Hello, everyone,
I just had a thought.
It occurred to me that with the increasing amounts of game development costs, games MUST be more optimized for the international market - the English-speaking one, that is.
Because the rising costs cannot be "brought back", so to say, by publishing in a single country only.
Which means that games must be optimized to be published internationally.
I had this thought in conjunction with Divinity 2. This game is first published for a national market.
It isn't bug-free, but eleminating these bugs means in a way that this national market had actually been - nno matter whether intended or non-intended - a stage area / a test area for the international market.
Because the bugs are found there, on the national market.
With all or nearly all bugs eleminated, this product is "ripe enough" for the international market, eventually.
Which it must be, in order to get all the high development costs back.
Now, I fear that this might become an actual trend: Test in an any national market for release on the international market.
Combined with my already assumed optimization for the world's far largest software market - the U.S.A. - this develops into something ... preferring the international customer over the national customer.
Those who have *real* benefits of this aren't only the international market customers, but also all citizens of the English-speaking countries.
It's simple, because the language of the international market = the language of the English-speaking countries.
Which also include the far largest software market, the USA.
So, implicitely, this is a development of preference of the U.S. as the both the biggest software market *and* the biggest part of the international market per se.
If the international market had a different language as the main language - let's say Spanish, which is indeed spoken by quite a number of countries, apart from Chinese, which is more difficult because it also uses a different character-set, meanwhile most "Western Countries" use Latin as the basis for their characters - then it would be a bit different, because the U.S. would not be automatically be part of the international market (apart from the fact that indeed Spanish is also spoken in several parts of the U.S.).
The question I'm currently asking myself as I write this here down is, whether how much sense it would make to port any high-costly game into other countries as well.
There might come a point at which the development costs are *that* high, that porting/localizing games into other areas of spoken languages is a definitive "MUST", because the costs would probably no more "brought back" even by the international market ... But that would depend on how much the porting/localization would consume itself.
I'm wondering, where this development goes to.
But right now, it goes into the international market, first of all.
National markets seem to dwindle in their importance. Or the games would be rather bug-free even for national markets (Drakensang was - as I assume - primarily a national release. The international release was more or less a kind of "bonus", that's how i see it, personally).
Alrik
I just had a thought.
It occurred to me that with the increasing amounts of game development costs, games MUST be more optimized for the international market - the English-speaking one, that is.
Because the rising costs cannot be "brought back", so to say, by publishing in a single country only.
Which means that games must be optimized to be published internationally.
I had this thought in conjunction with Divinity 2. This game is first published for a national market.
It isn't bug-free, but eleminating these bugs means in a way that this national market had actually been - nno matter whether intended or non-intended - a stage area / a test area for the international market.
Because the bugs are found there, on the national market.
With all or nearly all bugs eleminated, this product is "ripe enough" for the international market, eventually.
Which it must be, in order to get all the high development costs back.
Now, I fear that this might become an actual trend: Test in an any national market for release on the international market.
Combined with my already assumed optimization for the world's far largest software market - the U.S.A. - this develops into something ... preferring the international customer over the national customer.
Those who have *real* benefits of this aren't only the international market customers, but also all citizens of the English-speaking countries.
It's simple, because the language of the international market = the language of the English-speaking countries.
Which also include the far largest software market, the USA.
So, implicitely, this is a development of preference of the U.S. as the both the biggest software market *and* the biggest part of the international market per se.
If the international market had a different language as the main language - let's say Spanish, which is indeed spoken by quite a number of countries, apart from Chinese, which is more difficult because it also uses a different character-set, meanwhile most "Western Countries" use Latin as the basis for their characters - then it would be a bit different, because the U.S. would not be automatically be part of the international market (apart from the fact that indeed Spanish is also spoken in several parts of the U.S.).
The question I'm currently asking myself as I write this here down is, whether how much sense it would make to port any high-costly game into other countries as well.
There might come a point at which the development costs are *that* high, that porting/localizing games into other areas of spoken languages is a definitive "MUST", because the costs would probably no more "brought back" even by the international market ... But that would depend on how much the porting/localization would consume itself.
I'm wondering, where this development goes to.
But right now, it goes into the international market, first of all.
National markets seem to dwindle in their importance. Or the games would be rather bug-free even for national markets (Drakensang was - as I assume - primarily a national release. The international release was more or less a kind of "bonus", that's how i see it, personally).
Alrik
).