Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Folly]

http://www.pcgamer.com/mirage-arcane-warfare-beta-keys/

[n9103]

<snip>

Doesn't seem relevant to this thread, thanks anyway?
Perhaps the Chivalry thread, or maybe the free games thread?

[Aklyon]

<snip>

Doesn't seem relevant to this thread, thanks anyway?
Perhaps the Chivalry thread, or maybe the free games thread?

Free is technically for sale for zero monies.

[Flying Dice]

So it's shallower, shittier M&B on terrible laggy servers... with ~magic~?

(Seriously. Tried playing Chivalry. In a server with ~50 people nobody is below 150-200ms, plenty are in the 400-500ms range. I can get on a Warband server with 200 people and have almost everyone be <100ms. The fuck.)

[Aklyon]

Its more Chivalry with magic, really.

[AzyWng]

Welcome to region locking. Again.

Region Locking: Because fuck you, foreigners.

Seriously, why do companies do his? Is localization too much work or something?

[Frumple]

Competing laws, desiring isolated markets, plain ol' bigotry, indeed costs related to localization, profit projections (This is what kept a number of popular series in japan from seeing an english release, ferex. The devs and publishers over there didn't think they'd sell in a western market) in context of potential support et al for allowing it out of a specific region, all sorts of reasons.

[aristabulus]

...
Seriously, why do companies do his? Is localization too much work or something?

The short answer comes down to expected revenue, and expected support, sometimes with a side of "commerce politics that don't quite make sense from the outside."

Remember when Steam lowered the boom on cross-region stuff?  The move was hot on the heels of the russian ruble taking a nosedive, iirc.  In this modern networked world, that would've given any enterprising ru.gamer an easy way to make brain dead easy cash for flipping game copies.  Letting someone have your revenue/profit doesn't keep the business healthy.

Localization, done well, is not cheap or easy.  Also, having someone yell at you in broken english or a language you don't speak is a little terrifying...  tech support staff generally don't get paid enough to deal with that.

The political bits are harder to see sometimes.

Spoiler: random historical stuff (click to show/hide)

South Korea is a heavily PC-focused country, because there was a ban on Japanese electronics for many years (caused by Imperial Japan having Korea under its boot-heel for a couple generations).

China is also heavily PC, but for wildly different reasons.  Their console ban started in 2000 after public outcry re: video games as a negative influence.  It didn't stop any trends, it just altered their courses a little.  The ban was loosened in 2015 when PRC finally figured out they like money, and can still ban specific games that don't pass muster.

Brazil has a weird history with games.  I don't recall anything ever being banned outright but heavy tariffs, currency differentials, and low citizen wages make it an unattractive official market.  I've heard the grey market is doing pretty good there, though.

[Flying Dice]

Its more Chivalry with magic, really.

As I said...

[Shadowlord]

And iirc in Japan consoles are for serious games and PCs are for eroge and the like, which is why Japanese games tend to come to consoles first and PCs either later or never.

[LordArchibald]

Seriously, why do companies do his? Is localization too much work or something?

Yes. I have done it for two games and it's a living hell Unless we talk about a really small game (trivial amount of text, no voice over, etc, etc) it makes sense mostly for big studios. Especially painfull is the quality control (how should you know if zillions of your translators translated it properly? How do you check it?) and it gets even messier when you make a small update and suddenly you need to update *all* translation files... For example sometimes I release a new version every 1-2 weeks, so imagine how the coordination with the translators would look like then So, for games that are living and get updated it's not really feasible (doable, sure, but veeeery messy).

Of course region locking is another story

[Aklyon]

Last I'd seen, games that are actively updated either tend to leave translations up to the community (like prison architect), or they do them as a lower priority to making actual content.

[AzyWng]

So it's shallower, shittier M&B on terrible laggy servers... with ~magic~?

(Seriously. Tried playing Chivalry. In a server with ~50 people nobody is below 150-200ms, plenty are in the 400-500ms range. I can get on a Warband server with 200 people and have almost everyone be <100ms. The fuck.)

Where do you live? I haven't exactly had a huge amount of problems with high ping players, and I'm in the States...

[Flying Dice]

So it's shallower, shittier M&B on terrible laggy servers... with ~magic~?

(Seriously. Tried playing Chivalry. In a server with ~50 people nobody is below 150-200ms, plenty are in the 400-500ms range. I can get on a Warband server with 200 people and have almost everyone be <100ms. The fuck.)

Where do you live? I haven't exactly had a huge amount of problems with high ping players, and I'm in the States...

Kentucky.

The tiny servers that are 20v20 or whatever usually are okay, but as soon as you go into a decent-sized one it's a total lagfest. Don't have the issue with any other game, either, apart from a handful that have their own shitty networking issues.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Fellow KY-bro, can confirm Kentucky internet is shit.