Sup guys!

I have a project idea to help developers/small teams attract more players. I'd be happy if you could answer a few questions (or take a short survey). Any information would be very helpful :)

1) Do you consider the translation of the game into other languages important? (If yes, then into which languages?)

2) Do you use external services for game testing?

3) How important are specialized fonts for different languages to you?

Also survey with more questions for those who are interested https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewSAVzLB4SVuBSzSP_gFtRQRk45ZV5jjKcNtEu...

1) I create my games with as few words as possible. Never was a big reader. I make games for fun, if it was for money translation would be important. I imagine LLMs make this quite easy these days. I'd probably do the ~10 most popular languages.

2) No.

3) I never thought of that.

1. No. My games that are translated into Russian and Spanish have not fared better than my games that are only in English.

2. No. It's generally only those involved in the game that will commit the required amount of time (and that's mostly me). If a game is 5 hours long, I commit at least 10 hours to testing the final release version to make sure there are no issues. I wouldn't be able to pay someone for that many hours. If I do pick up an issue, it's often game-ending - something I didn't foresee happening when programming the game (so didn't build in the appropriate safeguards). If I'm testing it - I can fix it and carry on. An independent tester would be stalled at that point.

3. I didn't need any special fonts for the Russian alphabet. My friend who translated the games sent me the Russian text and I copied and pasted it, both into my graphics program and game software - and in both cases I had no issues. She proofread the final text in the game just to confirm. Everything was fine.

Hi!

1 - It's supposed to be important (i think maybe it's better to start after you obtain some result in english, in order to not waste effort elsewhere), probably 4-6 europeans (mostly spanish/portuguese/french/germany and in my case Italian because i'm Italian), then asian languages and russian i guess. They often tell me that it's important the localization made properly but paying a professionist costs a lot, sounds more like a publisher's doing;

2 - I'd like to use external tools for analytics but due to GDPR, PIPL and CCPA i have to give up for now, because it's a damn mess with privacy laws for indie devs. I'm bound to raw analytics of Itch and Steam, which are a bit better;

3 - To be honest i'd love to find an universal font (maybe it exists, but in my case it must be a pixel font), i have big troubles in finding one and the idea of switching font by code according to whether i'm playing with asian languages or not is quite annoying

1) Not if I'm an indie game dev publishing my jam games on itch.io. Yes if it's a steam release. Not sure which, but I'd probably pick the top five and go with that.

2) Not currently. Mostly same as two posts above me.

3) Not really.

Hope this helps

I see everyone saying it's not important, but I'd like to emphasize that it is very important! The main problem is that you're localizing into the wrong languages. Take a nice long look at this and you'll realize that over 50 percent of Steam's players speak either English or Simplified Chinese. If you are releasing to Steam, translate to Chinese before any other languages.

1) Do you consider the translation of the game into other languages important? (If yes, then into which languages?)

Yes, but it depends on your target audience; not all cultures have the same interests.

2) Do you use external services for game testing?

Does that exist? Why didn't anyone tell me... Where?

3) How important are specialized fonts for different languages to you?

I use RPG Maker, and I don't know if I can implement something like that.