In this essay i will be talking about national localisation and how it affects the way games that are produced. These are affected through culture, language and various customs of certain countries. An example of this is in America. Any scenes which may replicate the acts of 9/11 will be instantly removed from a game and then actions may be taken against the company who created it. This may then have severe repercussions for the company.
Production is the making of products in this case video games. The content within these games however are affected due to certain barriers which are created by countries to stop inappropriate content into their countries. An example of this is in China. In China they are not allowed any computer consoles in their country as they believe this will corrupt the children’s minds. However they still play the likes of World of Warcraft on there pc's and they contribute alot to the worlds overall online game time. Recently ideas have been released of a games console being produced in china but with the games already on the hard drive. This means that the contant on the console can be controlled.
Next their is localisation. Their are many forms of localisation. These include lingiustic and cultural. This form of localisation is the changes made to a game for language and cultural purposes. So they change a game by adding the right language for the country it's being sent to and they take out any innapropriate scenes that are banned in that country e.g a swastika's and Nazis are illegal in Germany so therefore Call of Duty: World at War was not distributed in Germany. The second form of localisation is legal ratings. The legalisation is the national bodies that decide the age ratings of games. Thses include PEGI (Europe), ESRB (Usa and Canada), OFLC (Australia) and CERO (Japan). The third is hardware and software. This talks about the change between PAL and NTSC, re-mapping of hotkeys, gameplay modifications. The fourth and final localisation is graphics and music. Music in a game may differ as the national trends may be taken into consideration when choosing a soundtrack for a video game. When talking about graphics they may use the same character or the same one with a few different changes. This is because of the cultures and trends in different countries. They might not like certain parts of the character as it goes against what that country/ culture stands for.
When marketing a product you need to think about what the target audience is. For example call of duty have a target audience of 16 to 35 year olds so they need to market their product when their target audience will be able to see it so they may put it in the middle of a football match so that their audience can see it. They can also put it on social network sites as these are very popular with the target audience they want. Once they put it on their it will start to spread and gain alot of attention and start to trend. This is called viral marketing. Also releasing posters can also gain attention towards it. As it is a AAA blockbuster game already many people will know about it but drip feeding their audience with info will keep the attention of their game in the spotlight. The content however has to be suitable for where it will be shown as it doesn't want to go against any cultures or norms in that country as they would get into trouble.
In conclusion i believe the most important issue is production of products in banned countries. This is because china are one of these countries who have banned consoles and are one of the biggests markets in the world so income is being lost. Localisation is less important as things can be bought over the internet in a flash ans you can lie about things (e.g age, country, etc.) to get the product you want so the age ratings and banned content can be easily contained without being caught.
When marketing a product you need to think about what the target audience is. For example call of duty have a target audience of 16 to 35 year olds so they need to market their product when their target audience will be able to see it so they may put it in the middle of a football match so that their audience can see it. They can also put it on social network sites as these are very popular with the target audience they want. Once they put it on their it will start to spread and gain alot of attention and start to trend. This is called viral marketing. Also releasing posters can also gain attention towards it. As it is a AAA blockbuster game already many people will know about it but drip feeding their audience with info will keep the attention of their game in the spotlight. The content however has to be suitable for where it will be shown as it doesn't want to go against any cultures or norms in that country as they would get into trouble.
In conclusion i believe the most important issue is production of products in banned countries. This is because china are one of these countries who have banned consoles and are one of the biggests markets in the world so income is being lost. Localisation is less important as things can be bought over the internet in a flash ans you can lie about things (e.g age, country, etc.) to get the product you want so the age ratings and banned content can be easily contained without being caught.
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