, maturing and advancing phases. We shall explore them following Bernal Merino’s titles.

2.2.1.1 1970’s: The Birth of Digital Entertainment

After the birth of one of the first games in 1961 (Spacewar! by the MIT), other now-cult games followed suit in the USA in the early 1970’s, such as Computer Space in 1971 and Pong in 1972 (Bernal Merino, 2015). These pioneering games were simple and intuitive at first, with almost no text. One could mostly find them at arcades and fair grounds, in the form of coin-operated games which quickly became profitable and were exported to households through the development of desktop consoles like Magnavox’s Odyssey in 1972. By the end of the decade, the Japanese had joined in, producing arcade games directly available in English, like Space Invaders in 1978 and Galaxian in 1979. Yet, even at such an early stage, the seeds of localisation started sprouting in the mind of the Japanese since the USA represented such a big market. Bernal Merino quotes Pac-Man as the first true instance of this process, since originally the game was entitled Puck Man, which was deemed inappropriate due to its closeness with a well-known swearword (ibid.).

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2.2.1.2 1980’s: Establishment of the Game Industry

The 1980’s saw the proliferation of the game industry, with the emergence of popular games like Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Sim City, and Super Mario Bros. This period saw the establishment of games companies as well as an improved quality of games. The home console market burst (mostly with Sega, Atari, Nintendo and Apple) according to Patterson and Elston (2008) and, as a result, the “portable console war” began between Nintendo’s Game Boy and Atari’s Linx (Newman 2004, cited in Bernal Merino, 2015). In this context, it became common to localise games to a “box and docs” level into the so-called “E-FIGS” languages (French, Italian, German and Spanish) as well as in Dutch (Bernal Merino, 2015). Yet, at this stage there were no game localisation specialists: according to Bernal Merino (2015), translation was done in-house or by freelance translators, which signed the birth of language service provider companies, but also by non-professionals, namely bilingual players.

2.2.1.3 1990’s: The Fight for the Markets

Games became more diverse in the 1990’s and this decade marked a shift from “box and docs” localisation to (very) “partial localisation” (Chandler and O’Malley, 2012): the user interface was translated, though subtitles were not always provided and voiceovers were only used for best-sellers. Still, it seems that this change was more than welcomed by foreign players (Bernal Merino, 2015), as games grew increasingly complex, making the understanding of them harder without proper knowledge of the language (ibid.). Furthermore, the availability of subtitles, both interlingual and intralingual, opened up the world of video games to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community (Bernal Merino, 2011). Some instances of full localisations were also found in the late 1990’s, for instance Baldur’s Gate, released by BioWare in 1998, was one of the first examples of full localisation into Spanish, introducing the premise of what would later become common practice (Bernal Merino, 2015).

This decade also signalled the beginning of the partnership between the game industry and the game localisation industry, as people grew more and more aware that games had to provide a quality experience in terms of language and immersion if they wanted to compete with other entertainment/cultural products. Bernal Merino (2015) places the beginning of systematic linguistic play-testing at that point in time, as well as the birth of industry associations working for protection from piracy and creating age ratings.

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Finally, according to Bernal Merino, “by the end of the 1990’s, video games had become a full-fledged entertainment industry, challenging the preeminence of the film, music and book industries” (2015, p. 3).

2.2.1.4 2000’s: The Professionalization of Game Localisation

With the turn of the century, a new model of game shipment emerged, known as the

“sim-ship” model, meaning that all linguistic versions are released at the same time. This model imposed new constraints on the industry since the localisation process had (and still has) to start when the product was still unfinished in order to meet the unmovable deadlines. By then, the localisation world had become a full-fledged industry, with emerging companies like XLoc and Gameloc, some of them even tackling recordings of audio files (Sioli et al., 2007). Localisation strategies thus became more refined, with companies using local celebrities, in order to keep up with more refined products, featuring for example very high quality cinematics, as is the case in the game L.A. Noire (Bernal Merino, 2015). It is also worth noting that cinematic assets started to be translated only recently after having “long been neglected” (O’Hagan and Mangiron, 2013, p. 125).

Gradually, localisation levels switched to full localisation in a wide number of cases, and in an increasing number of languages (for instance Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish), at least for AAA titles⁴ (Bernal Merino, 2015). Indeed, for Bernal Merino, full localisation was “increasing [companies’] revenue, their international standing and visibility, and the loyalty of their customers” (ibid., p. 172). To that end, it makes sense that the stress should now be laid on the quality of the localisation, with increased out-sourcing of functional and linguistic testing, the latter now being performed by “large seasonal teams”, mostly people that have a background in translation/languages and are “skilled players” rather than mere enthusiasts (Bernal Merino, 2015).

4 “AAA titles” refer to video games in which a lot of time and money are invested. They are allocated a high development budget and their level of promotion is high as well. Therefore, they are expected to market well and generate a high return on investment.

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Regarding video games proper, the end of the 20^th century marked the advent of a new era with the worldwide success of online games, especially MMOGs (massively-multiplayer online games) such as Ultima Online, one of the first, released in 1997. This new genre became very popular with the launch of World of Warcraft (WoW), the most popular, in 2004 (Bernal Merino, 2015). Online games enable developers to gather first-hand data and receive feedback from players, which may eventually lead to the decision to translate the game into other languages (ibid.).

2.2.1.5 2010’s: Enhanced Localisation and New Developments

The last few years saw a radical change in the production process since localisation is now taken into account very early in the development of the game, i.e. in the creative and planning phases (Bernal Merino, 2015). This change has been accompanied with the development of a more creative role for the translator (ibid.).

The current phase is also the perfect example of what Jenny McKearney called “deep localisation” or “enhanced localisation” at the Game Localization Round Table in 2007 (quoted in Bernal Merino 2015, p. 173). Indeed, she insisted on the fact that “whilst previous efforts had aimed at breaking into markets by simply eliminating language barriers, deep or enhanced localization staves off competition from other top games by presenting a product that caters directly to local tastes and sensitivities in a systematized way” (ibid.). This perspective is directly linked to the “culturalisation” processes described by Kate Edwards, as defined in section 2.1.2.5. A good case in point is Atari’s localisation of the music in one of its driving games: instead of using the American dance playlist, they switched it to hard rock songs in the Japanese version and therefore increased their sales by 20% (McCarthy et al., 2005, p. 149).

This pioneering approach is now starting to take roots and become more commonplace in the industry, marketing very targeted products. Meanwhile, video games keep generating massive revenues (30.4 billion dollars in the U.S. market in 2016 according to the ESA, 2017). They also become increasingly numerous, varied and hybrid and reach new markets both in terms of social and geographical groups.

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In this context, localisation is now everywhere and becomes a very powerful tool both in the video game world and the other industries, since it is a way for brands to roll out their products internationally and thus generate more profit. This is thus one of the reasons for localising video games, but we shall explore the others as well.