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Why Are Game Devs Not Paying Localization Specialists?

Game developers live in a world where their markets have expanded to encompass new countries and territories. That means their products need a video game translation to reach those audiences. But many video game devs avoid hiring a localization specialist and instead go with a fan translation. Especially Japanese games are subject to this method, leading to hilarious mistranslations throughout game history.

This may seem like a great way to save money and time. But at the end of the day, poor translation does great harm just to save your bottom line.

This guide will discuss why hiring a localization specialist is more important than other alternatives.

The Limitations of Machine Translation

If you don’t speak another language, it’s easy to use Google Translate or DeepL and think nothing of it. But consider how often you see lousy translations from another language to your own. These poor translations leap out at you, may make you laugh, or may even offend you.

Machine translation is impressive for how far it’s come. But at the current moment, it is not enough. Languages are complex, and it takes a professional who knows the nuances to properly convey your ideas.

Hiring a Localization Specialist Is Immediately Noticeable

Let’s address the elephant in the room: there’s a long history of bad game translation. It’s clear why this is the case – a well-translated game would cost much money, which many game developers don’t have.

But consider how this looks from the perspective of your customers. They can tell when you’ve done a proper translation and when you’ve rushed it into the target language. The difficulty is the language and cultural barrier that results in your customers being unable to communicate their frustration.

But if you hire a localization specialist or a game translation service, gamers notice. They can tell when they’ve gotten a good translation. They’ll only be more willing to financially support you.

A Fan Translation Is Not Sufficient

Fan translations are a great “free” way to get a translation from a native speaker. But this as well plagues you with issues you may not have realized:

Your fans may have done a poor translation, too
It’s an unofficial translation, and you have little control over the process, including whether they follow any specific style guides.
Your fans may give unintended translations that are confusing, funny, or offensive.
Translations may be inconsistent as fans usually don’t create glossaries or follow the best localization practices.
You are open to legal issues since you cannot control the translation process. The translation might have distorted the licensor’s original intent to convey a different meaning in his language. In some cases, you become susceptible to a lawsuit.
Fan translations often don’t involve independent proofreading by a third party. Grammar, spelling, and expressions are at risk as you don’t know the fan translator’s skills as a translator. Localization for your video game should be handled by experts in your target markets, ensuring it’s translated at the highest quality. This includes proofreading and localization quality assurance testing.

Price Fallacy Trying To Do Translations In-House

It’s reasonably tempting for game studios to manage game localization in-house to cut costs. Think twice, though: Countless implicit (and explicit) costs increase your translation spending rather than decrease them. Let’s go through the most pressing ones:

Hiring

The true costs of hiring an employee are often underrated. It takes an average of 52 days and $4,000 to hire a new employee in the United States, according to Glassdoor. The hiring process is expensive depending on several aspects, like company policies, labor laws, onboarding, training, base salary, and benefits. The higher cost often scares companies away from hiring someone they may not be sure will work out.

Quality

Speaking of: you will probably hire a freelance translator through marketplaces like UpWork to cut statutory employee benefits. Note, though, that it’s no guarantee for you to pick the top-rated freelancer and receive high-quality translations. There are limited options for you to confirm that the freelancer you hired did the job they’re sharing in their portfolio. Worst case: The result is low quality, and you must employ another translator, doubling your hiring costs.

Reliability

In a gig economy, freelancers work project-based. If you need an urgent translation, there’s a possibility the original translator job will not be available. This risks the consistency and quality of your translation; even worse, it can delay your game content release, causing additional costs.

Management

A localization project manager is a highly skilled executive who coordinates the entire localization process. Finding the right fit can be challenging, but mandatory if you want to manage an international team and ensure high quality. Usually, per language, you will need at least 3-4 members to localize, proofread, and do localization quality assurance.

Considering the current economic downturn and the aspects mentioned earlier, it makes sense why most AAA mobile game companies outsource their localization to specialized video game localization agencies.

Get a Localization Specialist Today

Put simply, a fan translation is a shot in the dark. You have no idea what you’ll get and no quality control whatsoever.

It is risky to use fan translations. It can upset your game community, or worse, it might become a legal issue. Take Tower of Fantasy Team’s approach to lure fans into localizing their game for free with paid in-game currency.

In-house localization teams are beginning to dwindle as the global economy slows and costs rise.

Still, game translation is the gateway for you to reach your international audiences. It’s a significant foundation for game marketing and entering new markets. Poor translations can ruin your original game and global revenues. Hiring a localization specialist ensures you get your game officially localized and avoid the issues a fan translation presents.

Looking to get one of these proper translations? SandVox Game Translation Agency is here to help. Use the game translation cost calculator to estimate how much it would be to translate your game.

November 10, 2022

Machine Translation Review of DeepL for Localization

Did you know game studios released 64% more games in 2021 than 2020? With more and more games reaching the market every day, developers are looking for a way to stand out. That’s where game localization comes into play. Increasingly, game creators rely on AI machine translation, primarily through DeepL – but does it benefit your game globalization efforts, or does it cause you more headaches?

Globalization is a key factor in a product’s success. For every language your game is translated into, your audience grows substantially. The question is how to translate your games.

In times past, human translators were the only translation tool available. But as AI language technology improves, machine translation is taking center stage.

DeepL is being heralded as the next big thing of these machine translators. It draws from databases of hundreds of human-translated documents. Experts say it’s more accurate than the long-reigning champ, Google Translate.

Does that mean you can use DeepL for the localization of your game?

To help you decide, we’ve assembled this in-depth review of localizing games with DeepL. Read on for the pros and cons of the software and whether you can trust it with your game.

The Pros of DeepL

The pros of DeepL for localization are that it’s like Google Translate but better. Here are the areas where critics sing its praises.

Free Version Available

Cost is always a consideration when investing in any product’s translation. One of DeepL’s biggest advantages is its free version. This allows game developers to translate their games into a multilingual phenomenon quickly.

Of course, each translation is limited to 140 characters. So, it’ll still take a few man-hours to manually copy and paste your text in and out of the software, 140 characters at a time. But it still offers significant cost savings over working with translators.

Learns as It Goes

Machine translators and machine learning, unsurprisingly, go hand in hand. DeepL software is constantly improving as it learns from every translation it makes.

Better Translation Than Google Translate

The biggest attraction is that it’s “better” than its competitor, Google Translate.

DeepL offers features not found in Google Translate. These include a custom translation tool that allows you to set rules for your account.

For example, you may always want a word like “cash” translated in a specific way throughout your game. DeepL allows you to set that translation rule so that your translation is consistent.

And in side-by-side comparisons, critics say that DeepL offers a more accurate translation. Specifically, studies found it to be 13% more accurate across data sets than Google. However, neither are actually good enough for publication.

The Cons of DeepL

Machine translation is still too stilted and flawed to capture the nuances of a game. Here are the biggest issues with DeepL – and all machine translation – for game localization.

Limited Languages

First of all, DeepL is only available in 28 languages. This limits the worldwide application of your game.

The three most common native languages are Chinese, Spanish, and English. But Chinese is a newer addition to the software. So its accuracy will be even less reliable than the European languages available.

Plus, Hindi, which is the third most widely spoken language, isn’t available.

If you want your expansion into Asian markets to succeed, machine translation isn’t a viable route.

Quality Varies in Each Language

When you work with human translators, they are experts in specific language pairs. That is, translating back and forth between two languages, like English and Japanese.

A machine translator is also better and worse at specific language pairs. For example, you might find DeepL’s English-to-Spanish translation passable. But that doesn’t mean English-to-Portuguese will be.

Unless you speak both languages, you cannot know if the translation is accurate enough. Then, you may feel the need to consult a human translator for quality assurance. It would’ve been quicker to start with them in the first place!

Privacy Issues

We explained that the software learns as it goes. To do that, it may store the translation for a period of time.

This data storage may only happen with the free version, meaning paid software is more secure. Nonetheless, running your entire product through an online platform presents considerable security concerns.

Limited Database

DeepL prides itself on its database of professionally translated documents. Its accuracy comes not from random sources of varying quality but from sound translation.

While that should make DeepL more accurate than other machine translators, it may also be its downfall. It learns as it goes, but its core strategy only comes from a few hundred documents.

Assuming that these cover every area of translation, from legal to healthcare documents, it can’t have that much exposure to each area. So, its abilities will always be greatly limited.

Context

This limitation is most evident in a lack of understanding of context. Direct translation can only go so far. It can’t grasp culture and nuance.

This is particularly relevant in game localization. Game characters are usually larger than life, with memorable personalities and quirks. These come across most in their speech.

So while machines can accurately translate grocery lists, they can’t handle dialogue full of sarcasm, aggression, and humor.

Specific Game Translation Issues with DeepL

Translation issues go beyond character speech. Here are specific areas that suffer when machine translators try to localize games.

Consistency

Human translators know when to use synonyms and when to be consistent with the same word. Machine translation tools don’t.

Within the same sentence, machines may use unnecessary and confusing synonyms. But human translators ensure everything from your UI to your dialogue is consistent.

Technical Requirements

This consistency is critical with technical requirements. Especially on a mobile game project, different operating systems use different words.

For example, in French, the word “Settings” differs on Android and iOS. Machine translators don’t know that, so your game could clash with the devices.

Punctuation

Punctuation isn’t universal. Each language uses speech marks, brackets, and spacing differently.

This isn’t exclusive to non-Indo-European languages like Korean or Arabic. Even European languages have varying punctuation rules. Last we checked, DeepL doesn’t offer to make the appropriate adjustments.

Placeholders

Game language is full of placeholders. They can take the form of numbers, symbols, symbol combinations, or words in brackets.

Placeholders indicate where other things will actually go when the game is published. These could be:

Button symbols
Custom character names
Numbers that vary depending on gameplay

Machine translation isn’t built to handle game punctuation. It usually gets confused and moves the punctuation around to where it thinks it makes more sense. Manually adjusting each of these errors is very time-consuming, especially if you don’t speak the language.

User Interface

A game’s user interface (UI) is crucial to the entire gaming experience. If poorly translated, it can put players off before they even begin.

But surely UI features are easy to translate, just like the figurative grocery list mentioned earlier? Not necessarily.

A grocery list is full of nouns: milk, eggs, tomatoes. UI though often uses several verbs, like “save” and “quit.”

Machine translation gets confused when these verbs aren’t in a sentence but stand-alone. It usually uses the wrong sense of the verb, like “starting” instead of “start.” This makes your UI seem offputtingly unprofessional, affecting your game localization efforts.

Language Nuances

Finally, as we’ve already touched on, machine translation can’t capture the nuance of a language. It’s effective for direct translation, but that’s not what you need.

For your characters to come alive, their dialogue needs to make sense. Otherwise, players will skip it and miss out on the heart of your game.

For example, say one of your characters often uses the exclamation “Oh shoot!” It won’t make sense if that’s directly translated into languages without that expression. Only human translators know how to replace it with a similar exclamation in the target language.

But what if your game doesn’t have lots of dialogue? Are language nuances really that important?

It doesn’t matter how much or how little text is in your game. If it’s poorly translated, it doesn’t make for a good gaming experience. This is true for free mobile games to $100 console ones.

A game product manager must ensure that their game’s translation is flawless enough that players don’t even notice it. Otherwise, the game won’t take off, and investing in overseas markets will have been a waste of time.

The Most Reliable Machine Translation Tool

Machine translation is a game-changing translation tool for communication. But it’s no substitute for human translators.

If you’re trying to achieve game localization, where should you start? There are countless specialist translation services available around the world.

But it’s best to work with game-specific translators if you’re translating a game. SandVox Solutions understands the nuances of video game language styles. We’ll make sure your game comes across with all the humor and grit you intended.

We want to hear about your game! Talk to us today so we can make your globalization dreams a reality.

October 12, 2022

Localization Quality Assurance Best Practices – All What You Need To Know

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When expanding into new markets, localization is one of the essential processes. After all, potential gamers are more likely to play, buy or download your game if they resonate, connect, engage with your content, and fully understand your product. Gaming localization quality assurance is about making sure that your game is perfectly adapted to the new target audience.

To guarantee localization quality, you need to set a method of evaluating it. In this post, we’ll show you some LocQA best practices that will help you build a thorough QA.

But let’s start with the beginning:

What is localization quality assurance?

Localization-quality-assurance-what is localization

Like any other service, the quality of translation and adaptation to a foreign audience may vary for various reasons. That’s why you need to test your product before launching it into new markets. And here the localization qa comes into the picture, being the last stage of this process.

Basically, locQA focuses on linguistic testing and translation quality review while covering UI/UX evaluation, compliance testing, culturalization, internationalization, functional tests, and more.

Simply put, native-speaking linguists with expertise in gaming and local culture play and review your game, ensuring that there are no problems or errors – both linguistically and visually.

If the game is about to be published in multiple languages, the appropriate native professionals should test every version.

Localization quality assurance confirms that the game is localized to (all) the desired languages, all strings are translated, and no development and implementation issues are found. Plus, it makes sure that the translations have a natural flow and consistency.

Why do you need locqa for your game?

According to Newzoo’s Global Games Market Report, the worldwide gaming market is expected to generate more than $196.8 billion in revenue for 2022, with the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America driving much of this growth this year and beyond.

The number of players is forecast to grow from 2.9 billion in 2020 to 3.5 billion by 2025, with the same emerging markets driving this growth.

localization-quality-assurance-number-of-players

Given the gaming market trends, developing your game with global users in mind is a must-do, and the localization quality assurance strategy is a vital step.

And this is because game localization is essential, no matter the source language of your playing. Even if the in-game texts are in the correct language, this is not enough. The dialogues and visuals must be appropriately adapted to the new market while keeping the UX/UI functionality.

A good translation quality assurance process should minimize the number of mistakes and reveal any flaws in your game so you can fix them before publishing.

What does game localization qa include?

In games, assuring the localization quality means more than simply checking for things like grammar and spelling errors. LocQA testers consider factors such as context, user experience, and cultural nuances when testing and analyzing the gameplay.

In their qa process, a locQA tester will look for three things:

Linguistic QA – targets mistakes in game scripts and voice-overs, such as spelling, grammar errors, and mistranslations. In the end, the linguistic QA testers suggest how to fix them or provide alternative translations;
Visual QA – checks for any design-related issues, such as untranslated or partial translated content and graphics, truncated characters, font issues, overlong strings, UX/UI issues, and compliance checks;
Functional QA – takes into consideration any graphic, art, or development bug that requires a code change to be fixed; most issues include broken links, performance issues, graphic, audio, and text problems, difficulties generated by the international keyboards, and AI behavior.

To have an effective localization QA, you should consider the following steps:

locqa-process

Set up your goals – the LQA manager determines your needs and designs the test plan and schedule
Pre-test preparation – game testers receive the localization brief that includes information about the game genre, previous versions (if they test updates), localization kit, style guides, and any other relevant info they need to perform the testing
Game testing. LQA specialists play the game and assess linguistic quality while documenting the bugs and inconsistencies. They also provide screenshots, explanations of the issues, and suggestions on how to improve the game
LQA implementation. After you receive the reviewed files, the localization manager helps you implement updates.

Localization Quality Assurance best practices

Now that you know the main locQA aspects and the basic stages involved let’s dig deeper and see how you get the most from your quality assurance process.

#1. Start early and test often

This mantra used by software developers also applies to game localization testing. The sooner you include testing as part of the localization process, the faster testers will identify bugs. You will thus avoid turning these mistakes into costly problems.

#2. Hire gamers as localization quality assurance testers as they can better understand your product

To ensure your game is ready to be launched in the specific target market, you must check it with local skilled testers. In addition, it would be great if they were also gamers. After all, who understand players better than gamers?

This way, they can evaluate every aspect of localization testing – from language and culture changes, swiping, and functionality to the interplay between translation and UI.

#3. Perform a bilingual examination as part of your localization quality assurance testing

The localization testing process should include a bilingual examination, which means comparing the original game with the localized one. Again, it’s essential that the localization qa testers fully understand your product and the target audience to ensure that the adapted gameplaying retains the intention of the original playing.

#4. Look for translation errors and consider the context

Your QA team should identify issues such as mistranslations, omissions, and inconsistencies. Also, look for typos that automated spell check features would miss by considering the context.

#5. Leverage technologies to facilitate localization testing

Using CAT tools with a translation memory feature will help improve translation accuracy and consistency over time. Also, you should create a translation glossary and store it on your localization management platform. This way, you’ll ensure that all translators use the same specific terms throughout the translated text.

#6. Use automated QA modules to improve the localization quality assurance process

Many CAT tools offer built-in modules that support the QA process. They can detect basic translation mistakes, such as grammar, spelling, formatting, punctuation marks, inconsistencies, and more. Some of them can also generate quality assurance reports so the linguists can review and fix those issues that require their attention and expertise.

#7. Evaluate customer experience

After you’ve covered and fixed all the issues related to spelling and grammar, layouts, formatting, and cultural factors, it’s time to move on to customer experience – the final testing stage.

This part of LQA helps you understand how players use your game and how they connect and engage with your brand. It works as an extra layer of quality assurance, detecting additional issues and verifying that the changes made by LQA teams haven’t created new problems.

#8. Create your Localization AQ report

At the end of the LQA testing phase, you need to draw conclusions and have a quality assurance report. This brings together the findings of linguistic professionals, cultural analysts, playtesters, coders, and user experience experts.

Make sure the report is comprehensive but precise. Keep in your mind that this report is useful not just in the short term but also in the long term. So, make it clear and precise, easy to read, and accessible to future locqa teams, and include any changes that have been made or need to be made, as well as the evidence to back them up.

Bonus point: Checklist for localization testing

#1 Style guide: Set from the very beginning the tone of voice and the language style used in your game

#2 Glossaries: What is the key terminology that needs to be translated?

#3 Product specification: What are the requirements?

#4 Languages and locations: In what languages and for which market(s) needs your game to be tested?

# 5: Product platform: on which platform will the testing be performed (mobile, desktop, or consoles)?

# 6: Functional/UI testing should consider

No overlapping or truncation of texts
Font size is correct across the whole game
The product layout is consistent with its source language version
Game functionality is working even if the product is not in the original language

#7: Location-related testing scope

The content of your game is correct based on the region’s specificity
Date, time, decimal number, currencies, and temperature formats follow language/region standards
Colors are appropriate according to local customs.
Flags and country names are correct
Event-based marketing is triggered in the correct season and shows the right context according to the local customs

# 8: Linguistic testing pays attention to

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation
Unnatural translation and idiomatic testing (checking if the game tone is in line with Style guidelines)
Translation consistency across the product
RTL (right to left for Arabic and Urdu Language) format
Improvement suggestions from testers to the product

# 9: Monitor your KPIs

Measure your user growth, analyze existing users, and linguistic-related complaints before and after locqa testing

Final words

When intending to expand into new markets, localization is a must. If you get it right, you’ll open doors for millions of new players worldwide and massively improve your revenue potential.

But accurate translation and cultural sensitivity are the cornerstones of expanding into foreign markets. That’s why you need to make sure your game is perfectly adapted to the new audience and compatible with local platforms and browsers. In addition, attention to detail will show your players that your company cares about their needs.

In this context, localization quality assurance is an important element in the process of adapting to foreign markets. Working with an experienced localization company with proven experience can help you avoid embarrassing and costly misunderstandings.

October 5, 2022

Why a Game Community Manager is important for your success

Nowadays, the entire gaming experience is becoming more and more social and the need for a sense of belonging cannot be ignored. Players come together and discuss different ideas related to the game, resulting in communities that develop around the playing. And proper community management improves not just social exposure but can really bring the gaming experience to another level. And the glue between players and game developers is the Community Manager.

What is a gaming community?

In plain English, a gaming community is an organized group of players who come together, usually having a common interest in a single game or series. It may be a small group consisting of a few individuals but in some cases, the numbers can reach hundreds of thousands.

Regardless of how many people are in the community, it’s essential to have a system in place to guide interactions between developers and customers. And this is because a community – big or small – is an excellent way to improve the game and promote it, but also to expand your player base and increase your sales.

In addition, there are also various other advantages offered by a vivid community and efficient community management.

Benefits of communities

You might ask why is so important to build and maintain a community around your game and why you should care. Well, research shows that the benefits of having a strong community are tremendous, but we listed below just some of them:

An online community can help you improve your players’ engagement by up to 21%
66% of branded communities say the community has had an impact on customer retention, while 68% of them admit the community has helped create new leads.
55% of branded communities say that the community has contributed to an increase in sales, while 90% say that suggestions from the community have been used to improve products or services
72% state that the community has led to an increase in website traffic
77% of support-based branded communities also have a knowledge base
88% of branded communities said that the community has helped improve customer experience
78% of communities say that it has been used to develop new/ future products and services
branded communities are 13% more likely to have an impact on customer experience than social media communities.
branded communities are 21% more likely to see an increase in brand SEO than social media communities.
58% of online communities say that their customers are more loyal to the brand because of their community.

When we talk about the importance of having a dedicated person to coordinate all the efforts involved in managing the community, studies show that:

76% of branded communities have a dedicated Community Manager
having a managed online community lessens the burden of engagement by 44%
3% of branded communities say they have community moderators
having a dedicated Community Manager can help improve performance by up to 12%.

And this leads us to the next question:

Why do you need good community management?

Managing diverse groups requires both the right skills and the right tools and strategies. Proper community management is critical for several reasons:

community management is the link between the developers and the end customers, providing a system for collecting relevant feedback.
it helps with releasing updated information and rolling out proper marketing strategies, fostering fan trust and opening up possibilities for growth
it provides a platform where fans can interact and learn from each other.

What is a Community Manager?

Simply put, a Community Manager is a link between developers and players and takes care of the most important aspect of any game – the gamers themselves. He/she engages with the followers, grows the offline and online communities, and attends events. Generally speaking, the community leaders are the people who know better than anyone else what the fans want.

Qualities of a Good Community Manager

With so many responsibilities, a community manager must have specific skills including:

Soft skills:

excellent communication skills
empathy
problem-solving – able to be solution-focused and take the problems in stride
creativity – when running successful communities, there is no one-size-fits-all approach
flexibility – you need to be able to learn from what happened, adapt, and keep moving forward

hard skills:

a good understanding of the games and their player communities
well-organized to manage the different aspects of the gaming community
sound judgment and flexibility to meet the issues that may arise
passionate about the job and the different players involved
analytical and know-how of the right software to generate critical reports

What does a Community Manager do?

A community leader speaks on behalf of the brands, which means PR is part of their role. As much of the communication is online, they spend their time on the platforms where they can meet their players.

But in reality, a good Community Manager is capable of wearing several hats – so he knows how and when to adjust the content and communication accordingly in any given situation.

#1 Content creation

As the name implies, Community Managers engage their communities, and one of the best ways of doing this is through content. They create and share content that resonates with their audience while implementing the best practices of each social platform they use.

This way they give your brands a voice, as well as help to build trust in your game.

#2. Community Managers interact with your players

To foster a sense of community with your gamers, Community Managers spend time interacting with players proactively and initiating conversations between community members. At the same time, Community Managers know that they’ll have to handle both positive and negative reviews from users. So they must be prepared to properly respond to them as well as vigilantly watch for offensive content that must be removed.

#3. Gather gamers’ feedback

The Community Managers not only interact with your players but also collect their feedback so that you can respond correctly in any situation. What do you do well and resonate with your customers? What are you doing wrong, and customers are not responding? The community leader seeks out this information.

#4 Social Listening

Although most customer service on social media is usually provided when a customer seeks it and tags a brand, social listening works differently. It’s a more proactive tactic that requires finding those who need assistance with anything related to the type of game, for example, but aren’t specifically reaching out to your brand via social media. Instead, it involves scanning the social scape to find where your brand is discussed, but not directly tagged. The social listener can gather valuable data about what people think about your brand, product, and services, and get feedback in a very honest, unfiltered way.

#5 Finding new players

As a game developer, your goal is growth, but this is impossible without having new users. That’s why along with interacting with your players, one of the Gaming Community Manager tasks is targeting similar communities and finding good candidates for your brand community.

#6 Engage with others in your industry and share your work

The Community Manager isn’t just the leader of your brand community, but he should also be a part of other communities. He/she has to connect with other bloggers and gaming influencers and foster relationships with them by following, commenting on their posts, and sharing their work within their own community.

#7 Community Manager tracks the content performance and adjusts it accordingly

Even if this task can be fulfilled by the social media manager as well as the content marketers, the Community Manager monitors the engagement of the content he shares and is prepared to adjust it according to what resonates with your players.

#8 Brainstorm content ideas and prepare the content calendar

This task can be also assigned to any content marketer or social media marketer, it’s also very important for community management and audience engagement. That’s why the Community Manager must always have an idea about the content to draft and share next, according to your brand strategy.

#9 Performs regular competitor analysis

Community Managers must be always aware of what competitors are doing with success and what not. This means carefully monitoring the social media presence of their competitors and the results they get.

Community Leader – Summing up

The Community Manager role is young, but a vital and rapidly growing one. It is a multi-faceted role that requires not only marketing and public relations skills but also empathy. Community Leaders engage with customers proactively in real, authentic conversations. As players prefer to interact with brands that are authentic and transparent, community moderators can provide gamers with a trusted connection between them and your business.

As they moderate various channels where customers can communicate, share content, and engage to keep the community safe and enjoyable, the Community Manager role is necessary to help your game’s fans feel safe and heard and ultimately become loyal customers.

September 13, 2022

How to develop an effective international SEO strategy and gain new players

Your business game is growing and at some point, you decide to go global. For this, you need to develop your overall business strategy, which includes both localizing the game and adapting your marketing to the local markets. As a key part of your content strategy, online communication starts with having a multilingual website that will help to engage with your customers in their own language. Even if this is the first step in reaching an international audience, it’s just not enough. If you want to rank well on search engines to drive organic traffic to your site and increase sales, you need to develop and implement an international SEO strategy.

As it takes into consideration the unique linguistic, cultural, and technical requirements needed for local engines, global SEO adds an additional level of complexity to your localized website. You need not just to adapt your site to the local markets, but also to optimize it for multiple languages and implement some SEO best practices if you want to be successful. And this can seem a little overwhelming, at least at first glance.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. The goal of this article is to make multilingual SEO much easier and show you the key steps for creating an effective strategy. Then, to help you apply these principles to your website, we’ll share an SEO strategy checklist you can use to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

Let’s start!

What is international SEO?

In a nutshell, international SEO means improving your website’s organic search rankings in multiple languages. Instead of only ranking your content in one language (English or French, for example) you also rank your content in multiple languages like Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Turkish, and so on.

This way, you can…

Increase the number of keywords you can rank for (because you’ll be able to rank for keywords in different languages);
Connect with more people by improving your search visibility. For example, ranking in both Google.com and Google.de;
Create a more user-friendly experience for your audience because they’ll be able to browse in their own language and have a personalized experience.

To target multiple languages, you must create a multilingual website and localize your content.

And here comes the international SEO strategy. While basic on-page SEO principles apply in any language, there are some specifics you need to consider when developing and implementing an SEO strategy for a multilingual website.

How to create your international SEO strategy

As well as for any strategy, to make your SEO efforts successful, it’s crucial to do your homework and develop a coherent strategy and implementation plan. Here are the steps you need to consider:

#1 Decide on the market(s) and language(s) you want to expand first

Regardless of the size of your gaming business or your budget, expanding on multiple markets is costly, but foremost, it’s risky. Therefore, the best solution is to prioritize. On which market should you enter first? Where is your game most wanted? – these are the first questions you need to answer.

Making your research is one of the most vital steps in your global SEO strategy. You can start by looking at the tabs for Language and Location in the Geo option in your Google Analytics account.

If you’re already doing business internationally, then pay attention to the languages and countries that are converting best on your website.

But if you’re not yet acting globally, you can still use the information from the Language and Location tabs – consider the users’ behavior, especially clicks, engagement, and time spent on your site. You can also find useful data when looking at the Audience tab:

Often, a smaller country or one that belongs to the emerging markets can convert better than more affluent countries. Therefore, you should never assume that if a country is bigger or richer, it will convert well.

Just check your data. Seeing where your traffic is coming from can really help you to make the best decisions.

#2 Perform competitor research

Researching your competition is also vital, as you can find information about their SEO strategy, what is performing best for them, and what not.

You can use a tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz – insert their website’s URL, and look for the highlighted countries to see the regions where they rank well. Once you’ve found out which of your competitors to look up for their digital achievements, move it’s time to find out the best keywords you can borrow from them.

#3 Conduct an international keyword research

After identifying your primary competitors, determine which keywords they are indexed for in your target countries and select the best ones to use for your SEO.

If you’re already implementing an SEO strategy in your site’s original language, you should be familiar with the importance of finding the best keywords to rank for.

Keyword research allows you to find out what people are searching for; this way, you can optimize your content for the search terms that offer the best ROI. The same principle applies to your international SEO strategy. If you expand to multiple countries, you’ll need to perform keyword research in each language you’re targeting.

Luckily, the most quality keyword research tools on the market give you the possibility to filter keyword suggestions based on their searching volumes and Keyword difficulty in searchers’ languages. This includes KWFinder, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.

#4 Consider local search engines

When most people think of SEO, they think just about Google. And that’s for a good reason, as Google is the dominant search player in most countries worldwide. Still, it’s not dominant in all countries or regions. According to the data of StatCounter, the top 10 list of worldwide search engines includes Google, followed by Bing from Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, AOL, Ask.com, Mail.ru, DuckDuckGo, and others.

Therefore, when developing your international SEO strategy, you need to perform some research to see whether Google is the major search engine in the markets your target markets or you need to optimize your content for a different search player.

For example, if you want to target countries like China or Korea Google is not the dominant search engine or it has a legitimate competitor:

China – Baidu is the dominant search player, followed by Shenma Sogou and Haosou, while Google comes in 4^th place in the users’ preferences, with just a 1,99% market share.
North Korea – even if Google is preferred by 73.96% of users, it has strong competition from Naver and Daum

South Korea – Naver is the most popular search engine.

And the list can go on.

#5 Localize your brand to succeed with your international SEO efforts

Now that you’ve established your keywords and know the search engines you need to optimize your message for, it’s time to start creating content in the local language. The first step is to localize your website pages. Keep in your mind that it’s not enough just to simply translate the original text into the targeted language and stuff it with keywords. You need to consider special local aspects as well.

For example, you need to be careful with the forms of ‘you’: in Germany, Italy, Spain, and many other countries you should use the polite form of ‘you’ when talking to someone you don’t know. Also, keep in mind that, for example, Germans are much stricter in the use of formal ‘you’ than Italians.

You should also pay attention to the sign-up forms – in Japan, people generally avoid giving out too much information because they value their privacy. Therefore, if you ask for more than the email address, you are highly likely not to get significant conversions, but an increase in bounce rates.

Here are some examples of additional localization steps you need to consider:

display different images based on a user’s language so that you can make sure every image is localized;
update cultural references according to the target market you want to expand to;
use the local currencies and units of measure (for example, Metric instead of Imperial);
adjust your site’s layout to make sure it fits the size and other characteristics of each language;
adjust the format for dates and numbers. For example, day/month/year vs month/day/year.

#6 Create content that’s relevant to your local audience

While you may identify local trends within your original keyword research, local competitors’ sites can help you to identify other local search behaviors that could be worth including in your keyword research.

Knowing your target audience is vital. Therefore, working with local marketers, as well as with translators and editors who are native to your foreign target market is important if you want to understand and provide a personalized user experience to your local audience.

#7 Monitor, measure and optimize your international SEO strategy

The last step in developing an effective SEO strategy is to measure and monitor your performance to adjust your approach and improve long-term performance.

Google and Bing provide free tools to measure performance and identify any errors on your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools which are useful to see how these search engines are crawling and indexing your sites. You’ll most likely also need to use other SEO tools to monitor your keyword rankings in different search engines so make sure you select one that supports all the territories and languages you’re targeting.

It is important to analyze the performance of each market/language individually. Evaluate each KPI for each audience and suggest strategic changes based on this information. For sanity’s sake, tie everything back to your business goals and overall marketing communications strategy.

Use the insights you get to get better results for every audience and get a better profit in all the markets you’re in.

While there are hundreds of tools to analyze your international SEO efforts, you should hire an SEO professional with experience in multiple markets before developing your SEO strategy.

Final words

When developing a multilingual online communication strategy, there are several important SEO factors to consider.

Evaluate your SEO potential in your target countries, analyze the competitive landscape, and pull together a list of the most profitable keywords for your global SEO. Then you need to define a clear intended reader for each of your pages and make sure that your localized content is not considered a duplicate of your original one.

By addressing these issues, you will not only have an effective international SEO strategy but also boost your rankings and improve the overall user experience in every country.

August 28, 2022

Localization Project Manager – The Key To A Successful Localization Strategy

The localization industry is growing every year, with no signs it will slow down too soon. In fact, it represented a $55 billion market in 2020, being expected to reach $73.6 billion by 2025. Therefore, when acting in this market or planning to expand internationally, you’ll encounter, one way or another, the concepts of project management and localization project manager.

When targeting foreign markets, your gaming business has its own localization needs. But are you truly ready to expand internationally? Once you’ve decided the market(s) you want to target, the language(s) you need to localize into, and developed your localization strategy (while also considering the cultural, economic, religious, and legal aspects), you need to move on to the implementation stage as well as allocating your resources.

As you can imagine, coordinating all these efforts is a full-time job. And it’s where the localization project manager comes into the scene.

But,

What is a Localization Project Manager?

The localization project manager is the person who oversees the whole process of entering new markets. He is responsible for implementing the localization strategy of a company and managing translation projects from beginning to end.

And this means hiring, managing, and maintaining relationships with trusted linguistic specialist providers (LSPs), developers, designers, writers, as well as other internal and external team members and final reviewers to produce an efficient localization workflow that ensures your product/service and marketing content are well localized.

Do you really need a Localization PM?

From our experience, yes. Regardless of the size of your company or the number of markets you want to expand on, it’s crucial to have a person who oversees and coordinates all the business processes and tasks from every possible angle (i.e., subtasks, deadlines, stakeholders, etc.).

This is no different in the case of localization. You need a project manager who has the necessary skills, resources, and tools to ensure that there is a single source of truth within the project and that everyone understands their role and gets their work done on time.

The profile of a successful Localization Project Manager

As you can see, a PM must perform many tasks and supervise many processes. To be successful, he/she must have hard and soft certain skills, as well as leadership and organizational skills. Let’s see what they are:

#1 Tech-savvy

First and foremost, a localization project manager must be able to effectively work within the translation management system you choose. Knowing the ins and outs of the chosen software from both a PM and a translator’s point of view prevents any surprises.

#2 Communicative

When speaking about localization project management, there are many stakeholders involved in the process. The project manager must communicate (daily) with all of them to make sure that the deadlines are met, keep the projects under control, and be able to follow and report the progress. This means that he must be able to keep an open line of communication with everyone involved in the projects.

#3 Can prioritize

A localization project also involves many moving parts and a multitude of tasks. A PM must be able to assess and prioritize these tasks so that everything is delivered on time.

#4 A Localization Project Manager must be a born leader

The localization project coordinator must always know who is doing what within the project. He must be able to lead, delegate and coordinate a team and even train the team members on various methodologies or the use of the TMS they work with.

#5 Must be aware of the importance of the local culture

When building the localization strategy for a new country, a localization project manager not only has to make sure that the translations themselves are accurate, but he also must take into account all local aspects – starting with the cultural ones, and continuing with the religious, economic, legal, and technical ones.

They must be aware of both the importance of local elements and the contribution they have to creating a real connection with new potential consumers. Therefore, a localization project coordinator must be open to knowing and understanding the different cultures of the world.

#6 Localization Project Manager should be multi-lingual

Successful PMs don’t need to be fluent in multiple languages, but it’s always a plus. However, they should be globally minded and can easily adapt to work both from the office and remotely, and in different time zones.

What does a Localization PM do?

The exact role and daily tasks of a localization project manager may vary from project to project, business to business, or even country to country. But generally speaking, the project manager is the person who coordinates the entire localization process.

Here’s for example, the job description of a localization project manager at Netflix:

“Netflix is a global product, and our Localization team needs to scale to support that. We are currently looking for a Localization Project Manager to help bring the Netflix experience to international markets.

As a Localization Project Manager, you partner with one or more Localization Program Managers for our different product components (business areas). You are responsible for all elements of the localization workflow, from request creation to job completion for an AB test, feature productization, or supporting the effort.

A successful candidate is a highly motivated individual who works comfortably and autonomously in a fast-paced environment. You have a demonstrated ability to manage priorities and projects and the right mix of organizational and communication skills.

Responsibilities:

Manage localization projects and requirements across external vendors
Work cross-functionally with Netflix stakeholders to identify critical business blockers and collaborate to solve and optimize these
Oversee end-to-end localization workflow using our translation management tools and systems
Identify and manage project risk through prioritization, bug management, and any other means necessary
Manage independent projects within the program
Drive high-quality output from localization vendors & freelancers
Oversee the localization budget for your projects by gathering data on the cost, timeliness, and quality of your projects
Contribute to project kickoffs & meetings with cross-functional groups for planning
Manage & train different vendors, translators, and reviewers
Evangelize Globalization to stakeholders
Support innovation initiatives like A/B Tests”

It is hard to define where the job of the localization Project Mangers starts and ends – it looks rather like one continuous task. However, as you can see, there are some important responsibilities in the localization project manager role, and they can also vary based on the company’s needs you work for as a PM or the industry’s standards.

As a localization project supervisor, you have to tackle a myriad of tasks. One of the most important responsibilities is related to the TMS used by the company, in which you must be an expert (or at least have experience in using a TMS and learn the one chosen by the company extremely quickly).

The other important request is to be an expert user of at least one of the project management tools existing on the market.

Which project management tools do localization PMs use?

Kissflow Project – an all-in-one powerful tool is one of the best free project management software on the market. It offers all the capabilities of a modern project tool but it targets the functional managers with an unstated project management responsibility rather than certified project managers.

Trello – is a leading online project management software with built-in collaboration tools to work with your teams. It’s lightweight, simple, and straightforward to use. It uses boards, lists, and cards to create tasks and stay organized. Users can collaborate within the cards, share files, and leave comments.

Asana – is a flexible SaaS project management tool with a focus on collaboration, with workflows that automate recurring tasks. It is intuitive with different task displays and supports custom fields and forms. You can even invite unlimited guest users. There are also options to build custom rules and approval workflows.

Zoho Projects – helps businesses keep track of tasks, collaborate, bug tracking, and run intuitive reports. The online project management tool offers features like Gantt charts and the ability to billable hours on multiple projects simultaneously. Zoho Projects also boasts a very impressive suite of communications tools, including real-time chat and forum pages.

Monday.com – Monday.com combines a visually appealing interface and useful project visualizing tools into intuitive, simple project management software. It’s flexible and offers a transparent way to organize your work. There are project templates on top which you can build your own boards. There are plenty of display options available like the map view and the calendar view.

How to be the best PM for your team

The most successful localization experts and managers (like any professional in any industry) always ask the right questions to find the best answers and make realistic and achievable projections.

At the same time, you must have good prioritization and organization skills, to obtain results (visual, linguistic, technical), while staying within the project budget.

A thorough understanding of the market and local customs will make you one of the most reputable. This can be learned (and proper certification plays an important role here, helping you gain credibility) or acquired through experience (a combination of both would be most effective).

You should also be able to speak multiple languages. As mentioned before, this is not mandatory, but it’s a great advantage. It helps establish proper communication with the translators and better estimate the timeframe for the localization project.

As a localization manager, you should also understand the translation services market. Thus, you can negotiate better terms and understand what requirements are realistic and what are not.

Final words

Whether you want to expand into a single market or multiple markets at once, or the size of localization projects, having a project manager to organize and oversee the entire process can significantly help smooth out what for many can seem like an impossible task.

At SandVox, our localization project managers are not service providers, but your strategic partners. They work hand-in-hand with you along the project, being able to communicate with important stakeholders and manage translator deliverables to provide a seamless translation workflow. Combining human skills with the organizational ones and the right tool, actually innovate and get the most out of their team. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you to successfully expand in the new markets.

August 17, 2022

10 Best Practices To Localize Marketing Content And Gain New Users

Expanding internationally is a tried and tested growing strategy for many businesses, especially in the gaming industry. However, when deciding to target foreign audiences and enter new markets, you need to think about localizing not just the game itself, but also its marketing. And we are including here both your overall marketing strategy and your marketing content for the specific locale.

Because not paying enough attention to the culture and preferences of your new customers is the biggest mistake you can easily make. The result? Missing out on significant opportunities results in lost users, fewer fans, and ultimately, lower sales.

First, what is content localization?

Marketing content localization is the process of taking content that you’ve produced for your primary market and adapting it for your new target market. Even if at the first glance you might that translation is enough, the process is more complicated and involves more aspects.

Why marketing content is important

First, because you need to be significant to your target market. This means adapting not just your product to fit your new customers’ needs, but also the message you convey and the way you communicate with them.

The more relevant the information is to potential customers, the more likely they are to take the desired action – play/download/buy your game, etc. And presenting information in their native language is the first step.

Besides, to win over users, you have to “sound like them”. And this means localization – adapting your messages to your new target market considering their norms and cultures.

If we take a closer look at the statistical data, localizing content also makes commercial sense. A 2020 study by the Common Sense Advisory, found that:

40% of respondents say they won’t buy from e-commerce websites in another language
65% prefer content in their own language

marketing-content-localization-statistic-user-data

Customers prefer content in their own language

73% want to read product reviews in their own language.
30% stated they’ll never buy from English-only websites, and another 30% say they do so only rarely.

Moreover, the same study shows that local-language support creates stronger and long-lasting customer relationships, as 75% percent of respondents say they’re more likely to buy the same brand again if client service is in their language. Even if this preference is strongest among those with less English competencies, still 60% of those who are most confident in reading English favor having customer support in their own language.

In short: having a content localization strategy is vital for your business if you want to expand in foreign markets.

10 best practices to consider when you tackle marketing content localization

What content should you localize? The answer is simple: all the content that helps you to advertise your video game – from your website to social media accounts, social media posts, ads, app store presentation, visuals, print materials, user guides, etc.

Where to begin? Let’s break it down step by step:

#1 Understand your best-performing markets

Just like when you develop your game localization strategy, your marketing content localization should start by drawing up a list of your most important markets. This means that analyzing your existing international traffic is the first step.

Use Google Analytics and other SEO tools to understand which markets are already driving traffic. You’ll get an understanding of which markets to localize into, and what channels to focus on.

Understanding the market prioritization will help you to plan and allocate the resources for localization.

#2 Conduct localized keyword research in your target markets

Once you know which markets to target, it’s time to conduct local keyword research. Here are the most important steps:

don’t simply translate the existing keywords in your source language into the target one, because how your audience understands, describes, and searches for online games is likely to vary by market. By simply translating your existing keywords you might miss out on the biggest opportunities. For example, by simply translating web content localization in Japanese, you’ll have ウェブコンテンツのローカライズ; but if you localize your translation, the correct version is ウェブコンテンツのローカリゼーション“
find out the competition level for your localized keywords so you can decide where to focus your efforts.

#3 Understand the digital landscape in your target markets

Even if Google is the most used search engine all over the world, it’s not the only one you can rely on. For example, if you target the Chinese market, you should know that Baidu is the most important search engine in China, followed by Qihoo 360 & Sogou.

marketing-content-localization-Chinese-search-engines

Most Important Chinese Search Engines

When speaking about social media platforms, statistics show that each market has its own digital landscape – involving different platforms and user behaviors.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter are the most popular social media platforms in western countries with 2.9 billion, 2.2 billion, 2 billion respectively 212 million monthly active users. Therefore, if you target different markets belonging to this region, these social media networks provide you with the best opportunities to connect with the right potential gamers.
On the other side, if you target the Chinese market, for example, you should consider that it has seen the emergence of many innovative new social platforms, with WeChat, Weibo, and Little Red Book being the most popular.

In addition, keep in mind that different search engines may require different optimization techniques, which could affect how you approach content localization.

#4 Start small with your marketing content localization – and build from there

When done properly, content localization requires a lot of time and resources. Therefore, it’s better to consider a step-by-step approach when entering new markets:

instead of localizing everything up-front, you could start with prioritizing your target markets and approaching localization in stages: priority 1 market, then priority 2, priority 3, and so on.
localize your website for the markets you want to expand on, as it is the most important channel you can use to interact with your potential gamers;
you can also start analyzing your most profitable keywords and develop a paid search campaign, with links to your website
When you can see demand, create a localized landing page, providing key information about your game
Depending on your results, you can go further and extend your localization efforts to other marketing content and channels.
Your budget may not allow you to localize everything, especially when you are an indie game developer and that’s perfectly ok; start with considering what will have the biggest impact in each market and be selective. Also, create your content according to each stage of the customer lifecycle – discovery, education, buying, post-buying, and advocacy.

#5 Decide what type and style of marketing content to localize

Before starting your content localization, analyze what is popular in your target markets, by answering the following questions:

What content formats perform best for your target audience? Video? Long-form or short-form content? Or social media posts?
What content do your main competitors publish? What’s performing well for them and what doesn’t work? Use SEO tools and some other analytics tools to provide competitive insight.

#6 Create a flexible and scalable content plan

If it’s not well planned, you may face the unpleasant situation of creating more content than is needed for one market and not enough for others. To avoid it, consider to:

develop a realistic marketing content calendar for each market, with clear deadlines;
design your team structure and hire people (in-house or freelancers) to create all the content according to your needs. It’s crucial to invest time to set up the marketing processes, as well as the roles and responsibilities of your team members;
while you must pay attention to the local cultural nuances, look for similarities across markets to identify the content that can be repurposed and republished in all markets.

#7 Balance budget constraints with local expertise

No brand has infinite resources. Successful content marketing localization means generating the biggest impact possible within your budget. To accomplish this goal, you should avoid the temptation to use just automated translations. Even if machine translations have come a long way, you still need to use human translators to avoid embarrassing (and potentially expensive) mistakes.

This way, you can make sure that language, visuals, style, tone, and references are all on point.

#8 Be authentic to local audiences

Being authentic to your local potential customers means more than using the right words and phrases. When performing your content marketing localization you should also pay attention to different other elements, such as:

imagery, how colors are perceived across cultures, check-out forms and subscription forms (taking into account that addressing formats differ), expectations, legal and regulatory issues, date and time formats, and so on.
SEO elements that need to be localized – URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, menu and navigation elements, image alt tags etc.

#9 Prioritize SEO

As mentioned before, even if it dominates the online search world, Google is not the only search engine on the market. There are many other options available, with implications for your content strategy.

Therefore, before starting to localize your content, understand the search engine landscape in each of your target markets – not just Google but also Bing, Baidu, Yahoo!, Yandex, Ask, DuckDuckGo, Naver, and so on.

marketing-content-localization-top-search-engines

Most Important Search Engines you may consider for marketing content localization

Invest your time (while also considering hiring SEO professionals) to understand the best practices for SEO for the relevant search engines.

As you localize your content, use these SEO insights to determine which keywords and key phrases you use, and how to structure your content.

#10 Promote your localized marketing content

Once you’ve localized your marketing content, you need to promote it. Otherwise, you’ll end up having a big failure. In terms of promotion, it’s always a good idea to work with local media and influencers to generate news coverage, links, and business opportunities.

Again, marketing channels vary by market, and it’s not just about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. A local marketing expert can advise you on relevant methods and channels to promote your game in your target markets.

Summing Up

Marketing localization is not only about tailoring communication strategies for local users, but also about personalizing content. To remain creative, generate interest, and increase conversion, localization needs to be professional and unobtrusive.

Although adapting marketing content while respecting cultural specificities can seem a daunting task, the right localization partner can help you manage the whole process. Get in touch now and find out how SandVox can help you gain a competitive advantage when entering new markets.

August 9, 2022

8 Best Practices to Improve User experience For Your Your Gamers

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When it comes to customer service, the gaming industry is full of contrasts, mainly due to the large number of companies on the market, the differences between them, but also the multitude of services needed to provide an excellent user experience. You might expect the big game publishers and developers to excel in this area, while the indie game studios would have shortcomings, but that’s not always true.

The customer experience is important, but how do you support your entire player base all day, every day, in every language, on every channel, at a low cost and a high level of quality?

Let’s take a look at some indicators for measuring it and some good practices that both new companies in the game and veterans could implement.

But first,

What is user experience?

The user experience is the impression that players have about your brand as a whole and includes all aspects of the buyer’s journey. Their interaction with your game(s)s and services and with your company in general, results in their vision of your brand. Positive or negative, the consumer experience influences your entire business, including revenue and profit.

The main elements that create the customer experience are the people and the products (games). Are they amazed by your game? Are they happy with the attention they get from a customer service representative to help them solve their problem?

These are just some general examples of factors that come into play when creating a great user experience. However, there are several metrics you can analyze to know if you are on the right track. Here is a list of the top 10, and their significance.

Top 8 user experience metrics

According to The Lumoa State of the Customer Experience survey, all companies use one or several of the 6 customer experience metrics to analyze the user experience: Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Churn rate, Retention rate, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or Customer Effort Score (CES).

Let’s see what they mean.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Why it’s important: CES tells you how easy it is for your customers to find something. It can be anything from finding the game you want to downloading, updating, and resolving a request with customer support.

Basically, the more effortless you make the user experience, the more likely are your players to download and play your game.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Why it’s important: it tells you where and how to improve user experience. You can use CSAT responses to figure out which parts of your game players are satisfied or unsatisfied with. Then make any necessary adjustments to these specific areas.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Why it’s important: it shows you how loyal your players can be and how many of them are likely to recommend your game to a friend or colleague. Usually, you use a scale from 1 to 10, and you can split the respondents into three categories:

detractors – those that answer 1-6
neutrals – people who answer 7 – 8
promoters – those that answer 9 – 10.

Customer Churn Rate: understand how to improve your user experience

Why it’s important: it tells you how many players are leaving your game after a period of time or no longer paying the subscription fee (if you are using the F2P model). The lower the churn rate, the more loyal gamers you’ll have.

Use the drop-off points in your retention measurement to see where, or which group of customers, are losing interest in your product. Then make all necessary adjustments to improve the user experience in these areas.

User Retention Rate:

Why it’s important: by analyzing this metric, you’ll find out how many players use your game over a given time and it’s highly connected to your churn rate, as previously discussed.

It shows you how much gamers value your product and have the chance to make improvements. As it’s far more expensive to onboard new users than to keep the current ones, this is something worth doing,

Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Why it’s important: It tells you how many players are actively engaging with your game in a given time – in this case, within a month.

You also need to be aware that this metric shows how a user’s activity changes over time. If you want a more in-depth analysis, you can also calculate Weekly Active Users (WAU) and Daily Active Users (DAU), depending on how often gameplayers are logging into your product.

Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate

Why it’s important: it tells you how many of your trial users (or free subscribers) are turning into paying gamers for your product. You’ll also get an overview of the number of users you can expect to see turn into paying customers.

Customer Referral Rate

Why it’s important: if NPS shows you the number of users who say they’ll refer your game to a friend or colleague, the referral rate shows how many are actually doing it. It’s the volume of referred subscriptions/purchases from your total selling.

In short, when customers are referring you to their colleagues, family, and friends, it means they believe your game has high quality and is worth investing in. But for this, they need to have had their own positive experiences. This means all interactions with your business. The smoother these processes are, the more likely they’ll be to refer you.

Top 8 best practices for providing a great user experience to your players

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that a professional customer support team is vital. And from this point of view, who can understand and help players better than…. gamers?

The best people to hire for this role are those who really understand or also play the game. But just gaming expertise is not enough. To be professional and reach their (and your) goals, your customer support team needs to have access to resources and also receive proper training: this is the only way to better understand what fixes what, as well as to ensure the quality of the solutions they provide.

Also, make a rule of using personalized replies to your gamers, to demonstrate that you value your users. In the years of mass emailing and bots, showing empathy and care is becoming increasingly important.

The golden rules to provide a great user experience

Provide a great gameplay

Offering a great product (or service) is the first rule of every successful business. And especially in the gaming industry, the players’ expectations are very high. This means you need to pay attention to:

Story: the game story is vital in engaging your audience on an emotional level. Therefore, make sure your product is based on an engaging story with relatable characters.
Graphics & sound: Poor-quality graphics or sounds are the sure way to make your users move on to the next game. So, test your game to fix any visual errors and replace any annoying music that can disturb your players. And if you want to target a foreign audience, then check the localized version of your game to make sure it fits all the local customs and rules.
Game mechanics: There’s a fine balance between having the difficulty level too high or too low. Finding that balance is key for gaming engagement. The mechanics and the game must be thoughtful and smooth for your customers.

Prioritize data security

As a gaming publisher, you’ll be handling the personal information of your customers. But people need to be sure that their accounts, personal data, and passwords are safe. Therefore, it’s important to make sure you protect their data from hackers and malicious attacks. There are a few ways to do this:

Implement multi-factor authentication
Apply firewalls
Use Risk-Based Authentication
Utilize password management software
Provide parents with ways to limit a child’s access

Be proactive

Proactivity is extremely important for every gaming studio, especially when you are an indie gaming studio. So, don’t expect users to reach out when they have an issue. Some players don’t complain – they just stop playing.

Be supportive to provide a great user experience

Build plenty of options for your customers to reach and interact with you. Your gamers don’t want to pause their session to look for help, they need it immediately. After all, nothing breaks an immersive experience like suddenly needing to reach out for help. That’s why you should build in-game helping tools; also Help Centers and FAQs are great options.

Be fast

The faster, the better. No one likes to wait for help, especially in the middle of a game.

Be multilingual

If you expanded to foreign markets, then speak your customers’ native language whenever you can. It increases trust, empathy, and loyalty. Localize not just your game, but also your help center, provide live multilingual support, and translate User Generated Content (UCG) in forums and communities.

Be available at any time

When buying it, gamers from the whole world can and will play your game at any time of the day, so expect them to reach out at all times. That’s why your Customers Service Support should be available 24/7, especially for massively multiplayer online games. And real-time chat is always a great option.

Be everywhere to provide a great user experience

As your customers can be anywhere in the world, you must be there for them, no matter where they are. Phone and email support are relevant, important, and must-have supporting channels. But don’t ignore other channels, like social media, live chat, and bots. For example, Pokemon Go took the world by storm back in 2016, becoming one of the biggest mobile games in history. As more and more people tried to use the app, their servers crashed. To provide good customer support and improve the user experience, the company started to post regular updates on its official website and social media. “[Niantic] kept Pokémon Go’s devout fans abreast of its progress in fixing bugs such as distorted audio, GPS issues, and server connectivity problems.”

Be personal

Players tend to be extremely loyal if their experience is fun and hassle-free, from start to finish. Of course, errors will occur, and players will not give much importance to instructions. Mistakes will be made by both parties, but if you can solve a problem quickly before escalating, it will pay off in the long run.

User-Generated Content (UGC) – blogs, forums, community content, and customer reviews – are also powerful tools for improving the multilingual customer experience. Game companies that provide translated content are more likely to turn customers into advocates. In other words, the more content you offer them in their own language, the happier your customers will be.

But that doesn’t mean you have to hire an international community of customer support agents. By harnessing the power of machine translation services and human intelligence, you can understand and be understood by your entire player base. It is also important to hire native-speaking agents; get consistent multilingual coverage 24/7, including holidays and peak times. And don’t forget: they hire agents for their human skills, not their language skills.

To bot or not? This is the question

Today’s consumers demand 24-hour access to customer service.

According to an eMarketer study, 38% of users consider getting their issue solved in a single interaction as the most important aspect of a good digital customer experience, while 26% said it was receiving a speedy and timely response.

If they can’t solve their issue by themselves, your players expect to get help via live chat, phone, or email. They want an immediate response, and whether you meet their expectations or not, they’ll share their user experience on social media and with their peers. Therefore, automation in customer experience is important and it can take many forms, from multilingual customer communication to AI-powered chatbots.

In conclusion,

The gaming market has grown constantly, and it will continue this trend. The competition is becoming fiercer. Therefore, acting in this industry is not all fun and games.

The gaming market has grown steadily and will continue to do so. The competition is getting tougher. Therefore, acting in this industry is not just all fun and games. It means a lot of work and a customer-centric approach. In a world where the next game option is just a click away or a download away, exceptional customer service is key to keeping players and their loyalty safe.

But what are your players looking for? And how can you involve and support them?

We hope we’ve helped you answer some of these questions, by explaining to you some of the best practices you can implement to provide excellent customer support services.

If you want to discuss any specific issue, do not hesitate to contact us. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter or read our blog, where we regularly share information about translation, localization, game marketing, and more.

May 20, 2022

Category: Articles

What is Fan Translation?

Types of Fan Translation

Fansub

Fandubs

Fanfiction Translation

Scanlation

The Pros of Fan Translation

Access to content

Community-Driven

Free and accessible

Creative outlet

The Cons of Fan Translation

Translation Quality

Unintended Translations

Lack of LQA

Missing Access to Original Text

Missing Access to Licensor

Legal issues

Conclusion

What is a high-quality translation?

Benefits of a high-quality translation

Characteristics of a high quality translation

1. Directed to the right target audience

2. Error-Free

3. Meaning & Intent

4. Consistency

5. Appropriateness

6. Fluency

Conclusion

The Limitations of Machine Translation

Hiring a Localization Specialist Is Immediately Noticeable

A Fan Translation Is Not Sufficient

Price Fallacy Trying To Do Translations In-House

Hiring

Quality

Reliability

Management

Get a Localization Specialist Today

The Pros of DeepL

Free Version Available

Learns as It Goes

Better Translation Than Google Translate

The Cons of DeepL

Limited Languages

Quality Varies in Each Language

Privacy Issues

Limited Database

Context

Specific Game Translation Issues with DeepL

Consistency

Technical Requirements

Punctuation

Placeholders

User Interface

Language Nuances

The Most Reliable Machine Translation Tool

What is localization quality assurance?

Why do you need locqa for your game?

What does game localization qa include?

Localization Quality Assurance best practices

#1. Start early and test often

#2. Hire gamers as localization quality assurance testers as they can better understand your product

#3. Perform a bilingual examination as part of your localization quality assurance testing

#4. Look for translation errors and consider the context

#5. Leverage technologies to facilitate localization testing

#6. Use automated QA modules to improve the localization quality assurance process

#7. Evaluate customer experience

#8. Create your Localization AQ report

Bonus point: Checklist for localization testing

# 6: Functional/UI testing should consider

#7: Location-related testing scope

# 8: Linguistic testing pays attention to

# 9: Monitor your KPIs

Final words

What is a gaming community?

Benefits of communities

Why do you need good community management?

What is a Community Manager?

Qualities of a Good Community Manager