101 ways to delay video game releases

Don't get me wrong. I'm fully bilingual, and absolutely think everybody in this province would get along much better if we all were. Moreover, St. Pierre has a point when she wonders why it's so difficult to have French options available here when copies of the same game are sold in France or other francophone countries, fully translated to French.

The problem lies in the delays it would cause for Quebec, and in some cases Canadian releases. Three months ago, I was told by a major game retailer that I couldn't pick up a copy of No More Heroes yet because the Canadian launch is delayed due to "translation issues."

No More Heroes is a Japan-developed video game, but its publisher is Ubi Soft, which is actually France-based (with a rather large subsidiary in Montreal). Plus, we're not even at the stage of obligatory French translations yet. We're only talking about manual and back-of-game-box translations here. That maybe comes up to 16 letter-size pages. And we're already seeing delays.

Worse, in the case of No More Heroes, and others I'm sure, it just doesn't make good business sense for the publisher to make sure there are two different kinds of packages for Quebec and the rest of Canada, so the game gets delayed across the nation, not just dans la belle province.

Now try to imagine what translating an entire game, contents and all, into French means. There is likely an abundance of reasons why most games in France (and other parts of Europe) have a later launch date than they do here, and translation must be one of them. After all, modern games, especially ones with strong stories, frequently have more recorded dialogue than a Hollywood production, not to mention volumes of text.

A more amusing side effect will probably be witnessing bad translations we get for a while until publishers realize they need to hire proper localization/translation teams. Nowadays, Japanese to English translations are extremely professional affairs, but it wasn't too long ago that video game villains conquered hero headquarters and claimed "all your base are belong to us."

I'm not sure if there really is an immediate solution. Some retailers have told me in the past they have been losing money due to these delays. Impatient, web-savvy gamers have several ways to get their hands on a coveted piece of software.

Meanwhile, since developers know what's coming up, maybe they can start looking for some good localization teams now rather than leave it up to the last minute. As a bit of a purist, I tend to stick to the original language any medium is created in, provided I understand it well enough. However I wouldn't want to switch to French options for kicks one day only to find out that "tous mon base vont appartiennent à eux."