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As of my freshman year, I will be posting content centered around a certain topic. You can expect my blog posts to feature well-written sentences.
Brady Bryan
It's no secret that not all video games are developed in the United States. Most popular game companies are based elsewhere such as Canada, Japan, Germany, and other places worldwide. Since games are developed practically everywhere in Earth, each will primarily focus on their intended audience. When considering what audience to hone in on to maximum sales, one must consider more than age, race, culture, and the like. Most aspiring professional game designers may forget that language is an integral factor. While culture was previously listed as though it were less important that language, such a notion could not be further from the truth. In fact, language and culture often go hand-in-hand when determining the primary audience. Those that have played numerous video games will realize that the setting for each video game differs greatly, even if the main concept behind each game is similar. For instance, if two games are both set in an urban setting, one game's urban setting will look different and function differently than the other. One urban setting may be more developed and gaudy where the citizens dress expensively and live lavish lives whereas the other urban setting may be densely packed and industrial where the civilians work every day to provide for themselves or someone dear to them. Between these two examples lie a major difference in culture which adds to the unique identity of the games. Assuming that both games were hypothetically developed using the experiences of the developers, it indicates that their upbringing played a crucial role in the result of their products. While language, in this scenario, is also assumed to be unique to each game as most cultures have their own communication system, it plays a much larger role in localization. If a game is heavily influenced by culture and language, then translating it into another language would be an arduous task. First, the localization team must consider how well the content will be received by a foreign audience. If the norm for the game's origin place is not the norm for a foreign country, then the localization team may elect to omit certain parts of the game, or slightly change the events so as to be understood by the foreign audience while retaining most of the integrity of the original game. At other times, the localization team may directly translate some events of the game into another language, which can lead to confusion. This is often the case for translating Japanese games into English, especially JRPGs, though any sort of correlation to be made has yet to be properly discussed. For those who wish to market their game to a foreign audience, proper translation of both language and culture must be accounted for. Alienating an audience is the last thing any company or producer would want to do, let alone any game developer as it can lead to poor sales and reception. Recap:
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Brady Bryan
A game that has been making headlines around the gaming community was the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 released for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. Alongside the newer generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft, this game sold incredibly fast on all platforms. With John Wick as the posterboy for marketing the game and ensuring a widespread appeal across a large audience at the most recent E3 game conference, alongside the numerous times it was delayed to continue work on it, Cyberpunk 2077 had the anticipation of fans growing with bated breath. It was heralded as one of, if not, the standout title that would pave the way for future next-gen consoles and set a precedent for next-level quality and ingenuity. However, as soon as the game was released, several players encountered unprecedented bugs, glitches, issues, and kinks in the game in record time. While the game admittedly looks impressive, especially when viewed on an expensive gaming PC, the graphical issues that occur in the game can and most likely will detract from the player's experience. Examples of such bugs include static animations, lack of people spawning in the overworld, unrigged models, broken textures, and random element spawning. Many players posted clips of the game's programmatical mishaps on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other media sharing websites. While games with problematic gameplay are often only seen as material to joke about online and elicit feelings of comedic relief, the sheer amount of bugs the game has during normal gameplay (as in, gameplay without the use of cheating or hacking software) raised eyebrows online. This, coupled with the numerous release delays, raised concern about the ethics of working developers to the bone and the negative effects in has not only on the company, but the game as well. The video game community became aware of the unfortunate yet common practice of "crunch time" which us game art design students have become familiar with over the course of our high school career. As the societal standard becomes more inclusive and less stoic than it once was years ago, so too does the concern for others' well being increase. People on Twitter voiced their concerns about how video game companies should prioritize the health of their employees should they want a complete product instead of a rushed, tacky result. This was especially heartbreaking for fans since the entire game's concept was a dystopian society ran by technology set far in the future (in case the title wasn't a dead ringer already). A provocative yet tactful take on what such a society is like should we let the things we own own us displayed in an entertaining and immersive way may be an ambitious feat as we've arguably yet to have seen any game of this caliber, but is more than worth the risk. Until it wasn't. The game's bugs caused enough issues to warrant a delist from the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 4 users. Hopefully, we may see a return to form in the future in the form of proper optimization. Recap:
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AuthorBrady Bryan is quite familiar with blogs since he had to frequently post on his blog in 6th grade. Although its been a long time since then, he still knows what a proper blog should look like. Archives
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