作者：Vincent Chan

根据WSJ，到2017年，全球手机游戏市场将从2010年的27.7亿美元提升8倍至296亿美元。而在所有国家中，以中日为首的亚太地区将成为手机游戏开发者的最大市场，即拥有48%的全球收益以及超过第二大区域北美3倍的全球收益。

基于这样的数据，我们便不会对每年无数手机游戏尝试着拓展海外市场感到惊讶，但事实上却很少有游戏能够取得成功。

这里存在的一大问题是现在的手机游戏迎来了现代的淘金热。世界各地的开发者都涌入了这一市场希望能够在此发财致富，从而便导致今天的手机游戏市场，不管是国内还是国外都变得极具竞争性。

但其实最大的因素还是开发者经常低估手机游戏本土化的挑战性与重要性。

在我们帮助手机游戏走向全球市场的经验中，我们总结出了这些游戏在进入国际市场最常犯的6大失误。如果能够避免这些失误，它们的成功几率也会大大提升。

1.缺少明确的国际策略和计划

游戏开发者可能犯的最基本的错误便是认为本土化只不过是语言上的翻译。

不管何时当你计划将游戏带向全球市场，你便需要先问自己以下问题：

什么元素能够让你的公司突显于市场中？（游戏邦注：例如目标用户，GDP，手机渗透，竞争者，语言，法规，文化元素，合作者等等）

基于这些参数，在十大世界市场中你会做出怎样的先后选择？

我们能否在进入这些市场前先测试市场需求？每个市场的需求是什么？

你的公司是否能同时面对多个市场？你是否应该寻找当地的合作者？

面对每个国家你的市场准入策略是什么？

缺少对于本土化的承诺与理解将会扼杀你走向国际市场的计划。

因此你需要确保你们公司拥有强大的公司策略能够推动深入调查，市场探索并进行有效执行。

如果未能制定适当的策略并将其落实行动，那么不管你的游戏支持了多少种语言，它都会遭遇失败。

2.忽视早前游戏开发阶段的本土化

许多游戏开发者总是将有关本土化的讨论推迟到开发周期后面阶段，但是他们却未曾意识到自己在写下第一行代码时便犯了一个巨大的错误。

这么做意味着他们将进行多次返工并需要承担在添加新语言与本土化需求的同时回头去修改代码的额外成本，这可能需要花费你们公司数千（或数百万）美元以及好几个月时间才能将游戏带到海外市场。

比起一直重复工作，你的团队应该事先做出精确的本土化决策。

你的代码是否为预翻译阶段做好了准备？你的UI字符串是否都具体化了？你是否仔细考虑了像符号，颜色，时间和日期格式，货币符号等非文本元素？

如果你的代码未能在一开始便进行本土化，那么你每添加一行代码，你所面对的问题便会更严重。

3.缺少“文化化”过程

为了提高一款游戏在国际市场的成功几率，你就必须更多地管组文化元素。

基本的语言翻译是任何游戏开发者需要做的最小任务。最理想的情况是，你的翻译者能够面向当地文化去调整你的游戏内容，因为文化化是非常必要的一环。

游戏工作室Turbine的产品开发副总裁Craig Alexander说道：“关于国际市场我们所学到的是只是翻译游戏的本土化是远远不够的。相反地，我们应该文化化游戏。”

为了创造最佳游戏体验，你的翻译者应该了解国外的文化传统，目标国家最近的流行文化以及一些当地的参照内容等等。

这同样也适用于非文本资产中。举个例子来说吧，在美国V字形手势是很常见的，但是在英国该手势却是表示对别人的侮辱。

为什么艺电的《植物大战僵尸》会成为中国最受欢迎的手机游戏之一？让我们着眼于下图的僵尸和长城北京的本土化设计。你必须牢记自己可以通过在游戏中设置具有针对性的游戏体验而建立玩家的忠诚度。

4.低估了全球手机游戏分销的挑战性

如果你认为每个国家的手机游戏分销渠道都是一样的，你便大错特错。特别是当你匆忙面向海外市场发行游戏时，这是更容易被忽视的问题。

你是否知道中国没有Google Play？相反地，这里拥有大概200家Android应用商店并创造出了一个非常分裂的市场。如果缺少一个适当的系统去追踪所有这些渠道的性能，你便不可能制定一个面向目标国家销售你的应用的有效策略。

在这200多家应用商店中，每家商店都服务着具有不同特征的不同用户。你需要着眼于用户的不同行为并调整游戏去适应不同的情况。例如市场领导者经常会为不同应用商店创造不同版本的游戏。换句话说，如果他们想瞄准20家应用商店，他们便会创造20个不同版本的游戏和市场营销策略。

鉴于这些复杂性，许多西方游戏开发者在进入中国市场时会选择与当地发行商和本土化合作者合作。

当你的团队在制定本土化策略时，你们应该考虑是否需要与当地公司进行合作。

5.未能本土化盈利策略

尽管你的代码和内容是最必要的本土化对象，但收益模式也很关键。

在一些像中国等发展中国家，它们的游戏玩家并未像美国玩家那样有钱。所以你的业务模式便需要能够反应这样的现实。

当《植物大战僵尸2》面向中国发行时，他们一开始尝试着优化盈利模式，即将游戏变得很难且很贵，并因此收到一些负面的用户评论并导致游戏评级一度从5颗星变成2颗星。为了解决这一问题，他们从经验中吸取了教训并尝试着去平衡难度且改变了游戏的经济模式。所以现在他们所收到的消极评论也大大减少了。

当艺电中国分部总经理Leo Liu在GDC上分享自己的学习经验时便说道：“中国市场是非常不同的，你需要为任何有悖于西方视角的情况做好准备。”

确保你不会再重蹈他们的覆辙。

6.发行前未进行设备上的测试与翻译审核

这是一个很容易避免的业余问题，但是许多开发者却屡次遭遇这样的问题。

你已经投入了许多努力去创造游戏，并制定了优秀的本土化计划，翻译了UI字符串，但是在游戏发行后你突然意识到一些内容出错了。你发现一些较长的德文单词破坏了游戏的某些UI！但是更糟糕的是当CEO问你为什么会发生这种事时，你却回答：“我本以为翻译者自己会注意这种问题。”

永远不要给问题留下任何机会。如果某些内容出了错，并且这本该是能够轻易阻止的错误，那么你就需要承担所有责任。

再专业的翻译者也是人，而人都会犯错，特别是在复杂，分裂且快速发展的手机世界中。

所以你应该确保你的本土化合作者能够测试并审核一些手机设备服务，因为你承担不起用户因为漏洞满满的游戏而失望的结果。如果你因此收到一些负面评价，你便很难在手机世界中隐藏你那低质量的内容。

结论

国际扩张是一件很困难的工作。因此你必须事先明确所有权问题，制定有效的策略并落实行动。如此你的手机游戏菜鸟有效利用巨大的国际发展机遇。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why Do Mobile Games Often Fail at International Expansion?

By Vincent Chan

According to WSJ, the global mobile game market is expected to increase eightfold from $3.77 billion in 2010 to $29.6 billion in 2017. And among all the countries, the Asia Pacific region, with China and Japan as leaders, is the biggest market for mobile game developers with 48% of the global revenue and three times more paying gamers than the second biggest region, North America.

Considering these statistics, it’s no surprise that there are countless mobile games trying to expand abroad each year; however, very few can claim success.

Part of the problem is that mobile gaming has become a modern-day gold rush. Worldwide developers flooded the market hoping to strike it rich, making today’s mobile game market extremely competitive, no matter in domestic or oversea markets.

But the biggest factor is that developers often underestimate the challenges and importance of mobile game localization.

In our experience of helping mobile games go global, here are six common mistakes they make when jumping into the international market. Avoid these, and you will greatly increase your chances of success.

Attached Image: game-localization-670.jpg

1. No explicit international strategy and plan

The most basic and early stage mistake a game developer can make is failing to understand that localization is more than word-for-word language translation.

Whenever you plan to take your game global, first establish a localization strategy that answers questions like:

What factors characterize an attractive market for your company? (e.g population, GDP, mobile penetration, competitors, language, regulation, cultural factors, partners…)

What’s your prioritized list of the top 10 world markets based on these criteria?

Can we test the demand of a market before going all-in?
What are the market needs of each?

Can your company address multiple markets at the same time?
Should you find a local partner?

What’s your go-to-market strategy for each country?

Lack of commitment and understanding in localization often kills an international initiative.

Therefore, make sure your company has a strong corporate champion to drive the in-depth research, explore the markets and own the execution once the strategy is done.

Without formulating the right strategy and translating it into actions, your game will fail, no matter how many languages it supports.

2. Ignoring localization in the early phase of game development

Many game developers try to postpone localization-related discussion until the end of the development cycle, but they don’t realize that they have made a huge mistake from the moment they write their first line of code.

What this typically equates to is a lot of rework and additional costs to go back and modify your code to work when you add new language and localization requirements, costing your company thousands (or millions) of dollars and months of delay in getting into overseas markets.

Instead of doing costly rework down the road, your team should make an explicit decision on internationalization upfront.

Is your code well-prepared for the pre-translation phase? Are your UI strings all externalized? Have you given careful consideration in international non-text elements such as symbols, colours, time and date formats, and currency symbols?

If your code isn’t localized in the beginning, the problem is getting worse with every line you add.

3. No “culturalization” process

To increase the odds of a title’s success in international markets, great attention must be paid to the cultural aspects.

Basic language translation is the bare minimum that any game developers should be doing. Ideally, your translators should be able to adapt your game content to the local culture because culturalization is a necessity.

“What we learned about international markets is that it’s not enough to localize the content by just translating it. Instead, we have to culturalize it,” Craig Alexander, VP of Product Development for game studio Turbine, said.

In order to create the best gaming experience, your translators have to understand foreign cultural traditions, the latest pop culture in the targeted country, local points of reference, etc.

The same applies to non-text assets. For example, while showing a peace sign is normal in the USA, a reverse peace sign suddenly becomes an insult in places like the UK.

Why did EA’s Plants vs. Zombies become one of the biggest mobile hits in China? Just look at the localised design of the zombies and the Great Wall background in the picture below. Keep in mind that you can build gamer loyalty by fully capturing a regionally exclusive experience within the game.

Attached Image: Plants-Vs-Zombies-Great-Wall.png

4. Underestimate the challenge of global mobile game distribution

If you think that all the mobile game distribution channels in every country are similar, you are making a big mistake! In the rush to launch overseas, this is often the most overlooked problem by game developers.

Do you know that China doesn’t have Google Play? Instead, it has around 200 Android app stores creating a highly fragmented market. Without a system in place to track the performance of these channels, you basically can’t have accurate strategies for distributing your app in this country.

Each of those app stores serve a different audience with their own characteristics. You need to look at their different behaviours and adapt your games to different situations. For instance, market leaders often create different versions for different app stores. In other words, if there are 20 app stores they want to target, they will create 20 different versions and marketing strategies for their games.

Due to these complexities, many western game developers work with local publishing and localization partners when they are trying to expand to China now.

When your team comes up with the localization strategy plan, make sure to discuss whether a local partner is needed.

5. Failing to localize the monetization strategy

Although your code and content may be the most obvious localization candidates, your revenue model is equally critical.

In some developing countries, like China, their game players don’t make as much money as the average US gamers. Your business model needs to reflect that reality as a result.

When Plants Vs. Zombies 2 launched in China, they initially tried to optimize for the monetization too much, making the game way too hard and expensive to play, which backfired on user’s reviews and dropped their rating from five star to two at one point. To overcome this, they learned from the experience and tried to figure out the right balance of difficulty and how to reasonably ask for money by changing the game’s economy. Now they get far fewer negative reviews than before.

When sharing his learnings at the Game Developers Conference, Leo Liu, GM of EA Mobile in China, said, “The Chinese market is so different, you have to be prepared for anything unusual from the Western perspective.”

Make sure you won’t repeat their mistakes.

6. No on-device testing and translation review prior to release

This is an amateur problem that is so easily avoidable and yet we came across it time and time again.

You work so hard on the game, create a great localization plan, translate UI strings, it launches, and suddenly, you realise something is broken. You find out that some extra long German words break some of your game UI! But the worst part of this scenario is when your CEO asks you how this happened, and you say, “I thought the translator was taking care of it…”

Never assume and never leave anything to chance. At the end of the day, if something does go wrong, and you could have easily prevented it, the responsibility is on you.

Professional translators are human and people make mistakes sometimes, especially in the complex, fragmented and rapidly evolving world of mobile.

Make sure your localization partners provide localization testing and review services on a number of mobile devices because you can’t afford to disappoint your users with buggy games. After you’ve received a poor rating, there is no way to hide poor quality in the world of mobile.

Conclusion

It’s true that international expansion is hard to get right. Therefore, clear ownership, good strategy up-front, and great execution are critical. That way your mobile game will be in a great position to take advantage of the huge international opportunity!

If you want to learn more about whether your mobile games are on the right track in terms of localization strategy, I invite you to get a Free Assessment with our Localization Managers today. We’re here to help! Simply click the banner below to join the invitation.(source:gamedev)