In today's world of board games, game localization is very important. The hobby of board games is becoming more and more popular, and many more people want to play a new game. The number of available (and good) games keeps getting bigger and bigger. There are games where there is no text on the components (the text is only in the rules of the game), and there are players who are perfectly satisfied with the games in English (or some other language), but there are also many people (and more and more) who want to play the game in their in the native language.

Therefore, the localization of board games is relevant, or in other words, publishing a game in the "local language". For this to happen, of course, several prerequisites must be met. Chief among them is having someone willing to publish the game, which will usually be a local publisher. In big countries, there is no problem with this, but in smaller countries (or those where this hobby is only in its infancy), everything often rests on the shoulders of one or two publishers, and the choices they make (and opportunities!) then also depend on what the local games published in the language will enter the local market. The other prerequisites already go hand in hand with these choices and considerations, which will also be discussed below.

Process

Choice

Let's assume that the main point is fulfilled - we have a publisher who wants to start or continue to publish games in the domestic market. The next important point is what to issue and why. What matters here is what the local board game culture is like. Since my own experience is in Latvia, as well as for you, the readers, the local environment might be more interesting, I will look at localization from this point of view (in short, about the big countries - the big publishing houses publish what they want, the small ones - what they can get and what they can hope for " kick out").

How to choose a game to release in Latvia or a market of similar size? Considerations are dynamic—you need to understand what game would fit into the local board game culture, but remember that these parameters evolve and change just like the culture itself. Since localizing a game is expensive enough and it's basically impossible to know if it will pay off, it's important to understand the local audience as much as possible to increase the chances of the game succeeding rather than failing. Of course, these considerations are also different in nature - most of them are pragmatic (costs, contract terms, the popularity of the game in other countries so far), but there is always room for feelings and intuition. As I have already mentioned, these parameters are changing - in Latvia 10-15 years ago, the potential was mostly only for light end and party games (the so-called "mass market"), however, now a generation of board players has grown up with a lot of gaming experience, and these people there are already so many that you can start thinking about some more difficult and serious (so-called expert or niche) game localization. Of course, mass market games will always be a safer option, as they will always be suitable for a wider audience.

Most games fall short of expectations upon release, but there are always exceptions - there are games that are unexpectedly successful, and there are games that absolutely fail to live up to expectations. In the first case, a vivid example is the game " Saboteur ", which is one of the most popular and well-known games in the Baltics, but at the same time, it is nowhere near as recognizable in the rest of the world. In the second case, there are many more games - I will not mention specific games, because it will be more interesting to look at the reasons why they failed to conquer the local market. Sometimes it's simply a mismatch of players' wishes, sometimes marketing or advertising doesn't work, sometimes the game was just released at the wrong time. As I mentioned before, it will almost always be a bit of a gamble (in such a small market as the Baltic countries, even the so-called super hits are not guaranteed to be successful).

The question remains open - where to find those games? The world of board games has changed a lot in 10-15 years. If in the past there were few new games every year, and you really had to look for something to release, now there is the other extreme - there are so many that it is simply impossible to identify them all, as a result of which a game with good potential may simply not be noticed. It is understandable that the most popular games will always be in front of the eyes of those who work or circulate in the field of board games, while the lesser-known ones are usually found when meeting with partners - already established publishers regularly go to various game festivals, during which they offer both their games and also looks at partners' offers as options for their market. During the standard four days, we manage to view and evaluate 100+ games, which is a lot on the one hand, but only a tiny fraction on the other (considering that 3000+ games are already released per year).

The practical part

Once the choice is made and the next potential hit is seen, it's time to put the project into action. The implementation consists of several steps, which are not complicated in themselves and are well developed for a publishing house with experience.

The formal part

A contract must be concluded with the publisher that owns the rights to the game. It is important to add here that it will always be a different publisher, because each game belongs to a publisher (which in turn has a contract with the author). The cases when the contract would be concluded with the author are different - the so-called release of a new game "from scratch" (this article is about bringing already existing games to the local market, so I will not talk about it). The contract usually talks about volume, price and all sorts of other boring points, on the basis of which it is then defined when and how this game will reach the local market. An important point is the distribution territory, which is always discussed, as well as the languages ​​in which the particular publisher is allowed to publish the game. For example, the biggest publishers in the Baltics - "Brain Games" in Latvia and "Kadabra" in Lithuania - usually get the rights for all three Baltic countries and four languages ​​(including Russian), but this is not always the case, as it may happen that the owners of the ownership rights have contracts in place for a specific country or (more often) language with another company. Everything else is already various details about what can and cannot be done (which basically affects the "image" of the game).

Material preparation

Once all the legal stuff is done, it's time to create the local edition files. It happens that there is no specific deadline, however, they are often quite strict. This is often because the production of the particular game is scheduled for certain times - if you don't manage to get the files ready by then, you'll be waiting for the next print time, which might as well be a year later. Therefore, it is better to be early.

There is no rocket science to the file preparation part - first the rights holders give the output files, then someone on the publishing side tweaks them properly to give to the translators and then to the layout designers, and then the finished files are sent back to be sent to print.

The translation part is extremely essential! The accessibility of the game to the players directly depends on how correctly it is translated and how understandable it is. Even a small mistake can significantly change the course of the game (for example, when describing an action, the word "must not" should be used instead of the word "must" - as if two letters and elementary rewriting, but just as well completely changed the game!). Leaving aside catastrophic mistakes that directly affect the flow of the game, even a simple inconsistency (calling a component a space in one place, a card in another, and a plate in another) in the use of terms can lead to misunderstandings, which means that the rules must be very technically correct and with creativity or literary diversity should not get carried away. At the same time, if the translation is absolutely technical (as in my experience it often happens with the work of translation offices), then an idea is often not "read", and a person without the skills of reading legal texts may have difficulty understanding what the rules want to convey. I myself have been involved in the translation of game rules for 10 years and I know how challenging this process is and how, unfortunately, it is easy to make mistakes.

Once the rules are translated and tested, it's time to layout them. For those new to the field, the process might be pretty straightforward - the layouter assembles the new texts into a pre-prepared blank file, replacing the original language with the new one. Of course, there are often different challenges, because one language is "longer" than the original, and also, when releasing a game in three or four languages ​​at once, it is often necessary to come up with new solutions to achieve this effectively. This is usually not a problem with the rules themselves, but with other components if they have text on them (cards, squares). Then you also often have to make a decision whether everything will be forced into one edition, or maybe some components will be divided by language, or even in general each country will have its own edition (as it is in games with a large amount of languages, for example, the recently released " Only One "). Either way, a solution is always found, and one way or another the game is rigged.

Printing, receiving and launching the game in the market

Once everything is verified, the conditional waiting period begins. The files are sent to print (often with multiple back-and-forths to tweak the last few details), the game is produced and shipped to the publisher's country on schedule. It usually takes a couple of months. Once the games are received (or even before), they are promoted and then marketed. Some games get more attention and are heavily promoted (sometimes even with a pre-purchase option), while others quietly hit the shelves without much fanfare. In some cases, a huge company can advertise the game very widely, for example, when " Scrabble " was released in Latvian about 10 years ago, the ads were even on television. But this is Hasbro - they have a lot of money and can do whatever they want. In any case, the game is here and can start its way to players, and then it will be seen if it will be a new hit, an absolutely forgettable event or something in between.

Summarizing everything, I won't say anything particularly smart anymore. The main thing I want to emphasize is that the overall board game hobby is still growing and has a lot of potential. Yes, in countries where it is popular there is a bubble that has been talked about bursting for several years, but there are many countries where it is just beginning. Even in Latvia, this hobby still has a lot of room to grow. All this, of course, means that the localization of games will continue to be a topical issue for both publishers and players, as it will not be possible to satisfy the desires of hobbyists with only locally created games or games only in English. It will always be necessary to release current news or established hits in the local language as well, so that the game becomes more accessible to as many game enthusiasts as possible.

The article was written by Edgars Zaķis