Why FFXIV: ARR needs spanish support (and likely other languages.)

[Marael]

This is wrong. Most japanese people can understand english well enough if written. And it's way enough to have basic conversations.

Spoken like someone who has never set foot in Japan. I have. This is completely false.

The majority of Japanese in their forties or older do not speak or understand a word of English. For those who are younger... There is so little use for it in everyday life in Japan that few people rarely remember much other than basic greetings and such from their required classes in English during school, or words that have made their way into Japanese pop culture. It's just like second languages taught in American schools. You may have a vocabulary of a hundred or so words by the time you move on to the next grade, and understand the basics of grammar, but you are not even close to fluent, and don't generally understand the language as it is spoken or written, and soon forget much of what you learned. During my two years in Japan, I met maybe three people total that could speak and understand English well enough to carry a conversation with me, and two of them were people who were in special programs in college learning to be translators, because English translators are in somewhat high demand for international companies that deal with the USA, and the third grew up near the US military base, and spent his time as a child talking to the American soldiers and doing his best to learn the language from them. Everyone else had to suffer through my horribly American accented Japanese, and shake their heads at the baka-gaijin who talks funny. I admit, it has been a good ten years since I lived there, but I doubt much has changed since then in this regard. Even my wife, who I brought home with me, and who prided herself on how well she did in her English classes in school could barely speak a word of it before she moved to the USA and really got immersed in the language. English is not the universal language that many English speakers believe it to be. A lot of people in countries that do not speak English as their official language really have no use for learning it, and so don't really care. Japan is no different in my experience. Learning a language is not something most people can do in a classroom, they have to immerse themselves in it through various means to really start picking it up properly. My wife, for example, started dating me because she wanted to learn to speak English better, and her teachers told her the best way was to find an English speaking boyfriend. And let me tell you, that was a VERY odd and awkward pick up, with her trying to come onto me in broken English, and using most words incorrectly before I finally asked her if she would be more comfortable having the conversation in Japanese. You can spend years and years in a classroom studying a language and still not be able to understand it when spoken.

[Warlyx]

1- Brazillians talk portuguese not spanish (some1 traveled to brasil and didnt even know what language isspoken there? lol)

2- some random examples :

blizzard translated WoW to spanish (Spain) at woltk release , then in the next expansion they released Latin american servers and added latin spanish language too.

Aion, after 2 years the game was translated

Gw2 was released on spanish.

DC Universe Online too

ect ect

even Perfect world international / and similar are translating their crappy games to spanish lol

spanish mmorpg players exist and there is a market for them, u dont notice them because they write in english on public chats/forums :P

3- the whole FF franchise has been translated to spanish (but FFXI >.< )

[Gramul]

But the thing is there have to be enough people willing to pay for it to happen. Since they haven't even announced a Spanish version, it might be because it's not worth the money.

All about money. Because translating an MMO isn't exactly cheap.

That is true. However, I don't think people avoid playing videogames in Spanish speaking countries because they're too focused on danger.

[Crimen]

No offense but most Spanish speaking countries are not a huge market of this game.

Legit question here. What do you base this out of? Because I say otherwise since I live in a Spanish speaking country and there's a ton of people playing this game.

[Crimen]

Anyway, it would be downright dumb of SE to completely dismiss the idea of adding a new language. They'll probably do research or whatever (polls and what not). If the game's popularity and demand keeps growing, they'll add it in a couple of years.

[Sakasa]

What about swahili? You down?

[zaviermhigo]

My thing is, I'm all for more languages if it helps. I personally speak English and French, and am American. But I live in a Spanish speaking area (Nevada) and I know many spanish speakers who play games, they just also happen to know English, but hey I bet some even in the US would like a Spanish Client. My only question would be, there are vast differences in how Spanish is spoke between countries. In one country it may be a nice word, in another it may be a bad word. Some countries have amerindian words they've loaned and mixed into the language even. Spanish is variable, and most of the Spanish speaking population ISN'T in Spain. Even in Spain there are multiple dialects of Spanish, but of course there is Standard Spanish, but again, most of the Spanish speakers in the world do not speak Standard Spanish, and if people think most of the gamers are from Spain, that is also not true. There are a lot of Mexican, Central American, and Latin American gamers. So I'm just making a point, SE would have to look at the majority of it Spanish speakers, figure out where they are from, and put in a spanish that isn't going to offend or confuse anyone. Its more complicated than you think.

France is France, they are so centralized that any French colony speaks pretty good french, its going to most likely be a Parisian Dialect, as anyone who knows french knows they pretty much tried to eradicate regional dialects. Germany is also Germany, while there are regional difference in speech, they never got too deep in the colonization game, and therefore less variation to the language. Spanish is THE colonizer, and just like French in Canada, or English in America, or Spanish in Mexico, you cut contact with the mother language for a while and it will change! (well they changed for opposite reasons). We don't tend to have academies doling out what is the "standard" of the language like Spain and France.

TLDR: I think they should add Spanish to the game, but I think its more complicated than people think >.<

[OldGeezer]

I bet there would be way more than there already are if they had the game in their language. I would think they could at least subtitle cs in spanish. I'm on a JP server with a small EN community and we even have a handful of ES speakers from different countries. There's even a guy from Spain that does not speak EN... THAT'S determination right there.

Unlikely. SE has a marketing department. It's their job to determine where their game will succeed. If FFXIV had enough support in Spanish-speaking countries they'd have made a Spanish version of the game. This game was marketed for Japan, US, and Europe not Central/South America. The marketing department did underestimate the initial response FFXOV had in those respective markets but I'm skeptical there is enough support to warrant a Spanish version of the game.

[o3o]

heres the Gaming market as a whole for the year of 2013

so yeah, the money just isnt there to make it worth while. :/


another thing i found is alot of the money is in brazil, which doesnt speak Spanish :/

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

heres the Gaming market as a whole for the year of 2013

so yeah, the money just isnt there to make it worth while. :/

Notice how is Europe, Middle east and Africa and not just Europe.

If we take away middle east, africa, russia and eastern europe countries. Whats the rest of Europe like in numbers? And from those take away all the spanish players from Europe and you have something very close to the Latin American market. And still no Spanish Client? lol.