According to Newzoo, one of the world’s leading market intelligence companies specializing in games, e-sports, and mobile content, the consumer trends for the video game market for 2019 inclines towards a predominance of Asian Pacific countries with 47%, followed by North America at 26% and Europe, Middle East and Africa with 23% and Latin America at 4%.
USA Video Game Market
English is the most international language on Earth. When it comes to the US video game market, the process of adapting video game content and code
originating in a non-English speaking country into American English is as straightforward as it can get.
Asia-Pacific: China, Japan and South Korea
The video game localization approach in China involves complete video game translation and localization, including names of game characters, dialogues and story arcs, sometimes also involving the creation of completely new character styles or plots from scratch to match the expectations of the Chinese video game audience comprised mainly of young to middle-aged individuals.
China is also famous for its rigid censorship of video game content, not allowing sexual connotations or overly graphical content. The process of video game localization should undergo thorough management and filtering by certified and experienced translation and localization specialists who can adhere to these absolute rules.
Apart from the state-of-the-art animation and localization technology harnessed, one aspect that sets the Japanese and South Korean video game localization markets aside from the Chinese is that not all the content necessarily has to be localized into Japanese or Korean, due to the intense internationalization and globalization trends in both countries.
Japanese and South-Korean video gamers are well-versed and exposed to foreign video games and, inherently, expect to see content in English, thus enhancing and authenticating their user experience.
On the other hand, the overall tone of the localized video game content should adhere to the rigors of politeness in Japanese and Korean cultures and should also avoid touching upon taboo topics, such as religion or nudity.
In Europe, the West is a stronghold in the game industry, boasting a long-established market and major competitors for North America and Asia.
Let’s drill down the highest-ranking countries across Europe’s gaming platform in order of influence, according to Newzoo’s 2019 country ranking report:
Most commonly, in these leading European countries the game content needs to be localized into the respective languages to such an extent that the language clusters have become commonly known as EFIGS or FIGS (referring to English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, specifically).
According to the latest report by Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), the leading German gaming audience prefers immersive and engaging fully localized content, not settling for anything less than the output ensured by German native experts who can render the video game content into an authentically German version that caters to their expectations.
