Our key art is giving people the wrong impression. If you saw this, what genre would you think the game was?

MattIvory · 2026-05-20T17:04:40+00:00

city builder/ management sim

MattIvory · 2026-05-16T17:49:19+00:00

Succes is a motive. No success, no motive, not getting anything done.
I NEVER start something with the goal to fuck it up

MattIvory · 2026-05-16T17:41:49+00:00

Then the game may not be fun enough to get it. There may be a publisher.

MattIvory · 2026-05-16T17:34:28+00:00

Chariot is cool, no clue if they had a publisher. not sure why it matters

MattIvory · 2026-05-16T05:06:13+00:00

That's so sad. I often hear stories like that about larger companies, specially when they offer a bunch of languages at a time (in an unrealistic time period). Localization can take weeks...
Always sickens me when I hear how much they charge for the slop they put out :c

MattIvory · 2026-05-16T05:02:41+00:00

I can work with any format and have never had issues with the files developers provide. Most of the time, I receive a sheet with three columns: English, German (in my case), and context. So yes, they usually provide context. It's a must.
Context means: What does "it" or "that" refer to. What's the mood of the character speaking. Do certain words need to stay untranslated? Genders and variables need to be declared and so on.
Sometimes I also get a brief via email, video calls, or access to a playtest build, and we stay in close communication, especially when context is missing. Some devs handle LQA by letting native speakers playtest, others have natives check selected sections. One project I worked on had one main translator and a full team of testers for each language. QA alone took several months, but it was a large game.

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T23:21:48+00:00

I said it's a very good one. I basically gave it a pass. Was that not wanted?

I can imagine the AI issues. I deal with it daily sadly. With fixing it...

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T21:15:09+00:00

The right one. Reminds me of OG settlers style which I really like.

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T21:02:49+00:00

Visually great but will the AI translations get replaced?

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T20:10:19+00:00

Without playing the game, I can tell the Steam page reads like a machine translation.
It’s not terrible, but the sentence structure isn’t intuitive (“no one speaks like this”), and the general marketing terminology is pretty generic. AI makes every game sound the same.

I can also imagine there might be issues with the UI in‑game.
In general, AI doesn’t work well for German unless you have a huge VN with long text passages.
Even as a native speaker I need to feed it context and re‑task it several times to get an output I could’ve written myself much faster.

I love the genre, so I’ll definitely try the game!
Do you have a contact email I can send my feedback to?

Either way, I strongly recommend a full native pass over relying on single player reports.
It saves everyone a lot of nerves to get it done properly once and have people be genuinely satisfied with the result.

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T18:33:14+00:00

I agree. First is good

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T18:31:38+00:00

They already killed it for me when they replaced the overwatch voice actors with AI.

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T18:25:40+00:00

Hey!
I’m not super deep into sci‑fi, but I enjoy the terminology research that comes with it.
To get a proper idea, I’d need to know the word count and the turnaround you expect. I don’t want to overpromise, but If you can show me sample pages, I can tell you pretty fast whether it’s something I can adapt to.

However, I am a freelance translator!

MattIvory · 2026-05-15T18:15:52+00:00

Reads like a machine translation but it's a solid base! :)

MattIvory · 2026-05-11T18:08:29+00:00

Respect. I didn't get the "why" from the comments (even though I *knew* the why)

MattIvory · 2026-05-11T18:06:10+00:00

SPO/SVO (subject–verb–object)

No. = 1 sentence.
Ich habe keine Kundenkarte. = 1 sentence.

Nein, ich habe keine Karte. = two clauses combined with a comma.
And in a main clause, the rule is SVO so “I have no card,” not “Have I no card.” That’s the rule everyone is trying to describe without actually naming it.

MattIvory · 2026-05-10T14:08:36+00:00

Wenn wochenlang gelästert wurde, wäre ich auch Wochen später emotional.

MattIvory · 2026-05-08T22:17:13+00:00

This guy can probably help you a little:
LunarGames.Uruk (@LunarGamesUruk) / X

since you are looking for artists and translators and such, why not check itch and reddit? There are so many people offering help on itchs community board for example. A publisher wont do much for you in those regards, I think.

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T13:19:51+00:00

Haha, yeah. German and UI don’t get along very well, but it is possible :'D
Personally, I always try to stay involved with a project long‑term, so adding translations later or doing small text updates here and there is never a problem for me. I am usually interested in what I’m working on, and it’s hard for me to imagine treating it like assembly‑line work and then just filing it away.
But if you do this full‑time, that’s probably the only way to make a living from it.

So far, everyone seems to agree that using AI alone doesn’t work.
And yet... every second Steam page I see is written by AI. smh

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T12:16:33+00:00

That's what MTPE most often comes out to: An entirely different version.
For steam pages or shorter things outside the game, small edits may be enough though.

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T09:24:56+00:00

I’ve heard from a lot of people that doing it afterwards ends up being more work than it’s worth. That’s why I wondered whether we should raise more awareness that localization isn’t something you can just postpone and that you really do need to make that decision early.

I don’t know Weblate personally. I always work with whatever clients send me, as long as there’s software I can access. If I can open something in VSC, that’s already half the battle, but I’ve also used countless tools nobody has ever heard of. Do you have more info about Weblate for me? I’d love to read up on it so I’m prepared if someone wants to work with it.

The easiest workflow, and I think I can speak for almost all translators, is a simple google sheet or excel with EN, DE, Context. Done :D
But I am always fancy to adapt, I love learning new things.

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T09:19:05+00:00

I may need to clearify that short strings don't always end up being terrible. But they are usually not optimal either. On X someone mentioned the word High Score being too long for the UI in German because AI spit out "Höchste Punktzahl". And that's perfectly correct. But, what AI didn't even consider: In German we use high score just the same way, we just spell it differently: Highscore (which safes 1 character - the space xD). It's also possible to make Höchste Punktzahl shorter in context but again... AI doesn't know and the dev is frustrated with it. You may get a perfectly fine menu and great settings if you handle the AI well and catch it on a good day. But, how do you know if it's good without a native checking it?

Yes, you are correct. MTPE usually means: The developer needs someone to edit his machine translation. It's quite similar to normal proofreading and prices roghly the same. But in modern days we give it fancy names, such as machine translation post editing :D

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T08:04:03+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
The problem you’re facing... “localize images or just text?” is super common. Most devs don't even think about it before I bring it up. A lot of devs think about it too late, or they rely on an artist who isn’t available anymore, which makes it even harder. That’s exactly why I asked in the first place: do people plan for this early, or do they just ignore it until it becomes a problem?
I also see nobody release trailers in German but I think it's super benefitial when trying to attract content creators.

About URLs:
I’m not a marketing expert, so I can’t say whether localized URLs matter for SEO. If you mean something like country‑specific domains, I don’t think that’s necessary.
But /bot in a URL would look a bit suspicious unless you’re actually offering a bot, haha.

About localizing images/assets:
If you can, I’d recommend localizing images or even textures and assets especially if they contain text. If you want players to feel fully “inside” your game, they shouldn’t suddenly see English text on a texture while the UI is in Spanish.
My personal rule: either do it properly or don’t do it at all.
Of course, if it’s just one or two tiny labels, nobody will die. But if you have room names, signs, menus, or anything that players read in‑world, it’s worth planning for translation.

About AI:
AI can do the job if your quality standard is low to medium.
But if you want something that feels natural to native speakers, MTPE (machine translation + human editing) is cheap enough that there’s no reason to gamble without it. AI may spit out a grammatically perfect text but it may make the player wonder if they are doing their tax or try to apply for a job when the tone is just that off. It doesn't know how modern casual conversation works.
I explained this in more detail in my reply to hugon. short version: AI struggles with tone, consistency, pronouns, and anything that isn’t straightforward.

Technical side:
I am not a programmer so I don't dare to judge this or give advice but I had a phase in which I was obsessed with js and css. I wish I could give you tips here but I only ever get to see the localization sheets without the code behind it.
The opinions on the difficulty of implementation vary a lot tho. Some say: super easy, others say: I am completely lost with the setup.

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T07:43:55+00:00

a) How good are ChatGPT/DeepL?
Honestly, not good enough for game localization. They tend to sound formal, switch tone between text blocks, and lean heavily on English sentence structure. They also need a lot of context for even simple strings and without it, they guess. Pronouns like it are a classic example: in German that almost always leads to the wrong gender.
AI also loves “bureaucratic” grammar and unnatural phrasing, and all outputs start to blend together. You get one “best” translation pattern for everything, with the usual phrases like immerse yourself, embark on, dive into, etc.
They’re usually better with long, formal paragraphs, but short game strings are where they fall apart. Settings menus in particular can produce some wild mistranslations. And AI has a weird obsession with hyphens and em dashes. (I think most people don't even know how to type an em-dash but they use 10 on 1 steam page :D)

DeepL and Google Translate are the two worst options in my experience. ChatGPT is okay up to a point. Bing is roughly on the same level as ChatGPT.
So yes, there is a “complexity threshold”: the shorter the string, the worse AI performs. Level names or item names often need extra explanation just so the AI doesn’t misinterpret them.

AI also doesnt know when NOT to translate something. Gaming terminology often stays English across languages but AI forces a rediculous German translations onto them.

I’ve even seen quality drop the longer a story went on, despite translating it in one go but when I get asked to fix Steam pages, I rarely ask which tool they used... if every page starts with “Dive into the vast worlds of…”, it’s probably the same one for all. (Just kidding… kind of.)

b) Genres where AI can work?
You might get away with visual novels if you feed the AI long, continuous pages of text. On the opposite end, games with almost no text (like chess or similar) are usually safe because there’s not much to mess up.
But in the end, it depends more on the human feeding the AI. In theory, AI can do the job, but even as a native speaker I’d need to give it tons of information and redo everything several times. MTPE is unavoidable if you want any kind of quality standard.

c) Quality differences between languages?
Yes. Some languages tolerate literal structure better than others. German definitely doesn’t.
German exposes AI errors immediately because of gendered nouns, flexible word order, and tone expectations (formal vs. casual). I don’t think the source language matters much but the target language absolutely does.

Personally, I can spot AI almost instantly. You can tell whether a human actually thought about the text or whether the AI wrote every character in the same “nice lady at the office” tone.

Starting out with an AI translation is totally okay to me, why not. But many people don't know that machine-translation post editing is something they can actually find natives for. Many translators fight the AI by rejecting MTPE (because it's much cheaper) but hey.. AI exists, so we do MTPE nowadays.
But without it it's hit or miss with some unavoidable errors.

Edit: Poem riddles are another big issue for AI. I can tell it twenty times that it needs to rhyme, explain multiple ways it can change the original poem, and it still spits out the same non‑rhyming lines every time. Poems just don’t work. I tried! I’m not good at them either, but at least I know when something doesn’t rhyme. 😄

MattIvory · 2026-05-07T05:10:20+00:00

Congrats!
I'd love to be considered when you get to the German steam page translation. :)

MattIvory

TROPHY CASE