Marketing, questions, languages

Dear CEO. Do you plan to sell the game through the site before the start of steam sales? whether the currency exchange rates of purchase and sale through regional proxies? Simply, many restricted with the USD, EUR, GBP
There is a ready form of prices for different countries?
What languages will be transferred to the game?

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  1. Yes
  2. We are still trying to figure out the best way to handle regional proxies and currently are running an experiment with the Chinese market courtesy of @Freeman. There are a lot of logistical challenges with regional proxies.
  3. Currently the price of the game is not adjusted for regional currencies. Unfortunately the cost of building the game is in USD and EUR. That being said you aren’t the only one to make the suggestion and I suspect it will be an ongoing discussion amongst the team as we move forward.
  4. That remains TBD and will likely depend on how much money we have by the time we finish building the game as localization will be one of the last steps we take before final release. We may add support for additional locales after the initial release.
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very detailed and prompt response thanks:slightly_smiling:

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For some reason the Chinese market seems very hard to reach.
in two years Elite Dangerous I’ve met one Chinese who was out of the game within a month.
their forum has no Chinese treads nothing referring to a Chinese market can be found.
thus also no request from the Chinese.
this makes me wonder the time invested , will that ever yield?

It’s a challenge but @Freeman has been running our Chinese fan-site for quite some time and we’re working with him to find solutions to those problems.

Generally speaking, the Chinese make games for the Chinese, and the Chinese play games made by the Chinese. There are many reasons for that - most of which I probably have less than zero understanding of - but the thriving gaming market in China is a well insulated bubble.

One of the reasons I do have a little bit of experience with, though, is the only just recently lifted ban on consoles in China, which has pushed huge chunks of the gaming market toward mobile games. And, well, the PC gaming landscape has way more in common with console gaming than it does with mobile gaming.

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I would hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with demographics. CrossFire is pulling in $1 billion in revenue annually and it’s a free to play FPS for 16 players on two teams that runs on pretty much any hardware. It’s very accessible.

If you can get $1 in sales of vanity items from 20% of the people on the planet, you’re going to be a billionaire. The important bit is getting them to see your vanity items.

Vaniety items actually seem to be something the Chinese market graviaites to on its own. As well as organized tournament play. Freemium games are king there right now, and Chinese gamers are more than happy to cough over a few yuan for some shinies.

If we assume that games tend to be a form of wish fulfillment, then look to providing what it is that the players don’t have. The Chinese don’t seem to have enough shinies. Americans don’t seem to get enough chances to kill things.

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You’d be surprised to see how much League of Legends generates money from their vanity fair (which is are mostly champion / ward skins), and LoL has only a very modest penetration in Chinese market due to some other Mobas there.

To be frank, anyone would pay some money to get nice shiny stuff. All depends on the definition of shiny.
A golden gun that does +50 damage and two-shots anyone? Shiny! But pay to win.
A golden gun that fires rainbow puppies and does regular damage? Shiny! Well, some would say and buy it so I’m sure :slightly_smiling:

And for a shiny googly eyed asteroid bobblehead?

Priceless

For everything else, there’s Battlescape.

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Just as soon as there’s a Pop! vinyl figure.

According to this, League of Legends is the number one title in China. Has been for a couple years.

judging by which games were the most played at the country’s internet cafes

Alright, that’s interesting. I still remember figures from before 2013. Then again, LoL went out of beta in 2009, so I guess from entering chinese market in 2011 with Tencent’s help and making it to n°1 in 2013, that’s a pretty awesome achievement.

My memory ain’t what it used to be either probably ^^

Keep in mind that most such reports coming out of China are usually anecdotal, or, at best, from observer studies. On those days, in those cafes, League was the most frequently played game. While there’s no reason to explicitly doubt those reports, it’s incredibly difficult to validate them. Getting reliable telemetry out of China tends to be a little more difficult than other countries, at least for non-Chinese companies, and the western companies that are getting reliable telemetry out aren’t overly keen on attracting extra scrutiny (so they won’t beat their chests about it).

It’s an issue that major publishers are currently looking at closely, and they’re increasingly guarded about it.

Couldn’t we, the community, help you guys with the translation? I could translate it into German and I guess others would help me with that or translate it into their own languages.

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Don’t worry @Blackstern , they’ll ask us.
At this point, I guess it’s too early to translate anything while the product isn’t out, even as “dev access”.

Plus, maybe they haven’t started the internationalization on it yet (preparing the product for localization before it is actually done).

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if they come out to the market the steam necessary to translate at least with the help of freelancers.

well at least you can already count on the French, with an emphasis INovaeFlavien

I was thinking the same, got bit of history working on fan game translation. (NWN2)

Its not like Battlescape will have complex dialogs :smile:
so it should be fairly easy.

if you follow this link and the elite link within that tread you see the few responses the subject on the Chinese market got for Elite Dangerous.

Cmdr Cosloli is btw also the same elite player I was revering to.
while he is discussing network problems within china no other Chinese respond.

now so far as I know Frontier development haven’t made any effort to get on the Chinese market but still the amount of responses is very low.

does anyone know how Star citizen in doing in the Chinese market ?
they too can be a indication if its worth to spend the so precious resources.

now off course it would be great if this market would be successfully obtained.
in this sense , they just do about anything for offspring and legacy and like to gamble or invest in things that will show they believe in fortune.
things that would be far more easy to integrate if all Kickstarter goals where reached.
this makes me think that this marked should wait for an update after a successful release.

this might sound negative to some but I think we all should realize the game is still produced on a tight budget.
and even the bigger companies seem unsuccessful to reach this large market.