TRACY KING / SCEPTICAL ANALYSIS
OPINION
Gamer and science enthusiast Tracy King dissects the evidence and statistics behind popular media stories surrounding tech and gaming @tkingdot
G
ame localisation is an entire industry of its own.
Knowing what American or British audiences
want compared with Japanese or Korean gamers
is a specialist skill. Not only do different markets have
different cultures and politics, but also different laws.
Australia, for example, is fairly censorious of violence and
gore in games. But what happens when two very different
cultures clash, and a Western publisher wants to change
the content of, say, a Japanese game?
On one hand, the creative vision of the game designers
and writers should be respected. On the other hand, game
publishers have a responsibility to not promote content
that isn’t acceptable to the market in which it’s sold. This
leads to some difficulties and occasional controversies. The
most recent is Persona 5 Royal, which has made headlines
because some of the scenes are undoubtedly homophobic.
The game’s publisher, Atlus, has changed character
dialogue for the Western release after backlash that
gay characters were portrayed negatively. The result is
essentially two different games.
One of them is written for Japan, with the implication
that it’s okay to be a bit homophobic there, and the other
for the USA and UK, where it’s recognised that this sort of
content can lead to real-world discrimination, intolerance
and bullying.
But, of course, it isn’t okay to be homophobic in Japan
either. While any individual culture is complex, LGBT
rights in Japan have historically been more progressive
than, say, the UK. In surveys, younger Japanese citizens
in particular are very tolerant. I can’t see how they’re
any happier with a homophobic storyline than anyone
else. Maybe the localisation to change that content sends
the message that it’s not okay anywhere. I asked Ed Fear,director of forthcoming British/Japanese game Murder
by Numbers (Mediatonic), for his thoughts.
‘I’m not one of those people who believes this kind of
localisation/culturalisation to be censorship but, at the
same time, the original creators should at least be consulted
where possible. I think the people who cry “censorship”
would be surprised at how often the original creators
would rather their work be enjoyed by the widest possible
audience than adhere strictly to their original template.
Often, it’s not even about parts that were done particularly
deliberately, so the changes aren’t a problem.
It’s a balancing act – keeping the flavour of the original
while making it as accessible as possible. It’s very easy to go
too far and change something just because it might seem a
little odd, but that will in turn make it more homogeneous,
which I don’t think is desirable.
As a minor example of the latter, there’s a scene in Murder
by Numbers where the main character is fired by her boss
and she says, ‘I thought we were friends!’ We got a note
back saying that this would feel very strange to a Japanese
audience, because no one in Japan would say that. In the
end, I fought back on it – not only because the game is set
in America, where it isn’t that odd, and secondly, because I
think a degree of ‘strangeness’ is important when dealing
with foreign material. If you smooth everything out, it
may look like something home-grown – but then what
was the point in it being made abroad?’
As more media (games, and indeed films, such as the
recent Korean smash hit Parasite) from non-Western
cultures break into the mainstream in the West, the more
culture clashes and localisation controversies will arise.
But that also means that each culture learns from the
other, which can’t be bad.LOCALISATION DILEMMAS
Tracy King analyses the sometimes controversial choices facing game
localisation teams, where what’s acceptable differs between countriesTRACYKING/SCEPTICALANALYSIS
OPINION
Gamer and science enthusiast Tracy King dissects the evidence and statistics behind popular media stories surrounding tech and gaming @tkingdot
G
ame localisation is an entire industry of its own.
Knowing what American or British audiences
want compared with Japanese or Korean gamers
is a specialist skill. Not only do different markets have
different cultures and politics, but also different laws.
Australia, for example, is fairly censorious of violence and
gore in games. But what happens when two very different
cultures clash, and a Western publisher wants to change
the content of, say, a Japanese game?
On one hand, the creative vision of the game designers
and writers should be respected. On the other hand, game
publishers have a responsibility to not promote content
that isn’t acceptable to the market in which it’s sold. This
leads to some difficulties and occasional controversies. The
most recent is Persona 5 Royal, which has made headlines
because some of the scenes are undoubtedly homophobic.
The game’s publisher, Atlus, has changed character
dialogue for the Western release after backlash that
gay characters were portrayed negatively. The result is
essentially two different games.
One of them is written for Japan, with the implication
that it’s okay to be a bit homophobic there, and the other
for the USA and UK, where it’s recognised that this sort of
content can lead to real-world discrimination, intolerance
and bullying.
But, of course, it isn’t okay to be homophobic in Japan
either. While any individual culture is complex, LGBT
rights in Japan have historically been more progressive
than, say, the UK. In surveys, younger Japanese citizens
in particular are very tolerant. I can’t see how they’re
any happier with a homophobic storyline than anyone
else. Maybe the localisation to change that content sends
the message that it’s not okay anywhere. I asked Ed Fear,
director of forthcoming British/Japanese game Murder
by Numbers (Mediatonic), for his thoughts.
‘I’m not one of those people who believes this kind of
localisation/culturalisation to be censorship but, at the
same time, the original creators should at least be consulted
where possible. I think the people who cry “censorship”
would be surprised at how often the original creators
would rather their work be enjoyed by the widest possible
audience than adhere strictly to their original template.
Often, it’s not even about parts that were done particularly
deliberately, so the changes aren’t a problem.
It’s a balancing act – keeping the flavour of the original
while making it as accessible as possible. It’s very easy to go
too far and change something just because it might seem a
little odd, but that will in turn make it more homogeneous,
which I don’t think is desirable.
As a minor example of the latter, there’s a scene in Murder
by Numbers where the main character is fired by her boss
and she says, ‘I thought we were friends!’ We got a note
back saying that this would feel very strange to a Japanese
audience, because no one in Japan would say that. In the
end, I fought back on it – not only because the game is set
in America, where it isn’t that odd, and secondly, because I
think a degree of ‘strangeness’ is important when dealing
with foreign material. If you smooth everything out, it
may look like something home-grown – but then what
was the point in it being made abroad?’
As more media (games, and indeed films, such as the
recent Korean smash hit Parasite) from non-Western
cultures break into the mainstream in the West, the more
culture clashes and localisation controversies will arise.
But that also means that each culture learns from the
other, which can’t be bad.LOCALISATION DILEMMAS
Tracy King analyses the sometimes controversial choices facing game
localisation teams, where what’s acceptable differs between countries