the biggest problem of Telltale Games....
I'm a fan of this company and its games, but there is something I am furious over you and disrespect they have with the Hispanic community by refusing to bend and translate their games to this language (Spanish), it seems and a company that are able to do this because their games are very famous among the Latino and Hispanic community but we all complain about not being able to enjoy their games because they were not designed for this type of public who are Spanish speakers, which I I have very annoying and also to the wider community, many famous pages that analyze and criticize video games and developers have said that until Telltale Games do not improve in this aspect does not respect the market and in the countries of is winning Spanish or Latin-speaking, the market for video games is too profitable and high demand these Spanish-speaking countries and this company (Telltale Games) is no longer a simple independent company and is a millionaire, prominent and capable companies to do good and things definitely are losing much of their market not open internationally as other empesas and do not take into account the fans on this side of the world who speak Spanish, I think we should improve as quickly as possible in this regard and They are now able to make multilanguage video games that have the potential of being able to play without any proble in Spanish-speaking countries. not only they are translated, but also that they are fully dubbed into Spanish, remember that the second most spoken language in the world is Spanish.
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This post had to translate with the help of the traducctor of google, as I do not use the English language, I hope you can see ... and do something about it.
thanks
Italian subtitles also are not taken in consideration....
And the history shows that they're very against us Italian.
They even let us play TWD season 1 in italian, but then retracted for season 2.
That's very sad, cause I've read many Italian websites and forum reducing scores and inciting to boycott TTG for their lack of Italian language.
Italian websites reducing scores because the game doesn't support their language? What morons are they? And who allowed them to review? Instead of boycotting Telltale, they could actually learn English or download an unofficial localization instead of bitching about such a stupid thing.
Here are snippets of some reviews (there's plenty) that states that no italian subtitles are detracting from the experience (there are a lot of this kind of reviews - and I only focused on Minecraft Story Mode, leaving aside forums too.....):
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"The parents need to know english very well, as the game is dubbed and subtitled only in english (so, no italian)"
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"Given that these kind of games are good almost exclusively for their story, to leave aside those who cannot understand english cut off inevitably a portion of players who deserve to enjoy the game as anyone."
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"Sadly no Italian mentioned. We don't pretend for italian dubbing, but at least subtitles in our language, given that other languages like german, russian, spanish, portuguese, french are included."
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"Cons: [...] English only subtitles"
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"As you may have noticed, Italian is missing, and that's sadly a constant on Telltale Games: pratically all the games of the software house are without italian subtitles, and there are no news about future improvement."
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"Jokes or fun situations are sadly understandable only for those who can speak english very well."
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"Who called the Whambulance?"
Also no German subtitles available but am I complaining about it? No...
Im actually glad that there Aren't German Subtitles. They mostly suck. But MC:SM actually has German Subtitles though. But they Really, Really suck.
English language > Spanish language.
You've got the sympathize with them, could you cope with this.
Or you could learn German...
Instead of hating on other languages how about we just admit that there SHOULD be Italian or Spanish subtitles in an Italian or Spanish speaking country! I mean if TTG is marketing their products in these countries, one would assume they would at least add subtitles in that native language.
I live in the US and speak a little bit of Italian, but if an exceptional game were released here only in Italian, I would be upset. We all really enjoy these games and stories, it is unfortunate that many people who buy the game never have these amazing experiences because they didn't know there would be no subtitles.
Thank you for your understanding
I agree luckily my english skills are fair enough
Of course, my friend
It would be nice if they incorporated other languages into their games(although to be honest with Season 2 of TWDG, I think we should've had English Subtitles when the Russians were speaking), although I'm not sure if they will or if they can? It's very similar to allot of games these days, they don't use foreign subtitles, probably because some companies only focus on making games in English, I know how you feel since there are allot of Japanese Games and Anime that I'd love to get English Subtitles for, TTG may do it in the future but it seems unlikely as of now. I mean I can understand the extra effort in translating stuff, especially when some English sentences don't translate very well, but I'd hope for other languages that TTG finds Translators and doesn't use Google Translate for Translation. Or perhaps they could add an optional DLC that adds different language subtitles to their previously released games? I think we should be supporting the use of other languages for subtitles, it doesn't change anything for us who understand English but it makes the game actually playable and understandable for others.
I'm originally Portuguese but currently living in the U.K, so I have some understanding of the issue. Portugal is a small little country with a sh*t economy and too much red-tape. We're also a minority and games are very rarely translated or dubbed into portuguese. With that said, the problem here is not Telltale.
Why should Telltale (a company that exists to make money to make more games to make money, and so on) invest in a massive translation to a language that is not profitable in the game industry? Yes, spanish is the second most spoken language in the world with 414,000,000 estimated speakers (I'm one of them), but countries with spanish language are also a breeding ground for piracy or just lack of interest in games. Most spanish speakers aren't in spain, but in south america, where economies are trashed, prices are ridiculous, the infrastructure for good I.T. doesn't exist and people have little to no money.
If they retracted the spanish from iterations of their games then there's a reason behind it. Clearly the games doesn't sell very well in spanish speaking countries, and the revenue return from those countries does not compensate paying translation fees. They can't just translate the game and be done with it, besides paying translators they need to hire customer support in spanish, this means forums and website in spanish, moderators, administration fees, extra-hosting, not to mention red tape from each individual country to approve said translations and infrastructure, plus distribution.
Boycotting Telltale will have the exact opposite reaction that you're asking. By not buying their products in spanish (or italian, or whatever) speaking countries, you're just adding fuel to the fire. Meaning Telltale won't see (again) any significant sales in those countries, and therefore come to the conclusion that endorsing a spanish translation is STILL not worth the time or money, so boycott all you want, but ironically it will only delay what you're requesting here in the first place.
People also seem to be under the impression that Telltale is a multimillionaire company, they're most likely not. Telltale is not E.A. or Activision. They are still a very small company with small infrastructures, you can tell by these forums, by the lack of phone support numbers (unlike the big ones that have dedicated country support call centres) and by the small magnitude of their games.
TWD season 2 was estimated to have cost $5.000.000 to make, that's lunch money for the big players. Season 1 was probably even less because Telltale hadn't even won the notoriety or awards that season 1 brought them. Just for comparison sake, Grand Theft Auto V costed $128M to develop, plus $137M in marketing. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 costed "only" $50M, but had a $200M budget for marketing. Even a smaller story telling game like Heavy Rain (which had localization in spanish and other languages) costed a whooping $55M (disregarding inflation).
So I reckon it's pretty normal that Telltale simply cannot profitably afford translation right now. So instead of complaining in the forums, maybe you could invest in yourself and learn the third most spoken language in the world, because like it or not, the distribution and economic panorama of that language is a lot better. Any person up to the age of 35 to 40 should know how to speak this language, if not, they should actively seek it, because it will just set you back if you want to take any professional career farther than spain or south america.
Suggest all you want in the forums, and request your language to be translated all you want. But don't rant and criticize or tell the company that "they" have a problem when you are the ones that have no idea and have done absolutely no research on the costs of game development and the money that the company actually has available.
You just single-handed explained the main reason why Telltale does other things, too. Like, episodes don't come out quicker because they aren't a megacorporation with thousands of employees, or they obviously would only target franchises with promise. It isn't anything to condone, of course, that's just how business works. Pretty much everything is profit-driven, and honestly no one should blame them for making choices that either bring potential revenue or cut costs not worth the time and effort.
My respect to you, intellectual sir/madam.
I agree with almost everything that you said, especially the part about bashing/boycotting Telltale. But I would like to point out a few things.
But isn't possible that their games are not selling so well mostly because a lot of people can't speak English? I'm from Brazil, there's a huge Telltale fanbase here, but I know a LOT of people who'd love to play their games but can't because they don't speak English. We're talking about text heavy games, it's impossible for someone with a mediocre English to play them. A lot of South American countries have a poor education system, it's uncommon to see someone with a really decent English here. If you go watch any brazilian gameplay of any Telltale game, most of the comments are complaints about the lack of Portuguese subtitles.
I'm not sure where you found this information, could you cite the source?
I have to disagree. People have been playing the ''Telltale is a small company'' card for too long in my opinion. Of course they're still not EA or Activision (thank god) but they're not as small as everyone think they're. Their sales have been fairly decent since TWD S1, they have 300+ employees (the same as CD Projekt Red, the company behind The Witcher 3, for example) and they've been working with very successful franchises. Besides, it's very common nowadays to see indie companies investing in translations to Spanish/Italian/French/German etc. So that's not really an excuse.
Here is the source of the estimated $5M. It was never officially announced, so it will never be a fact.
Yes, Projekt Red is a small team, and the internal development of The Witcher 3 was composed of only 240 people. But you're comparing a Telltale game with another game that costed a whooping $81M to make, so it's no surprise there's some margin to translate to Spanish like they did. On the other hand you have Telltale with budgets of probably 5 to 20, 25 million.
Also take into account that Telltale has 240 staff members, apparently, in their California studio, working in different games and projects. Notice how Project Red had 240 staff for The Witcher 3 alone? Telltale apparently has the same 240 for everything, that means smaller teams for each game. Not to mention people out of those 240 that are not actually game devs, but rather support, like finance, HR, legal, and whatever else you might think of.
So we have: Budget constraints and staff constraints. That's all they need to have to cut down and prioritize. So despite being (only in appearance) very similar sized teams, they apparently aren't, and neither are their game budgets.
Fact of the matter is, neither you or I, or anybody else here has a clue of what their spending and expenses are, so all we can do speculate and research with some common sense thrown in the middle. If they had the money to throw around with translations, I'm sure they would, because as you say, it will affect sales if people can't understand it. But if they don't, it's because they really can't, since the risk/reward is too high. It's just not a profitable and sane financial decision at this time.
Again, the above is mostly speculation apart from where sources are quoted, but it can't be too far from the actual situation. It's just a shame people don't even bother to read these as they are a wall of text disagreeing with them, instead of another 3 lines ranting voice in their favor saying how evil and stupid the company is for not doing what they want without as much as a clue of... anything really.