Company Bandai Namco Entertainment for over a dozen years it has been present in the Russian market and supports our gamers with high-quality official localization of everything that it releases. In light of the fact that other major publishers often do not want to translate products in our country into Russian, we wondered why Bandai Namco Entertainment does it. Unfortunately, we did not recognize the budget spent on localization and its payback, but we listened to an interesting story The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan and found out a lot more.
Good afternoon! My name is Evgeny Mirkin, I am a freelance editor of the first Russian site for gamers – GameMAG.Ru. Could you introduce yourself and tell our readers about your work at Bandai Namco?
Clare: Hi, I’m Claire McGowan, Production Manager at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe. The production service manages all the testing, localization, and primary certification processes at BNEE, helping our production and development teams produce great games around the world.
Oleg: Hi, I’m Oleg Khazhinsky, Commercial Director for Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, and I am largely responsible for the BNEE business in Russia.
You are a rare Japanese company that translates almost all of its games into Russian, including niche RPGs such as the Tales of series, which makes BNE very different from other studios, since many do not translate their games into Russian. How did BNE come to the decision to localize everything?
Clare: Indeed, when it comes to translation, we initially focused on France, Italy, Germany and Spain. But at present, as the leading entertainment company in the world, we at BNE believe that we should do our best to provide at least translation for France, Italy, Germany and Spain plus Russia, when possible. It is important to us and is related to our mission to bring “More fun for everyone”. About ten years ago, we conducted a study that identified the Russian market as one of the key emerging markets. We understood the potential and from that moment began to introduce Russian localization into most of our games.
Users often discuss that translation into Russian (whether subtitles or sound) is very expensive, and games often do not pay off in terms of sales. Presumably, therefore, publishers refuse to do more localizations. Nevertheless, Bandai Namco continues to delight Russian gamers. What can you tell us about budgets – is a translation really so expensive and may not pay off? Can you dispel myths?
Clare: There are many other aspects that should be considered in addition to translation, for example proofreading when you check grammar and spelling, and editing when you check general consistency or even sound. All things considered, costs are similar to other languages; but there are things that can be trickier in translating the Russian language.
Good example – The Dark Pictures: Man of Medanwhich we released in 2019 completely in Russian. Without going into spoilers, the game has three characters from French Polynesia. To ensure the best possible experience, we worked with three voice actors from France who could speak Russian as a second language. The result was magnificent: they did not have an accent when speaking French – their native language – and at the same time there was a clear French accent when speaking in Russian, which created a more exciting and realistic experience. Finding the perfect match in Russian was much more difficult than in other languages.
All this is part of our long-term investments in the Russian market, including, for example, regular participation in IgroMire. We hope that we will interact more and more with our fans in Russia, and at the same time we will invest more in the market.
We at the editorial office noticed that some BNE games sometimes suffer from a loss of meaning in the Russian version. Do you read reviews with wishes and does this affect future projects?
Clare: One of the last steps in the localization process is quality testing. We have native speakers who analyze the game and, among other things, provide feedback on the quality of the translation. We have come a long way to make it as good as possible; however, small errors can always slip away. We are serious about providing the most exciting experience possible, so we take the feedback to heart and we will often fix problems with the patch if we can. Our games can potentially become part of the development of our younger audience, so it is very important for us to ensure the correct spelling and good grammar.
Each game we release makes it easier to translate the next. For example, in the framework of one franchise, where you can reuse the translation of character names, locations, attacks or catch phrases. We try to have the same team work on this franchise. As brand knowledge accumulates, they can provide even better localization.
We also noticed that some things are well adapted to the market. For example, local memes sometimes slip through. Do you specifically hire locals who understand them, or are your European or Japanese employees also versed in them?
Clare: In fact, we do not have an internal translation team; We use external partners with whom we have a long-standing relationship. We set a very high bar, and depending on the context, we turn to translators who are well versed in cultural references and even memes.
Bandai Namco games are available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. Which platform is the most popular in terms of sales of your games in Russia? Can you name the data at least as a percentage between platforms?
Oleg: All platforms are very important for us, we have very good relations with all platform holders and we try to support them as much as possible, and we feel their support in response. Russia has historically been a PC country, therefore our largest platform [в отношении продаж] there is still a PC, but we clearly see that other platforms are growing very fast.
What are your five best releases in terms of sales in Russia? Which BNE series do Russian players prefer? Anime games, your own cult franchises like Tekken or Dark Souls?
Oleg: Of course, the whole series Dark souls – A cult in Russia. She performed very well Tekken 7. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan was a huge hit, we look forward to presenting the next part of the series to consumers – Little hop. Little nightmares became a big hit in Russia, and speaking of anime games, they have a very dedicated audience. They all grow, and we don’t care whether their sales are small or large: our main goal is to support local gamers and anime fans in Russia.
What will Bandai Namco do for us this year? When to wait for Elden Ring or game news? 🙂
Clare: Please follow us on social networks. We also just launched official group on VKontakte. There you will always receive the latest news about our new products! And in order to become a larger player in the Russian market and release even more products, we need you!
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