Nine Noir Lives Afrikaans text and voice
Hi guys, we're hard at work on our "point-and-lick" adventure game Nine Noir Lives. We've recently decided to support an Afrikaans translation (text and voice).
Below is a sample of that in the game (no voice yet and no lip syncing animations). So my question, is the novelty factor big enough for you as an individual to purchase said game for 15 USD, with the main motivation being because it's Afrikaans. Trying to gauge novelty factor relating into sales..
Below is a sample of that in the game (no voice yet and no lip syncing animations). So my question, is the novelty factor big enough for you as an individual to purchase said game for 15 USD, with the main motivation being because it's Afrikaans. Trying to gauge novelty factor relating into sales..
Comments
But for me, well no.
South African gamers are used to English and the kind of players who would prefer an Afrikaans version are not the kind that would be scrolling through Steam, looking for new games. Thinking about my mom for example, she struggles with English but she also do not play any computer games and only the occasion casual on her phone.
I could be totally wrong and like Tuism pointed out, this forum is not representative at all. We are mainly developers here and even the Afrikaans speaking among might prefer English just because we got so used to it.
Maybe try the mybroadband forum too with a post about this topic.
For me personally (and I am afrikaans) it's a no. If you have time to kill and it doesn't cost you anything, sure, you can add it to the game, but in my opinion you should spend any real resources on this.
The 2 main reasons being:
1. It's a very niche thing, and most of your buyers probably won't care about it.
2. Being South African (or afrikaans) is not the main selling point of your game. If I take Boet Fighter as an example, their main focus was the whole South African vibe. Their marketing revolved around this and pretty much the whole theme of the game. So they focused this out and aimed their marketing at this. I really enjoyed watching their marketing videos, because it spoke to the theme of the game.
I just can't see how a checkmark on steam would help your sales much, or that spending time on a video promoting the fact it is available in afrikaans wil be worth the effort.
I realise this come across quite negative, it's not meant to be. If you want to add the language into the game, and tell people that you have a game on Steam and it's in afrikaans, go for it, but you might get 1 or 2 sales more if you add it in, and probably not much more because of the language. I haven't actually checked which languages you support, but if you only have english, adding another popular language would be much more beneficial.
How family-friendly is the game? Is it something you could market as being good for Afrikaans parents to play with their kids? Because the Afrikaans parents I do know are always looking for appropriate Afrikaans media to enjoy with their kids.
If a target audience is tied to expected sales there is indeed reason for concern, as the potential audience is minuscule.
Technically I would look at the speed of the text and allowing the player the time to read it at leisure. It disappears too quickly and it seems from the video there is no control over the time afforded to read the text. Don't assume player reading speed... I want to make a "koppie koffie en 'n beskuitjie" while I contemplate the last paragraph spoken :)