原作者：Andrii Goncharuk 译者：Willow Wu

（本文作者是波兰华沙CI Games的资深游戏设计师）

我曾经思考过一个问题：应不应该学习一门外语？作为一个游戏设计师，学习外语有什么实际的好处？

电子游戏行业的文化差异

现如今，文化差异已经成为了某些游戏更改内容或叙述方式的原因之一，跟国际版有所区别为的是更好地本地化，有些游戏甚至只在部分地区发行。

当下最典型的例子就是美国（或者说是西方）游戏和日本（或者说是亚洲）游戏之间的差异。

任天堂历史悠久的审查制度

在电子游戏行业的早期发展阶段，也就是1980-1990时代，整个市场是由任天堂这个日式游戏开发公司主导的，在任天堂主机平台上发行的游戏很多都需要审查，还要进行文化“加工”，就正如Aleks Krotoski在《卫报》中所举的例子：

1.给Castlevania中的裸体雕像加上衣服

2.删除Maniac Mansion中恣意、无端的暴力行为

3.将Punch Out!中的角色名字“Vodka Drunkenski”改成“Soda Popinski”

4.移除游戏内医院、公墓、和教堂中多余的十字架

这还只是其中一小部分例子，但是从中你就能看到为了适应某种特文化环境，制作团队要对游戏做出哪些改变，要考虑到当地玩家的可以接受游戏中的哪些内容，对哪些内容有所忌讳。

很多人可能会想说这是很久以前的例子了，但是就算在今天，类似的例子也有很多。就拿最近的事来说，《德军总部（Wolfenstein）》系列的新作要在德国发行，我们就要对游戏内容做出调整，因为德国对包含纳粹元素的游戏有十分严格的规定。

现如今，文化依然对游戏有着非常大的影响，这种改变并不一定都在于审查制度，有时候更多是风格化以适应市场需求，让产品在某些特定地区也能被用户所接受。

很多研究表明不同国家、不同文化环境下的玩家，他们的偏好会有很大的差异，这就是为什么我们这么在乎这个问题，下面我们来就来深入说一说。

玩家的偏好

世界各处都有人在玩游戏，可以说在特定区域中，某些特定游戏、题材、类型的热门程度跟当地的文化是有很大的关系。这就暗示着不同文化环境的玩家对游戏有不同的偏好。

为了让大家更容易理解，我们挑选了两个比较极端的案例，美国和日本。（我建议你们多看看Anita Ching Yi Ngai写的这篇文章《文化影响电子游戏：玩家对于叙事和玩法的偏好（Cultural influences on video games: players preferences in narrative and gameplay）》，写的非常好，你们可以了解到更多细节。）

这是Anita在文中讲到的关于日本和美国的情况：

“日本的历史沉淀、体制基础和文化底蕴都非常独特。他们的文化强调的是要遵循古人遗留下来的传统，保持忠诚并且继续稳固下去，对于新事物要有灵活多变的创新能力，能够引领潮流。可以借助年轻群体来发展消费产品和服务，因为他们就是创意的源泉。日本人很擅长革新，他们经常利用世界各地的资源进行二次创新，转化为他们的新发明。正是这种探索、识别、理解文化变更的能力让他们的创新能力持续活跃，引领文化潮流。

日本在动画以及漫画领域有着悠久的发展历史。无论是哪个年龄段的人，他们的日常生活都离不开动画和漫画。那些比较严肃的主题，比如宗教、种族、战争和社会公正，会在动画或者是系列漫画中以复杂、长篇幅的剧情展开。

日本的电子游戏产业很大程度上是受益于这种强大的角色创作、平面设计以及剧情创作基础。游戏和动漫行业的技术都在发展，并且行业之间互相分享成果，交叉影响在这些行业上有非常显著的效果。处于消费者市场中，玩家能够明显感受到动画、漫画、游戏三者的一体化发展。”

“美国是个非常注重个人主义的国家，自我独立感非常强。他们尊重并且重视个体的自主权和自决权。美国文化强调的是自立能力、个人目标、抱负以及个人成就。美国的主流娱乐是由流行音乐、电影和电视节目表现出来的。

漫画和卡通被认为是孩子的娱乐节目，剧情通常都跟童话相似，对孩子们来说非常安全。美国就是通过这些媒体形式把成功地把儿童流行文化产品推广到世界各地，而且没有对其中的任何文化元素进行改动。

但是从另一个角度来看，美国对于外国流行文化产品的接受度并不高。美国流行文化扩张已经在全球娱乐市场主导了很长一段时间。热门电影、电视节目、或者是美国明星出现在游戏产品中已经是很常见的现象了，因为游戏行业也想从娱乐产业的巨额利润中分一杯羹。虽然这些游戏在市场上已经有了知名度，得到认可，但是还是缺少原创剧情或者是玩法不够吸引人。

美国的游戏行业也有一体化发展现象——游戏公司把PC游戏的设计移植到主机平台上，考虑到PC的普遍程度，玩家会比较熟悉电脑平台的游戏风格和玩法。

从上图不同类型的游戏销量情况可以看出美国、日本、中国的玩家对游戏的偏好有很大差异。角色扮演游戏目前在日本具有压倒性的优势，然而在美国比较吃香的是运动类和动作类游戏。游戏类型的划分是根据游戏中的互动形式来决定的，游戏类型体现了互动方式以及剧情叙述对玩家的重要程度。

角色扮演游戏的剧情通常都是结构严密的，玩家必须要按照逻辑顺序逐渐深入游戏，按照游戏设计师的计划触发一系列事件。因此，类似收集物品、打敌人赚经验升级这种流程的互动形式就非常有限。

动作游戏，比如说第一人称射击游戏，会运用叙事技巧为玩法补充剧情背景。其它的动作游戏，比如说运动类游戏，就根本不需要叙事框架。动作游戏中的互动就比较灵活了，玩家可以根据自己意愿进行探索、操纵，享受个性化的游戏体验。

这些差别之所以会存在就是因为游戏有各种各样的参数，这些参数包括当地文化、不同的语言，后者是我们的接下去讨论的重点。

文化差异与语言

对于游戏行业还来说，文化差异不仅仅是应用于玩家对游戏的偏好，有时候还影响了游戏本身的创作方向，因为不同文化空间的开发者们会下意识地把他们的价值观和文化嵌入到游戏中，由此就产生了游戏设计之间的差异。

如果你想了解更多关于不同地区的思维差异，你可以多看看 Richard E. Nisbett的作品。

Nisbett在他的文化差异研究中阐述了一个观点——西方人的思维方式倾向于直线型，而亚洲人倾向于环形。西方人倾向于认为稳定的环境预示着未来趋势，事情将会按照现在的步调继续发展下去；但对于亚洲人来说，稳定的环境表明了潜在的变化，看似稳定的形态是因为有些变量又回到了早先建立的状态。

Nisbett的研究中还有一个挺重要结论：如果你给双方一张图，亚洲人会把这一张图当作是一个整体，观察各个事物之间的关系，因为他们想给出一份完整的解读。但是大部分西方人会直接聚焦在画面中比较明显的细节上。

文化差异在解读物品和意义上有非常关键的影响作用，这也是为什么人们在游戏消费和创作上会有不同文化偏好。语言的作用是不可忽视的，它对我们日常生活的影响远远超出你的想象，下面我们就来讲讲。

语言和我们的日常生活

语言是如何影响我们的日常生活？有种说法叫作“语言决定论（游戏邦注：linguistic determinism）”。也就是说，语言结构限定了人所学的知识、想法以及思维过程，比如分类、记忆、理解。语言决定论暗示了不同母语的人他们的思维过程也是不同的。尽管这个理论在以前十分受推崇，但是在如今，主流语言学家们都对它产生了质疑。语言决定论是语言相对主义（也就是著名的萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说）的加强版本，它主张的是个体的母语结构会影响到他们的生活经历。

简而言之就是你说话的方式（不管是大声说出来的还是脑海中的默念）会影响你的决定还有你对世界的看法，如果你已经看了我之前发的那篇关于人的大脑和记忆是如何工作的文章：《关于情感的生物学基础（一）(Biological foundation of emotions pt.1)》，那这边说到的东西应该不难懂，你可以从一个词联想到其它很多词、各种不同的词义；不同的语言也有不同的近义词、反义词，只要把其中一个词呈现在人眼前，其他的相关的词语就会从记忆中立刻浮现出来。

举个例子，日语的“四（し，shi）”也有“死”的意思，如果在对话中出现了类似“2004年4月4日第4街道第4层”这样的内容，就会感觉到一种紧张的气氛。

框架与双语思维

外语不仅能让我们避免文化和语言陷阱，也是一个优化决策过程的趣味工具，这就叫做双语思维（用外语来思考问题）。它能够提升决策的合理性，避免语言框架带来的影响(比如某种特定的陈述方式会产生误导，造成错误的选择)。

在社会科学领域，框架是由一系列的概念以及理论观点组成的，阐述了个体、团体以及社会是如何组织、理解、交流现实的话题、事件。

根据心理科学协会成员Daniel Kahneman创作的模型，生活中至少有两种认知系统：1.快速系统（系统1）依靠的是启发、直觉和情感，相比之下，慢速系统（系统2）会更加理性、有条理，依靠的是自身的努力。系统1一般会用于比较简单的任务，系统2更多的是用于比较难的任务。系统1中的直觉本性会让人更容易受框架的影响，系统2中的条理性和进取心能够帮助你抵抗框架效应。

系统1通常使用的是母语，而系统2使用的就是外语，因此，用另一种语言思考会更加理性、有条理性。

我们行业中负责叙事和任务设计的工作人员可能会对语言框架十分感兴趣，想知道特定的信息表达方式是如何影响玩家的决定，因此，从一个游戏开发者的角度来看，了解语言框架、搞清楚它的缘由、学会避免它是很重要的，也是一种强大的技能。

现在你明白了所谓语言框架就是可以让我们以不同的方式理解信息，框架效应不仅仅是看得见的实际反馈，还牵涉到句子的形成、模式和节奏背后的语言结构以及逻辑规则，这些会对一个人的思维产生影响，从他/她的创作以及日常生活中反映出来。

你思考所用的语言会影响你的手头上的创作，比如说设计、艺术、音乐等等。语言结构如果是比较简洁、直接的，可能会导致你做出来的游戏、画面也是如此，因为创作会反映作者的思维方式以及选择。就连这篇文章也可以算是表现我思维方式的例子：我将不同领域、不同主题的内容连接起来，尽管这些内容的并没有直接关联性，但是这很大程度上是因为我的母语结构特点：

一词多义，但是不同定义之间并不存在任何逻辑关联

有些句子用一个单词就能表述出完整的意思，还有些句子可以长成一个段落，就像建筑一样层层搭建，同时也能保证句子的完整性，意义不缺失

人们不需要遵循某种规则或者是某种构造方式来创造出一个句子

词语的顺序会对句意有非常大的影响，语境也会使得原来的句子呈现出完全相反的意思

俄语&英语例子

Lera Boroditsky为Edge杂志写了一篇优秀的文章，其中她举了一个非常有力的例子，表现了语言差异是如何影响人们对信息的接收程度，乃至世界观、思维方式。

她在文中是这样解释的：

“大多数关于语言是否能够/如何改变思维方式的疑问都始于不同语言种类之间的差异观察。让我们举个假设性的例子。假设你想说：“布什读了乔姆斯基的新书。”让我们先把重点放在动词“读（read）”上，要用英语说这句话，我们必须要注意动词的时态。在这句话中，因为是过去时态，“read”应该发成“red”而不是“reed”。在印尼语中，你不需要（游戏邦注：实际上应该是不能）改变动词来强调时态。在俄语里，你的动词要修改成既能表示时态又能明确性别的样式。因此，如果是劳拉·布什读了那本书，那你的动词形式就要跟主语是乔治·布什时不一样。在俄语中，你还需要通过动词来表现完成体和未完成体。如果乔治只读了一部分，那你的动词形式必须和他读完整本书时的动词形式有所区别。在土耳其语中，动词还必须表现出你是怎么得知这个信息的：你是亲眼目睹了这一罕见事件，还是你是从某个地方读到、听说的，或者是从布什的话语中推断出来的，不同获取方式的动词形式也要不同。

显然，不同语言需要说话人表达出的东西也不同，由此可见，不同语种之间的差异非常大！这是不是就意味着说不同语言的人，他们的世界观也不同？说英语的人、说印尼语的人、说俄语的人还有说土耳其语的人最终都会以不同的方式对待自己的经历，甚至连记忆也有所区别？就因为他们的语言不同？在有些学者看来，答案当然是肯定的。只要观察人们说话的方式，他们就能给出答案。当然，说着不同语言的人他们也在世界不同的地方关注着不同领域的事情，有着自己的见解，这样他们才能用语言交流起来。”

这里有个重要的话题就是当我们理解了信息，记住它的时候，我们经常会把语言当作是一个记忆工具，把这些信息保存起来，当我们需要用到这些信息的时候，我们通常只能记这个话题被我们自己“转译”后的内容，这个结果要取决于你当初是怎么收集、记忆信息的，还有你现在是通过什么想起来的。

再学一门语言，值得吗？

这些理论都很有趣，但是更重要的问题是这对于游戏开发者们有什么价值？首先想到的可能是有利于制定出更加有效的营销策略或者是游戏的本地化效果会更好，但是请相信我，多学一门语言的好处还不止这些：

1.更加理性的决策过程

就如前文所示，用非母语思考有利于制定更优秀、更加理性的决策，因为你调动了大脑的另一区域，而这一区域是更加理性的部分。相比用母语思考，用另一种语言来思考是一种更为困难的认知任务。

2.提升头脑风暴技巧，优化创新过程

假设你要进行一场头脑风暴，你需要对游戏的下一个关键部分做出思维导图，你利用几个关键词作为起点，然后你关联表中的词变得越来越多，思维导图一步步展开。如果你只用母语，关联的词汇数量就很有限，如此一来，你会发现自己的结果跟同一母语的人的结果非常相似，这就是因为一般情况下，人们首先联想到的就是同义词和反义词，这两种词汇关系是最直接的。但是如果你会别的语言，你就马上就可以增加另一种语言的近义词和反义词，得出独树一帜的想法、概念。

3.接触到异国文学、电影以及网络文化

如果你真的对另一门语言非常熟悉，可以阅读/听懂对你有用的内容，那么你的信息渠道就会增加很多。所有未翻译的相关书本、电影和科学节目，如果你有办法接触到这些资源，按照前文所说的加以利用，那么你的创新、研究工作会更上一层楼！

4.更好地理解外国文化与市场。

不要忘记了，懂另一门语言意味着你可以更好地理解他们的市场以及文化差异，这就能帮助你在特征选择的过程中制定正确的决策。根据当地的市场需求选择正确、适合的游戏机制以及视觉风格，创造出具有吸引力的产品。这样受益的不仅仅是营销团队。

5.更好的记忆力

上文提到的，我们是否能记住更多文字信息或者是口头信息，这是跟我们的语言能力有直接联系的，如果你会3门或者是更多语言，你就能用3种语言的关联词汇描述主题，存入你自己的记忆中。因此，我们要有选择性的记忆，把重要的相关细节记住就好了。学习新语言也可以训练你的记忆能力，也这样是一个加分项。

所以现在该做什么?

我想你是找不出什么理由来拒绝学另一门语言，唯一让人觉得不好的地方可能就是学一门语言你需要花很多时间，但是如果你真的想成为行业中的佼佼者，这些付出是必须的。

总结：

文化差异在哪个行业都有，游戏行业也不例外

历史上游戏团队更改内容、玩法以适应不同文化的例子不计其数

不同文化环境下的玩家对游戏的喜好也不同，其原因不仅仅在于历史、价值观，还在于他们的语言。

日本和美国之间的文化差异是游戏行业中一个非常典型的例子

文化差异和语言是有直接联系的

语言对我们的日常生活有非常大的影响

游戏设计师想提高竞争力、创新能力就得学习更多东西，外语就是其中一项

如果你能读懂或者是听懂另一种语言，对你会有非常大的好处

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Instead of intro

Hello my name is Andrii Goncharuk, but you can call me Andy, I’m a senior game designer working in CI Games, Warsaw, and to be honest… I’m a little bit worried right now… I’m not very good with polish language and everyone here(surprise!), speaking it. I thought to myself do I need to learn a foreign language? Is there actual benefits for a game designer to do so?

Cultural differences in video game industry

Cultural differences nowadays is one of the reasons why some games are being altered content or narrative wise compared to world wide versions, sometimes games are not even released in some countries.

One of the strongest examples that exist nowadays is difference between US or western type of games and Japanese or asian type of games.

Nintendo’s age of censorship

At early ages of video game industry in years 1980-1990 when market was dominated by Nintendo a Japanese based game development company there were many examples of censorship and cultural “fixes” to games that were released on their consoles, as Aleks Krotoski writing in his article for The Guardian:

Clothing nude statues in Castlevania

Removal of “blatantly random and gratuitous violence” in Maniac Mansion

Changing a character’s name from “Vodka Drunkenski” to “Soda Popinski” in the game Punch Out!

Removing crosses willy nilly from in-game hospitals, cemeteries and churches

This is only a small shortlist but it’s already shows how games were altered to fit certain cultural limitations of what is considered accepted and what is not.

Many may think that this is something from old times, but today we have many examples, most recent could be an alterations done to a latest game in Wolfenstein series for a German version of the game because they have very strict rules about Nazi symbols.

Culture is affecting games and industry greatly even today, and not all changes are censorship sometimes they are more of stylization to fit marketing needs, to make product more feasible for certain regions.

Many studies shows that players preferences are vary drastically from country to country and from culture to culture this is why it is important and it is what we gonna talk about.

Player’s preferences

Games being played all over the world and popularity of certain games, genres and types can say a lot about culture of any specific region. All this implies that different cultures have different player preferences.

For sake of simplicity we will discuss two extreme examples, US and Japan(for more details I suggest to make yourself familiar with amazing work done by Anita Ching Yi Ngai “Cultural influences on video games: players preferences in narrative and gameplay”.)

Here is what Anita tell us about situation in Japan and USA:

“Japan has a distinctive historical, institutional, and cultural foundation. Its culture emphasizes conformity, loyalty and stability of the old, and the ever-changing creativity and trend-setting of the new. Development of consumer products and services feed off of the youth population which provides a source of creativity. Japan is skillful in regenerating ideas from all over the world to create their own, keeping new ideas new. It is this ability to discover, recognize, and understand changes in the culture that keeps creativity alive and moving popular culture forward.

The Japanese culture has a long history of animation and manga (Japanese comics). They are very much into the daily lives of people from all age groups. Serious issues, such as religion, race, war, and social justice are presented in long complex storylines of animated films and manga series.

Japanese video game industry has benefited from this strong foundation of character production, graphic design, storyline writing. Skills are concurrently developed and effectively shared among these industries, making cross-influences of contents very apparent. In the consumer market, players are well aware of such integration between anime, manga, and videogames.”

“The US is a highly individualistic society, with a strong sense of self independence. They respect and value individual autonomy and self-determination. Its culture emphasizes self achievement, self-reliance, personal goals and ambitions. (Aoyagi, 2000) The American entertainment media mainly consists of pop music, movies, and television programs as major forms of expression.

Comics and cartoons are categorized as children’s entertainment, which often consist of perfectly preserved, overwhelmingly safe fairytale-like storylines. It is through these media that the US has been spreading its popular cultural 14 products to the rest of the world, without any effort of altering its cultural message for the global audience.

On the other hand, the US has been relatively less receptive to foreign popular cultural products. Such an imperialism of American popular culture has long been dominating the global entertainment market. (Shiraishi, 2000; Allison, 2000) It is common to see popular movies, television programs, or American celebrities in video game titles as the industry taps into the revenue stream of the entertainment industry. These games often lack original narrative or compelling game-play, even though they generate market awareness and recognition.

The American video game industry has also been integrating computer game designs into console games, since players are familiarized with the styles and game-plays of computer games through the popularity of PCs”

Sales and popularity by game genre presented above, shows great difference between US Japan and China. Role-playing titles currently overwhelming in Japan, while US is currently more into sports and action games. Game genres are categorized by the type of interactions being offered in a game, it indicates the kind of interactions and the level of narrative being valued by players.

Role-playing games often present highly structured plots with a logical progression in which players must follow, unfolding the series of events as directed by the designers. Thus, interactions are mostly restricted to collection of items, battling with enemies for level-ups.

Action games, such as the first-person shooter games, use narrative to create scenarios for game-play. Other action games, such as sports, do not require any narrative framework at all. Interactions are much more flexible in action games, as players can explore and manipulate game-play to their own experience.

All this differences exist because of many parameters, culture and more important for us here, language is one of them.

Culture differences and language

In our industry all of this cultural differences apply not only for preferences in what games are being played but also what games are being created, because games designed in different cultural spaces usually have big differences between each other, as developers subconsciously convey their values and culture in their products.

More details about different way of thinking in different parts of the world can be found in works of Richard E. Nisbett.

Nissbett makes a statement, in his study on cultural differences, is that Westerners tend to assume linearity but Asians assume circularity. Westerners tend to think that stable set of circumstances signal about trend and that things will continue in same way but for Asian, stable set of circumstances is an indication of the potential change and later some elements return to state that were established already earlier.

One of other important conclusions of Nisbett’s works is that if given an image, someone from Asia will take in the images as a whole and the relationship between things since they tend to give a complete account of a scene while most of Westerners will tend to focus on prominent details of an image.

Difference in culture plays a major role in the way of how meanings and things are interpreted, and this is one of the reasons of different cultural preferences in games consumption and creation. Language plays important role in all of this and directly affect our day to day life more than we think and here is how.

Language and our daily life

One of the main ideas behind language affecting our daily life is linguistic determinism. Idea that language structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception. The term implies that people who speak different languages as their mother tongues have different thought processes. Though it played a considerable role historically, linguistic determinism is now discredited among mainstream linguists. Linguistic determinism is the strong form of linguistic relativity (popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis), which argues that individuals experience the world based on the structure of the language they habitually use.

In short they way you speak both aloud and in your head affect your decisions and perception of world, that not hard to follow if you already read my previous articles about how human brain and memory works (Biological foundation of emotions pt.1), each word have an associative connection to many other terms words and meanings and different languages have different set of synonyms and antonyms that immediately appear in memory when person is presented with one of the word from group.

One of the examples can be a word for Four in Japanese language (Shi) also means death that can create some tension during conversation that involve something about 4th floor on 4th street in 4th of april in year 2004…

Framing and bilingual thinking

Foreign language not only allow us to avoid cultural and linguistic traps it’s also provide an interesting tool that can increase quality of our decision making process, so called bilingual thinking(thinking in a foreign language) can increase rationality of your decisions, and avoid language framing effect(when certain presentation of information can mislead into making wrong choice).

In the social sciences, framing comprises as set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize, perceive, and communicate about reality and events.

According to a model created by Association for Psychological Science fellow member Daniel Kahneman, there are two at least cognitive systems: a fast system (System 1) that relies on heuristics, intuition, and affective processes, and a slow system (System 2) that is more rational, effortful, and systematic. System 1 is more likely to be utilized when performing tasks that are easy, while System 2 is more likely to be utilized when performing difficult tasks. The intuitive nature of System 1 makes it more easily influenced by the effects of framing, while the effortful and systematic nature of System 2 resists the effects of framing.

And as you understand System 1 is usually use native language and foreign language is operated by System 2 thus making process of thinking in another language more rational and systematic.

But for our industry narrative and quest designers can be very interested in language framing and how information presented in a certain way can affect players decision, so from perspective of game developer being aware of language framing and how to avoid or cause it is important and powerful skill.

Here is a video from Wilbert channel that perfectly illustrates this effect with an example:

As you can now understand language framing is something that make us perceive information in different ways and framing is not the only effect that can be seen, language structure and logical rules behind sentence creation, patterns and tempo also affect way of thinking of a person and in the end reflects in persons creations and daily life.

Language that you use to think in directly affect any creative product(design, art, music) that you work on. Language with simplified and more straight forward structure can result into designs both game and visuals with same features simply because creation reflects authors way of thinking want author this or not. Even this article is a good example of my personal way of thinking in interconnected patterns from different areas of subjects that don’t have linear straight connection between them, but this is mostly because this is how my native language is structured:

Words can have many different meanings that don’t have any logical connection between them

Sentences can be as simple as one word and be fully complete and viable or they can have multiply layers and be as long as one paragraph without loosing integrity or meaning

There is no strict rule that one need to follow or certain pattern of structure of a sentence

Order of words can have significant effect on meaning and completely opposite soley dependent on context

Russian & English example

In well written article of Lera Boroditsky for Edge, she provide a really powerful example that shows how information can be obtained or loss due to language differences and how it affect viewers world perception and way of thinking.

Here what she explains in her article:

“Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let’s take a (very) hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, “Bush read Chomsky’s latest book.” Let’s focus on just the verb, “read.” To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like “red” and not like “reed.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) alter the verb to mark tense. In Russian you would have to alter the verb to indicate tense and gender. So if it was Laura Bush who did the reading, you’d use a different form of the verb than if it was George. In Russian you’d also have to include in the verb information about completion. If George read only part of the book, you’d use a different form of the verb than if he’d diligently plowed through the whole thing. In Turkish you’d have to include in the verb how you acquired this information: if you had witnessed this unlikely event with your own two eyes, you’d use one verb form, but if you had simply read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, you’d use a different verb form.

Clearly, languages require different things of their speakers. Does this mean that the speakers think differently about the world? Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their experiences differently just because they speak different languages? For some scholars, the answer to these questions has been an obvious yes. Just look at the way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use their language properly.”

One of the important subjects here is that when we perceive information and remember it, we often may use language as a medium to “store” this information in our memory, and when we trying to get access to this information we usually can recall only parameters of a subject that we “translated” into our language, this result in a huge difference when you collecting, remembering and trying to recall information.

learning one more language, worth it?

All this is interesting but more important question is how this is important for game developers? First that comes to mind is marketing and cultural alteration for a game that you are working on, but believe me there is many more benefits that additional language give:

1.More rational decision-making process

As was presented above already thinking with different from native language can lead to better and rational decisions because other zones of brain are used, more rational ones since even to think in different language is a hard cognitive task compared to native language.

2.Improved creative process and brainstorming skills

Imagine you have a brainstorm session and you need to came up with a mind map for next feature, you use several keywords as starting point and starting getting words and meanings that you have in your association tables to build your mind map, well if you use only native language you will end up with a really limited range of words that connected between each other, and most of the times your results will be really close to people with same language simply because synonyms and antonyms are first things that usually came to mind due to close relationships between words. But if you have more than one language you can also simply add synonyms and antonyms from different language pretty fast, coming with concepts and ideas that will be unique in their nature.

3.Having access to foreign literature, movie and internet content

If you really familiar with other language and can read and/or listen effectively content in this language that dramatically increase your informational reach. All books, movies, science shows and programs, all that content that stays untranslated you have access to it and combined with previous statement that will make your creative process and research even stronger!

4.Better understanding of foreign culture and market

You also should not forget that simply being able to understand different language also give access to better understanding market and cultural differences, this will give ability to make correct decisions during feature selection process. Choose correct and appropriate game mechanics and visual style to fit market needs and create compelling product. This can be beneficial not only for marketing team…

5.Better memory

As was stated above, being able to remember more written or verbal information is directly correlate with our language capabilities, if you have access to 3 or more languages you may endup describing subject for yourself to store in memory using words from all 3 languages thus saving more important details about subject in your memory. Also simply learning new language trains memory so this is also a plus.

So what’s now?

There is no any reasons why you should not learn one more language the only downside could be is time required for actually doing it, but hey if you want to be good at your job you have to work hard. If you can come up with more additional benefits please do comment, I’ll be happy to invest more of my time to research this topic even deeper, but I need your help!

Summary:

Cultural differences always were on market and game industry is not exception

History know many examples of content and gameplay alteration to fit different cultures

Player’s preferences are different from culture to culture and there is strong reason that lays not only in different history and values but also because of language

Japan vs. USA is great example of culture differences in video game industry

Culture differences directly correlate with language that prominent in this culture

Language greatly affect our daily life

Game designer to be competitive and creative should learn more and foreign languages is on this list!

There is strong benefits from at least being able to read and listen in different language（source:gamasutra.com ）