Venetica - Review @ Strategy Gamer

Alrik Fassbauer said:

The dominance of the English language - or rather, the focussing on it - leads to the phenomenon tht we don't know a thing about French or Spanish games - which must exist, I suppose - because no-one scans their web sites for them. e get to know games from these and from other countries only when they have an English-language web site for them. Until that - nothing. The amount of French games covered here at RPGWatch and elsewhere is very low, because of this, I think.

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We're an English website, Alrik - frankly, I think we cover a fair amount of international news for an English website, especially German stuff.

If you'd like to read about French developers, I assume RPG France covers them. For Italian news, you might check out RPG Italia and so on. In fact, given your comments, why haven't you already?

On the front page of both of those sites, after quick scan, all I could find are non-italian and non-french games - mainly US and a german game or 2...

There's not a lot of French RPG developers and most of the time their games are in English anyway.

but RPG France have a nice coverage *bookmarks*

@Alrik

English is a world-wide common language because

a) England was and the US are world powers.

b) English is easy to learn - the sentence construction is pretty straight forward.

RPGwatch is an international site so English is the natural choice.

We get news from not-English-speaking-countries, if our bilingual members tell us about their home country gaming news in English.
So if we want news from France or Italy we have to lure some bilingual Frenchmen and Italians to RPGWatch.

I think English nowadays is what Esperanto wanted to be.

fatBastard() said:

I know you have mentioned the language issue quite often, but unless you're actually able to UNDERSTAND the language in question, you'll be stuck with piece of software that is worthless to you.

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That's why I'm against programming languages made up of English words.

This is not about respect or disrespect for regional languages but about simple practicality. Without a reasonably decent english version, you'll never be able to sell your game outside of your own region. If developers can't be bothered to make a passable english version that I play and understand, then I can't be bothered to buy their game.

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Right. English is one of the most wide-spread languages, so it makes sense.

On the other hand, let's take the French again, why should they bother about buying an English-lnguage game if they canot understand it ?

And still - I still feel more than disturbed by Belgians who are seemingly so much used to English-language games that theyy even can't imagine playing games in their own languages. To me, this is like losing a part of their own culture.



("Alrik's on his crusade again, didn't you hear the fanfare ?")

Alrik Fassbauer said:

That's why I'm against programming languages made up of English words.

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There are major practical reasons why programming languages are mainly made up of english words. It would be a mess of major porpotions to do it othervise.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Right. English is one of the most wide-spread languages, so it makes sense.

On the other hand, let's take the French again, why should they bother about buying an English-lnguage game if they canot understand it ?

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Somtimes theres not enough money to translate game to all languages. Thats why its good for french to learn the common language aka english.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

And still - I still feel more than disturbed by Belgians who are seemingly so much used to English-language games that theyy even can't imagine playing games in their own languages. To me, this is like losing a part of their own culture.

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As a finnish I can tell you there is much more to culture than playing games on native language.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

On the other hand, let's take the French again, why should they bother about buying an English-lnguage game if they canot understand it ?

And still - I still feel more than disturbed by Belgians who are seemingly so much used to English-language games that theyy even can't imagine playing games in their own languages. To me, this is like losing a part of their own culture.

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Why do Taiwanese play English and Japanese games when they don't speak the language? One reason because the better ones are made in English and Japanese. Sometimes they're translated to Chinese sometimes not, doesn't seem to matter to them. It's just the way it is. If you don't like it then become a billionaire and start making AAA games in other languages. Until then the market has spoken and English is in.

Although I have this suspicion that the show Firefly had the future pegged where both English and Chinese are equally used.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

That's why I'm against programming languages made up of English words.

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You have to be kidding, what do you propose? We have a programming language like C in different variations such as English, German, Russian, Chinese, Spanish etc.?
How confusing and limiting would that be? There would be no common ground anymore for programmers to exchange ideas as they cannot write in a common language, or would you be OK if it is a single language as long as it is not English?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

And still - I still feel more than disturbed by Belgians who are seemingly so much used to English-language games that theyy even can't imagine playing games in their own languages. To me, this is like losing a part of their own culture.

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LOL. You are reflecting your own ideas and notions upon others. Games in Dutch are for kids. The rest play games in English or German. I have not lost part of my culture because of that. Our culture is that we do not synchronize movies. Our culture is that we play games in English. And especially for the Dutch our culture is that when we go out for dinner we eat food from any country but our own.
Instead of trying to place yourself in their position and look at the world through their eyes, you are judging other cultures based on your personal convictions. In my opinion history has enough examples of that being a bad thing.

Myrthos said:

And especially for the Dutch our culture is that when we go out for dinner we eat food from any country but our own.

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At least your Frikandellen are tasty ... yum yum

Heh, that's true.

HiddenX said:

Myrthos said:


At least your Frikandellen are tasty … yum yum

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Looks delicious. Id like som of that. There should be an agency for culture-importing.

Even here in Finland (which is practically in the neighborhood of Germany) game magazines don't "see, hear, speak" too much about other game producting countries than GB and USA which is a big shame. I myself have just recently found richness of german rpg-scene. And the reviews here also tend to favor british and american games. Last german game review was Arcania and the review was not too flattering.

Most of the little knowledge in finland of -for example german rpgs- I've got from couple of finnish forums, from Venetica there hasn't been not a word in local printed game media and very little even in the forums and net news. And this blindness of media, my friends, it sucks.

After all even when I don't understand german, spanish, french or many other languages I still would like to know what's going on the neighborhood.

I'm glad I found this forum (from another side of the ocean :lol, here are many good tips for my future have-to-get list

And no, I don't dislike english language, after all it's almost only foreign language I can understand a little at least and my favourite games are for example Fables, Mass Effects, Dragon Ages etc.

Still every time finding a new gem branch like this time german rpgs it's like finding treasure, every time