VideoGame Archives - DeafCat Studios

Helping Chinese Video Games Publishers Enter the MENA Market

DeafCat Studios — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 12:13:29 +0000

VideoGame Publishers In the Mena Market

The MENA region has the fastest growth rate in the videogame market, with more than 4 billion dollars of total revenue in 2017. We’re confident that the future of the videogame industry in the Arab world is promising and DeafCat Studios is happy to be part of it. Our main objective in the coming years is to localize more Chinese games into Arabic.

There’s no doubt that for foreign video game developers and publishers, tackling the Arab market can be quite tricky. Recently we were at Gamescom in Cologne and had the chance to chat with various publishers such as EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft and we felt that there’s a big appetite from these global companies to grow their footprint in the MENA market. The biggest appetite of them all was definitely that Chinese publishers who currently are rejoicing the Chinese government, lifted the freeze on new video game licenses according to the Economist. At one point China was producing more than 9,000 new games every year before the freeze and now the giant machine is back on. We met with top Chinese video game publishers and they all had their eyes on the Arab gamer. Most certainly the biggest validation to this, comes from the gaming giant Tencent Games that recently picked Dubai as their MENA headquarters.

News

The good news for the Chinese is that the Arab videogame market is real and lucrative. But the bad news is that Arabs consumes content primarily in Arabic and not English and especially not Chinese and this is where we can help. As a matter of fact, for the past five years, DeafCat Studios localized video games into Arabic. We have been working with global publishers such as EA to help them localize some of their biggest titles into Arabic including World Cup 18, FIFA 19, FIFA 20 and also Battlefield 5. Our best added value to EA is the fact that we are a dynamic team who acquired unique video game localization skills. We also like to believe that we have the necessary middle eastern cultural know how fused with an international mindset and that allows us to easily bridge between Arabs and the rest of the world. Our presence in both Beirut and Dubai solidifies our Arab roots and expands our international spirit which is attractive to most global publishers. For those reason we believe we are in a best position to localize Chinese games into Arabic.

Now if you are a Chinese publisher reading this article, the following message is for you. DeafCat Studios is more than your typical localization company. We are part of a trio set-up made up of three other companies that have digital marketing and advertising as a core service offering. The trio set-up is perfectly positioned to localize and drive highly targeted converting traffic to your IPs or video games. We can help you enter and grow the MENA video-game market quickly and efficiently.

To learn more about our services, feel free to contact us or chat with us by clicking the chat icon on the bottom right of the screen.

The post Helping Chinese Video Games Publishers Enter the MENA Market appeared first on DeafCat Studios.

Top 10 Rules to Successfully Manage a Video Game Localization Project

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 19:01:30 +0000

Proper management of a video game localization project is essential for its success. Modern video games usually have complex story-lines and game-plays and in turn have a large script. These scripts have more than 100,000 words that are recorded and hence localizing these video games into spoken Arabic is not a walk in the park. We have compiled below the top 10 rules that will help you successfully manage a video game localization project in Arabic or any other language:
1- Organize all your files in a comprehensive manner and place them in a shared folder that is easily accessible by team members.
2- Make sure the naming convention of your files are short and simple.
3- Make use of a project management tool and keep log of the tasks. We recommend Celoxis.
4- If you work with freelance translators, ask them to spend as much time at the studio as possible and not work from home.
5- Study the video game, understand the game-play, the plot, the characters’ bios and play previous versions of the game if possible.
6- Use a cloud based service to share and edit the scripts. We recommend Google drive.
7- Get the actors to preview the scripts prior to recording.
8- Start on time and commit to a certain number of recorded lines per day.
9- Spend enough time on script adaptation before the recording.
10- Review all the files and make sure they are complete before sending them out to the client.

We have been really lucky to work with top video game developers to localize their product into spoken Arabic and we have learned a thing or two along the way. If you have a video game that you want to localize into Arabic, please feel free to contact us to learn more.

The post Top 10 Rules to Successfully Manage a Video Game Localization Project appeared first on DeafCat Studios.

Video Game Localization into Arabic Made Easy!

Deafcat Studios — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:23:03 +0000

We have been working very hard to put together an optimized system to simplify video game localization into spoken Arabic. We also have been very lucky to work with European clients who helped us learn from their own processes. Let’s face it, European standards are very high and we are very fortunate to be able to cater to their request. A few things we learned along the way:

1- Project Management: It is undeniably the most important building bloc of the job. When working on video game localization projects, the studio is usually working with multiple stakeholders such as translators, actors, quality reviewers, sound engineers and most importantly the game developers. It is important to submit all the material to the game developers exactly in the format they ask for, and they might ask for up to 10 different audio recording format to fit exactly within their game structure. With games that need over than 100 hours of audio recording and 10 different file formats, it is very crucial to have solid project management skills.

2- Comply with the instructions: Since we are working with international clients, it is very important to comply to the instructions that they have send us. We learned that the proper delivery of our files and following instructions to the letter, does not only help us ensure deliveries, but is also very important to the other stakeholders’ deliveries since they are directly related to our own.

3- Transparency and trust: Localization of video games into different languages such as Arabic usually means dealing with clients that have no clue about the language. They do not speak the language and they rely on us to provide them with proper guidance. Hence it is very important to explain to them every detail no matter how frustrating it might be. Sometimes we feel like we are giving Arabic 101 courses but we learned that it is very important to build trust with our clients.

4- Support: It is no secret that all clients like to have outstanding support when asking for our services. As a general rule at the studio, we always go out of our way to provide our clients with whatever support they need. For example, we recently installed Skype conferencing in our studio so that the client and his engineers can assist the recording sessions from overseas. They asked for it, we made it happen.

5- Committing to deliveries: We take our delivery commitments very seriously, for that we understand that our clients are usually very eager to get their products out. They have sales milestones to reach and these are absolutely dependent on our deliveries. Consequently, we feel it is our duty to do whatever it takes to meet the deadlines. Easier said than done, since we are usually running after moody talents and juggling schedules to be able to make sure not one single hour is wasted. It has been truly a blast working on all our video game localization into Arabic projects and we are happy that we acquired that skill. Feel free to drop us a line to discuss a potential collaboration with our studio.

You have a fantastic new game you want to release and want to reach those 300+ million Arabs? Well, we can help you localize your game into modern standard Arabic or the popular Lebanese dialect. Contact us today to learn more.

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