Reeves: “Sometimes it’s an advantage to be last in Europe”

[mcdoomer2]

bdbdbd said:
@Kyros: You're right about peoples english skills. To an extent.
I would say about 50% of people knows english well enough to understand what the talk is about (and that is in Scandinavia). It also varies a lot between areas you're in. The bigger cities usually have more english skilled people, than the smaller towns.
If you didn't know, for example the TV programs are all made in peoples native language, subtitled or dubbed. What do you think is causing that? You'd be able to save a lot of money since people are so good in english.

Look, no matter how you try to look at it, without localisation, you're going to miss a lot of potential customers, since they don't enjoy the game if it requires skill you don't have.
Of course the language barrier isn't something you can't overcome, even i did beat Shadowrun on SNES despite knowing swedish (yes, it was available only in swedish here, thanks to Bergsala AB), but you need motivation to overcome it.
The need for localisation is evident in every form of entertainment, whether we are talking about TV, movies, books or music (yes, even music), so what makes games different?

Look at how popular Singstar is in Europe, it doesn't require learning curve or skill for foreign language.

As for what it comes to localisations on consoles, the first game i remember having localised subtitles was Super Metroid. And even after that, the vast majority of games haven't had language options. Basically only the biggest publishers (Sony, Nintendo, EA) are the ones who really seem to care about localisations.

As for european countries being "PC countries", isn't the PC doing just as good in english speaking countries too?

Gran Canaria should have lots of people with very good skill in english, since the place lives with turism. And that's what i've heard from people. You're the first one i saw complaining about the lack of english-skilled people.

You do live in Finland right?

Sorry Kyros, (and others) but i'm going to stick to my original statement. Even in scandi, where english is far well known and spoken than in the rest of europe, the great majority of people couldn't endure a full lenght movie without subtitles. It's much easier there to manage yourself only with english, but its a long stretch from managing to actually having a meaty conversation, which was my point all along.

My wife travels all over europe as well, always using english as her linguistic crouch and yet she can't endure a movie without subtitles or a medium level vocabulary conversation. And for me, she speaks english as good as most of the scandis I've crossed this year. I have a degree in english and I still found myself hard pressed sometimes to automaticaly translate everything into place.

I've worked some time in Localization Testing and Proofing, and I strongly defend that localization is needed in every country you don't hear the original language 24/7.

PS - i'm a dub hater. subtitles ftw!