Someone else mentioned My Summer Car, and while the dialogue certainly isn't a huge focus in the game, I definitely think it adds to the charm for sure.
There are other games that I prefer in their native language as long as there are English subtitles, I think if the game is interesting enough it shouldn't drive away too many customers.
General UI MUST be in english or my native language. Without it playing the Game or understanding the Story might be extremly difficult.
Regarding voice acting it can be a different case:
For someone that got in to anime and realized that the original voice actors can be leagues above some dubs I say yes yes yes!
The same with gaming, some Developers offer voice acting from their Home country that is way better then any localization from another country.
Or it can also be the complete opposite. I played some Games made by German Game Developers where the German voice acting sounded horribly robotical, but if you switched to the english voice acting it was waayyyy better.
So it really depends on who does it, If it is a localization (they are only Reading the voice lines from a script) or Synchronisation (where they also read voice lines from a script BUT also have the Game in Front of them to sync and emulate the character on screen much better then without it).
So sometimes just try out both languages for a couple minutes and see what sounds better and then chose whatever you find more immersive or fun to listen to. So you can have the best experience with the game possible.
I want to add to this that you have to be able to change the UI language too if there's multiple.
I've had some games default to my native language (Dutch), and if I can't change it to English within like 5 minutes of googling I'm just going to stop playing and refund if possible.
I can't speak for him nor about Dutch translations, but I can speak for myself about Brazilian Portuguese translations.
Unless the game is originally Brazilian, I always switch to English. Brazilian Portuguese translations tend to be bad, and by "bad" I don't mean wrong or gibberish, but just lazy. They are technically correct™ but fail to convey small nuances that are conveyed in English, usually because the translator chose to use a simpler/more common word/grammatical structure either because he doesn't know the best word/structure or because he assumes the Brazilian gamer won't know it (and won't bother looking it up in a dictionary or something).
For example, I've seen "ravenous" translated as "faminto" ("very hungry, famished") when a better translation would be the less common "voraz" ("voracious"). To be more specific: all the three words (ravenous, faminto, voraz) mean "very hungry", but "ravenous" has a more specific connotation ("frenzied by hunger") that it shares with "voraz" but not with "faminto".
Another example: In Path of Exile, there's an Inquisitor-like boss named Baran. In one of his moves, he raises his hand and charges up a powerful attack and yells "Atone!" to let you know you better get the fuck away from him or you'll be one-shot. The "Atone!" was translated into a wholeass phrase "Pague pelos seus pecados!" ("Pay for your sins!"). It could've been translated to "Expie!" (lit. "Atone!"), but it wasn't because "expiar" is a relatively unknown word, restricted to religious contexts (much like "atone" in English) and would probably be mistaken for the homophonous "espiar" ("spy, look"), even though the translation is presented as subtitles instead of audio.
And that's not to mention alternative structures could/should have been used, such as, instead of "Pague pelos seus pecados!", "Paga pelos teus pecados!", which would sound slightly more archaic, similarly but not as archaic as "Pay for thy sins!" would sound in English. This would be quite fitting for a character that's clearly inspired on a Catholic inquisitor.
But no, they go for the simpler/more common translation even if it butches the entire experience. It's been a while since I last played a Brazilian game translated to English but when I did, I didn't find the translation to be lacking as it is the other way around.
Also there's the fact that once you play the game in English, it becomes much easier to look for info on the internet, as you can look for info directly in English without having to guess whether "Faminto" was used to translate "Hungry" or "Ravenous".
Thanks for reading my huge rant on why Brazilian Portuguese translations are shite.
Very interesting perspective. I am American but my mom is Brazilian so I was raised with both languages. I can understand Portuguese with complete fluency but still struggle with speaking complete sentences. I have also noticed that translations can be kindof rough and not get subtle nuances when I google translate something then read it and realize that it really isn’t what I’m trying to say. When my cousin came for a visit from Brazil a few years back he spoke near perfect English, mostly attributed to playing tons of games in full English.
The main one is that it just sounds weird. Conversationally a lot of common gaming parlance is just left untranslated, weaving the english words into otherwise dutch sentences. A lot of game translations instead translate *everything*, so you get super stilted translations. A friend of mine briefly played Dota 2 in Dutch because it took his Steam language, and they even translated some hero names because they're made up of normal nouns. Nobody would ever refer to them by their translated names in conversation, except to make fun of how bad the translation was.
A lot of translations are frequently just bad, and I'd rather read natively written English than badly translated Dutch. Translation companies might translate it line by line while missing a lot of the context of where that text goes, so even if it's professionally translated quality isn't guaranteed. Then there's also machine translations, and while those have gotten a lot better recently they're still not perfect while also magnifying the previous issue.
Then there's also that I hang out in a lot of English speaking communities, and talking about a topic gets a lot harder when the thing you want to talk about uses a completely different language. The worst one here isn't a game, but Excel. They translated even the function names, so if you ever want to copy something from Stackoverflow it straight up will not work in any non-English copy of the software. It means that to use translated software, the user has to basically reverse engineer the untranslated text to make use of most internet resources.
It’s interesting to look at all the unintended consequences of English being the “default” language for development and entertainment with I guess the great cultural impact of English speaking countries.
Reminds me of Japanese translations where they write "Press Start" and other such UI in Japanese, when in reality those have always been in English and everyone expects them to be that way. An arcade would never say お金を入れてください it would say ＩＮＳＥＲＴ ＣＯＩＮ, even in Japanese (nobody had the ROM space for all those Japanese characters in the 80s, and now that's just how it is).
The only games I've seen made in Japan that went full Japanese were doing so for stylistic reasons; to evoke a more archaic or mythological feel. Sometimes those even go for vertical text.
Not the person you replied to, but the english UI in almost any product is vastly superior. And there is no way of knowing if the translation was done by professionals or by google translate. While the later is more obvious, more advanced translation engines can spit out mostly correct translations that are still wrong in places.
To be fair, danish is pretty indistinguishable from nonsense mumbling so it shouldn't feel too weird for people who are used to made up vocalizations in games
Bruh DayZ is so good partly due to everything in the map being in russian, written in cyrillic alphabet. It just brings an unique vibe and some challenge when u gotta figure out where are ypu exactly in the map. UI is in english tho and that's the only thing that matters imo. Also there should be subtitles for dialogue as u mentioned urself.
> A: Where are you?
>
> B: No idea man
>
> A: Read a street sign
>
> B: I don't even know how to mate...
>
> A: Spell it out maybe?
>
> B: Mate, there are three different types of R and 2 different types of N.......
I was pissing myself laughing when I heard this interaction between 2 buddies in dayz. Was funny as fuck.
The Yakuza games have (until recently) always been in japanese, and they are cult classics. Personally, I think this is perfectly fine, and if your voice actors are good, they will be able to carry the scene even for non-danish speakers.
*Edit: As long as you have good subtitles, though!*
Danish isn't an insanely fashionable language like Japanese is. I know a ton of weebs that just learn Japanese for its own sake (as opposed to learning, say, English for utilitary purposes). Yet I don't know a single person who'd even consider learning Danish.
Right, but the Yakuza series of games has English subtitles. I definitely wouldn't expect someone to learn Japanese to play it, though I'm sure some do.
Especially since the setting is Japan, it makes sense to hear the characters speak Japanese. They added English voices to the newer games, but I don't particularly want to see these very obviously Japanese characters in Japan speaking English in a setting where English wouldn't be used*.
I guess what I'm getting at is the voiceover language is a function of the story setting, since the text would still be available in English. I'd rather hear Danish if the story is Danish.
*Obviously English is used in Japan, but probably not in the Japanese underworld. The latest entry in the series is set in Hawaii though, so I would expect to hear English and Japanese there. It would be weird if everyone in Hawaii spoke fluent Japanese (though I hear many do due to heavy tourism there).
Well, you yourself mentioned that even Yakuza games started implementing English voiceover. So let's just think about it:
- Japanese is popular and cool among their target audience, some even learn it
- They're a very popular and established game series with a substantial playerbase
And with all that, with EVERYTHING in their favor, they STILL did their research and decided that they NEED an English voiceover for some reason. But some noname game in a language that no one knows somehow will do just great without voiceover, sure. If literally no one knows you, there's few things worse than just building this sort of wall between you and the player. There are tons of games out there and no one's going out of their way to play yours in a world where they make TikTok as short and information dense as possible because the average view time is freaking 8 seconds, aka if people don't get what they want IMMEDIATELY, they just swipe and go on. There is an infinite amount of content these times and the least you can do is stop creating artificial barriers to consume yours.
> did their research and decided that they NEED an English voiceover for some reason.
woah woah woah let's not accuse Sega of making competent business decisions; since when have they ever.
Most games don't have voiceovers at all. It's not really a wall or barrier in the slightest.
Games that don't have voiceovers are designed around that fact and don't need a voiceover. What you just said, quite literally, is that Detroit become human doesn't need a voiceover because Tetris doesn't have one.
Yes. And if dude decided to go for a danish voiceover despite being an indie (so, like, super limited resources), it's probably more necessary than not, so he's probably not making "Tetris"
It's a stylistic choice. There's never a time when you actually need one. You can just do subtitles only like it was before PCM audio was even available. It wasn't a barrier then and it isn't now.
Japanese wasn't always popular with language learners. It became a fashionable language *because* a bunch of cool shit was made in it over the past few decades.
I'm not saying OP is gonna suddenly make everyone into Danophiles with their brilliant game but, like, people are open to foreign language VO if the content is good enough.
French film with subs is popular around the world. Latin pop is super popular even outside the Hispanic community. Netflix has had global hit shows in German and Norwegian. Korea is having a big moment as a cultural exporter across mediums (TV, music, film, games) right now. Heck, Iceland has produced successful musicians who use their native language, and there are only a couple hundred thousand speakers. There's no reason that a game with Danish VO and (quality) English subs couldn't be successful.
> I'm not saying OP is gonna suddenly make everyone into Danophiles
Me neither, and my entire point is he won't. If I assumed it was possible I wouldn't write it. I did think of clarifying that, but I thought it was too obvious. French is insanely popular as well, literal lingua franca for centuries, so it's a terrible comparison. And arguably music is the least relevant out of all media because people just don't care about the lyrics in pop songs. I'm pretty sure 95% of non-hispanic listeners of latino pop have no idea what the songs they listen to are about and they kinda don't need to, it's not at all the same as a movie or a game.
> if your voice actors are good, they will be able to carry the scene
Actually, I like foreign subtitles especially when the voice acting is bad. Would much rather experience bad acting in a language I can't recognize than my native language where it will be glaring.
The real reason I'm subs-over-dubs for anime. I get a buffer between me and second-hand-cringe (though that's usually because of the characters and not the voice acting).
Yeah, but I am not a native English speaker, so localized subtitles feels natural.
I even think that, for example, Kingdom Come Deliverance miss a lot of immersion by not having Czech voice overs.
I wonder how much research there would be available for this, but my intuition says a higher percentage of people who would go for indie games in the first place would be OK with "foreign" voice acting with decent subtitles. It's not like gamers aren't used to mumbling in lieu of voice and also pseudolanguages like the Magicka "swenordanish". I myself am a big fan of sound being in language(s) that fit the culture of the game and what the characters would actually be speaking in the scenario. I don't mind the game being in the language of the development studio either (irrespective of the scenario of the game), as long as that means the feel of voice acting is good and fits in.
I prefer playing games in their native language as long as the UI is in my language and the subtitles are well done.
Not everyone is like this though so I'd imagine you woukd alienate a decent number if players
Remember that if you do that you'll always get entitled people complaining loudly. I'm not discouraging you but just keep that in mind so you don't get taken by surprise
If its a danksh game playing in denmark,then yeah,it should be even better with danish voiceovers.
When i played the metro series,i only played it in russian with english sub,couldn't bear the english voiceover because its not authentic
Yep! So many games have complete gibberish and even that is fine.
I know English speakers who played The Witcher 3 in Polish for an “authentic” experience and that had tons of dialogue.
If it's a Danish story, I think it would add to it to be in that same language. I recently played whisper of a machine, a sci-fi nordic noir. It was clearly taking place in Sweden, but everyone spoke English which felt unnatural to me.
If it's got subtitles I'm likely to not care about the audio language. I actually prefer non-English voice acting since it doesn't sound so forced and terrible (I know not all games have bad voice acting, but enough do that it's often pretty jarring).
Take a look at Tunic. It's 90% a gibberish fantasy language, with small amounts of English in scrapes of the instruction manual you find throughout the game.
Bit surprised at how little this is mentioned? Tunic is a prime example of how to make it work. Their way of doing it obviously wont work for all games, but its a great source of inspiration at least.
If the cultural impact is big and the game itself is great - people will. Think about all the Japanese games. Think about the STALKER games in Ukrainian. :)
Semi-casual indie game fan here, plays usually 12 games a year (AAA + indie), I heavily would not play a game if it wasn’t in English. I love foreign films so subtitles aren’t an issue, just giving my gut opinion but it also depends a lot of how much of your game depends on dialogue.
Short answer : If it is in their native language, yes. Otherwise, no.
The game not being in english will significantly limit the total accessible market.
Even with subtitles? I guess in my mind it's like anime, I know so many people that prefer to watch subbed anime over any kind of dubbed language. Personally I think if the game is interesting enough and there are subtitles people will go for it regardless, hell many games don't even have audible dialogue and people still enjoy them.
All the people playing Japanese games.
All the people playing STALKER, Escape from Tarkov...
All the people playing games with nonsensical made-up languages...
Assuming there's subtitles and the UI and everything is in English so I can use it, the language spoken in the game doesn't bother me. I play Korean and Japanese games all the time.
The only caveat with that is to remember that cutscenes and cinematics don't have as much punch when you have to read subtitles. Just chatting with an NPC in an open world? Works fine. Lots of games don't even have spoken dialogue in those situations.
For environment text and voice lines it's really cool to see/hear other languages! I might have a harder time appreciating characters if I don't understand them, but actions, gestures, and intonation can go quite far!
If the game looks to be heavily narrative focused I might pass, but that's not due to the language barrier.
I think the settings should have language options pretty mandatory. Gameplay UI kinda depends on what your UI is like, if you can get away with an intuitive system where icons or not a lot of text is necessary, I don't think it is as required, but it would still be preferential to have an English option in this example for English.
Dialogue and text though there are plenty of games where if you at least have subtitles or context clues (as some games don't even have human languages) where you need them, I think that's great.
If you make it accessible, I don't think most people would have an issue with it.
I am a Norwegian so to me the question is simple to answer; sure if it interest me, but Danish and Norwegian are 2 languages that share a lot of vocabulary and lexicon (the same with Swedish) so it would be akin to go to an English man and ask him if he would play a game from Scotland/Ireland he probably would but to give some more information that is general
there have been some puzzle/adventure game games that have an invented language (Conlang, short for Constructed Language) that you need to decipher for example "Chants of Sennaar" & "Heaven's Vault" are 2 games that have a conlang, (the Zelda games also have a conlang but that is not necessary to learn it to play the game) but those are games that have constructed language what about games with natural languages?, well Metro 2033 is a Russian language game with English sub & dub( I only saw people playing it in Russian and English sub, there are probably a small minority that plays it in English dub, also the developer is Ukrainian not Russian just to inform about that), Atomic Heart is made by a Russian game developer, Russian voices and English subs are there and people play it like that( They kind of got fucked since the game released just around the time that Russia invaded Ukraine, if they released it before the invasion they would likely get more publicity), Yakuza (or Like a Dragon as it is called now) is also mostly in Japanese (they have 3 script and katakana is used to write foreign words, the most common example is Ringo for apple which originate from Spanish or Portuguese so if you understand katakana you might be able to read part of the world), they got a new English voice actor cast and people hated it because the voice actor for the main character was just bad, the Stalker games (Ukrainian developer, own them but never played them) all voices are in Russian and there are subs for the shops and scenes, Papo & Yo have just text bubbles from what I remember (it is a long long time since I played it)
so there are games out there that have non-English voices as "default" and they are successful, but games is kind of like movies(/television), while Hollywood is the big distributor-king out there with hundred of movies a year there are film industries in other countries, and a lot of the content that get produced in one country do not have to stay in that country, for example the Swedish cultural product Pippi Longstocking have been exported to the whole world, the Moomins is a Finnish cultural product and both of these became really popular before the internet even existed making it really hard to research cultural stuff (& impossible in some cases), in 2024 we have a mature internet (at least compared to 1970) making it relatively easy to research an reference in the game (the only exception could probably be China due to the firewall, and North Korea since they don't have an internet like we do), Denmark is not know for their huge population (and tall mountains) but that do not mean that there are not going to be people that buy the game
I think as long as there's English subtitle (or any language that players can understand better than the VO language), it shouldn't deter people trying it out.
as long as there are subtitles, i fail to see how this would be different to games with made up languages (like Ori and the Blind Forest). not a nagar i’ve to me. i would prefer english speak but it isn’t the end of the world at all.
Spoken non-English with subtitles is fine in cutscenes and dialogue sections, but if you have an action or strategy game where there are background barks that are tactically important, like "our base is under attack" or "my health is low", while the gameplay might be going too fast for you to pay attention to subtitles, those can be a problem.
They would if the Danish was serving something. Like, if your game was very Danish and the Danish helped immerse the player into that.
Otherwise it will probably just slightly hurt the accessibility of your game and make it look like you couldn’t afford two sets of voice actors, which isn’t the worse thing.
I’d be happy to personally. I played the Metro series in Russian, The Witcher 3 in Polish, Assasin’s Creed Unity and the Plague Tale games in French, Assassin’s Creed Mirage in Arabic, and Stellar Blade in Korean and the only one of those languages I can actually speak at all is French.
Ui options menus etc i need to read, but if im drawn in the language isnt a big deal.
I remember playing a ton nehrim (essentially different game made using oblivion as an engine), the VA’s its all german iirc but didnt matter had subtitles
my design philosophy for insectoid descent was to make as little words as possible, for the gameplay. yes, there is story and lore written in english, but its not required for play. the only english word in the gameplay is "RELOADING". currently, 40% of players are in USA (where the game was made). the rest are Singapore / Russia / China / Hong Kong. So, I'd like to think the fact that understanding english is non-required for play has helped us have a wider audience
that being said; if you want to have the game in Danish, most of us will never be able to read or understand it. so the gameplay itself must be fun, even if you can't read any of the Danish text.
another consideration is that, some people physically cannot read. perhaps due to visual or cognitive impairments. its possible for a semi-blind person to be able to play a game without being able to read the words.
The answer is yes, I absolutely would. I played Ghost of Tsushima with Japanese audio and English subtitles, by choice.
But also (unfortunately and sadly) it will more likely than not have some degree of negative effect on your overall sales. How much that is, and how much you care, is between you and fate.
I'd be fine with that, but there's definitely going to be people that will refuse to play it because they don't want to read all the dialogue. It's probably not that many people, but I haven't done market research or anything.
Totally. I consume anime and always watch it with original audio (Japanese) and subtitles (English). I prefer 1000 times the original audio with the emotions conveyed by the actors than a dub that's in my mother tongue but lacks emotion
Honestly, if the game had any kind of serious dialogue (not just random quotes when selecting a unit or encountering someone on the footpath) I need subtitles, no matter what.
Obligatory demographic information:
English is not my first language. It's not uncommon for me to watch a movie or show in a foreign language with subtitles. Unless the translation/overdub is of very good quality, I'd rather use a subtitle.
Yes. I like to use the language game was created with (see Metro 2033, stalker series and several indies, games originally in japanese etc) - when the game is built with specific Language and location in mind it shows.
Just allow me to have UI/subtitles In EN (I prefer it if I can't speak target language) or in my language (PL, but that is the least preferred option for me with the exception of Witcher 3 ;)
This will limit you of course, but there are people that dig it.
If it's just the spoken dialogue and there are english subtitles then it's fine. I've played japanese games with japanese spoken dialogue that I didn't understand and relied on english subtitles.
As a non-american, I always play games that's not in my native language. Even if the game has my language set up, I'm switching voices to english, and sometimes even switching subtitles to english. Because translation to my language is so poor in some cases.
That's not 100% of the cases tough, if I see translation to be high quality, I'm using my native language.
Anyway, I would have zero problems to play a game in danish, providing that there would be at least english subtitles. Actually I would even prefer to play a game that's not in english, because TBH I'm fed up with english since some time.
I guess not exactly the same, but the "Shogun" TV series comes to mind - it has been hugely successful in spite of a large part (most?) of its dialog being in subbed Japanese. Given people are more used to reading dialog in games than in TV shows (on account of many games not having dubbing at all), I don't think that should be an issue. In fact, there are plenty of games only dubbed in English that are very successful in countries where people don't speak English (though English-speaking audiences may feel different about it).
Really interesting to consider.
A lotto games use no voice over and have only text dialogue in speech bubbles or running at the bottom of the screen.
I hate these games. I always click-click-click through the dialogue, often to my own detriment because I miss so much detail.
But oddly, I'm not averse to reading. I loved, for example, Disco Elysium. And I'm also a very quick reader, so it's not that I can't keep up. IN fact, I always put the text on quick scroll because I hate the slow reveal.
I think I just don't like it being meted out bit-by-bit when they could just put the whole text up to be read at will.
The fact is, we don't write-read the way we speak-listen.
Anyway...
Most of this comment is just about my personal preferences, but the bit to consider seriously:
If you're going foreign spoken with English subtitles it will be no different really from those other games for most people. The majority are going to ignore the audio. It may as well be the gibberish language of Animal Crossing for all it will mean to most players. They'll just be reading the text.
So then you need to make sure that the reading experience is pleasant.
If there's a good reason for the game to be in another Language it makes sense to have voice lines in that language with subtitles, but for everything else it should be localised if you want people to buy it in that locale.
For example if you made a game about history in France, it might make sense that the characters speak French and not English. However, unless the point of the game is to teach you another language, it would be quite inaccessible if all the menu and game play elements were also in French.
So vocals are fine, but ideally there's a reason other than "resourcing issues" for the use of Danish. Everything else should be localised (not just English) to every region you wish to publish the game.
Localized VO only matter for a small % of any playerbase(aside from some VERY edge-cases), which can't be said about other methods of conveying information - that is, if you want your game to sell.
As in, there are a lot of Chinese games that don't even attempt to have any VO aside from the original one, and sometimes even subtitles/interface are of MTL-quality, but people play them purely because of gameplay or its style.
>I’m developing a game [...] with the UI being in English and with subtitles [for dialogue and cut scenes].
Yes, perfectly fine.
Maybe not mass market appeal, but animal crossing mangled speech is acceptable. So are languages I don't speak.
People love to be able to play in their own language, even if they know English, it's much more comfortable.
They need to be at a similar level to a native speaker for the experience to be the same in English.
I play a lot of JRPGs and I love when they have the option to leave the original voice acting in Japanese but change the subtitles and menu to English. Most of the time it's a luxury to even get voice acting in some games.
Yes and I have several times. Dragons dogma online. I localized my ps4 to Japan and played not knowing nearly any words or how to navigate menus. Played using visual cues only lol
While I as a Dutch person would love it if more cultures were accepting of multiple languages, the truth is that you should go for English most of the time. In my experiences most people want to experience a game in their own language or English. This means that no matter what English will be preferred.
Also this is a matter of priorities. Games can work very well if the VA is non-English and they are well-respected but English VA will draw in more people. Just look at almost all of the Assassins Creed games(in paticular Ezio trilogy). All of the games that involve Ezio I play in Italian because well duh. But for profit stick to English.
If you make your game in Danish, only people from Denmark will play it. If you make your game in russian, only people from ruzzia will play it. If you make your game in French, only people from France will play it, ETC. I mean, there's a segment of people who know the language that will be able to play it, but they're a small percent of the people that will be able to access your game.
English is the international language with the widest possible reach.
It is foolish to not have it at least as an option. I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm making my game first and foremost in English, even my native language version is going to be a translation.
Edit: I need better eyes, these ones are broken. I see now you intend to have English UI and subs. This is more than enough.
I played this old Japanese SNES game called Ball Bullet Gun, completely untranslated, because the universal language of "cool real life guns" somehow prevailed the cultural barrier.
Also recommend trying it if you can still manage to catch a ROM or even an imported cart. It's basically a turn based tactical game based on airsoft/tacticool subcultures. Me kinda being familiar enough with gun stuff because of my airsoft/armybrat friends, and also being pretty familiar with tactical turn based games meant that I only need to remember which words mean "move", "attack", "end turn", "skill", and the like...
I played this old Japanese SNES game called Ball Bullet Gun, completely untranslated, because the universal language of "cool real life guns" somehow prevailed the cultural barrier.
Also recommend trying it if you can still manage to catch a ROM or even an imported cart. It's basically a turn based tactical game based on airsoft/tacticool subcultures. So everyone is a chunky chibi goofball (if dude) or cutie (if chick) sprite, but also they're all in tac gear, like your typical workplace weekend airsoft clique. Me kinda being familiar enough with gun stuff because of my airsoft/armybrat friends (though admittedly it's more just playing a lot of early era counterstrike than anything), and also being pretty familiar with tactical turn based games meant that I only need to remember which words mean "move", "attack", "end turn", "skill", and the like...
If there's English text, that seems fine to me.
Just one example, but Atelier is a Japanese game series that used to get English dubs but don't anymore. I believe their most successful subseries in the west is Atelier Ryza, which is one of those that didn't get an English dub.
Probably depends on how interesting / engaging your game looks to players. Personally I wouldnt mind the audio to not be English as long as the game is but only if the game is interesting enough to keep me hooked
Though having English audio would certainly help.
It's a bit similar to dubbed VS subbed movies. There's a certain charm to watching the movie in its original language with subs but at the same time this takes away attention from the movie as you have to focus on reading the subtitles rather being fully engaged in what's happening on the screen
Though given that it sounds like your game might be text heavy I'd probably try to find English voice actors instead of risking having only English text 😅
At the end you end up still paying voiceactors so I'd personally just go for English speakers.
I know you mentioned it being easier for you to find voice actors locally but I can't imagine it being that difficult to find English speakers. Especially if you advertise it online
May I offer Missing Translation up for thought? If I remember correctly(it's been a number of years since I played it last) there was absolutely no text in the game. A puzzle of sorts... with. No. Text. 0.o yet I played the heck out of that game to beat it. :) a game could be in an alien made up language... and here I am trying to sus out what they're saying.... like a nerdy dork. ^ .^ so yea. Not in english isn't a problem for some of us :)
I'm not gonna post my personal opinion on the topic as I believe I couldn't say anything that hasn't been said before.
I'll just say the following: This is a Reddit community related to game development. Expect the average gamer, especially the American one, to be much lazier and less receptive of different languages than the average opinion here.
This could be a non-issue, though, depending on the type of game you're developing.
As long as the text is localized, sure. If the danish voice acting is good and the game is situated on Denmark or inspired by its culture, it can elevate the atmosphere a lot. If the setting is more generic then it can come up as a weird design decision.
If japan can get away with it I don't see why others couldn't. Maybe we should start valuing our own languages more.
It might shrink market but subtitles are 100% enough for me. I've started leaving most English not first language games in their native languages after Sekiro.
I used to reinstall games in French or Spanish when I was trying to learn, figured if I was avoiding homework by playing a game I should at least get some practice in. :)
As long as there are subtitles in my language (English) and the UI is also translated then sure, I would have no problem playing a game where the spoken language is not English. I do it all the time.
But if all the dialogue is Danish and NOT subtitled then it would have to be a *really* good game for me to consider it, and much of that would depend on the opinion of other people who told me if the game was enjoyable or not even without being able to understand the story/dialogue due to lack of subtitles.
Some people are turned off by subtitles but IMO those people are idiots. Why would you pass on a good experience just because it requires some light reading??
People underestimate how essential language is to culture. All these films and games set in non-English speaking places with only English audio always feel super jarring and weird. Some at least have localization options (eg playing AC Unity in French or AC 2 & Brotherhood in Italian, or Mirage in Arabic is infinitely better), but really the original language with subtitles should ALWAYS be the default. Any game should be spoken in the language that is appropriate for that setting. People who are too lazy to read subtitles need to get over it. Unless you're literally unable to read because of disability, there is no excuse. Ideally if you're going to have voice acting, there should be localization options, but original language should be default.
If you want to make any money, English all the way. It’s one thing to watch a movie with subtitles, but another entirely to play a game in another language that has a heavy dialog focus. Keeping dialog in Dutch will reduce your sales population dramatically and even says to English speakers “this game is not meant for you”.
Voice acting in your native language is fine but make everything that the player has to interact with is in English. You need to have it universal for your audience. If I have to break out google translate to know what I'm doing or going, it'll leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Loads of anime and jrpg fans will refuse to watch/play something with English voice acting, so you're probably fine with non-English voice acting. I for one would find it cool since I haven't heard much Danish and it'd add some uniqueness since Danish isn't often heard in games :)
People are saying yes, and while some people say yes, I think it’s not a great idea if you care about sales. Making games is already hard, a vast majority of new devs sell very little. You’re now making it far more difficult by doing it in Danish.
It’s not impossible. People shared examples. But think of it like this. If you had a pretty interesting concept and were selling the game cheap, you may get a decent audience of people who check it out. But now that it’s in Danish, they check out your steam page, see it’s in Danish and a lot will probably just click away immediately.
Ultimately you should do what you want and what excites you. If you really love the idea. Do it. But I will say it will probably make it a very hard sell I think.
I would not play a game that doesn’t offer all content in my native language as well as the option for the same for all languages of countries it is released to. Small snippets here and there of another language to add context (as long as it is translated so we can understand it) would be fine. I’m just one person, though so take it with a grain of salt.
let's take an example of Shinkansen 0. that game got so much love but the dialogues were in Japanese even though the subtitles were in English. so absolutely go for it
Chants of Senaar is an award winning game that has its own languages, its UI and subtitles are in the language of your choice. If people cant read text you provide them, they will not play the game, because they wont know how, and have to struggle to figure it out. Spoken language in games does not matter, as long as you give them a translated text.
I personally would find that pretty cool, but I think it would hard to break out into a wider audience. I think asking game devs what they would play is going to get tilted results.
The short answer is "Yes, but fewer."
The long answer is:
"Yes, people would play a game that was not in English if it had English subtitles and UI elements. Dialogue is something that people can pretty easily get around if there are subtitles in a language they can understand. The English speaking world consumes plenty of foreign films and anime in this fashion.
But, that isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some people just don't like reading subtitles, or they like feeling like they can look away for a moment and still keep up with what is being said.
So while people will play a game with dialogue they don't natively understand, that audience will be smaller than if it was completely translated."
I would say to go ahead and do what you are doing. Subtitles and UI elements are the biggest hurdle for broader access, and VA can be expensive if you are creating multiple scripts and doing lots of recording. If you find success, maybe you can patch in more languages. Or make the VA easily moddable so your community can translate into more languages than just English. Or your next game can have a higher budget which allows for broader translation.
I dont have a direct response to your question but here's my experience as a consumer:
Im a native English speaker with some experience with Spanish and Russian. When playing games that take place in non-english speaking regions I usually try to turn the audio to the local region. Metro is my favorite example of this. Sam, the American character, really feels out of place compared to when they all speak english. Same goes for STALKER and other STALKER-like MMOs.
Ive been considering playing Just Cause 3 and 4 in spanish with english subtitles
Depends. If it's in Japanese, yeah tons of people. Some other language, probably not.
If it's Japanese you'd even get people praising the voice acting and how good it sounds even if you had no subtitles or translations.
Tunic is kind of like that, minus dialogue.
It's a sort of Zelda-like puzzle/discovery game, where you have to figure out how to play by finding bits if the game manual, which are written in a made-up language.
Worth checking out to give you an idea how to convey ideas beyond a language barrier!
Video Game Industry is heavily linked to the internet. And for the worst of the best, we collectively accepted English as the default language, so we can speak with anyone without the need to learn his specific language. I don't have to wait for someone to speak French if we both also speak English.
Knowing that, developing a game with no English translation in mind is probably shooting yourself in the foot. Especially if there are a lot of dialogue. That's 90%++ of potential buyers disappearing for no good reason.
Dialogue is largely unimportant, so long as we can *read* everything else + subtitles.
The Sims is one of the most popular games in the world, and they speak a made up language.
Absolutely! I love this kind of thing. My favorite mod of all time uses the different language packs for the game to change the spoken audio of most of the npc's to reflect their heritage or affiliation. (Cosmopolitan Night City for Cyberpunk)
I play Japanese games with Japanese audio if it feels relevant (like Ni No Kuni) and I would definitely play a Danish game in Danish.
I’m from Finland and I enjoy movies from sll around the globe, so subtitles are normal thing to me.
Stepping into your audience / market minds, If you're developing it with commercial success in mind, the UI has to have English unless all the icons are crazy clear. Without it, those who scroll through your steam page / store page will most likely ignore it thinking, ah not built for me.
VO wise, not a deal breaker and is a non-issue. Though, on your store page, if you plan for English, mention it as it'll widen your market :D
Audio can be done in other languages and still give the needed emotion but at least text and subs in English are a standard, pick as example the games coming from Japan, I will often chose original audio for the emotion of the actors in the voice and set the game for any language I understand to play.
Brazilian dub is sad and rarely well done, Italian dub is really great at most occasions even changing some meaning but the studios have talented voice actors so is my choice when English is too flat dub. I think if a script is originally in danish language maybe the dub would sound more real in it, but depend in a lot of factors you will need to consider in your final art state for the game.
Which emotions and experience you want to give for the players is a good point to consider.
The red flag I see in your question is different...
Asuming this is your first game (alone or in a very small team), dont do an open world 3d game unless you are okay with high chance of failing. That will take ages and is most likely overscoped.
But good luck anyways. Better than not to try at all I guess.
It depends on how many people know the language.
As a rule of thumb, only spanish, chinese, russian and english are languages for videogames if you want to sell it.
I would go english, you won't turn up in searches is easily if you aren't fully english. I don't think think I have ever played a non-english game, but I also don't think steam, nintendo eshop etc has ever shown me a game not fully in english.
I much prefer a game in its native language over poorly voice acted English. It's why practically all JRPGs with voice acting should be played in Japanese if possible, because the voice acting and the lines sound so stiff and cringe in English.
As long as your writing is solid, then it shouldn't turn many people away.
Edit: getting downvoted by idiots who are too shy vocalize their beliefs. If you think you've even got one good counter example, name 'em. I'll wait.
Sekiro defaults to Japanese for dialogue, and it feels wrong trying to play with English voices.
On the UI though, being unable to understand how you interact with the game is the same as the game having a useless UI.
Consider accessibility issues - this could be an instant no for dyslexic people or just generally lower-grade readers.
Personally it’s a kinda nifty gimmick but I worry that 90% of the game would be spent ignoring most of the screen and staring at a subtitle line at the bottom.
I feel like the option to toggle languages would be better than baking it in.
Right, but there’s a world of difference between a text-based game not designed to have VO, and a game where VO is fully part of the normal game, but not comprehensible to the average player.
And while a game translated into English may technically be ‘localised’ VO it’s a world of difference between that and the opposite, translating from English into languages with far fewer speakers like danish. Most Danes are extremely good at English anyway, it’s English speakers who will have problems.
Ultimately what OP seems to be going for is very niche and the answer to ‘would it be better for my game sales/experience if the VO is in a language most players understand’ is gonna be ‘well, duh’ lol
Someone else mentioned My Summer Car, and while the dialogue certainly isn't a huge focus in the game, I definitely think it adds to the charm for sure. There are other games that I prefer in their native language as long as there are English subtitles, I think if the game is interesting enough it shouldn't drive away too many customers.
General UI MUST be in english or my native language. Without it playing the Game or understanding the Story might be extremly difficult. Regarding voice acting it can be a different case: For someone that got in to anime and realized that the original voice actors can be leagues above some dubs I say yes yes yes! The same with gaming, some Developers offer voice acting from their Home country that is way better then any localization from another country. Or it can also be the complete opposite. I played some Games made by German Game Developers where the German voice acting sounded horribly robotical, but if you switched to the english voice acting it was waayyyy better. So it really depends on who does it, If it is a localization (they are only Reading the voice lines from a script) or Synchronisation (where they also read voice lines from a script BUT also have the Game in Front of them to sync and emulate the character on screen much better then without it). So sometimes just try out both languages for a couple minutes and see what sounds better and then chose whatever you find more immersive or fun to listen to. So you can have the best experience with the game possible.
The UI absolutely NEEDS to be in my language (English for me) but really, if the emotions and narrative are conveyed well, no language is needed.
I want to add to this that you have to be able to change the UI language too if there's multiple. I've had some games default to my native language (Dutch), and if I can't change it to English within like 5 minutes of googling I'm just going to stop playing and refund if possible.
Is there a reason you like English UI over Dutch UI?
I can't speak for him nor about Dutch translations, but I can speak for myself about Brazilian Portuguese translations. Unless the game is originally Brazilian, I always switch to English. Brazilian Portuguese translations tend to be bad, and by "bad" I don't mean wrong or gibberish, but just lazy. They are technically correct™ but fail to convey small nuances that are conveyed in English, usually because the translator chose to use a simpler/more common word/grammatical structure either because he doesn't know the best word/structure or because he assumes the Brazilian gamer won't know it (and won't bother looking it up in a dictionary or something). For example, I've seen "ravenous" translated as "faminto" ("very hungry, famished") when a better translation would be the less common "voraz" ("voracious"). To be more specific: all the three words (ravenous, faminto, voraz) mean "very hungry", but "ravenous" has a more specific connotation ("frenzied by hunger") that it shares with "voraz" but not with "faminto". Another example: In Path of Exile, there's an Inquisitor-like boss named Baran. In one of his moves, he raises his hand and charges up a powerful attack and yells "Atone!" to let you know you better get the fuck away from him or you'll be one-shot. The "Atone!" was translated into a wholeass phrase "Pague pelos seus pecados!" ("Pay for your sins!"). It could've been translated to "Expie!" (lit. "Atone!"), but it wasn't because "expiar" is a relatively unknown word, restricted to religious contexts (much like "atone" in English) and would probably be mistaken for the homophonous "espiar" ("spy, look"), even though the translation is presented as subtitles instead of audio. And that's not to mention alternative structures could/should have been used, such as, instead of "Pague pelos seus pecados!", "Paga pelos teus pecados!", which would sound slightly more archaic, similarly but not as archaic as "Pay for thy sins!" would sound in English. This would be quite fitting for a character that's clearly inspired on a Catholic inquisitor. But no, they go for the simpler/more common translation even if it butches the entire experience. It's been a while since I last played a Brazilian game translated to English but when I did, I didn't find the translation to be lacking as it is the other way around. Also there's the fact that once you play the game in English, it becomes much easier to look for info on the internet, as you can look for info directly in English without having to guess whether "Faminto" was used to translate "Hungry" or "Ravenous". Thanks for reading my huge rant on why Brazilian Portuguese translations are shite.
Very interesting perspective. I am American but my mom is Brazilian so I was raised with both languages. I can understand Portuguese with complete fluency but still struggle with speaking complete sentences. I have also noticed that translations can be kindof rough and not get subtle nuances when I google translate something then read it and realize that it really isn’t what I’m trying to say. When my cousin came for a visit from Brazil a few years back he spoke near perfect English, mostly attributed to playing tons of games in full English.
The main one is that it just sounds weird. Conversationally a lot of common gaming parlance is just left untranslated, weaving the english words into otherwise dutch sentences. A lot of game translations instead translate *everything*, so you get super stilted translations. A friend of mine briefly played Dota 2 in Dutch because it took his Steam language, and they even translated some hero names because they're made up of normal nouns. Nobody would ever refer to them by their translated names in conversation, except to make fun of how bad the translation was. A lot of translations are frequently just bad, and I'd rather read natively written English than badly translated Dutch. Translation companies might translate it line by line while missing a lot of the context of where that text goes, so even if it's professionally translated quality isn't guaranteed. Then there's also machine translations, and while those have gotten a lot better recently they're still not perfect while also magnifying the previous issue. Then there's also that I hang out in a lot of English speaking communities, and talking about a topic gets a lot harder when the thing you want to talk about uses a completely different language. The worst one here isn't a game, but Excel. They translated even the function names, so if you ever want to copy something from Stackoverflow it straight up will not work in any non-English copy of the software. It means that to use translated software, the user has to basically reverse engineer the untranslated text to make use of most internet resources.
It’s interesting to look at all the unintended consequences of English being the “default” language for development and entertainment with I guess the great cultural impact of English speaking countries.
Reminds me of Japanese translations where they write "Press Start" and other such UI in Japanese, when in reality those have always been in English and everyone expects them to be that way. An arcade would never say お金を入れてください it would say ＩＮＳＥＲＴ ＣＯＩＮ, even in Japanese (nobody had the ROM space for all those Japanese characters in the 80s, and now that's just how it is). The only games I've seen made in Japan that went full Japanese were doing so for stylistic reasons; to evoke a more archaic or mythological feel. Sometimes those even go for vertical text.
Not the person you replied to, but the english UI in almost any product is vastly superior. And there is no way of knowing if the translation was done by professionals or by google translate. While the later is more obvious, more advanced translation engines can spit out mostly correct translations that are still wrong in places.
People play games with nonsense mumbling and beeps in place of words. Language is pretty unimportant if there are text boxes.
Dunkadunka
Magika ftw
To be fair, danish is pretty indistinguishable from nonsense mumbling so it shouldn't feel too weird for people who are used to made up vocalizations in games
Fandt fjeldaben. Hvordan kom du ud af buret? Vi burde virkelig få de nordlige territorier under kontrol igen!
I feel like I'm playing Zelda already!
If someone is curious, they wanted to conquer Norway (if I understood danskjäveln correctly). My kind of Zelda game.
Bruh DayZ is so good partly due to everything in the map being in russian, written in cyrillic alphabet. It just brings an unique vibe and some challenge when u gotta figure out where are ypu exactly in the map. UI is in english tho and that's the only thing that matters imo. Also there should be subtitles for dialogue as u mentioned urself.
> A: Where are you? > > B: No idea man > > A: Read a street sign > > B: I don't even know how to mate... > > A: Spell it out maybe? > > B: Mate, there are three different types of R and 2 different types of N....... I was pissing myself laughing when I heard this interaction between 2 buddies in dayz. Was funny as fuck.
Haha sounds familiar! That game is such a pain in the ass but so rewarding for that.
The Yakuza games have (until recently) always been in japanese, and they are cult classics. Personally, I think this is perfectly fine, and if your voice actors are good, they will be able to carry the scene even for non-danish speakers. *Edit: As long as you have good subtitles, though!*
Danish isn't an insanely fashionable language like Japanese is. I know a ton of weebs that just learn Japanese for its own sake (as opposed to learning, say, English for utilitary purposes). Yet I don't know a single person who'd even consider learning Danish.
Right, but the Yakuza series of games has English subtitles. I definitely wouldn't expect someone to learn Japanese to play it, though I'm sure some do. Especially since the setting is Japan, it makes sense to hear the characters speak Japanese. They added English voices to the newer games, but I don't particularly want to see these very obviously Japanese characters in Japan speaking English in a setting where English wouldn't be used*. I guess what I'm getting at is the voiceover language is a function of the story setting, since the text would still be available in English. I'd rather hear Danish if the story is Danish. *Obviously English is used in Japan, but probably not in the Japanese underworld. The latest entry in the series is set in Hawaii though, so I would expect to hear English and Japanese there. It would be weird if everyone in Hawaii spoke fluent Japanese (though I hear many do due to heavy tourism there).
Well, you yourself mentioned that even Yakuza games started implementing English voiceover. So let's just think about it: - Japanese is popular and cool among their target audience, some even learn it - They're a very popular and established game series with a substantial playerbase And with all that, with EVERYTHING in their favor, they STILL did their research and decided that they NEED an English voiceover for some reason. But some noname game in a language that no one knows somehow will do just great without voiceover, sure. If literally no one knows you, there's few things worse than just building this sort of wall between you and the player. There are tons of games out there and no one's going out of their way to play yours in a world where they make TikTok as short and information dense as possible because the average view time is freaking 8 seconds, aka if people don't get what they want IMMEDIATELY, they just swipe and go on. There is an infinite amount of content these times and the least you can do is stop creating artificial barriers to consume yours.
> did their research and decided that they NEED an English voiceover for some reason. woah woah woah let's not accuse Sega of making competent business decisions; since when have they ever. Most games don't have voiceovers at all. It's not really a wall or barrier in the slightest.
Games that don't have voiceovers are designed around that fact and don't need a voiceover. What you just said, quite literally, is that Detroit become human doesn't need a voiceover because Tetris doesn't have one.
No, that's not what I said. I said it's not necessary for a game to have one. You can choose to make it necessary or not in your game design.
Yes. And if dude decided to go for a danish voiceover despite being an indie (so, like, super limited resources), it's probably more necessary than not, so he's probably not making "Tetris"
It's a stylistic choice. There's never a time when you actually need one. You can just do subtitles only like it was before PCM audio was even available. It wasn't a barrier then and it isn't now.
Japanese wasn't always popular with language learners. It became a fashionable language *because* a bunch of cool shit was made in it over the past few decades. I'm not saying OP is gonna suddenly make everyone into Danophiles with their brilliant game but, like, people are open to foreign language VO if the content is good enough. French film with subs is popular around the world. Latin pop is super popular even outside the Hispanic community. Netflix has had global hit shows in German and Norwegian. Korea is having a big moment as a cultural exporter across mediums (TV, music, film, games) right now. Heck, Iceland has produced successful musicians who use their native language, and there are only a couple hundred thousand speakers. There's no reason that a game with Danish VO and (quality) English subs couldn't be successful.
> I'm not saying OP is gonna suddenly make everyone into Danophiles Me neither, and my entire point is he won't. If I assumed it was possible I wouldn't write it. I did think of clarifying that, but I thought it was too obvious. French is insanely popular as well, literal lingua franca for centuries, so it's a terrible comparison. And arguably music is the least relevant out of all media because people just don't care about the lyrics in pop songs. I'm pretty sure 95% of non-hispanic listeners of latino pop have no idea what the songs they listen to are about and they kinda don't need to, it's not at all the same as a movie or a game.
> if your voice actors are good, they will be able to carry the scene Actually, I like foreign subtitles especially when the voice acting is bad. Would much rather experience bad acting in a language I can't recognize than my native language where it will be glaring.
The real reason I'm subs-over-dubs for anime. I get a buffer between me and second-hand-cringe (though that's usually because of the characters and not the voice acting).
Yeah, but I am not a native English speaker, so localized subtitles feels natural. I even think that, for example, Kingdom Come Deliverance miss a lot of immersion by not having Czech voice overs.
Same for Witcher series. It is so good with any slavic voice
I wonder how much research there would be available for this, but my intuition says a higher percentage of people who would go for indie games in the first place would be OK with "foreign" voice acting with decent subtitles. It's not like gamers aren't used to mumbling in lieu of voice and also pseudolanguages like the Magicka "swenordanish". I myself am a big fan of sound being in language(s) that fit the culture of the game and what the characters would actually be speaking in the scenario. I don't mind the game being in the language of the development studio either (irrespective of the scenario of the game), as long as that means the feel of voice acting is good and fits in.
I would.
Others have said it... most games don't have voice over and just have text... It'll be fine.
People will if it's a great game. Many people across the world are waiting for Black Myth: Wukong.
As long as it has subtitles, sounds fine to me.
You will be really limiting your target audience if you do this. However, don't let that stop you! Make art for the sake of making art!
I prefer playing games in their native language as long as the UI is in my language and the subtitles are well done. Not everyone is like this though so I'd imagine you woukd alienate a decent number if players
I personally quite like it when something is subbed in English and still being able to listen to it in the original language
Remember that if you do that you'll always get entitled people complaining loudly. I'm not discouraging you but just keep that in mind so you don't get taken by surprise
If its a danksh game playing in denmark,then yeah,it should be even better with danish voiceovers. When i played the metro series,i only played it in russian with english sub,couldn't bear the english voiceover because its not authentic
Yep! So many games have complete gibberish and even that is fine. I know English speakers who played The Witcher 3 in Polish for an “authentic” experience and that had tons of dialogue.
If it's a Danish story, I think it would add to it to be in that same language. I recently played whisper of a machine, a sci-fi nordic noir. It was clearly taking place in Sweden, but everyone spoke English which felt unnatural to me.
If it's got subtitles I'm likely to not care about the audio language. I actually prefer non-English voice acting since it doesn't sound so forced and terrible (I know not all games have bad voice acting, but enough do that it's often pretty jarring).
I played A Plague Tale in French with English subtitles, it really added to the atmosphere.
Take a look at Tunic. It's 90% a gibberish fantasy language, with small amounts of English in scrapes of the instruction manual you find throughout the game.
Bit surprised at how little this is mentioned? Tunic is a prime example of how to make it work. Their way of doing it obviously wont work for all games, but its a great source of inspiration at least.
Same, I was shocked nobody else had mentioned it so far. It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread.
If the cultural impact is big and the game itself is great - people will. Think about all the Japanese games. Think about the STALKER games in Ukrainian. :)
Im playing last train home now. All the text is english, all the voices are czech/russian. It is perfectly playable
I wouldn't.
Semi-casual indie game fan here, plays usually 12 games a year (AAA + indie), I heavily would not play a game if it wasn’t in English. I love foreign films so subtitles aren’t an issue, just giving my gut opinion but it also depends a lot of how much of your game depends on dialogue.
Short answer : If it is in their native language, yes. Otherwise, no. The game not being in english will significantly limit the total accessible market.
Tell that to My Summer Car.
Even with subtitles? I guess in my mind it's like anime, I know so many people that prefer to watch subbed anime over any kind of dubbed language. Personally I think if the game is interesting enough and there are subtitles people will go for it regardless, hell many games don't even have audible dialogue and people still enjoy them.
All the people playing Japanese games. All the people playing STALKER, Escape from Tarkov... All the people playing games with nonsensical made-up languages...
Millions of weebs would like to have a word with you.
just do it
Assuming there's subtitles and the UI and everything is in English so I can use it, the language spoken in the game doesn't bother me. I play Korean and Japanese games all the time. The only caveat with that is to remember that cutscenes and cinematics don't have as much punch when you have to read subtitles. Just chatting with an NPC in an open world? Works fine. Lots of games don't even have spoken dialogue in those situations.
Sure, why not. I use subtitles when watching non English language movies, why not games.
Yes.
For environment text and voice lines it's really cool to see/hear other languages! I might have a harder time appreciating characters if I don't understand them, but actions, gestures, and intonation can go quite far! If the game looks to be heavily narrative focused I might pass, but that's not due to the language barrier.
I think the settings should have language options pretty mandatory. Gameplay UI kinda depends on what your UI is like, if you can get away with an intuitive system where icons or not a lot of text is necessary, I don't think it is as required, but it would still be preferential to have an English option in this example for English. Dialogue and text though there are plenty of games where if you at least have subtitles or context clues (as some games don't even have human languages) where you need them, I think that's great. If you make it accessible, I don't think most people would have an issue with it.
As long as there are subtitles, sure!
I am a Norwegian so to me the question is simple to answer; sure if it interest me, but Danish and Norwegian are 2 languages that share a lot of vocabulary and lexicon (the same with Swedish) so it would be akin to go to an English man and ask him if he would play a game from Scotland/Ireland he probably would but to give some more information that is general there have been some puzzle/adventure game games that have an invented language (Conlang, short for Constructed Language) that you need to decipher for example "Chants of Sennaar" & "Heaven's Vault" are 2 games that have a conlang, (the Zelda games also have a conlang but that is not necessary to learn it to play the game) but those are games that have constructed language what about games with natural languages?, well Metro 2033 is a Russian language game with English sub & dub( I only saw people playing it in Russian and English sub, there are probably a small minority that plays it in English dub, also the developer is Ukrainian not Russian just to inform about that), Atomic Heart is made by a Russian game developer, Russian voices and English subs are there and people play it like that( They kind of got fucked since the game released just around the time that Russia invaded Ukraine, if they released it before the invasion they would likely get more publicity), Yakuza (or Like a Dragon as it is called now) is also mostly in Japanese (they have 3 script and katakana is used to write foreign words, the most common example is Ringo for apple which originate from Spanish or Portuguese so if you understand katakana you might be able to read part of the world), they got a new English voice actor cast and people hated it because the voice actor for the main character was just bad, the Stalker games (Ukrainian developer, own them but never played them) all voices are in Russian and there are subs for the shops and scenes, Papo & Yo have just text bubbles from what I remember (it is a long long time since I played it) so there are games out there that have non-English voices as "default" and they are successful, but games is kind of like movies(/television), while Hollywood is the big distributor-king out there with hundred of movies a year there are film industries in other countries, and a lot of the content that get produced in one country do not have to stay in that country, for example the Swedish cultural product Pippi Longstocking have been exported to the whole world, the Moomins is a Finnish cultural product and both of these became really popular before the internet even existed making it really hard to research cultural stuff (& impossible in some cases), in 2024 we have a mature internet (at least compared to 1970) making it relatively easy to research an reference in the game (the only exception could probably be China due to the firewall, and North Korea since they don't have an internet like we do), Denmark is not know for their huge population (and tall mountains) but that do not mean that there are not going to be people that buy the game
As long as I can understand what's going on it's fine. I play games in Chinese all the time but that's my native language so..
I think as long as there's English subtitle (or any language that players can understand better than the VO language), it shouldn't deter people trying it out.
as long as there are subtitles, i fail to see how this would be different to games with made up languages (like Ori and the Blind Forest). not a nagar i’ve to me. i would prefer english speak but it isn’t the end of the world at all.
if it were stylised properly and fun otherwise I could see it being a niche fun thing.
If the UI and subtitles are localized, I don't mind if the audio is not in English.
As long as it has subtitles its fine but I am honestly not willing to play a game with no subtitles in another language no matter how good
Spoken non-English with subtitles is fine in cutscenes and dialogue sections, but if you have an action or strategy game where there are background barks that are tactically important, like "our base is under attack" or "my health is low", while the gameplay might be going too fast for you to pay attention to subtitles, those can be a problem.
They would if the Danish was serving something. Like, if your game was very Danish and the Danish helped immerse the player into that. Otherwise it will probably just slightly hurt the accessibility of your game and make it look like you couldn’t afford two sets of voice actors, which isn’t the worse thing.
I’d be happy to personally. I played the Metro series in Russian, The Witcher 3 in Polish, Assasin’s Creed Unity and the Plague Tale games in French, Assassin’s Creed Mirage in Arabic, and Stellar Blade in Korean and the only one of those languages I can actually speak at all is French.
Ui options menus etc i need to read, but if im drawn in the language isnt a big deal. I remember playing a ton nehrim (essentially different game made using oblivion as an engine), the VA’s its all german iirc but didnt matter had subtitles
my design philosophy for insectoid descent was to make as little words as possible, for the gameplay. yes, there is story and lore written in english, but its not required for play. the only english word in the gameplay is "RELOADING". currently, 40% of players are in USA (where the game was made). the rest are Singapore / Russia / China / Hong Kong. So, I'd like to think the fact that understanding english is non-required for play has helped us have a wider audience that being said; if you want to have the game in Danish, most of us will never be able to read or understand it. so the gameplay itself must be fun, even if you can't read any of the Danish text. another consideration is that, some people physically cannot read. perhaps due to visual or cognitive impairments. its possible for a semi-blind person to be able to play a game without being able to read the words.
The answer is yes, I absolutely would. I played Ghost of Tsushima with Japanese audio and English subtitles, by choice. But also (unfortunately and sadly) it will more likely than not have some degree of negative effect on your overall sales. How much that is, and how much you care, is between you and fate.
I'd be fine with that, but there's definitely going to be people that will refuse to play it because they don't want to read all the dialogue. It's probably not that many people, but I haven't done market research or anything.
Totally. I consume anime and always watch it with original audio (Japanese) and subtitles (English). I prefer 1000 times the original audio with the emotions conveyed by the actors than a dub that's in my mother tongue but lacks emotion
Yes, its allright if game characters speak a different language that is not a fantasy language.
If the dannish text/voice is justified (like the game was based in Denmark..) everybody should be ok with that.
Original language can be a strong suit sometimes, but UI and subtitles must be at least in english.
Sekiro is all in japanese except the Ui/ text and subtitles and it works really well
Honestly, if the game had any kind of serious dialogue (not just random quotes when selecting a unit or encountering someone on the footpath) I need subtitles, no matter what. Obligatory demographic information: English is not my first language. It's not uncommon for me to watch a movie or show in a foreign language with subtitles. Unless the translation/overdub is of very good quality, I'd rather use a subtitle.
Yes. I like to use the language game was created with (see Metro 2033, stalker series and several indies, games originally in japanese etc) - when the game is built with specific Language and location in mind it shows. Just allow me to have UI/subtitles In EN (I prefer it if I can't speak target language) or in my language (PL, but that is the least preferred option for me with the exception of Witcher 3 ;) This will limit you of course, but there are people that dig it.
If it's just the spoken dialogue and there are english subtitles then it's fine. I've played japanese games with japanese spoken dialogue that I didn't understand and relied on english subtitles.
As a non-american, I always play games that's not in my native language. Even if the game has my language set up, I'm switching voices to english, and sometimes even switching subtitles to english. Because translation to my language is so poor in some cases. That's not 100% of the cases tough, if I see translation to be high quality, I'm using my native language. Anyway, I would have zero problems to play a game in danish, providing that there would be at least english subtitles. Actually I would even prefer to play a game that's not in english, because TBH I'm fed up with english since some time.
ever heard of stalker
I guess not exactly the same, but the "Shogun" TV series comes to mind - it has been hugely successful in spite of a large part (most?) of its dialog being in subbed Japanese. Given people are more used to reading dialog in games than in TV shows (on account of many games not having dubbing at all), I don't think that should be an issue. In fact, there are plenty of games only dubbed in English that are very successful in countries where people don't speak English (though English-speaking audiences may feel different about it).
I prefer to be able to understand the dialogue. If i have to look at subtitles i get bored especially when there is a lot of dialogue.
I would actually like that.
Hi JRPG and Japanese gatcha game addict here,I would absolutely play a game on its native language with subtitles and English UI.
Heck danish with subtitles could be pretty hilarious on its own
Really interesting to consider. A lotto games use no voice over and have only text dialogue in speech bubbles or running at the bottom of the screen. I hate these games. I always click-click-click through the dialogue, often to my own detriment because I miss so much detail. But oddly, I'm not averse to reading. I loved, for example, Disco Elysium. And I'm also a very quick reader, so it's not that I can't keep up. IN fact, I always put the text on quick scroll because I hate the slow reveal. I think I just don't like it being meted out bit-by-bit when they could just put the whole text up to be read at will. The fact is, we don't write-read the way we speak-listen. Anyway... Most of this comment is just about my personal preferences, but the bit to consider seriously: If you're going foreign spoken with English subtitles it will be no different really from those other games for most people. The majority are going to ignore the audio. It may as well be the gibberish language of Animal Crossing for all it will mean to most players. They'll just be reading the text. So then you need to make sure that the reading experience is pleasant.
If there's a good reason for the game to be in another Language it makes sense to have voice lines in that language with subtitles, but for everything else it should be localised if you want people to buy it in that locale. For example if you made a game about history in France, it might make sense that the characters speak French and not English. However, unless the point of the game is to teach you another language, it would be quite inaccessible if all the menu and game play elements were also in French. So vocals are fine, but ideally there's a reason other than "resourcing issues" for the use of Danish. Everything else should be localised (not just English) to every region you wish to publish the game.
Chronicles of Myrtana is the best RPG of 2021 and it's 100 hour game with only Polish voice over.
Localized VO only matter for a small % of any playerbase(aside from some VERY edge-cases), which can't be said about other methods of conveying information - that is, if you want your game to sell. As in, there are a lot of Chinese games that don't even attempt to have any VO aside from the original one, and sometimes even subtitles/interface are of MTL-quality, but people play them purely because of gameplay or its style.
no, unless there's subs
>I’m developing a game [...] with the UI being in English and with subtitles [for dialogue and cut scenes]. Yes, perfectly fine. Maybe not mass market appeal, but animal crossing mangled speech is acceptable. So are languages I don't speak.
People love to be able to play in their own language, even if they know English, it's much more comfortable. They need to be at a similar level to a native speaker for the experience to be the same in English.
I play a lot of JRPGs and I love when they have the option to leave the original voice acting in Japanese but change the subtitles and menu to English. Most of the time it's a luxury to even get voice acting in some games.
As long as it’s well subtitled. I used to wish all the jdm games I played in the 90s were subtitled.
People played Celeste and the dialogue where in "gibberish". It can be done BUT it has to be done really well.
Det er helt okay med mig! Men, hvis der er svenskere med i spillet, så sørg lige for underteksterne er på finsk for dem i stedet for…
If it’s good
I know a pretty popular game that isn’t in English but quite a few people still love it. It’s called ”Sims”.
Yes and I have several times. Dragons dogma online. I localized my ps4 to Japan and played not knowing nearly any words or how to navigate menus. Played using visual cues only lol
While I as a Dutch person would love it if more cultures were accepting of multiple languages, the truth is that you should go for English most of the time. In my experiences most people want to experience a game in their own language or English. This means that no matter what English will be preferred. Also this is a matter of priorities. Games can work very well if the VA is non-English and they are well-respected but English VA will draw in more people. Just look at almost all of the Assassins Creed games(in paticular Ezio trilogy). All of the games that involve Ezio I play in Italian because well duh. But for profit stick to English.
If you make your game in Danish, only people from Denmark will play it. If you make your game in russian, only people from ruzzia will play it. If you make your game in French, only people from France will play it, ETC. I mean, there's a segment of people who know the language that will be able to play it, but they're a small percent of the people that will be able to access your game. English is the international language with the widest possible reach. It is foolish to not have it at least as an option. I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm making my game first and foremost in English, even my native language version is going to be a translation. Edit: I need better eyes, these ones are broken. I see now you intend to have English UI and subs. This is more than enough.
I played this old Japanese SNES game called Ball Bullet Gun, completely untranslated, because the universal language of "cool real life guns" somehow prevailed the cultural barrier. Also recommend trying it if you can still manage to catch a ROM or even an imported cart. It's basically a turn based tactical game based on airsoft/tacticool subcultures. Me kinda being familiar enough with gun stuff because of my airsoft/armybrat friends, and also being pretty familiar with tactical turn based games meant that I only need to remember which words mean "move", "attack", "end turn", "skill", and the like...
I played this old Japanese SNES game called Ball Bullet Gun, completely untranslated, because the universal language of "cool real life guns" somehow prevailed the cultural barrier. Also recommend trying it if you can still manage to catch a ROM or even an imported cart. It's basically a turn based tactical game based on airsoft/tacticool subcultures. So everyone is a chunky chibi goofball (if dude) or cutie (if chick) sprite, but also they're all in tac gear, like your typical workplace weekend airsoft clique. Me kinda being familiar enough with gun stuff because of my airsoft/armybrat friends (though admittedly it's more just playing a lot of early era counterstrike than anything), and also being pretty familiar with tactical turn based games meant that I only need to remember which words mean "move", "attack", "end turn", "skill", and the like...
If there's English text, that seems fine to me. Just one example, but Atelier is a Japanese game series that used to get English dubs but don't anymore. I believe their most successful subseries in the west is Atelier Ryza, which is one of those that didn't get an English dub.
Probably depends on how interesting / engaging your game looks to players. Personally I wouldnt mind the audio to not be English as long as the game is but only if the game is interesting enough to keep me hooked Though having English audio would certainly help. It's a bit similar to dubbed VS subbed movies. There's a certain charm to watching the movie in its original language with subs but at the same time this takes away attention from the movie as you have to focus on reading the subtitles rather being fully engaged in what's happening on the screen Though given that it sounds like your game might be text heavy I'd probably try to find English voice actors instead of risking having only English text 😅 At the end you end up still paying voiceactors so I'd personally just go for English speakers. I know you mentioned it being easier for you to find voice actors locally but I can't imagine it being that difficult to find English speakers. Especially if you advertise it online
May I offer Missing Translation up for thought? If I remember correctly(it's been a number of years since I played it last) there was absolutely no text in the game. A puzzle of sorts... with. No. Text. 0.o yet I played the heck out of that game to beat it. :) a game could be in an alien made up language... and here I am trying to sus out what they're saying.... like a nerdy dork. ^ .^ so yea. Not in english isn't a problem for some of us :)
I'm not gonna post my personal opinion on the topic as I believe I couldn't say anything that hasn't been said before. I'll just say the following: This is a Reddit community related to game development. Expect the average gamer, especially the American one, to be much lazier and less receptive of different languages than the average opinion here. This could be a non-issue, though, depending on the type of game you're developing.
As long as the text is localized, sure. If the danish voice acting is good and the game is situated on Denmark or inspired by its culture, it can elevate the atmosphere a lot. If the setting is more generic then it can come up as a weird design decision. If japan can get away with it I don't see why others couldn't. Maybe we should start valuing our own languages more.
It might shrink market but subtitles are 100% enough for me. I've started leaving most English not first language games in their native languages after Sekiro.
I used to reinstall games in French or Spanish when I was trying to learn, figured if I was avoiding homework by playing a game I should at least get some practice in. :)
As long as there are subtitles in my language (English) and the UI is also translated then sure, I would have no problem playing a game where the spoken language is not English. I do it all the time. But if all the dialogue is Danish and NOT subtitled then it would have to be a *really* good game for me to consider it, and much of that would depend on the opinion of other people who told me if the game was enjoyable or not even without being able to understand the story/dialogue due to lack of subtitles. Some people are turned off by subtitles but IMO those people are idiots. Why would you pass on a good experience just because it requires some light reading??
People underestimate how essential language is to culture. All these films and games set in non-English speaking places with only English audio always feel super jarring and weird. Some at least have localization options (eg playing AC Unity in French or AC 2 & Brotherhood in Italian, or Mirage in Arabic is infinitely better), but really the original language with subtitles should ALWAYS be the default. Any game should be spoken in the language that is appropriate for that setting. People who are too lazy to read subtitles need to get over it. Unless you're literally unable to read because of disability, there is no excuse. Ideally if you're going to have voice acting, there should be localization options, but original language should be default.
If you want to make any money, English all the way. It’s one thing to watch a movie with subtitles, but another entirely to play a game in another language that has a heavy dialog focus. Keeping dialog in Dutch will reduce your sales population dramatically and even says to English speakers “this game is not meant for you”.
Voice acting in your native language is fine but make everything that the player has to interact with is in English. You need to have it universal for your audience. If I have to break out google translate to know what I'm doing or going, it'll leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Loads of anime and jrpg fans will refuse to watch/play something with English voice acting, so you're probably fine with non-English voice acting. I for one would find it cool since I haven't heard much Danish and it'd add some uniqueness since Danish isn't often heard in games :)
People are saying yes, and while some people say yes, I think it’s not a great idea if you care about sales. Making games is already hard, a vast majority of new devs sell very little. You’re now making it far more difficult by doing it in Danish. It’s not impossible. People shared examples. But think of it like this. If you had a pretty interesting concept and were selling the game cheap, you may get a decent audience of people who check it out. But now that it’s in Danish, they check out your steam page, see it’s in Danish and a lot will probably just click away immediately. Ultimately you should do what you want and what excites you. If you really love the idea. Do it. But I will say it will probably make it a very hard sell I think.
I would not play a game that doesn’t offer all content in my native language as well as the option for the same for all languages of countries it is released to. Small snippets here and there of another language to add context (as long as it is translated so we can understand it) would be fine. I’m just one person, though so take it with a grain of salt.
let's take an example of Shinkansen 0. that game got so much love but the dialogues were in Japanese even though the subtitles were in English. so absolutely go for it
Chants of Senaar is an award winning game that has its own languages, its UI and subtitles are in the language of your choice. If people cant read text you provide them, they will not play the game, because they wont know how, and have to struggle to figure it out. Spoken language in games does not matter, as long as you give them a translated text.
I personally would find that pretty cool, but I think it would hard to break out into a wider audience. I think asking game devs what they would play is going to get tilted results.
The short answer is "Yes, but fewer." The long answer is: "Yes, people would play a game that was not in English if it had English subtitles and UI elements. Dialogue is something that people can pretty easily get around if there are subtitles in a language they can understand. The English speaking world consumes plenty of foreign films and anime in this fashion. But, that isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some people just don't like reading subtitles, or they like feeling like they can look away for a moment and still keep up with what is being said. So while people will play a game with dialogue they don't natively understand, that audience will be smaller than if it was completely translated." I would say to go ahead and do what you are doing. Subtitles and UI elements are the biggest hurdle for broader access, and VA can be expensive if you are creating multiple scripts and doing lots of recording. If you find success, maybe you can patch in more languages. Or make the VA easily moddable so your community can translate into more languages than just English. Or your next game can have a higher budget which allows for broader translation.
I dont have a direct response to your question but here's my experience as a consumer: Im a native English speaker with some experience with Spanish and Russian. When playing games that take place in non-english speaking regions I usually try to turn the audio to the local region. Metro is my favorite example of this. Sam, the American character, really feels out of place compared to when they all speak english. Same goes for STALKER and other STALKER-like MMOs. Ive been considering playing Just Cause 3 and 4 in spanish with english subtitles
Depends. If it's in Japanese, yeah tons of people. Some other language, probably not. If it's Japanese you'd even get people praising the voice acting and how good it sounds even if you had no subtitles or translations.
Tunic is kind of like that, minus dialogue. It's a sort of Zelda-like puzzle/discovery game, where you have to figure out how to play by finding bits if the game manual, which are written in a made-up language. Worth checking out to give you an idea how to convey ideas beyond a language barrier!
Video Game Industry is heavily linked to the internet. And for the worst of the best, we collectively accepted English as the default language, so we can speak with anyone without the need to learn his specific language. I don't have to wait for someone to speak French if we both also speak English. Knowing that, developing a game with no English translation in mind is probably shooting yourself in the foot. Especially if there are a lot of dialogue. That's 90%++ of potential buyers disappearing for no good reason.
Dialogue is largely unimportant, so long as we can *read* everything else + subtitles. The Sims is one of the most popular games in the world, and they speak a made up language.
Absolutely! I love this kind of thing. My favorite mod of all time uses the different language packs for the game to change the spoken audio of most of the npc's to reflect their heritage or affiliation. (Cosmopolitan Night City for Cyberpunk)
I play Japanese games with Japanese audio if it feels relevant (like Ni No Kuni) and I would definitely play a Danish game in Danish. I’m from Finland and I enjoy movies from sll around the globe, so subtitles are normal thing to me.
Stepping into your audience / market minds, If you're developing it with commercial success in mind, the UI has to have English unless all the icons are crazy clear. Without it, those who scroll through your steam page / store page will most likely ignore it thinking, ah not built for me. VO wise, not a deal breaker and is a non-issue. Though, on your store page, if you plan for English, mention it as it'll widen your market :D
Audio can be done in other languages and still give the needed emotion but at least text and subs in English are a standard, pick as example the games coming from Japan, I will often chose original audio for the emotion of the actors in the voice and set the game for any language I understand to play. Brazilian dub is sad and rarely well done, Italian dub is really great at most occasions even changing some meaning but the studios have talented voice actors so is my choice when English is too flat dub. I think if a script is originally in danish language maybe the dub would sound more real in it, but depend in a lot of factors you will need to consider in your final art state for the game. Which emotions and experience you want to give for the players is a good point to consider.
Some of the coolest games are natively voiced in another language. Sekiro is default Japanese. 9 sols is Chinese.
Sekiro got by on subtitles, so I'm sure plenty of people would be willing.
any game with solely a conlang as textual communication to the player
Ghosts of Tsushima has two different modes where all the dialogue is in Japanese. It's awesome for cutscenes, but a bit distracting in gameplay imo.
The red flag I see in your question is different... Asuming this is your first game (alone or in a very small team), dont do an open world 3d game unless you are okay with high chance of failing. That will take ages and is most likely overscoped. But good luck anyways. Better than not to try at all I guess.
Yep. Kind of irritates me how many Japanese themed games I’ve played where the language is in English and the English version is the original.
Just don't mention it to the players and they'll think it's Simlish. Make sure to always use icons instead of text or else it will ruin the effect.
[удалено]
great! if they're interested in learning then they can have more fun
No
It depends on how many people know the language. As a rule of thumb, only spanish, chinese, russian and english are languages for videogames if you want to sell it.
I would go english, you won't turn up in searches is easily if you aren't fully english. I don't think think I have ever played a non-english game, but I also don't think steam, nintendo eshop etc has ever shown me a game not fully in english.
I much prefer a game in its native language over poorly voice acted English. It's why practically all JRPGs with voice acting should be played in Japanese if possible, because the voice acting and the lines sound so stiff and cringe in English. As long as your writing is solid, then it shouldn't turn many people away. Edit: getting downvoted by idiots who are too shy vocalize their beliefs. If you think you've even got one good counter example, name 'em. I'll wait.
I speak 2 languages, if its not one of them im not interested
I want the game to be in English or Spanish
If there is a way to turn off the voice acting and just read the text, I'd probably opt for that.
Sekiro defaults to Japanese for dialogue, and it feels wrong trying to play with English voices. On the UI though, being unable to understand how you interact with the game is the same as the game having a useless UI.
My son would, me? Nah
Worked for The Sims I guess
Consider accessibility issues - this could be an instant no for dyslexic people or just generally lower-grade readers. Personally it’s a kinda nifty gimmick but I worry that 90% of the game would be spent ignoring most of the screen and staring at a subtitle line at the bottom. I feel like the option to toggle languages would be better than baking it in.
A lot of games have no VO whatsoever - and fully localized VO is an *insane* expense.
Right, but there’s a world of difference between a text-based game not designed to have VO, and a game where VO is fully part of the normal game, but not comprehensible to the average player. And while a game translated into English may technically be ‘localised’ VO it’s a world of difference between that and the opposite, translating from English into languages with far fewer speakers like danish. Most Danes are extremely good at English anyway, it’s English speakers who will have problems. Ultimately what OP seems to be going for is very niche and the answer to ‘would it be better for my game sales/experience if the VO is in a language most players understand’ is gonna be ‘well, duh’ lol