Drakensang - Translation of Gone Gold Announcement

[Corwin]

Peter De Jong has kindly sent us a translation into English of the announcement that Drakensang has gone Gold:
It’s time: The German version of the RPG “Das schwarze Auge: Drakensang” (Drakensang: The Dark Eye) has reached its Gold status after several years of producing and the discs are now being pressed.

Next to that Publisher dtp entertainment is comfirming August 1 2008 as the release date for Gemany, Austria and Switzerland. Exactly on the release date both the standard and the limited collector’s edition will be on the store shelves.

Website: www.drakensang.de

The standard edition, which will kost 49,99 euro (USD 79, AUD 82, GBP 40) will also contain the DSA rule book 4.0 as PDF.


Buyers of the limited collector’s edition (59,99 euro, USD 95, AUD 98, GBP 48) will receive a complete fan package: The high quality book cover, having the look of a dragon’s skin, will contain the game and several extras, and the exclusive DSA tin miniature “Lindwumtöter” (tapeworm killer), which no DSA-fan can do without and isn’t available anywhere else. Furthermore, the noble book-box contains the epic original game soundtrack by Dynamedion and the DSA audio book (on seperate discs), which will guide your leap into the Drakensang world perfectly. The fourth edition of the original DSA rule book and a leather map of the Aventurien world will make the introduction into the world of pen and paper complete, even for beginners.

Only 10.000 copies of the limited collector’s edition will be available.


Dtp entertainment AG have done their very best in creating a high-quality and authentic setting for DSA:D. As mentioned before, many of the featured characters in DSA:D will be voice acted. Some of these will be known from the voice doubling of Hollywood movies. One of those is Torsten Michaelis, who normally dubs the voiced of Wesley Sniped and Martin Lawrence in their movies.


Apart form him, Charles Rettinghaus, who is known for his dubbing of LeVar Burton in the German versions of the Star Trek movies, will make an appearance. Dietmar Wunder, the German dubbing voice of Daniel Craig (James Bond) and Adam Sandler, will be part of the Drakensang crew.

Fans of Gothic rock and medieval music also see their needs met. In DSA:D the voices of six of the most famous medieval musicians can be heard, amoung those Martina Sofie Nöth (Amber), Brandan Pötschokat, lead singer of the band Cultus Ferox, „Teufel“ (devil), lead singer of the band Tanzwut (dancing fury) and musicians from Saltatio Mortis.

In producing DSA:D dtp entertainment and developer Radon Labs are realizing exactly that game, RPG fans have been waiting for a long time. Drakensang is the first RPG system in twelve years, that makes it to a PC game.


DSA is Germany’s leading Pen and paper RPG system. The story to Drakensang was developed in coaction with DSA P&P writers, through which authenticity is guaranteed. Connoisseurs of the DSA world will feel right at home and will miss out on nothing. Thanks to the most modern technologies , the world of Aventurien is revived on the PC in breath-taking 3D graphics and a keen eye for authentic detail.

Dtp entertainment will publish DSA:D on August 1 2008. Once again, thanks Peter for doing this.

Addendum:
A little clarification to address the discussion in the comment thread: The prices and details above are only valid for the German version. Whoever signs Drakensang for other territories will make his own decisions regarding pricing and bonus content.
At 49,99 EUR Drakensang sells for the standard retail price point for full price games in the German market. No surprise here. The Collector's Edition on the other hand is a real bargain. You'll get a lot of gimmicks for only 10 bucks more. We have seen other publishers charge twice this amount for half the content.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=9666)

[Pjotr84]

Well, glad to be of help. I did however notice some mistakes in the text, which are caused by the umlauts of several German words. These umlauts have been replaced by some letter combinations, preceded by &. The text I sent you this afternoon should have the umlauts in place. If not, please send me a mail, so I can send you the word document I translated the German text in.

[Avantenor]

One correction: Das Schwarze Auge = The Dark Eye.

great job. :)

[zakhal]

Buyers of the limited collector's edition (59,99 euro, USD 95, AUD 98, GBP 48) will receive a complete fan package: The high quality book cover, having the look of a dragon's skin, will contain the game and several extras, and the exclusive DSA tin miniature “Lindwumtöter” (tapeworm killer), which no DSA-fan can do without and isn't available anywhere else. Furthermore, the noble book-box contains the epic original game soundtrack by Dynamedion and the DSA audio book (on seperate discs), which will guide your leap into the Drakensang world perfectly. The fourth edition of the original DSA rule book and a leather map of the Aventurien world will make the introduction into the world of pen and paper complete, even for beginners.

I wants this. I like audio books. No preorder yet I presume.

[Avantenor]

It's the German Limited Edition. It is limited to 10.000 copies. Amazon.de doesn't accept any further preorders, because their quota is exhausted.

[zakhal]

It's the German Limited Edition. It is limited to 10.000 copies. Amazon.de doesn't accept any further preorders, because their quota is exhausted.

Thats a bummer. The currencies fooled me - (59,99 euro, USD 95, AUD 98, GBP 48). I guess they meant to inform the australian germans how much the game costs.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Thats a bummer. The currencies fooled me - (59,99 euro, USD 95, AUD 98, GBP 48). I guess they meant to inform the australian germans how much the game costs.

No, the original press release only contained the German price. No others.

So I assume that the translator "translated" these prices into USD & AUD & GBP, too.

[Corwin]

The post is a straight C&P from the email I received.

[Pjotr84]

The post is a straight C&P from the email I received.

That's weird. Maybe the text box used for sending you the translation can't handle special characters. If you'd like the text as it should look, please send me an e-mail, so I can supply you with the original .doc I translated in.

@currency translation

I converted the original price in euros to other large currencies to give those not using the euro itself an idea of the price in their own currency.

[Arhu]

I fixed the formatting of special characters and changed the English title. My C&P worked fine, no idea why Corwin's didn't...

[Glorian]

Any information about the English version?

Looks like lots of attention was paid to every aspect of the game and I think I'd play it with real pleasure.

[Dhruin]

Other than saying translation is will begin straight away - no. They've put absolutely zero effort into cultivating an English community.

[Gorath]

Maybe their big plans for internationalization have been slightly modified. If they´re back to the standard license business then whoever signs the game has to invest in marketing it.

Still not good business sense IMHO. If I had 3 RPGs in my portfolio like dtp at some time (Legend - HoG, Drakensang: TDE and Venetica (?, by Deck 13) ), I would definitely hire a full time community manager with some marketing experience, only for these games. He would earn his money back multiple times, without a doubt.

[Gorath]

I´ve made an addendum to the newsbit to clarify the pricing thing. We don´t want our transatlantic friends, who are used to get all their PC games for a budget price, to have a heart attack. ;)

[Dhruin]

Agreed to the community manager. Either way, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to do some English newsbits and other tidbits - the last update on the English side of the official website was April an d that was only about a new look for the website itself - nothing for the game.

I realise the old line is the publisher looks after marketing but this is the internet age.

*shrug* It's their sales loss.

[Brother None]

Other than saying translation is will begin straight away - no. They've put absolutely zero effort into cultivating an English community.

They did help drakensang.info a bit with gathering the dev logs for Avantenor and me to translate, but otherwise, less than zero really.

They just have no interest, seemingly. Perhaps it'll start up now? It'd be a shame if this game ends up being good but missed out because of bad marketing.

[Corwin]

What else is new!! Look what happened with Gothic for example!! One would think that producing a top quality and well marketed English version would be their number two priority after the getting the local version done.

[Avantenor]

The TDE licence for Drakensang has been granted exclusively to Radon Labs, not to dtp. Drakensang is a cooperation between RL and dtp. As I understand the situation, Radon Labs and dtp are more or less equal partners. Maybe that is a reason?

[zakhal]

Germans are almost as bad as russians with their english versions.

[Gorath]

What else is new!! Look what happened with Gothic for example!! One would think that producing a top quality and well marketed English version would be their number two priority after the getting the local version done.
PB have changed their style. Their art director gets paid to work on community development and the production of marketing material, among other things. Their MD is also quite busy posting on WoPB, probably because he is the only one not directly involved in the actual game development. Deep Silver on the other hand watches the forums but stays out of the way unless the topics refer directly to the publisher.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Germans are almost as bad as russians with their english versions.

And English versions are sometimes never translated into German.

Sorry, but I couldn't resist in saying that.

[zakhal]

And English versions are sometimes never translated into German.

Sorry, but I couldn't resist in saying that.

Finns have never had problems of making english versions (i.e death rally, flatout, shadow grounds, max payne, alan wake, etc), allthough none of the english versions ever get translated to finnish. I can understand russians (their game dev is young & have more problems with english) but germans no. They are simply too pompous with their language. I studied up to three foreign languages - I would except germans to speak atleast one. ;)

[Gorath]

Finns have never had problems of making english versions (i.e death rally, flatout, shadow grounds, max payne, alan wake, etc), allthough none of the english versions ever get translated to finnish. I can understand russians (their game dev is young & have more problems with english) but germans no. They are simply too pompous with their language. I studied up to three foreign languages - I would except germans to speak atleast one. ;)

Every German pupil learns English and in most cases one other language, typically French or Latin, sometimes Spanish, Russian, Italian or Old Greek.

Sounds like you completely misunderstand the problem. ;)
Small markets (read: unimportant markets or secondary markets) get the standard version (= English) because a localization is not a worthwhile investment. Big markets demand a translation into their own language. A publisher can only afford not to make a German / French / Italian / Spanish translation if his game is very simple (-> for example shooters) or if he wants to position it as a niche product for a core audience. Size is in this case something like a disadvantage because the customer expects everything to be in his primary language, which automatically leads to lower foreign language skills compared to countries in which for example TV shows are shown in English.

Of course they make a German version first if Germany is their home market. Then the translations are done, and of course they are limited by budget. The publisher can hardly spend 250k on English voice recordings if his calculations say the game will only make 1M international royalties.
The reason for the time delay is simple: The publisher often needs to enlist external help for the translation. It´s cost efficient to wait until you have final source material.

[zakhal]

The publisher can hardly spend 250k on English voice recordings if his calculations say the game will only make 1M international royalties.

250,000€ for voice translations? Thats insane. Better just make english only version in the first place so you dont need to make additional translations. It has a way bigger market anyways and it shouldnt be a problem since every german speaks english. ;)

Have to say I dont remember the french to ever have problems like this with the english versions. And they are a big market too. ;)

[Ragon der Magier]

...
Have to say I dont remember the french to ever have problems like this with the english versions. And they are a big market too.

Pardon me, please!?!?o_o
You probably do not know many French people, do you?
Acc. to common lore, they are most peculiar about their language, have an aversion against anglizisms eroding their native tongue and have a natural "resistance roll" against English, so to say. ^^
Or i have fallen to bad cliches otherwise. :cool:

If not then i´d have to say they´re probably the primary candidate for insisting on localized versions for their home market before any other country.

The quota amongst French netizens might be lower, but it´s still there.

As for us Germans:
Yes, it´s right that many of us, especially computer illiterate people, can handle English fairly well on average.
Nevertheless no German Publisher/Developer could ever afford to make a genuine English version alone for a game developed in and for the German market first.
Unthinkable.

And it doubt that many other countries wouldn´t serve their local market first before all others in terms of language versions.

CD Projekt did this for their "The Witcher" as well and many others do.
Even though they have to be praised for possessing the brightness and courage to bring out a multilingual version of the game.
So i could play it in English one time and the other in German and compare and improve my English (hopefully), just like with movie DVDs! :party:


Ragon The Mage

P.S.: I hope i didn´t hurt an French companion´s feelings! :oops: ;)

[Avantenor]

No international publisher would have signed Drakensang right from the beginning.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Better just make english only version in the first place so you dont need to make additional translations. It has a way bigger market anyways and it shouldnt be a problem since every german speaks english. ;)

Exactly that is the problem.

To put it in a rather bitter and cynical tone, people with English as their first language have the greatest number of games worldwide to chose from.

Considering how many games are actually translated into languages of small(er) countries, English-speaking people live in a world of vast luxury.

(Apart from simply horrible translations like the infamous "all your base are belong to us". ;) )

So, they can be demanding without haviong to fear any losses. They will ALWAYS be pleased and catered, because the English-speaking marked IS the biggest of the whole world !

In many German gamers, for example, this leads into frustration. Not being considered a "proper market" by the neglection of translations into their own language by the big publishers might drive gamers of ALL countries nuts.

There was an incident that made me quite frighten : During the development of Sacred, Ascaron I think announced a chat session with the developers - in English language. For the English-speaking international audience.

The reactions were very, very bitter. Quite a number of people actually wrote down words of ... I'd call it "anti-americanism" about the "developer chat" being in English, and for an international audience - meanwhile they never had a developer chat themselves before ! And that although Ascaron is a German company, and the developing team was (as far as I know) a German-speaking one !

This outcry made me feel horrified because it showed me a deep, deep bitterniss down there. People were actually feel being neglected by international companies to whom the English-language market was more important than anything else.

This outcry made me feel ashamed, too, because of the words of anti-americanism I happened to read. This shouldn't be in a public forum ! This was just impolite ! I thought.

But something inside of me said : Within all of their bitterness they are right : It hurts not being considered a "proper market" by companies which are so much profit-oriented that they forget that there are distinct cultures and languages in this world !

This was a kind of lesson I learned from this incident. I decided to put my word into the need to properly translate games into - if possible - all languages of the world,

because the people are Humans with their distinct cultures and languages, and not just money-deliverers !

[fridi]

to get back to the topic (or one question along the way):

bernd beyreuter stated quite a few times that they could never rely on the german market. i think that means they are going to put a big effort into localozation, never fear.
and since they are working with a german publisher there simply was no reason to develop the game in english the first place.

[Avantenor]

It would have been useless. dtp is not an international publisher, they can't sell an english product. Developing a german game in english for them that then has to be translated into german is not an option. Only few germans would buy an english game, especially if it is from a german developer. Germans buy english games when it is an international product because they mainly fear the sometimes cheap and therefore quite horrible german translations. But that's the only reason. If you don't find an international publisher (and Radon Labs have been looking for a publisher since 2001 / 2002), you do it with a local publisher. Then you try to make the best game possible for your home market and then try to sell it to another publisher who takes care for a hopefully correct localisation. That's the way how Attic did it for RoA and that's the way it worked out for Legend, that now gets published by THQ, Sacred, and so on.

[Corwin]

I would have thought that the old Realms of Arkania brand was sufficient to at least garner interest from an English language publisher even if that branding has been dropped from the current title. I was interested in this game from its first announcement simply because of familiarity with RoA and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[old-time gamer]

250,000€ for voice translations? Thats insane. Better just make english only version in the first place so you dont need to make additional translations. It has a way bigger market anyways and it shouldnt be a problem since every german speaks english. ;)

If you know a foreign language, you also know that you can write much more sophisticated in your native language. If you want to make sure that a text is easy to understand for a six years old, let a foreigner write it. Also, while a scottish accent is state of the art for dwarves, barbarians and starship mechanics, you really don't want to hear various german accents all troughout the game ;)

There is an ascending difficulty in being able to read, understand spoken word, write and speak a foreign language. Yes, most germans below the age of 40 can read english and understand someone speaking in high-level english. Most of them won't understand a single sentence in, say, London, though.

As for markets, there is a reason why US-games are not primarly produced in Chinese...

Firstly, German is the largest central european market, including Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. France and Spain together have about the same population as the German speaking countries. Sure, there are ten times as many native French and Spanish speakers over the world, but wealthy central europe is a much better market for such decadent hobbies as computer roleplaying.

Secondly, Drakensang uses a very popular german P&P-System, playing DSA (Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye) is as common as D&D. Just like you know automatically what to expect when reading "D&D", a German automatically knows what to expect when reading "DSA", developing the game in english would be counterproductive.

[Dhruin]

No argument with that but putting a minimal effort into developing an English community would help proselytise the limited marketing they're likely to muster for NA and UK.

[zakhal]

This was a kind of lesson I learned from this incident. I decided to put my word into the need to properly translate games into - if possible - all languages of the world,


There are 230 spoken languages in europe (23 official) alone but I dont see any problem if all games were released in english too even though english is not my native language. It simply makes things easier. I dont mind multilingual versions (some things cant be translated) but english version should in the least be released at the sametime atleast in europe!

The bad thing about multilingual is that it raises costs. I have to pay more money for the game and thats how (apart from taxes) I have seen publishers defend the reason that EU games cost more than i.e US ones.


There is an ascending difficulty in being able to read, understand spoken word, write and speak a foreign language. Yes, most germans below the age of 40 can read english and understand someone speaking in high-level english. Most of them won't understand a single sentence in, say, London, though.


I havent yet had problems with that either. I work, study, watch TV, read, listen and even think in english somtimes. Practise makes perfect. I even stopped reading TV subtitles 10 years ago or more.

Allthough as a minority Ive been forced to learn other languages too. But I never complain abt the miss treatment of my own native language but instead just hope that english is enough because I dont have time to perfect every big language in europe just so that they can be considered as "proper markets" too. :)

But anyways if germans dont wanna make english games the loss is to themselves. They are loosing sales and making less money. English is the absolute majority in european union (just like it is in US too ;)) so it would make sense to sell to that market too. Perhaps german publishers should learn to become european publishers.

Secondly, Drakensang uses a very popular german P&P-System, playing DSA (Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye) is as common as D&D. Just like you know automatically what to expect when reading "D&D", a German automatically knows what to expect when reading "DSA", developing the game in english would be counterproductive.

I know and thats one thing that has always made the entire RoA series interesting. I had never heard of Dark Eye until the first game was released and I read the review. I would surely like to know more and perhaps even play it if its released with the english CE (propably not though). I have plenty enough of D&D games allready and the system was never my favorite anyways.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

The point is that both culture AND language are closely intertwined with one another. Tolkien was one of the few who actually saw and acknowledged this - and he incorporated this concept into his making of hid Middeearth Elves.

Not translating something into one language means eventually in the end not acknowledging the country's own culture. Because there is no culture with its very specific language. You can turn it around as you wish, but you can't deny that each language has its own culture and voce versa. This begins with slang expressions and ends with full-blown languages like the gaelic one.

In an discussion once a rather young IT trainee said that it doesn't matter when a language dies out: The information is retained.

This is a purely information-based point of view that could come only from an IT-professional. No professional in culture-oriented occupations would EVER say such a thing !

Because when a language dies it, the information is NOT retained. Only a very, very tiny fracture of all possible information held within a language.

The kind of information that can be formulated and transferred via some sort of language heavily depends on the layout of the language, how it is "constructed".

You can put much, much more information into a language that is suited for it, apart from a very minimalistic, heavily reduced language that is the English language according to Frederick Bodmer's book "The Loom of Languages", for example.

Just take the cliché of the Inuit "having 100 words for fish". How do you actually transport suich a variety of "fish-information" into a language that has - for example - only 1 word for fish ?

Take the word "geist" of the German language, for example. The German language has only 1 word for what's in the English language: ghost, spirit, wraith, spectre, maybe even banshee. So how do you transport the meaning of a wraith into the German language ? The might suurely be misunderstandings, because the German word of "geist" sometimes also means the mind. THe German language just cannot receive the information that is placed into the variety - subtle or not - of "ghosts" in the English language !

The German book/novel title "Das kunstseidene Mädchen" is usually translated as "the artificial silk girl". But this isn't right. It should rather read: "the artrificial-silky girl". This is just a tiny change of information, but it transports the German meaning much better ! Plus, the word "kunstseiden" contains several subtle sub-meaning that you can't just catch with words alone.

I call these "sub-meaning" the "emotional image of a word".

So - the language contains a certain amount of information that just cannot be ported 1:1 into another language - simply due to the different layout of the language. Texts of philosophers are the best place to prove this, imho.

But neglecting the need to translate something into an language also neglects the existence of an own culture that is connected with this language.

Okay, the origional meaning is better kept while NOT translating the text ... - but how many people in a country can understand the text to its full extrnd ? It is not so that every German, for example knows the English language to 100 %. This will never be reached, and to a great part only by living in an English-speaking country.

So, to make an untranslated game understandable for the big mass, its language must even be reduced - "dumbed down" - a bit to let it made understandable to those who do not know the English language enough to understand subtleties.

No, no, not translating means to me: "You have no culture worth translating into".

[unregistered666]

translation of Drakensang to english -
http://drakensangtranslation.freeforums.org/

[Gragnak]

OK....
But anybody knows when this cursed game will be released in NA?
I do not expect an Italian localization so I hope will get soon an English version.
Some release update?

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Everyone assumes the first few months of 2009.

Q1 or Q2, I don't remember anymore.

Gorath ?

[Brother None]

Everyone assumes the first few months of 2009.

Q1 or Q2, I don't remember anymore.

Official date is either Q1 2009 (most recently announced) or January 2009 (from an old trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6lppsWVcgk)). But that date's not valid anymore, so Q1 2009 it is.

I think I put in a question on the release date in the interview I submitted to them a while back, so clarification coming soon(-ish).

[skavenhorde]

Just thought I'd pop in and give the Asian view on translating games. First off the games being sold over here, dating back to the days of Nintendo, were hardly ever translated into Chinese. For Nintendo it was buy the Japanese language version or nothing. For PC games when I first got here a lot of them were in English with the manual in Chinese. Now more and more games are being translated into Traditional Chinese by the publishers here. Not the majority of them yet, but I've had to special order a lot more in the recent years. I guess the publishers here finally figured out that they could make a bigger profit in Hong Kong and Taiwan if they translated it into Traditional Chinese.

I don't know about the rest of China since their written language is Simplified Chinese, but I would suppose that since the publishers are translating more into Traditional Chinese they would also do the same for China. Maybe not since I don't think they are quite at the level of Hong Kong and Taiwan, yet.

I'm not sure about this whole disrespecting a culture theory that has been popping up in the thread. Taiwanese have been playing games that were not in chinese for a long time and it's normal for them. Even RPGs where knowing the plot of the game is half the reason I like them, but to the people here it's not. I however won't buy a PS3 due to the fact that the majority of the games are in Japanese, but for my friends they don't seem to care if it is in Japanese, English or Chinese.

[crpgnut]

Off-Topic

Skaven, you can speak all 3 languages? Amazing, if so! I'm lucky to understand my own language, much less another :D

[skavenhorde]

Off-Topic

Skaven, you can speak all 3 languages? Amazing, if so! I'm lucky to understand my own language, much less another :D

My Chinese has improved a lot this last year, but would I say I'm fluent..no. Not yet. Chinese uses 4 different tones when speaking and if you use the wrong tone with a word, it will change the whole meaning of the word. That is my biggest headache with trying to learn Chinese. I don't even want to tell you the horror about the chinese characters. I'm trying to learn (keyword is trying)spoken Chinese first and then moving on down to written maybe in a decade or so:)

That's the thing though, most Taiwanese know some basic English, some Japanese that their grandparents taught them, most are fluent in both Taiwanese and Traditional Chinese. But even though they only know some Japanese they'll play Wizardry (japanese Version) on the console or whatever the current console Japanese RPG that is released or English RPG released on the PC. They don't know enough to understand what exactly is going on, but still have a blast playing it.

I tried doing that when I first got here. I bought this cool looking RPG TB game that was only availble in Chinese and tried to play it. I ended up with a dictionary next to me and every three seconds trying to look up the next word in my dictionary. I did manage to play that game for awhile but I gave up on the conversations and just looked up the meaning of my skills, equipment and anything else that I needed to know to survive. It was fun for awhile but got boring because I had no idea why some NPC was yelling at me or what I was saying back at them ;P

It must be a cultural thing because my friends still have fun on games that I would of given up on if it wasn't in English. Say for example Planescape: Torment if that had been in Chinese forget about it. I wouldn't of gotten out of the crypt without getting frustrated and calling it quits.

[Turjan]

Better just make english only version in the first place so you dont need to make additional translations. It has a way bigger market anyways and it shouldnt be a problem since every german speaks english. ;)
Even if this has already been addressed, I think I see some fundamental misunderstanding here. Even if most Germans are technically able to speak English to some extent, they don't expect to have to use it. The big European countries are not subjected to English like the smaller ones (smaller as far as population is concerned). In Germany, all Hollywood films are shown in German. Even the tiniest US TV series will be shown fully dubbed. Original English programs are a tiny niche for a negligible midnight crowd.

I know a few friends who will buy original English versions of games because they don't like the often horrible translations into German. Most of my friends wouldn't buy an English language version under any circumstances, though. They demand a German version, or it's a lost sale.

There is an additional legal problem for English language games: They will not get an age clearance, which means they will automatically be rated for 18 years and older. Shops won't be able to sell them without age verification, which automatically means that English language games are hard to find in shops. Most shops won't bother with stocking them.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Turjan explains things fairly good.

All in all, it's about different cultures.

English-language versions are not that easy to get. Some shops have them, of course, but the majority doesn't I got the impression.

I once asked at EBGames, they wouldn't import *any* games, not even Puzzle Quest. ;)
The Saturn electronics chain - one of the biggest retailers here - doesn't import, too.
And I almost assume that most other electronics chains don't as well.