Quote:
Originally Posted by Fienepien
But you can safely assume that *generally speaking* the German market is not interested in English voices and English subtitles.
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I have to disagree at some extend. True, I'm not sure if there's a real MAREKT for it in terms of selling considerably more copies. But there's definitely a large INTEREST. I very often read in German adventure forums that people would really love bilingual versions of the games. There are a lot of people who would love to hear the voices the original game designer has casted for the characters and to play the game with all the subtle jokes that might get lost in translation.
The fact that most German games don't offer bilingual versions is mostly due to licensing reasons. Developers or publishers owning the world wide rights often fear that it might get harder to find international publishing partners if there's a high risk that many people from the international community have already imported the game as multilingual version perhaps months before the English release or the US release. That's why multilingual versions are often only reluctantly allowed.
I know the case is different if the publisher for a certain country doesn't have the budget for producing full voice dubbing. In that case they will obviously need to use the English language and only translate subtitles. But even then, they usually won't make the game really "multilingual" because you cannot switch the screen verbs and the subtitles.
OK, once you have a UK version, you cannot prevent US exports and vice versa. That's a situation publishers HAVE to live with
But let's return to the situation in Germany. I remember that when dtp/Anaconda published the German Dreamfall in a real multilingual version, they got A LOT of positive feedback from the gamers. They also promised they would try to repeat this as often as possible with future games, but so far I think Dreamfall stayed an exception.
Well maybe they will remember this gamers' request when publishing So Blonde. After all, THEY will be owner of the world wide rights. But I think that chances will be biggest if they have already found an English and US partner (have they?) and if the release dates are anyway planed to be pretty close. Otherwise I fear the the chances will be rather slim.
