Drakensang Online - Interview, "Too few people bought Drakensang"

[skavenhorde]

It's the Chinese I'm worried about, hopefully Hong Kong's influence on their culture can help English grow in the Far East. For better or worse, England's 19th century imperialism and the US' post WWII territory & army bases around the world have helped push us towards a single language.

I wouldn't worry too much about Chinese taking over as the dominant language. Most parents in Taiwan (and China) have their children learn two or even three different languages. They start them off in Kindergarten learning English on top of Mandarin. They even have to pass an English test to get into senior high school. If they fail they have to retake it before they're allowed to go to high school. Seems a bit harsh to me, but there it is.

Chinese isn't just one language, it's hundreds, that's the problem.. The difference between regions can be as big as two different languages, so i think english makes more sense in a programming language.

That is somewhat true, but still a lot of people in China speak Mandarin and it's not like any of the regional languages will ever become dominant. Either people in China will learn both Mandarin and their own language or their regional language will be phased out completely (over many many years of course) As you can see here most of China speaks Mandarin. It's the most widely used language in the world with over 1 billion native and second language speakers. Over here in Taiwan Taiwanese isn't taught in schools. They either pick it up at home or from friends at an early age. I recently read this article about why Taiwan as a society has chosen to teach a language other than it's own. It's a good article for anyone interested in languages.

Now programming in Chinese would be a pain. To type just on character you have to type out a combination of other characters that are on the keyboard and then choose the character you want from a list that pops in a window. I only know this because I've seen my girlfriend type and I'm amazed at how easily she does it. This keyboard is literally filled with 3 different characters on every single letter, number and punctuation. I asked her once how she knows what to type and she goes by the phonetic spelling of the word. She also said she prefers to type in English because it's a lot easier to use English than Chinese.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing something like Firefly's setting with both English and Chinese as the dominant language. It was funny as hell to hear the characters swearing in Chinese. I was surprised when I heard one of them start saying something in Chinese. I know enough Chinese (especially what they were saying ) to pick up on the meaning and I literally almost fell off my chair when I couldn't stop laughing.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Sounds to me like people realizing that that alien pilot from Return Of The Jedi speaks an african language.

[The pilot] Nunb was voiced by Kipsang Rotich, a student from Kenya, in his native tongue of Haya. In the movie, Nunb can also be heard speaking Kikuyu, another Kenyan language.

 

[Avantenor]

I still believe that the human brain has fewer obstacles in processing the native language than a learned language. Which means, in my opinion, that English-based (as native tongue) programmers have a slight advantage over foreign once (let's say even Greek ones, because Greece has its own set of an Alphabet.

Native tongue and foreign languages are using different brain regions. Best example for that are dyslexics (Legastheniker). They have problems to read their own language, but they are capable of learning foreign languages as any other human being.

Here in Germany there are some prejudices.

One of them is that : Americans don't care about the rest of the world. Therefore they do not see any need to learn other languages.

I think you're creating a false picture of german people. There are prejudices against the US politics, not against the language. That are two different things and people are capable enough to make a difference between these two things. I also think most of the studied people have arranged themselves with English language. English is the main language for all natural sciences and even my friends use it daily. But there is no urgent need for it in daily live. Turkish oftenly would be much more helpful than English.

Maybe that's bad luck for the gaming sector, who is forced to sell also on the English market, but I think the real problem was not the language but the product and the developer-publisher-realtionship. As you can see on the examples Gorath mentions, there are german developers who are able to place there products internationally. But Radon Labs was not able to sign a contract with a bigger ones who can push forward an english release, just like Koch/Deep Silver. I think that was the main problem and that's a result of the product they wanted to create.

They don't have a publisher. dtp is a local company. They can't publish their games in other markets without a partner. All they could do is Steam, etc., and I wonder why they haven't tried this yet. They have the same problem for Venetica.

It wasn't their job. Radon Labs develops. dtp promotes the German version. The international partners promote the international versions - unless they don't. I guess CD Projekt in Poland was the only international publisher really behind it.

And obviously there cannot be an English retail release without a publisher or distributor.

Afaik dtp's job also included finding a international publishers. At least that has been the impression they gave me over the years while talking to them about DraSa 1. But apparently they failed 'til now. I also don't know, why they didn't try out the Steam way.

That said I am at a loss why River of Time failed commercially in Europe. I even bought the personal edition for an insane amount of money and I thought these editions sold well.

That's what I am also wondering about. I don't really have an answer for this. Where have all the (german) customers of the first Drakensang gone? Don't know. Maybe this sequel came to fast after the first one, maybe with Dragon Age and Mass Effect ahead the competition was to hard for them. The german version of RoT was well received by the critics, so that can't be the answer.

 

[Fenris]

I thought the first DraSa was mediocre and uninteresting, so I haven't even considered buying RoT. Only after my younger Brother pointed me to the Review of "MTV-Game One" I was interested again - I nearly had missed one of the best RPGs ever
Well, the AddOn was once again at the level of DraSa 1 - only much shorter.

 

[skavenhorde]

Sounds to me like people realizing that that alien pilot from Return Of The Jedi speaks an african language.

I didn't know that. I bet there were a few people saying "Wait….What did that guy with two cheeks say? HEY!!! They speak our language in a galaxy far far away

 

[elikal]

Aww crap. I so loved Drakensang. I play The Dark Eye for 25 years, and even tho it was in some ways different than the pen and paper version, I really loved Drakensang and seeing the lands of the Dark Eye in computer again. Too bad. *sigh*

 

[KasperFauerby]

You overlook that Germans aren't good at speaking or writing in English. Everybody learns the language at school. That's enough to get along, but using it professionally is something different.

Yeah, I know that would be the "standard" answer - but I actually thought that it might be somewhat of a myth when it comes to the younger generation in Germany. I've had a couple of german colleagues over the time, and they all speak quite decent english. And they probably understand it even better I guess...

It's probably a matter of what you're used to. Denmark is such as small country that we never get any localized products, be it movies, games or whatever. As a result we've simply gotten used to all our media/entertainment being in english (sometimes with danish subtitles though). Hell, when I buy a new washing machine they might include a danish instruction manual - but usually it's just the output of BabelFish or something, so I always use the english manual instead

All the games I've shipped we've simply released as multi-language discs (EFIGS). Our tools and production pipelines has always been focused on developing multiple languages simultaneously, so localization has always been a fairly small thing for us - probably also cost-wise, although that has never been on my table so I can't say for sure. In the grand scheme of things the cost of recording/translating some spoken dialog and text to a couple of languanges is probably fairly small compared to the total development cost.

 

[KasperFauerby]

Oh, and I forgot - I have a question for Alrik about the actual RoT game (I guess that's actually "off topic" by now).

Have they recorded voices for all the dialogs this time? I can play german games as long as I have both voice and text, but I tend to struggle if it's text only....

 

[petardo]

I really hope they translate River of Time to English, with some marketing they could sell it very well. In Spain, it was distributed by FX Interactive, and they did a very good job: Take a look at the Spanish trailer of River of Time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7YT2Vwq-vQ&feature=related
At the end you can read "Rol en estado puro" that means something like "Pure Role Playing"

 

[Avantenor]

Oh, and I forgot - I have a question for Alrik about the actual RoT game (I guess that's actually "off topic" by now).

Have they recorded voices for all the dialogs this time? I can play german games as long as I have both voice and text, but I tend to struggle if it's text only….

I'm not Alrik, but I can answer this as well. It has full voice recording.

 

[Gorath]

Yes, all dialogs have full voice-overs.

Amazon.de has the CE for 40€, if you're looking. The normal edition should cost 25-30€ everywhere. It's hard to predict when another price reduction will come. You can make a case for both reducing the price now or waiting till next year.

 

[Gorath]

Afaik dtp's job also included finding a international publishers. At least that has been the impression they gave me over the years while talking to them about DraSa 1. But apparently they failed 'til now. I also don't know, why they didn't try out the Steam way.

Yes, I agree.
I wonder if the contract between RL and dtp does (not) include a clause that the rights for certain territories fall back if they're not put to use.

 

[bkrueger]

I expect that with the growing importance of digital downloads the need for local publishers will vanish in the end. The developer or the main publisher will pay for localisation and hope that digital sales will justify it. They should have done that for the River of Time.

 

[Avantenor]

I expect that with the growing importance of digital downloads the need for local publishers will vanish in the end. The developer or the main publisher will pay for localisation and hope that digital sales will justify it. They should have done that for the River of Time.

I disagree. Small developers like Radon Labs won't be able to financially stem such a project, even if it was as "low-budget" as Drakensang 1 (~5 Mio. €, maybe some more). They will always need a bigger partner and that one will dictate the terms of publishing. I don't think Radon Labs missed the chance to ask some financially more capable publishers to publish their game.

 

[bkrueger]

I disagree. Small developers like Radon Labs won't be able to financially stem such a project, even if it is as "low-budget" as Drakensang 1 (~5 Mio. €, maybe some more).

That is why I said "… or the main publisher."

In other words, the party which provides the money for game development should also pay for localisations. There is no reason to have this role distributed over different countries any more, because you don't need local distribution structures any more.

 

[Voxclamant]

I find this sad that "it didn't sell enough."

Drakensang is a very enjoyable game to me, and I have replayed it several times. With the exception of the final boss fight (which I found to be insanely difficult to beat) this has become one of my favorite replayable RPGs. A couple mods I found, especially one that added a battlemage, also added a ton to this game.

Methinks they did a horrible job of marketing it -- and not making the addons available was a serious error. I have no clue why they would largely ignore the USA market so long and to such a degree. With no disrespect meant to anyone, I have to assume USA sales are near the top for any serious game title.

Oh well. Sad.

 

[Avantenor]

That is why I said "… or the main publisher."

In other words, the party which provides the money for game development should also pay for localisations. There is no reason to have this role distributed over different countries any more, because you don't need local distribution structures any more.

It's a little bit more complicated. It is not, that they ignore Steam. dtp is well aware of steam. They are also selling games there, amongst them Legend, Drakensang 1 and Divinity 2, and at least in German, French and English. But some unknown reasons prevent them from doing this also for Drakensang 2 (or Venetica). That seems to be bad luck for Radon Labs.

There are no other publishers that have interest in a crpg franchise. Ubi and ActiBlizz simply don't care about the genre, EA has BioWare, Atari has D&D, Deep Silver has Piranha Bytes and Sacred, JoWood is unreliable, Microsoft and Sony are not interested in PC gaming, and Sega / THQ / Warner / SquareEnix / Bethesda are not really represented on the European market or have better options. Whom they should have asked instead? On of them you will need for sure, no other has the ressources to do so. Even CD Project needs international partners for releasing The Witcher 2 worldwide.

 

[Grandor Dragon]

Just some thoughts from a linguist:

Language is much more than an obstacle to selling games. There is so much culture in each language - all the idioms, schemas, associations, leanwords...languages are an excellent way to learn about different cultures and mentalities. A world with only one language would be very, very poor. Language death, which in this centruy will affect the majority of the world's languages, is a real loss when it comes the rich diversity of mankind, and our opportunities to learn about it. Learning about different cultures and languages means learning about humanity. Thankfully, a unilingual world is a very unrealistic vision.

Chinese Mandarin is the language with the most native speakers, and of course China is gaining political and economical power. Still, there are no signs of Mandarin becoming the next Lingua Franca. In fact, China's increasing involvement in the world's affairs might increase the use of English, as more and more Chinese learn the language.

German knowledge of English is not bad, really. But knowing a foreign language in a way that enables you to use it as a writer takes much more than just knowing the words and the grammar. It takes a lot of cultural experience.

 

[bkrueger]

@ Grandor Dragon: +1

 

[Grandor Dragon]

Native tongue and foreign languages are using different brain regions. Best example for that are dyslexics (Legastheniker). They have problems to read their own language, but they are capable of learning foreign languages as any other human being.

I don't know where you read this, but both claims are a bit strange. Very little is known about how foreign languages are processed in the brain as opposed to native languages. There are obviously differences in representation, but when it comes to location, evidence from neuroimaging to lesion studies imply that the differences are not very big.

The dyslexia comment also cannot stand as it is. I am not an expert on dyslexia (not by far), but I assume that most dyslexic cases have difficulties with several languages. Now there are different types of dyslexia, and I cannot rule out that some might fit your description. However, I never heard of them, despite having worked in a department which does research on dyslexia, among other things.

You should consider that languages have different orthographic systems, so that the same neurological impairment can manifest differently depending on how sounds and words are represented visually. For instance, difficulties in phonological segmentation ("c-a-t") might not play a role if you write in Kanji.