Foreign game manufacturers are so the Chinese market "heart"

If I told you, a mobile game in the app Store in China for a full two years before the update, in the past two years, the U.S. region has made 15 updates; If I tell you, there is a mobile phone game has launched Chinese support but not in the domestic shelves, a game in the early localization and then appear broken more; if I told you , there is a permanent only stay in the progress of the state of the hand tour can also be on the shelves in China-and these games are from overseas famous game manufacturers, you will believe that this is true?

The answer is: they are true, these foreign game manufacturers are so the Chinese market "heart".

Several overseas game manufacturers including EA, Ubisoft, Gameloft, 2K games, etc., not only have sales teams in the country, many also open branches in China. They do not lack of interest in the Chinese game market and understanding, but their game in the domestic has a variety of operational problems, with the accompanying of course, the Chinese players gift "nickname".

2 k Games: The localization of luxury talk

In China, 2K games may be one of the least grounded gases in all manufacturers. It's hand tour each birth is delicate, want to play not necessarily buy, can not afford to have Chinese, the server in Chinese is not necessarily stable, stable not necessarily in the Chinese area to download.

2 k game Price from 6 yuan to 98 yuan, there are few free games to play. 2K started with sports games, "NBA 2k14" game, although the voice of the domestic players is very high, but did not shelves in the country. Players are very difficult to wait for the "NBA 2k15", but found that it not only price as high as 50 yuan, and do not support Chinese, and even when the flash back, even if the loyal players can hardly be in such circumstances do not feel discouraged.

The same thing happens in the 2K series of strategy games, 2K in the PC market is well-known lock area monster--the 2014 "Civilization" series of the latest new "Civilization: space" The process of human civilization moved from the earth to a more vast space, but the game has not been spared, locked in the Chinese region. But the hand swims this side, does not have the shelves also to become another kind of puzzling choice. "Civilization: Reform," the Chinese version of the shelves will not be updated, "Civilization: Reform 2" has been delayed in the national clothing shelves, bar players found that by extracting the file, you can extract from the game of the official Han half of the hidden files.

By the host Game "evolution" adaptation of the elimination of RPG game "Evolution: Hunter's Expedition", has supported traditional Chinese, but the domestic players have to watch helplessly. As for the recent 98 yuan in the domestic price of the "Meier Starship" support is traditional Chinese, Chinese fonts in the ipad interface is too small to see the point. At the same time, the game even the most basic of the Chinese did not do a good job. When you know all this, it's hard to talk about 2K's attention to China's hand travel market.

EA: Half fire, half iceberg

The EA China, renowned for its efficiency and productivity, often gives people a high profile feeling. Hand travel for a long time break more, network instability is the main feature of EA Games.

EA's important IP adaptation of the round Game "Dragon Age: Heroes" in the online one year, China's network connectivity is basically in a state of semi-paralysis, even if you are fortunate enough to enter the game, it may be due to occasional network ventilation and disconnection.

This is not the most common problem of EA, EA China in the domestic game will appear "broken more" phenomenon, some games even a year or even nearly two years to update. The most serious of these is the Sims Free Edition. Games from 3.3.2 to 5.11, the middle of the update after a period of up to 09 months. The updated records from the US Area App Store show that there have been 15 major and minor updates in the US region during the period when there was no update in China.

These updates are not a perfunctory bug fix, including even two major updates to the--4.0, New Island play, and 5.0 editions to join the teens and colleges. Because the game has not been updated for a long time, the atmosphere of the game is far inferior to the outside service, some loyal players have to go to the United States. The United States can not only maintain content synchronization updates, but also to support Chinese, and account is still global synchronization, without any inconvenience.

Simsfreeplay Baidu Post in a new literacy area of the question and answer, now it seems to have fun-the United States version and the main difference is what? Which one should I play?

A: "Since 2015 lifting state version of the synchronized update, so now whether the United States version or the country version of the game, the game content is now completely consistent, so you can download at will not specifically registered foreign account." "And behind the bar, there is a detailed set of the U.S. Area Account registration guide."

EA People told the author: EA in the central shelves of the game will not be installed in the domestic server. So, many of the previous games are slow. The two games mentioned in this article have no localized operation, so it is entirely up to the US to decide whether to update or not.

On the contrary, similar events would not have happened in Shanghai, a merger with EA China. In the "Plant vs. Zombies 2", the theme map of "Chinese Kung Fu World" has been specially designed for the Chinese region. and its exclusive brush fragmentation mechanism, the characteristics of the four-sister flower Pot Upgrade design is entirely for the Chinese market "tailored"-eating is not ugly another said, but it does not hinder your normal game.

Gameloft: High-cold hereditary nobility

Ubisoft's independent subsidiary, Gameloft, focuses on the business of hand-travel. Gameloft not much to praise in the game innovation, but their game quantity is big, the class is many, the new, also is very lucrative, is renowned for the hand tour fast food factory.

In terms of quantity, since 2008 began to Gameloft for the App Store, has more than 270 hands to swim down the shelf and rest in the ground. As the industry's new force, each quarter Gameloft will basically release at least 5 games, and generally will be the App store recommended.

Gameloft game in the domestic players Word-of-mouth is basically in the sound of growth, its game gives people the feeling is no angular, there will be no major flaws, the so-called great quality of the game is also a decent. In the game the player is most criticized or the game is not concerned about the operation.

A more common problem is still the network, Gameloft Chinese games more, but in the country does not seem to have a stable server, it may be the CDN optimization did not do well. The latest game "Dungeon Hunter 5" Many players feedback stalled at 30% progress, and the 2014 "Modern Warfare 5" and the end of 2012 "Battle of Chaos and order" is often unable to load.

Many users posted similar feedback on Weibo and post-"Modern Warfare 5 dead Internet connection problem, your server is hung up!" "," "Vertigo Storm" is dizzying. "It's awkward, and if you search for chaos and order in the App Store, Apple will also give you the automatic referral VPN software."

It is also because of the frequent drop in the line, or the cross-regional game and other reasons, the system will misjudge some of the domestic players using the plug-in, resulting in social networks complaining that their account has been blocked by more players, a gameloft game "Ice Age" in the number of users said: "Store download, no cheating, play well, Why is it sealed? ”。

As a link in the combo technology, the "innocent" by the number of players found their own complaints no door. Let's take a look at Gameloft's microblog public account, which, like a promotional machine, regularly pushes 1-2 tweets between 10 points and 3 points a day, rarely rarely "Jews" forwards a player's microblog. For all of the player's spit, comments, advice, Gameloft completely ignored, or as a robot to respond unanimously: "Dear players Hello, please send email to kefu@gameloft.com and customer service communication." According to one player's saying: "Gameloft customer service is a device."

Incidentally, Gameloft's "Dungeon Hunter 4" in the operation of the process also has a problem, the U.S. region is already 1.9.0 version of the time, China is still in the April 2014 update of the 1.5 0 version, but also nearly a year has not been updated.

Ubisoft: The player who says "machine flips" kneels

In Assassin's Creed, the currency "franc" is written as "pound of law"; Uplay's introduction to Google Play is, "with Uplay, you're playing more and more, you're winning!" "In the latest host game Assassin's Creed: In the Great Revolution, there was" the blood of treason thieves, "" We need to be brave, more courageous "sentence;--because of these strange translations, the word of the mouth of Ubisoft's players is:" Hello, you may be the victim of the Chinese version of Ubisoft ", They conveniently dubbed the Ubisoft Player platform Upaly as Playu.

To the hand tour, similar to the strange translation probability has been reduced a lot, but still occur, especially in the volume of text than the larger works is so. In Assassin's Creed: Pirates, "Click on a treasure box to get a reward" is translated to "Get your pay by clicking on your chest." The text in the scene animation will be partially obscured. Shanghai Ubisoft produced the "Stunt motorcycle: The front line", inexplicable will appear strange * character, at the beginning I thought it was a sensitive word.

After some understanding of the author found that Ubisoft also has its own unspoken. A Ubisoft insider told the author: Ubisoft's many games are global architecture, with the Third-party engine, the Chinese support is not good. For example, line-wrapping, commonly used punctuation can not appear in the first sentence, which allows translators to translate the game when the manual line.

The general text display mechanism is to convert Unicode to font style in a typeface program, then in front of the display, and the western language of the font size is more than 10 k, but more Chinese font, only GB2312 has more than 6,000 glyphs, these fonts should be placed in memory ready to call, while the hands of the memory resources are extremely limited. The general solution is to use the text in the font file, such as translation to "123". Pull out these three-character glyphs and compress them. Some vector fonts, compressed into JPEG. This is why many Chinese fonts in some games always seem to have a mosaic feeling.

And sometimes a hand tour need to update after the release, the development group has forgotten to the new translation content to increase the font-such as new added to the "four or five", but the characters are not updated, the player will see the question mark, blocks and other garbled. This is why the game will appear in different fonts, missing words and garbled. (You can, of course, call Apple's Chinese font, but only one glyph, and the invocation resource is more expensive).

Ubisoft previously had a hand tour called "Little Raider", it encountered a more difficult problem: to call from the social network user name, but the development group does not know what the user name, had to put into a huge character set, the vector word is pressed into JPEG.

Many of the game's strange translation is also due to technical constraints, such as the seemingly coherent sentences in the translation end is three or four of the stitching, there are many variables. This causes the front end to see the sentences and the back end to see the sentences greatly different. In addition, given the limited size of the game to the number of characters, the program sometimes restricts the translation, some words can not be used.

We also asked Ubisoft about the localization of Ubisoft's game, and their official response was this:

Our hand tours are typically translated into more than 10 languages in the global marketplace, and these localized work is done by the development team with our three localization teams around the world. Then our local product team is responsible for the localization of game materials, game materials and promotional materials to ensure that all localized content is in line with the local market while maintaining consistent brand positioning. However, given the specificity of the Chinese market, our Shanghai market and product team has also specially produced China's localization Guide, which is distributed to all studios worldwide. For example, the limitations of Facebook's use in China, the embedding of game Chinese logos, and the need for Chinese customer service.

In China's Android market, due to Google Play in China's limited, we set up a special localization team, targeting the Chinese player's consumption habits, modify prop pricing, optimize the pay system, join local customer service support and so on.

Summary

For these overseas manufacturers in the domestic launch of the irresponsible mode of operation, one industry personage explains: These originally for English market games, if the localization of its actually many times is to spend a large cost, make a penny. This is not worth doing in the eyes of many overseas manufacturers.

In addition to language barriers, we consider the game's operation, customer service, social system transformation, pay model changes, server erection, marketing, China and headquarters communication and other factors, a hand tour of the "import" is not what most people think, translation so simple. Of course, if some manufacturers are deliberately differentiated treatment of the Chinese market, only want to cut a market in China cake, but operation and maintenance services can not be matched, such eating is too ugly. This will eventually be discarded by Chinese players, and we might as well look at a positive example.

Supercell's approach is well worth learning, although compared to the traditional big game manufacturers and other volume difference is huge, but they are including "Clash of Clans" and so on game operation very much. The COC's fonts are very fluent Chinese fonts, and there will be large sections of the news update instructions.

The social account support in the game is also connected to the mainstream microblogging and Youku in the country, not to Facebook. COC's microblog often forwards good ideas from fans to share, and on Weibo to interact with fans such as "Creative formation solicitation" to forward diamonds from the game. During this year's Spring festival, Supercell's another game, "The island of Surprise", but also very grounded and micro-letter cooperation, to give fans 5 million of red envelopes.

Chinese players aren't really greedy, China's game market is not inactive-it can also be seen from last year's "Magic Call", "simulated city" in the domestic stability performance can see that these two are not "standard localization" transformation, only to support the Chinese and Content Global Synchronization update game, has achieved a market-sense success in China. One of my colleagues once lamented that China's gaming environment, like the world, is an island that no one knows, but when will it change?