On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
(1 edit) (+2)

Some of my games are translated into Russian (and localised for language, there's no other localisation relevant). Some of my games are translated into Spanish.

 None of my translated games are more popular than the games only available in English. 

On my own website, as opposed to itch.io, my top visitors are from USA, Russia and South Africa (where I live). The remaining countries are where Huawei cell phones are popular, because Huawei organically promotes my browser games better than any other store. From that list there isn't a stand-out country. I haven't ticked the block for China on the Huawei store else it would definitely be a stand-out country (because I don't understand their copyright requirements).

With the Russian I don't know which came first - the audience or the translation. I did authenticate my website through Yandex (top Russian search engine). Yandex 's computer gave me more useful tips (in English) on my website than the other search engines' computers (this was years ago). I also listed my website on Duckduckgo.com and they were partnering with Yandex at first (I don't think they still are). Some of my views on itch.io come from Yandex.

But the translations are incidental - I happened to meet translators elsewhere and they translated my games as a barter agreement for editing help or we made the games together.

The other sites say Spanish, French and German are popular languages because the people will pay for games and not everyone speaks English. But I did find they will try a game anyway. I try to show how to play the game in a video so they don't need text, and use symbols inside the game. When I was publishing on Google I put the instructions on how to play as part of the description so if they were Google translating the page, they would see how to play. But that was only the case when I was promoting the game externally (free for a day). Else I don't think they'd even notice the game.

That is super interesting! I was fully expecting you to say how a specific language got you more downloads, etc. 

but that does not seem like the case whatsoever..

I’m really considering just adding the big 3 as extras to cover a bit more of the world/Europe (German. Spanish, French). I did notice how Portuguese (Brazil) has the same number of games as Spanish though so I might consider adding that later!

Thank you for your reply & insight into Russian translation, I was very curious as I’ve seen a couple of itch pages list it. The market on itch (according to games listed with that language) is on par with Chinese though, so that’s a language option(a) I’d definitely consider if I ever shipped to Steam!


thank you once again!! 🙏🏽

(+1)

Very interesting.

My guess would be, that it also depends on what languages people are tought in school. There are countries where English is mandatory. Reddit tells me, while English is kinda wide spread in Russia, it is not everywhere so. They teach anything from German to Chinese as a secondary language.

While you might not be able to hold a conversation with your school English, it might be enough for most games. But it might be a different scenario entirely if the game is very story and dialogue heavy.