You should be very careful when choosing the right translator services, because a poorly translated term or expression can give your targeted reader a completely different impression. Specifically, when you plan to localize your product for the Chinese market, be sure to ask well-known and experienced professionals in the industry to do all the naming and supervision work. We advise against using any general translation agency - they may have senior experts in traditional fields like finance or law, but it's likely they will have difficulty with all the gameplay-related keywords.
In any of these scenarios, U.S. developers and marketers are at risk for one obvious reason: They can't proofread any translated work for final approval.
Developing Business Partners in China: Essential for Success
A local partner is essential for any foreign game company that plans to do business in China, no matter what type of product they want to sell. The Chinese game industry is quite young, where the local enterprises are too small to compete with foreign giants. To cope with the possibility of instant failure, the government issued lots of unbreakable protection policies, such as forbidding fully foreign-owned companies to operate an MMOG. Furthermore, laws and regulations for the industry are still under development. There is no supervision mechanism or any product rating organization. The whole industry is regulated by many national ministries who sometime issue conflicting policies. This is confusing and even dangerous for any foreign company, if they attempt to work without a Chinese partner or in a joint-venture structure.
How Basic Marketing Activities Compare: Know What to Expect
The obvious goal of any dual-culture collaboration is a game that sells, and that requires an investment in marketing. Here is an overview of some basic marketing efforts of public relations, advertising and exhibiting at trade shows so you'll know a little more about how things are done in China and what they might cost.
Public Relations/Media Relations. There are about 80 credible game web sites in English, but you only need to interact with the top 15 or 20; the rest of the sites will post links to published press releases so there is a good chance that if you send press releases to those 15 or 20 top sites, that you'll get coverage on many of the other sites.
The media ecosystem in China is similar. Only a few (perhaps 10) big game portals dominate most new release sources and public attention and thus attracts largest share of marketing budget from clients, while smaller sites can copy and paste.
The challenge U.S. developers have is finding out what the top China game sites are and the name and the email address of a specific editorial contact. That information is available through PR agencies in the U.S. with clients in China, and from China-based PR agencies, but there aren't many of them.
Advertising. Advertisement sizes and specifications are easily accessible in both countries simply by visiting the publication's web page.
In China, there are no strict rules for game ad content or message, because neither the regulating authorities nor the readers take "game stuff" seriously. The fact is game companies always use exaggerated expressions, even "aggressive comparisons." Some weak products even use bold comparisons to an influential title to "borrow" the marketing strength from known titles.
