07: Expanding Playerbases Through Localization
Welcome back to Supercharged: Insights from Keywords Studios, our quarterly newsletter.
This edition explores how traditional boundaries between gaming audiences are disappearing and how players are increasingly becoming grouped by shared interests, communities and cultures, rather than geography.
As video games become an ever greater part of mainstream culture, localization is evolving with them, helping extraordinary experiences travel across borders while preserving what made them distinctive in the first place.
Topics:
Contributors:
Romina Franceschina, Director of Products, Offers, Solutions and Implementation, and Dominick Kelly, CE Senior Technology & Solutions Director at Keywords Studios
Romina Franceschina
Dominick Kelly
The Global Opportunity
Games are travelling further and faster, players have unprecedented access to cultures beyond their own, and the traditional boundaries between markets are becoming increasingly blurred. For studios, this creates the opportunity to reach new audiences in markets they may previously have overlooked, without necessarily changing what makes their game distinctive. Many Studios assume that a player’s location tells us what language they speak, but it doesn’t accurately capture everything about the content, communities and cultures they engage with or are a part of, or what resonates.
Thinking about localization as ‘just translation’ misrepresents its value as a commercial driver There is a difference between making sure the words functionally make sense and making sure the experience carries the meaning, personality and intent of the original. Yet localization is still too often brought into development after many of the decisions that shape the global player experience have already been made.
Localization can influence far more than the words a player reads, from UI and narrative design to characters, environments and cultural references.
This changes the role of your localization team in that they are no longer just concerned with providing a fundamental local or regional understanding of a game, but with how to globalise a game’s original content effectively and maintain authenticity across borders.
This requires a different mindset and a set of experts who understand more than just language, but the people behind it, sitting at the intersection of culture, technology and player experience.
The question is no longer simply “How do we translate this game?” but “How do we make this experience work for players around the world without losing what made it distinctive in the first place?”
Where are the Emerging Markets?
Publishers and developers often ask: Where are the emerging markets and what countries and languages should we be investing in?
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as black and white as historical precedent would suggest. A country and its audiences aren’t monolithic, and language alone isn’t the defining characteristic of a successful local launch.
A market might seem like a natural fit because a large proportion of its population speaks or understands a particular language (ie. French in Tunisia), but understanding a language doesn’t necessarily mean players want to experience games in it, or that the game itself will resonate with them.
Equally, another market might feel like the right choice based on a similar game that has seen widespread success, but that doesn’t necessarily mean yours will be a hit. While developers should look to what already exists to understand whether there is an existing player base for their genre, and if the market has room for more, the more important question is which elements of the game made the content culturally resonant, understanding how players consumed it, and where there might be an opportunity for something new.
This is where data and cultural understanding need to work together. Before investing in a new language or market, studios should consult local experts to understand what is trending with local audiences and whether players who currently play in English might actually prefer to experience the game in their own language.
Perhaps, then, the more interesting question isn’t simply “Where are the emerging markets?” but “Where are the emerging audiences?”
Right now, one of the industry’s best examples of commercially beneficial localization is the movement between East Asian, US and European audiences in both directions, a winning example being Black Myth: Wukong which generated a 21% increase in revenue just from Western Markets after being adapted from the original Chinese. Developers from East Asian regions are recognising the wider love and understanding of their cultural exports around the world, and acting accordingly, from games to hit shows like K-Pop Demon Hunters.
At the same time, forward-thinking studios are looking towards rapidly growing Middle Eastern and South-East Asian markets, where substantial gaming audiences are creating new opportunities across platforms and genres, spurred by a newfound appreciation of cultures which exist beyond their own.
Cultural Exports and the Meaning of Words
Anime is beloved far beyond its origins in Japan, dry British humour is likely to crack a laugh beyond the United Kingdom’s shores, and we all know how much K-Pop has become a global sensation.
Streaming, social media, games and other digital platforms have accelerated that exposure and audiences use entertainment as a means of engaging with and learning about new cultures. The cultural reference points that once felt highly local can increasingly be understood, appreciated and actively sought out by global audiences.
That creates an interesting challenge for localization in that the goal shouldn’t always be to remove those differences.
Localization in gaming can, and should, honour the cultural exports found within each game’s digital DNA. Translation inherently alters the original message, but effective localization can preserve the intent behind a game and the references within it, even when presented in a different language to a different audience.
Sometimes staying true to the culture of the source is precisely what will interest players. A great example of this is RuneScapes launch in China. There may already be an audience ready and willing to experience that game in something close to its natural form. In other cases, players may need more context or certain elements may need to be adapted to make the experience feel intuitive and relevant.
And sometimes that decision goes far beyond language. On one project, for example, we were asked to review an Arabic setting within a game for historical authenticity. Something as seemingly insignificant as a pack of cigarettes became a localization consideration: would that particular brand have existed in that market at the time the game was set? If not, what would realistically have appeared in its place, and what language and artwork would have been used?
That level of detail is where localization starts to become culturalisation. You are no longer simply translating words. You are helping to make a world feel believable to the person experiencing it.
The strategy is deciding where that balance sits.
Localization means that we do not digest meaning on behalf of the gamer. Instead, we think about how well understood a cultural export is beyond its origins and how far we need to take either the game or the player to create the right experience.
Meaning is Individual, Ever Changing
Language and culture never stand still. Pop culture, social media, online communities and platforms like TikTok constantly introduce new words, references and ways of communicating, often moving them across borders at incredible speed. What resonates with an audience today may mean something entirely different in a few years, or even in another online community. Localization therefore has to evolve alongside the players it is trying to reach.
The same principle applies visually. Cultural experts brought into development early enough can help inform characters, clothing, colours, imagery and environments, not to make everything universally generic, but to help developers understand how those choices may be interpreted by different audiences. A great example of culturalization in gaming is Animal Crossing.
Making Play Easier
Making a game flawless across a variety of languages, cultures and countries goes beyond wording and content. It also means considering the presentation and mechanics of that content. Something as simple as a translated instruction no longer fitting on screen can quickly become a player experience problem rather than simply a language problem.
Technology is starting to give developers a way to see some of those problems much earlier. Imagine you are developing a game in English and don't speak Chinese. Using machine translation or an LLM to create an early version can give the development team a first look at how the game behaves in Chinese. It isn't the finished localization, and it shouldn't be treated as one, but it might immediately expose text overflowing from the UI, broken instructions or areas where the player experience simply doesn't work.
At that stage, the value isn't that AI has localized the game. It's that it has helped the team see problems early enough to bring in the right human expertise and fix them.
The question developers should be asking isn't simply “Where can we use AI?”, but rather:
If technology can support the mechanics of translation and workflow, cultural and linguistic experts can spend more time on the areas where their expertise matters most: storytelling, nuance, context, authenticity and the player experience.
But that requires understanding where technology adds value and where it doesn't.
That becomes increasingly valuable as games become bigger, narratives become more complex and player choices create multiple possible outcomes. Bringing localization and internationalisation expertise into development earlier gives teams more opportunity to identify these issues before they become late-stage production problems.
The opportunity is therefore not technology versus people. It is understanding how the two work together.
The ambition should ultimately be simple: create the same quality of player experience regardless of the language someone chooses to play in.
A Global Launch for a Global Playerbase
This is all to say: if you’re no longer offering your game beyond where you made it, you’re leaving money on the table. And if you’re limiting yourself by only offering your game to where you think it will be understood, you may be underestimating today’s global connectivity.
Simultaneously launching in multiple markets, including those traditionally underserved, offers the chance to connect with players through their interests, not simply their location.
But reaching those audiences isn't about adding more languages to a list at the end of development. It requires understanding where audiences exist, what they already understand, what makes the original game distinctive and how much, or how little, should change to create the right experience for them.
The processes will continue to change. Technology will continue to evolve. Games themselves will become bigger and more complex. But the fundamental purpose of localization remains remarkably human: taking something created in one language, culture or community and enabling someone somewhere else in the world to experience it as it was intended.
Today's playerbase is already global. Localization is how we make sure the experience can be too.
Ultimately, developers want the same thing their players do:
