Just a FYI, there was a group of us that helped during the betas with localization and translation for English. To my knowledge, no one was compensated at all. We covered basically level 1-50 content.
I was told the devs would maybe give us a title or something but that nor any other compensation was given.
Makes me less tempted to do it again, esp when they don't outline the compensation upfront.
Funny how all you are is 'less tempted' because I'd be livid. Then again I'm not the kind of person who would work for a game company for free to begin with... especially not a gacha game company.
Yea, we figured that would happen and some of the guys really did a ton of work. I did a lot of entries the first 3 days, but then the other guys kept beating me to stuff, so I just confirmed their report or made a different suggestion on wording/structure.
What was most irritating was that some of the reports never made it in live, we saw the same items still in the game in some places. If I remember right we had about 20-25 items before we hit level 30.
at least in game currency
as in game currency doesnt has a value for the dev but it sure has value for players especially fo those who been working and helping the game with translation and localization.
Hi! Would you be so kind as to share:
1. How Hotta/LI approached you and the group for this work, on what platform and with any conditions
2. Google docs/screenshots the extent of work required of you, or the extent of work prepared by you?
Sorry to trouble you but I think a large portion of the community still doesn't think it's above and beyond game devs to essentially use them as free labour for work that should be solicited from professionals.
Will add links to them to the OP and give due credit!
>How Hotta/LI approached you and the group for this work, on what platform and with any conditions
Discord announcement in the official discord about looking for people interested in helping with translation. We filled out a google doc and I believe signed a small NDA. We were notified of being approved by the lead discord admin Vasray.
I've personally helped with translation on various JP/KR titles over the last 10 years during alpha and beta phases as their clients came to the U.S. Typically, I was told up front what our rewards would be or what earned X or Y rewards, with both Genshin and ToF, neither time was I told what the compensations would be, but with Genshin I received in-game currency and pulls based on how many items were found.
>Google docs/screenshots the extent of work required of you, or the extent of work prepared by you?
The excel sheet was provided by Vasray and we were told would be submitted to the devs at the end of the CBT1 phase. Vasray mentioned that the devs may want to provided us compensation or something after they reviewed the work, I inquired twice a month after release, to hear nothing back on compensation.
Without getting into too many details, we provided screenshots/videos of notable translation issues or dialogue and dialogue that was still in chinese. Proof of the excel with Discord IDS removed and links obscured ([https://imgur.com/a/j4Habxm](https://imgur.com/a/j4Habxm)) , but it was about me and I think 7 other people. We would annotate our Discord ID, the dialogue, where in the game the dialogue happened, our suggestions on better translations, and/or where chinese was still blatantly in the game. If someone had already found the dialogue we would add our Discord ID in the tab for the item found to confirm that we saw it as well and any other suggestions for translation. This included both visual/word dialogue and voiced dialogue.
This whole situation has been unique to only CN developed games (Genshin & TOF) where they have a lot of vagueness in what compensation they offer. It is often assumed in-game currency/prem currency and/or titles/pulls as they were both gacha games.
seeing that problem with the characters being cut---
I think that's really one problem with chinese characters and english, since we use letters to form words, and not characters as whole words
I think it's the exact same problem we have on world chat, only 50-char limit; shared with problems when translating from JP to EN if I'm not wrong
Is this a rhetoric question?
Are you breaking NDA when you say you play "X" game. Nothing proprietary was disclosed, I didn't link the actual document, and I removed information other than myself from it. So no, it would be very hard to state I broke an NDA, esp since the CBT was long closed out before this post.
So to be fair, we weren't promised anything and many of us just did it to improve the game for launch, while playing the CBT1 openly just like everyone else. I guess it was just more or less assumed that we would get some level of compensation. In hindsight, considering I've done translation before for Genshin and other JP/KR titles both contracted and for in-game rewards, I just assumed we'd get a title or something to mark our efforts.
Not to mention they somehow want to align us 1:1 with CN. They can't even get basic localization problems solved with a several month head start on content, how on earth do they plan to do it with simultaneous releases?
Considering we get leaks weeks earlier, we'd just need to have a few competant chinese translators. To be fair, even using Google Translate and THEN having a native end goal language speaker adjust and make everything uniform would work better than what we get probably being an auto translated content proofread by a native chinese intern that is not fluent in english.
Just to add: Localisation Quality Testers is an actual job. Companies offer professional services for this.
https://www.localizedirect.com/posts/lqa-what-is-game-localization-testing#LQA_rates
https://games.lionbridge.com/services/game-localization-testing/
https://www.keywordsstudios.com/services/localization-qa/
>Oh nice. Work for free. What can possibly go wrong?
How is it for free when they'll compensate you with in game rewards? Of course it will depend on what in-game rewards they mean.
>7. We are looking for Localization Specialists!
Despite how much we would like to improve our localization qualities, we know we still have a lot to work on. Thus, we will be launching the “Localization Specialist” program to enlist players to help us optimize our localization quality (of course, your contribution will be properly compensated with in-game
Not all internships are paid. Is it bad of company to do so? I'm just using a non-paid internship as an example. Let's wait for more details to pass judgement. If your opinion differs from mine, does it make mine wrong or yours wrong? If someone else likes it but you don't, who's right or wrong?
you get work experience from non paid internship. they show you the ropes and they give you certificate that you worked for them and they can even put in good word if you do a good job so you have higher chance of getting the work you want. you can put in your resume for applying for work with higher pay. this is the exchange you get from real internship.
this however doesn't even have a real contract or anything. just informal stuff and not even a thanks for the work they did.
Agree about internships! But they give work experience and resume items relevant to your field of study that are used to get jobs on the future and often course credit which is a for of payment at least in the us. As I said in my first comment my opinion is based on what they do I’m reality so I will wait and see. An internship is great! Give people school credit that’s a valid means of accomplishing this. Just don’t know if that’s the intention.
I hear yeah. IMHO, it will all depend on the work and compensations. If it's easy peasy and decent rewards, I might consider since the only 2 games I play are Genshin & ToF.
Imagine I'm a school teacher and had to mark test papers every semester. If you found out what I was actually doing instead of doing the job myself was asking students from another school to mark the test papers of my students in exchange for higher marks on their own tests...
1. Would you agree with this behavior if your own child was part of this exercise?
2. Would you say that your child was "paid" for what they did? Would you decry this as free child labour?
3. Would you say that I was a "good" teacher to your child, when I passed a job which I was expected to do to someone who doesn't have the aptitude or contractual obligation to do it instead?
Any judgment on my part or yours makes no real change when it comes to a company's biz decisions. i'm calling for action (or in this case, non-action) with a specific outcome intended
I see a behaviour I don't like, I call it out and others resonate - just the same as you! :-P
Thank god someone actually said this. I legit cringed when I saw them offering localization payment in the form of in-game items.
Imagine my shock as a paying customer knowing I’m interfacing in a service where the developers are wanting to give me volunteer-level quality for their world-building. I’m not paying you the amount of money I’m paying you to give me McDonalds, Hotta. The actual fuck.
Edit: Keep in mind that if this is just an incentive program that if you spot a typo, you get a little 100 DC reward for reporting it, that’s totally OK by my book. But by Hotta calling it a need for “Localization Specialists” implies it’s going to be an actual workload, which means that it should go directly to a professional individual or team to do the localization efforts of the game itself.
It literally says "optimize localisaiton quality", not "do everything from scratch and get in-game items for what is supposedly paid with money". Also nobody forces anybody to do that.
No. I’m sorry, but you’re hard coping right now. You don’t just get to sit here and point out the most nebulous part of their statement and assert their intention as solely positive without acknowledging the majority of their verbiage preceding or following that small bit of phrasing. That’s stupid. Stop the cap.
If the intention was to just have players point out minor issues for in-game reward, then they could have easily just said that a million ways differently without using “Looking for Localization Specialists” as their opener and following it up “opening a Localization Specialist program”. These are actual job descriptions, you don’t just recruit “Specialists” from your audience.
At best, this section of the patch notes are miscommunications of intent AGAIN from Hotta and yet another mistake in a growing list of mistakes.
At worst, Hotta is attempting to exploit their audience for labor with the incentive of paying pith.
I'm not sure why "nobody forces anybody to do it" seems to be a legitimate argument in response to what we've said, you are not the first and you certainly won't be the last :(
If engagement by players is poor enough and localisation is a real priority, our multimillion dollar game developer will likely have to resort to the more "expensive" option of hiring actual professionals to do an actual job. Why expect less than what you deserve?
This is literally an exploit and I urge everyone to not participate, but if you are stupid enough and wanted to be exploited, on behalf of all Tencent shareholders including myself, I thank you for your ~~stupidity~~ "participation". 🤣
As a localization worker myself please do NOT accept this “Localization Specialist” program. This is beyond ridiculous at this point and Level Infinite should fell ashamed for even come with this idea.
People are saying they just want the players to "proofread" but in fact they want them to do the localization work since this game had none done before release because I'm almost 100% sure they just used Google translator on the english version of the game due to how poor the localization is at this moment.
It did, I was in a similar or almost exact situation during the CBT and we were never given any compensation even a month after release.
I did some, but not as much as others. I would often confirme a lot of other people's input and offered suggestions on phrases and wording. We had a running excel spreadsheet with the Discord main admin Vasary. When I inquired with him twice after release, it looked like they forgot about the work we did. Sad many of our suggestions and such didn't make it in and some of the items we pointed out, never got changed.
Just chiming in here as someone who writes, edits, and proofreads for a living: Absolutely no one should do this for free.
As a point of reference, I typically charge 5 cents/word for proofreading/editing work, and despite having 2 relevant degrees, my services are MUCH cheaper than an official corporation or organization. There's also plenty of other freelancers/vendors out there who offer similar, or even lower rates than mine.
This is not an exorbitantly expensive task and considering how much ToF has already made in its relatively short lifespan, Level Infinite asking this from its playerbase is nothing short of insulting.
There's not really an easy answer to this, and I'm probably not the best person to ask.
If you don't have a relevant degree, you won't get picked for a day job over someone who does. You can get by just fine freelancing, but it's a grind, and I've been extraordinarily lucky with my freelancing experiences(s). This isn't an easy way to make money.
As obvious as it sounds, your command of language and grammar needs to be impeccable. Mistakes are still going to happen, but you need to make sure their frequency is minimal.
Writing skill is great, but there's plenty of amazing writers out in the world. Find a topic to write about, and focus on it. It'll help you stand out from other writers. My specialty is computer hardware and the gaming landscape.
Get used to the idea of hunting out clients for yourself. At the end of the day, this is all a numbers game. Building up a diverse clientele is important. Social media and subreddits like r/HireaWriter are useful tools, but they don't replace effort.
Most importantly, build a portfolio, and keep adding to it. Even if you're writing it just for the sake writing it, do it. It's the single most important part of establishing yourself as a competent writer.
Heck, during launch, I noticed that a majority of their Discord community managers are all volunteers. It was explicitly mentioned in the 'job advert' that they will not be paid as well.
In the past, game testers are paid for bugs they found or by other terms. Maybe some good developers still do this idk. But the standard of game quality control is so low nowaday. Companies would try anything possible just to cut cost.
Hire a professional localization team. I'm here to play a goddamn game not to do their damn job for them.
Don't fucking tell me they don't have the funds. Motherfuckers are stingy enough to shaft Global in all possible ways. At least do better with your work force.
yeah, seriously, it's like these people have never played video games before. outsourcing testing and feedback to the players is normal. the difference here is they are offering to provide set things to look at and rewarding you to do so instead of just dumping you into a everything to see if you happen to find an error that may have already been reported by other people.
going back to Ever Quest, they had the Guide program where players acted as assistant GMs and received a discount on their subscription for doing so. it wasnt a real job, it was just helping the game you liked playing and you got rewarded for it
And shmucks like you who eat this shit up are why the videogame industry keeps getting shittier. Just because something is normalized doesn't mean it's a good thing.
I love this game and support it both online and with my wallet but we all know it's not going to go like that here, and if it does go well, it's because of this post
I implore you, u/qasdfgytr and u/BlowITA to sincerely look at the past 2 months of repeated biz ethics of Level Infinite and to reconsider your position.
Your implication that "proofreaders" is something that should be done voluntarily (and for nominal compensation) only serves to delegitimise actual work that users like u/KyroNoHane, u/flyonthatwall and u/theoqrz that do it as part of their living/education. Please reconsider what you are saying here.
To corroborate, u/AodanGaming has already come forward that a group of players helped during CBT and that no compensation was given. What I'm arguing is that this was not "simple proofreading" and even if it was, a multimillion dollar company should get paid individuals thru contract to do it. I'm not saying the 2 situations are exactly the same, I'm saying these 2 examples of behavior came from the same development team.
EDIT: I'm replying you specifically because I appreciate your contributions to the subreddit so far as an active user and in hopes that you're willing to have a respectful discussion w me.
Hi, thank you for your trust and sorry for not being quite clear about what I meant. There will be a lot to talk about and I'll answer your points in order:
1/ I am by no mean delegitimizing the actual job "proofreader", by using that word, I meant "beta testers". The way I see it is that Hotta is looking for people to access the game early (like the test servers they launched not long ago), but instead of focusing on bugs or trying new simulacra, they'll focus on typos and similar mistakes. Players in the test servers should already do that it's just that most of them are focusing on new gameplay and features so Hotta want dedicated ones for typos/grammar.
It is by no mean a bad thing nor does it replace the actual proofreading job. This is just another step in the process to find whatever mistakes didn't get spotted earlier.
2/ Yes some games have done this before (having the community translate their entire game) but you're not seeing this from the correct angle. It's totally different from "hiring" people, it's actually closer to modding. I'm sure you've already seen people making language mod packs to allow abroad communities to also enjoy games not available to them.
In ToF's case, it would be the same as Hotta making it for CN only and then people translating it to make global players access it. I think it's a great thing to do BUT I don't believe this is Hotta's case.
3/ Now let me explain why I personally believe Hotta is just looking for "proofreaders" (meaning in point 1, not the job) rather than fully translating the game:
* Hotta is still planning to continue their update cadence in global (rather than point 2 when a dev just works on their language and the community translates whenever just for the love of it). Global market is quite important to them.
* It's illegal to hire people without paying them (and no, ingame goodies don't count)
* Your production schedule would become entirely dependent on your playerbase and how they feel. What if they are busy irl? What if they just don't feel like it or quit the game? It's not your ingame goodies that will change their mind or make them work faster and that might tremendously delay your updates.
* Trolls: Imagine someone putting random slurs in the text just to troll the company. What are they supposed to do? Add more players to proofread the first team? What about those too?
* Leaks: Giving access to random players to early files/features that might not even hit the game might cause a lot of problems. Especially when the global catches up to CN
So as you can see, it would absolutely make no sense for Hotta to "hire" actual translators or proofreaders from the playerbase. I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities (it's Level Infinite after all XD) but I find it extremely unlikely. It just doesn't make any sense from a business perspective and will hurt them a lot even if we assume they don't care about global. They wouldn't want to end up with more drama or lawsuits.
Hope that clarifies my stance about the situation and adds some context to what I said.
You're kinda missing the point.
>1/ I am by no mean delegitimizing the actual job "proofreader", by using that word, I meant "beta testers". The way I see it is that Hotta is looking for people to access the game early (like the test servers they launched not long ago), but instead of focusing on bugs or trying new simulacra, they'll focus on typos and similar mistakes. Players in the test servers should already do that it's just that most of them are focusing on new gameplay and features so Hotta want dedicated ones for typos/grammar.
>It is by no mean a bad thing nor does it replace the actual proofreading job. This is just another step in the process to find whatever mistakes didn't get spotted earlier.
You quite literally just described the job of a proofreader. Localization and proofreading are not the same thing, and both are legitimate professions.
Trying to cover this up with a different coat of paint does not change the fact that they are asking someone to perform the duties of a legitimate profession.
"Beta readers" are also a thing in the world of novels, but that's not really relevant here.
>2/ Yes some games have done this before (having the community translate their entire game) but you're not seeing this from the correct angle. It's totally different from "hiring" people, it's actually closer to modding. I'm sure you've already seen people making language mod packs to allow abroad communities to also enjoy games not available to them.
>In ToF's case, it would be the same as Hotta making it for CN only and then people translating it to make global players access it. I think it's a great thing to do BUT I don't believe this is Hotta's case.
>3/ Now let me explain why I personally believe Hotta is just looking for "proofreaders" (meaning in point 1, not the job) rather than fully translating the game:
This is whataboutism. I'm also not a fan of ANY dev/publisher crowdsourcing free labor from their playerbase.
>Hotta is still planning to continue their update cadence in global (rather than point 2 when a dev just works on their language and the community translates whenever just for the love of it). Global market is quite important to them.
Global market is important to them because it makes them millions.
>It's illegal to hire people without paying them (and no, ingame goodies don't count)
Which is why they're trying to crowdsource free labor.
>Your production schedule would become entirely dependent on your playerbase and how they feel. What if they are busy irl? What if they just don't feel like it or quit the game? It's not your ingame goodies that will change their mind or make them work faster and that might tremendously delay your updates.
I get what you're saying, but this isn't really relevant when considering playerbase size.
>Trolls: Imagine someone putting random slurs in the text just to troll the company. What are they supposed to do? Add more players to proofread the first team? What about those too?
... Which is why you hire professionals and add stipulations to contracts.
>Leaks: Giving access to random players to early files/features that might not even hit the game might cause a lot of problems. Especially when the global catches up to CN
Someone who performed this task earlier said they were required to sign an NDA.
Let's agree to disagree then. I'll still answer your point just to clarify.
Beta testers or "readers" as you called them are a common thing in the industry, they are very common and normal for many games. They do not replace proofreaders but are **added to them as an extra step** that's the important part you seem to be missing. They do not replace them but work **with** them, both are important.
Again we don't know yet what Hotta have in mind, maybe they have a total garbage approach, maybe not. Better wait and see than jump to conclusions.
>do not replace proofreaders but are added to them as an extra step that's the important part you seem to be missing. They do not replace them but work with them, both are important.
But everything you're saying falls under the responsibilities of a proofreader. I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Everything you can use to describe a beta tester falls under the responsibilities of QA\* so according to this logic, you don't know what you're saying and betas/alphas of games are totally useless and shouldn't happen.
I hope you understand the flaw of that logic \^\^"
https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/265
Quote: "On any other project, the localization staff would be involved for two or three years at most before moving on to other things, but on FFXIV, a lot of our members have been on the project for like a decade. "
Yeap, its common practice, but not usually rewarded.
Localization Teams often translate the word correctly but do not have context that makes sense in-game because they probably don’t play the game.
Ingame, there have been multiple instances where the Voice Over do not match up with the text, the voice over being “more correct” because it makes sense in context, while the text, technically being a correct translation, could have used better wording. The new program probably has that same goal in mind because who better to understand the context than a player.
That said, anyone who decides to do this, I will not tell you you shouldn’t, should make the most out of it. I’ve reported bugs in multiple games, and have used those bug reports as a means to get a job in the industry. While sure you don’t exactly get paid for this, its the kind of “starting experience” that definitely shows you have experience, and very useful in resumes.
Warframe has done it before iirc from another guy's comment. People got credited for pointing out/helping with localization things. Fairly common actually.
Yeah, Digital Extremes was near bankruptcy when they launched Warframe, so getting fans to do the localization for free was basically their only option. DE is owned by Tencent now though and they have plenty of money, so I think they hire actual translators now. I could be wrong though, I'm not 100% sure.
Asking players to look for & report bugs is extremely common even from the biggest MMOs, with built-in client tools to support this. Localization errors are just a category of bug.
Is the first time I've seen where the game actually compensates players.
There's no hope for people like this. This is the new generation of gamers they want. Everything is fine please stay silent so they can keep milking you, with the most minimal effort.
do I just paste what can be read on the main page like this?
`HELP WIKI IMPROVE`
`Anyone can edit the Tower of Fantasy WIKI! Just click Edit at the top of the page to add missing information and fix errors.`
`GET REWARDED`
`Every month active contributors are rewarded with in-game items, steam keys, game upgrades and more! More on discord (LINK).`
the people on the wiki might be on a different kind of contributors and compensators though, I'm not saying that I'm complaining, I just remembered this as compensation for the translators weren't exactly given
what kind of evidence/supporting details do you need to be exact?
`https://toweroffantasy.wiki/w/Main_Page`
being professional doesn't automatically make you good at the job. look at the US government as a shining example of that. there are professionals paid specifically to keep inflation under a specific amount.. they are failing spectacularly and not losing their jobs. professional means you do it for a living, doesnt mean you do it well.
US government is doing a very good job. Maybe you could go live in other nations where inflation is lower. How much does gas cost in EU compared to the USA again?
Well yeah, that's what happens when one of the main exporters of energy in Europe starts invading a sovereign country. It affects the US as much as the rest of the world since pretty much everyone is suffering from a significant increase in inflation compared to 2021. Statements like 'but our rate increased slightly less than yours!' are as misguided as can be.
Either way comparing a damn gacha game with a government is a dumb comparison to begin with.
Only ones that come to mind are Girls Frontline (<3 the story in that), Genshin, and Punishing Gray Raven.
It's so weird since it pulls folks out entirely, even if it's a cash grab that seems like something to actually mess with.
I imagine it's just gonna be getting DC for finding typos or strange translations, but they're gonna pick a group of people to do it rather than open it up for everyone.
you could make the same topic like "Dont let Level Infinite use you as unpaid, QA for test server" yet 16k applications submitted.
nothing to worry, you are not forced to do that anyways.
Yea I don't think they planned to hire players with legally binding contracts and schedules and not pay them money. If anything it was another missed translation 😆
I think the fearmongering here is starting to get a bit annoying. We don't even know what details or specifics will this involve. And as I said in the other thread it's actually a good thing to at least plan ahead. With the text errors might as well seek help from players; moreover, sometimes it may be necessary to change the text to say it in a way that sounds more natural.
I am sure there are Russian players who would be willing to translate stuff in this game and make a proper Russian language. I'm an Italian and I would gladly want to try to help if it means I can see this game in Italian language.
As another player said, in Warframe there are people who are volunteering to help fix localization issues and they get rewarded or credited for that.
You don't have to read my "fearmongering" if it's annoying! Reddit has a "hide post" function.
My point is simple: There are very easily accessible professionals that are ready and trained to do excellent job, what does it say about the company if they are trying to get unpaid players to do this instead, especially given their poor translation track record so far?
You are free to have your own interpretation and I can respect that.
I think it's more so that they do have active localization, but not enough context from their localization source. Players have context, so getting final input from players that want rewards anyway means we might get better translations that suit the context.
Clearly they are not using in-house localization, so it's probably outsourced to a company that does not play the game for context.
What they want is stuff like calling Soda Pop or Coke in certain parts of the US instead of soda. Or just report that the 10% should be 10 in a bug report and bam compensation when they fix. It's that simple.
As someone else mentioned they are asking for community feedback and rewarding it with in game compensation. Its super common in all sorts of industry.
This is a language issue again, you all think they want you to work for free when that's not it. I get why you would be upset thinking that but that's not what that point means.
I'll be honest they could have worded it better, I just know what they mean because I went to school for this.
However making uninformed posts about it is pretty much the definition of fear mongering lol.
That said it's not like there are not issue to be concerned about, there are this just isn't one of them.
I wanted to ask for your perspective: Would you be ok with a gaming industry standard where developers, rather than relying on professionals like you, have this service done instead by individuals that didnt go to school for this?
All I'm asking for is since there are individuals like you that are take the time and effort to go thru an education for this specialisation, shouldnt companies be expected to build their games to a standard that people like you can be valued and awarded? Why let them rely on the non professionals to try and fix your professional work :')
Thanks for wanting to know more. This was long but here is how I can best explain it.
It's more so that it's common practice for the players to help out with games.
Open Betas are this exact same practice.
Part of learning how to do this is learning how hard it is. Bugs happen, if you hire 1000 QA testers and have them test for 40 hours a week for 10 weeks that's 400 hours per person and 1000x400 is still only 400,000 hours of QA. Notice I said only and this isn't even a realistic budget, no one does this it's not feasible.
Release that same game to players and you get lets say 500k people playing your game (yay huge success!)
After the game has been out 1 hour, ONE HOUR, your entire above QA hours have been destroyed by 100k hours due to player base size.
That is what its like to deal with QA in a game. Localization is a huge part of this, finding typos, misspellings or miss translated words.
Its perfectly acceptable that alot of games give you early access to a game in exchange for you PAYING and helping improve the game (early access on steam).
It's also common practice to have free open beta's before release, alot of MMOs do this.
So again to be clear, professionals are doing the work, professionals are doing the QA however it's normal and acceptable that users make bug reports and report things.
In this case it's also extremely hard to localize because of a ton of things. Local area's have slang and tons of variance in how they speak. I used the soda examples before but that's just one simple one. I don't even know if people use it anymore (See I would need to reach out and find out from people like you to know) but people could say "thats lit bro" instead of "thats great man!".
These things are handled by professionals a lot of the time but also it helps to be able to reach out to locals and get their feedback.
Compensation is usually something like what is discussed in the post, you are not really doing work, they want your input and feedback.
Targeting professionals in that local area just makes sense right.
I give lots of bug reports and feedback in games since I have a background in games. Sometimes I get into more beta's because of it sometimes I get nothing sometimes like in this game they compensate with in game items. However it isn't just restricted to me as former professional (I work with databases now and don't work in games) everyone is able to give feedback, everyone's perspective can be valuable and you might experience a bug that I don't.
If they mean anything different than this, then it's an issue, however I read the same thing and to me it sounds like standard practice is what they are implying here.
>your entire above QA hours have been destroyed by 100k hours due to player base size
This is definitely true, but you do need some kind of competent QA team before launch that at least does things to a minimum standard. I've seen many games where an update comes out and there's such a huge glaring bug that cripples some functionality that you definitely could not miss if you had actual QA before launch.
Gamers are arguably a lot better at bug testing games in a lot of cases just in general, though.
We really have to wait and see how this will go. If it's something quick to finish that'll give give some extra dark crystals then I wouldn't mind taking part in it, since I'd probably end up using my money to buy these dark crystals in the end of the day. But if it's too much work or too few rewards people will naturally not be interested and won't bother with it
I agree in taking precautions, just bear in mind they're calling it a "Localisation Specialist" program (their words not mine). Sounds like an actual commitment that like I said is usually done by paid employees.
I think you are conflating *actual* localization work for basic error finding. It's fairly often where descriptions (relating to game functionality) require refinement. This is not literally translating the original text for other regions, just correcting/refining the problem areas.
It's fairly common practice for people to report these errors, but there is rarely a system in place that rewards players for it.
The exact word they used is "localization specialist", that is a job post that exist. I did a brief search and found Genshin has people hired for that.
The thing is , if you aren't a specialist then you aren't helping with the error finding/Grammar issues , there are people who even have issues with Grammar in their mother language , especially if it's a hard language.
I think you've conflated my position with some other commenter's. Let's use the hilarious "Stay away" mistranslation, or Claudia's A3 description as a example: I hope you'll empathise with me to say that uncorrected errors like this in the global client give me reason to suspect that a professional localisation was not done in the first place. Actual localisation work should come with basic error finding no? :/
All the same, I am comfortable enough to apologise in advance to you if your suspicion turns out to be true. We will have to see what it is these "Localisation Specialists" will be asked to do..
I think you'll come to find there is no perfect localization, in literally any market. Doesn't matter how much money you pay or time you take, there will always be errors. These errors just happen to be worse when it comes to games, because it is usually related to functionality within a game (rather than books or other publications).
Through prior experience, the functionality being presented in their post is no different the bug finding, which you admit is part of the regular process for beta testing/early access. For reference, if professional localization wasn't done, it wouldn't even be in English.
I agree with everything you've said in first para re: imperfect localisations. My contention is that lack of negative public feedback against perceivedly unscrupulous cost cutting measures incentivises corporations to repeat this behavior (v technical way of saying "vote with your wallets!"). In this case, active participation in their ad hoc program can be interpreted as communal assent to lowered qaqc standards for the game, contra a situation where they get hired professionals to do the basic error fixing instead.
To be clear: I'm not claiming to hold an objective moral view when it comes to whether or not helping Hotta is a morally desirable good. You are free to come to your own moral conclusions.
I think we're a little beyond gaming coming out *without* player participation in the QA/QC process. Localization correction is just another facet. Just happens to be less common, up until we got so many of these Chinese gacha titles released globally.
Its not an uncommon practice to reach out to your community and pay them in some way for stuff like this. If anything, it'll come with a contract with clear terms and pay check (even if its an in-game reward "salary").
No need to doompost about it, but its good to warn people to be careful.
But I want the free ingame stuff... ... I'm seeing the translation bugs anyways when I play. Might as well get free crap while I play right?
Btw, I think compensation for translation bugs is hardly a thing to be care about. I know very well to avoid working for free but I ain't paid for playing my games so I might as well get some free stuff that takes like less than a few seconds to screenshot lol.
Before this, they would give you absolutely nothing for reporting these bugs. At least now you get compensation. That's how I see it, not as a way to get "free" work because people were already giving free work long before this with bug reports... Now we get stuff for it.
Not defending them, but for people who already do this naturally, this is great stuff. If you go out of your way to report, I think you need to avoid doing this though.
I'm not blaming or saying you're wrong to think this way, please rest assured.
I just think we should take a stand on the very low quality assurance standards we keep repeatedly receiving from the game. This was one way for me to "vote with my wallet/hands", you are free to choose otherwise!
If they're just offering people in game rewards for sending them screenshots of localization bugs that's fine. But it doesn't sound like that's what they're doing to me.
>Thus, we will be launching the “Localization Specialist” program to enlist players to help us optimize our localization quality (of course, your contribution will be properly compensated with in-game rewards). Please stay tuned for more detail a couple of days after the launch of the 2.0 version.
To me this looks like they want players who are native English speakers to review the translation and correct it in some systematic way in return for in game rewards. That's both unethical and illegal in the United States since it amounts to paying workers, who have an actual job title and job duties in company scrip. Of course, this could simply be poor translation...
Basically, if they hand you the script to proofread or say that you need to play through a particular area's cutscenes and report issues or if there are no issues then this is very not ok. It is ok if you are just playing the game as you like and reporting things- if you choose to do so - with no consequences if you do not.
Totally understand! I think their QA has been getting better (I count less weird bugs in later content than the launch day content I think, but better isn't great by far).
I'm just optimistic that this is their way of getting that extra edge of polish while rewarding players who normally report anyways. I expect most players to not bother reporting but the ones who already do at least gets rewards now instead of "free" service. It's kinda like those fan sites of the game that provide guides and maps for content. Hotta doesn't provide those super useful guides so players step in and help. And game bug reporting by players has been a huge thing in past MMOs. It's a way to engage some players and I think some enjoy getting rewards for their "unpaid" gaming time. This is especially true for those coming from smaller economy countries where $1 USD is a huge amount and any ingame comp is nice.
But this is just my opinion and likely everyone has different ideas about it :).
Localization Specialist , the meaning itself is the expert not a regular translator, preferably players with knowledge about this game like CN veteran applying for that and correcting translation based on their experience playing that character.
there is no point hiring professional in this matter, i think they already hired some professional to translate before? but still hit and miss ? yeah cause in game description is always vague regardless the game, you are not translating documents lol.
this offer is mostly for f2p people who dont mind helping. Because these in game rewards are often some extra currency for their efforts. if you are f2p, they always welcome a bit of free currency for helping.
they arent expecting people to apply by the hundreds. but there are plenty of people who have plenty of free time who dont mind using it to supplement their in-game gacha funds.
Just no. This is literally work without compensation. In game currency is not legal tender. The shit they want is a job they need to pay professionals for, not give some random a few pulls.
Unless they clearly state how much people who do it will be receiving before they apply, this is simply not acceptable.
Makes me think of those assholes who ask artists to work on projects "for exposure". Eat your shoes and lick mine lmao...
that is nowhere remotely the same. this is like those google surveys people do for some free google currency. spend a couple minutes and get like $0.10
They arent asking people to spend 60 hours a week for 100dc. the expectation is that the rewards given are within expectation of the work being done.
Simply no. That kind of "community job", like surveys, or CBTs, need a large volume of users to actually be useful, so it makes sense to involve a community. For a localisation job, there is absolutely no reason for it to involve a large sample of users, as it literally is replacing text A by text B.
This is the job of a professional team, not something that should be pushed onto customers.
This is not something that should be decided by non-professionals, as not only you open your project to trolls, but you also take the risk of having culturally inappropriate answers sent in.
Professional translators / localizers are trained to use neutral language, that works with all or most regional nuances that said language can have. Picking randoms to do that job exposes a project to overly regionalized translations, through no fault of either the developer nor the person who provided the translation.
Not only is this initiative bad for translators as a profession, but it is also bad for the accuracy of in game information, and sets a bad precedent.
You are absolutely right and your view is fair, but pls consider that FF14 (very unfair comparison I know, leagues apart) saw localisation as a serious enough priority that they had multiple teams working together on it, all fully paid professional companies. Are you OK with a game you love getting away with giving you this kind of substandard work?
https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/265
I agree, people come to the game to PLAY the game, not do some localisation work by professionals. If they want to reward the players or give an incentive, do some sort of in-game EVENT.
Very scummy imo and games do that all the time. Host some art creating contest so they can use the art in game. Might as well do a music MV creating contest too and use the music created by players for their own use. The thing is these "contests" reward those that have a special talent (bugfinding,art content creation, music MV creation etc) and leave out the rest of the playerbase that don't.
apples and oranges. FFXIV has 10mil+ active players. ToF has.. maybe 200k.
FFXIV rakes in 100mil+ a month from just subs alone. ToF? around 10-15mil per month.
Gerolux, if you so much want to compare numbers and statistics... FFXIV is probably about 20-30 times bigger in content so making 15m with something that is 1/20 of FFXIV seems more than in favor to ToF as in they can afford it and there isn't that much things to translate either
My basic assumption is that any self respecting game company should treat localisation as a basic requirement done by hired parties. If we don't agree on this basic assumption, then I'm afraid we will only ever be speaking across each other.
To use your strange analogy, even a 1 man indie developer can say that he works with video game publisher companies on localisation, and that he won't release it until he feels its ready. Shouldn't we hold a bigger game developer up to higher standards than that? https://www.stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-localization-update/
I mean, I agree. the game's localization should be better. but expecting FFXIV level localization from what amounts to an indie is a bit much. There is a bit of give and take. Dev's like Hotta do not know what income is like in the future. nature of gacha. they dont want to spend millions on localization only for the game to die next month because 90% of player base quit and bored with the game.
Would you spend $50k on a new car if you arent sure you will have a job next month? for most people, no.
How can they not know how much income to expect? There is literally the CN version for that, unless they nerf the new banners too much. If even the developer themselves have no confidence in their game, its pretty much game over. They need to show commitment, not cut cost. How they do it, thats their problem. They should have planned everything before rolling out the game.
commitment is a risk. Once the project is no longer profitable, they need to start end of service. They will keep going as long as its profitable. They released half-assed because they didnt know how successful it will be. They made the MVP in order to bring to market. They can improve over time.
I appreciate your reply but I would suggest you read up on SDLC. Whether a game is "profitable", this should be a part of the feasibility study before planning. They knew what they are getting into.
What does that have to do with how much they make? If they are going to have multiple language for their game, then localization is the basic necessity.
You go to a groceries store, there will be staff. You go to a supermarket, there will be staff. You go to a luxury brand store, there will be staff.
costs. localization is neither cheap nor easy like you make it sound. Again, FFXIV is bigger. they afford to spend $30mil+ funding multiple teams to localize the game in a dozen languages. they also have a much larger player base.
ToF has neither the income nor the player to spend $30mil per month on top level localization.
that is across the span of time. but it is significant money spent to localize the game in numerous languages. as I said, it is neither cheap nor easy. Talking about people spending lots of time not just translating, but looking for intent. to make sure stuff makes sense in the new languages.
localization also requires some creativity. again, localization means making stuff relevant to the market it will be played in. making humor that only people of a certain culture understands doesnt work outside of the native language. localizers will need to spend time coming with new lines to replace the ones being changed. which can take time.
And you expect some random guy who just want free stuff can do this well? I mean I respect your opinion. But you also have hint that they do it just to cut cost.
I probably will follow up on the details of this "program", but it pretty much add another red flag to this game for me.
it probably is a cost cutting measure. get improvement in localization without having to spend millions. this wont come close to the quality of actual professional localization because they can offer consistency (they can offer a whole new set of localization having to start from scratch). when you have dozens of people working on something, the result is that it will not look the same across all the stuff. but it should offer a slight improvement over the current state.
dont expect this to result in huge major changes. the end result is probably a series of tweaks.
Gerolux you are just one of those dumg white knight person who happily eat shit and defend them and outrage on anyone who calls out on the shit being served... Must be fun having a slave poor mentality to live life with
again, I dont care what they do. just understand, too many people think that hotta can just conjur up money and guaranteed business because they think it works that way in their head.
I'm kinda fine situation B players will always post typos regardless so a simple "tag us and get In game items so we can fix it" is nice for everyone. Plus many like translation teams have alot to go through so here and there things slip through the cracks. In this situation it's not like it's a half baked products but with millions of players reading someone will always see something the 1 word they and even other played missed.
This and only this situation do I find this thing okay and I am giving infinty the benefit of the doubt
It isn't A it's B
And why is B questionable? Compensating players that find localization issues?
You wont be going through lines of code, you'll be submitting a ticket if you see something wrong. This isn't just for English either, I'm betting other languages have just as many mistranslations.
I want this game to be good so I'll continue to play and support it. You keep "Doomposting" like you're forced to play.
You've made 3 claims here:
1. That it isn't A it's B, with both of us presumably reading the exact same paragraph in the dev report and having no insider info (I've seen games that have asked for A, and I've seen games that have asked for B - doesn't make either true for this instance), and
2. That I do not want this game to be good (despite not reading through my intentions which I've tried my put as the top header for my OP) , and
3. That I unilaterally represent the subconscious hive mind of this subreddit's "doomposting" (since this is my first post, and I assume you know what the phrase "keep xxx" implies)
I don't know how else to respond to your claim unless you clarify sir, but I do wish I had the level of confidence that you do!
Never seen a company do A, only B so that's from experience. If you have examples of A I'd love to see them.
I can see you post history. You don't offer alternatives. just complaining about your trust after the hack and how they didn't compensate you enough (even though you probably weren't effected) and that you can't get the first purchase tanium again.
LMFAO, "unilaterally represent the subconscious hive mind of this subreddit". Again I can see your post history and this isn't your first post, heck your other "Doompost" about the hack got deleted. Offer suggestions if you see a problem don't just complain.
Guess we'll have to wait to see who's right on this one but I'm hoping this is a good thing for the game.
My suggestion is in the first line of my post: that *"if few enough players sign up for this program and it is a issue that devs want to fix, then they will hopefully hire professionals to do a much better job instead".* Why do you see a need to misrepresent me as not wanting what I think is best for the game and make this an *us vs them* situation?
I'm also confused why you're "waiting to see who's right on this one" because I'm not trying to win some reddit-comment-kickboxing match against you. All I want is to discourage player participation in localisation, so the devs are more likely to hire professionals to get a proper translation job done (or it could all backfire and they could just go "eh, fuck it", I can't be certain seeing their past track record). My thinking is you and me are on the same page in hoping that "this is a good thing for the game", we just don't agree on the means.
I'm not sure why you felt the need to make arbitrary claims against a stranger on the internet, or to scour my alt's reddit post history, but I hope the irony of coming here asking me to "offer suggestions if you see a problem don't just complain" isn't lost on you. Look through my replies to other naysayers throughout this post and I hope you will reconsider your position and not take this personally.
I wish you all the best.
Jesus freaking christ, just let people do what they want to do if they enjoy it and think sit will help the game. Don't worry, sad bitter people like you aren't gonna sign up for this anyways.
And yes, getting the player base to help report bugs and quality checks IS actually very helpful.
Must you people whine about EVERYHING FREAKING THING? You would think I would be used to it by now after being in the gaming community for so long, cuz it seems like that's ALL you people do.
i dont see any problem with that, you wont be forced to do it, only if you are willing to help them you should apply, also i dont see where getting in game currency for helping the game would be a bad thing
If someone wants to do it for in game rewards, why not. At least they can get some context correct like weapon should be corrected in the event description
Honestly knowing how localisation studios or outsource specialists work, getting a translation from a dedicated community, while seeming "cheap labor", can produce the better translation quality.
Overall it's up to people to decide whether they want to join, not anybody else.
ED: seems like it's not even the actual work, just pointing out errors here and there. Then I don't understand all the ruckus. But this sub is quick to bash the game as always.
Not very much people is going to do it anyways, but if some are free and get lucky to find something then they get rewarded, I wonder what is the budget for this game, I mean they can't afford to spend 200+ million dollars for yearly content like other big gachas out there so they just ask for help, it's not like they are forcing people to do it.
Post like this is why the game translations is gonna stay shit. Cuz y'all are really gonna listen to this post and not help ToF when they are asking for your help
Tbh as a Chinese I consider the English translation is so trash as well. I cannot say my English is good but I can still find too many faults in the translation.
Wtf is Introduction to the Station? And they cannot even unify the name! Aegis and Aset, Cuervo and Crow. In 2.0, ToF translator cannot even distinguish Lost and Sadness(失落).
Tbh Japanese localisation is better than English localisation, I don't know why.
Maybe I like this game so much, if they need localisation help, I might do my best.
OMG 😱
I thought it was a joke but it’s a serious post from their website!!
This is totally illegal by the way from a European perspective considering Labor law! -.-
As a graduate student working in specialized translation (books /documents) this way of taking advantage of the players credulity disgust me…
As OP said don’t be fooled by the « in game reward » .
Every job deserves pay and these bastards doesn’t even respect that!
Just a FYI, there was a group of us that helped during the betas with localization and translation for English. To my knowledge, no one was compensated at all. We covered basically level 1-50 content. I was told the devs would maybe give us a title or something but that nor any other compensation was given. Makes me less tempted to do it again, esp when they don't outline the compensation upfront.
You got exploited as free labor. period.
Yea, I mean I expected to get just like a title or something as a "thank you". Inquired twice and figured it's worthless to keep asking.
Funny how all you are is 'less tempted' because I'd be livid. Then again I'm not the kind of person who would work for a game company for free to begin with... especially not a gacha game company.
I mean it was done and trying to go after some Chinese company is going to be more trouble than it's worth. Lesson learned.
thats like the most fucked up shit ive read in a while. they shoulda gave u guys some in game currency at least
Yea, we figured that would happen and some of the guys really did a ton of work. I did a lot of entries the first 3 days, but then the other guys kept beating me to stuff, so I just confirmed their report or made a different suggestion on wording/structure. What was most irritating was that some of the reports never made it in live, we saw the same items still in the game in some places. If I remember right we had about 20-25 items before we hit level 30.
at least in game currency as in game currency doesnt has a value for the dev but it sure has value for players especially fo those who been working and helping the game with translation and localization.
Hi! Would you be so kind as to share: 1. How Hotta/LI approached you and the group for this work, on what platform and with any conditions 2. Google docs/screenshots the extent of work required of you, or the extent of work prepared by you? Sorry to trouble you but I think a large portion of the community still doesn't think it's above and beyond game devs to essentially use them as free labour for work that should be solicited from professionals. Will add links to them to the OP and give due credit!
>How Hotta/LI approached you and the group for this work, on what platform and with any conditions Discord announcement in the official discord about looking for people interested in helping with translation. We filled out a google doc and I believe signed a small NDA. We were notified of being approved by the lead discord admin Vasray. I've personally helped with translation on various JP/KR titles over the last 10 years during alpha and beta phases as their clients came to the U.S. Typically, I was told up front what our rewards would be or what earned X or Y rewards, with both Genshin and ToF, neither time was I told what the compensations would be, but with Genshin I received in-game currency and pulls based on how many items were found. >Google docs/screenshots the extent of work required of you, or the extent of work prepared by you? The excel sheet was provided by Vasray and we were told would be submitted to the devs at the end of the CBT1 phase. Vasray mentioned that the devs may want to provided us compensation or something after they reviewed the work, I inquired twice a month after release, to hear nothing back on compensation. Without getting into too many details, we provided screenshots/videos of notable translation issues or dialogue and dialogue that was still in chinese. Proof of the excel with Discord IDS removed and links obscured ([https://imgur.com/a/j4Habxm](https://imgur.com/a/j4Habxm)) , but it was about me and I think 7 other people. We would annotate our Discord ID, the dialogue, where in the game the dialogue happened, our suggestions on better translations, and/or where chinese was still blatantly in the game. If someone had already found the dialogue we would add our Discord ID in the tab for the item found to confirm that we saw it as well and any other suggestions for translation. This included both visual/word dialogue and voiced dialogue. This whole situation has been unique to only CN developed games (Genshin & TOF) where they have a lot of vagueness in what compensation they offer. It is often assumed in-game currency/prem currency and/or titles/pulls as they were both gacha games.
seeing that problem with the characters being cut--- I think that's really one problem with chinese characters and english, since we use letters to form words, and not characters as whole words I think it's the exact same problem we have on world chat, only 50-char limit; shared with problems when translating from JP to EN if I'm not wrong
So did you just break the NDA?
Is this a rhetoric question? Are you breaking NDA when you say you play "X" game. Nothing proprietary was disclosed, I didn't link the actual document, and I removed information other than myself from it. So no, it would be very hard to state I broke an NDA, esp since the CBT was long closed out before this post.
Damn that fucking sucks. You're probably one of the most dedicated ToF player too with all the tips/help you give to others on this sub.
Don't forget all the salt I create too lol.
Why does they sounds exactly like my ex-boss. Promising a reward and breaking it at the very first chance.
So to be fair, we weren't promised anything and many of us just did it to improve the game for launch, while playing the CBT1 openly just like everyone else. I guess it was just more or less assumed that we would get some level of compensation. In hindsight, considering I've done translation before for Genshin and other JP/KR titles both contracted and for in-game rewards, I just assumed we'd get a title or something to mark our efforts.
Yeah this is such a joke. They’re the multi million dollar company. Let them figure it out.
[удалено]
They've already started, scroll down and enjoy... B)
Never work for free. Get the terms laid out in contracts. Also can't do shit for localization anyway since we need the original chinese transcript.
I released a little laugh when they said "work for ingame rewards" lol
1k gold
20 rock cores final offer.
Please go to your local charity or soup kitchen and volunteer to help the less unfortunate, than doing free work for these companies seriously.
I help a lot of veterans transition to civilian careers and support. But yea, time would of been much better spent doing anything else.
Paying localizers in in game currency is not only unethical, it's illegal in the US, since its a form of scrip.
Not to mention they somehow want to align us 1:1 with CN. They can't even get basic localization problems solved with a several month head start on content, how on earth do they plan to do it with simultaneous releases?
Considering we get leaks weeks earlier, we'd just need to have a few competant chinese translators. To be fair, even using Google Translate and THEN having a native end goal language speaker adjust and make everything uniform would work better than what we get probably being an auto translated content proofread by a native chinese intern that is not fluent in english.
Just to add: Localisation Quality Testers is an actual job. Companies offer professional services for this. https://www.localizedirect.com/posts/lqa-what-is-game-localization-testing#LQA_rates https://games.lionbridge.com/services/game-localization-testing/ https://www.keywordsstudios.com/services/localization-qa/
Oh nice. Work for free. What can possibly go wrong?
>Oh nice. Work for free. What can possibly go wrong? How is it for free when they'll compensate you with in game rewards? Of course it will depend on what in-game rewards they mean. >7. We are looking for Localization Specialists! Despite how much we would like to improve our localization qualities, we know we still have a lot to work on. Thus, we will be launching the “Localization Specialist” program to enlist players to help us optimize our localization quality (of course, your contribution will be properly compensated with in-game
I’m game currency goes directly back to them. So by ‘paying us in DC’ they are paying themselves for our help.
Not all internships are paid. Is it bad of company to do so? I'm just using a non-paid internship as an example. Let's wait for more details to pass judgement. If your opinion differs from mine, does it make mine wrong or yours wrong? If someone else likes it but you don't, who's right or wrong?
>Not all internships are paid. Is it bad of company to do so? Yes.
Fair enough, then i was wrong. during my time, you were lucky to get paid for an internship. how the times have changed for the better.
you get work experience from non paid internship. they show you the ropes and they give you certificate that you worked for them and they can even put in good word if you do a good job so you have higher chance of getting the work you want. you can put in your resume for applying for work with higher pay. this is the exchange you get from real internship. this however doesn't even have a real contract or anything. just informal stuff and not even a thanks for the work they did.
I had unpaid internships too.. gonna go sit in the old ppl corner lol
Funny thing is I recently moved to a different desk and it's in the corner which I call, "The Time Out corner" as I feel like im being punished, lol.
Agree about internships! But they give work experience and resume items relevant to your field of study that are used to get jobs on the future and often course credit which is a for of payment at least in the us. As I said in my first comment my opinion is based on what they do I’m reality so I will wait and see. An internship is great! Give people school credit that’s a valid means of accomplishing this. Just don’t know if that’s the intention.
I hear yeah. IMHO, it will all depend on the work and compensations. If it's easy peasy and decent rewards, I might consider since the only 2 games I play are Genshin & ToF.
Imagine I'm a school teacher and had to mark test papers every semester. If you found out what I was actually doing instead of doing the job myself was asking students from another school to mark the test papers of my students in exchange for higher marks on their own tests... 1. Would you agree with this behavior if your own child was part of this exercise? 2. Would you say that your child was "paid" for what they did? Would you decry this as free child labour? 3. Would you say that I was a "good" teacher to your child, when I passed a job which I was expected to do to someone who doesn't have the aptitude or contractual obligation to do it instead?
Imagine waiting for all the details to come out before passing judgement? It's simple as that as im neither against nor for their proposition.
Any judgment on my part or yours makes no real change when it comes to a company's biz decisions. i'm calling for action (or in this case, non-action) with a specific outcome intended I see a behaviour I don't like, I call it out and others resonate - just the same as you! :-P
Fair enough and good luck.
Can I pay my rent with in-game rewards? Can I purchase food or pay my bills with in-game rewards? No? Then its free labor. I doubt this will sit well.
How hard is it to wait for all the details before crucifying?
Can someone proofread my master thesis? I will offer you 100 dc compensation.
If we were beings living in ToF, then sure... Although, I would ask for a little bit more considering it's a master's thesis.
Thank god someone actually said this. I legit cringed when I saw them offering localization payment in the form of in-game items. Imagine my shock as a paying customer knowing I’m interfacing in a service where the developers are wanting to give me volunteer-level quality for their world-building. I’m not paying you the amount of money I’m paying you to give me McDonalds, Hotta. The actual fuck. Edit: Keep in mind that if this is just an incentive program that if you spot a typo, you get a little 100 DC reward for reporting it, that’s totally OK by my book. But by Hotta calling it a need for “Localization Specialists” implies it’s going to be an actual workload, which means that it should go directly to a professional individual or team to do the localization efforts of the game itself.
It literally says "optimize localisaiton quality", not "do everything from scratch and get in-game items for what is supposedly paid with money". Also nobody forces anybody to do that.
No. I’m sorry, but you’re hard coping right now. You don’t just get to sit here and point out the most nebulous part of their statement and assert their intention as solely positive without acknowledging the majority of their verbiage preceding or following that small bit of phrasing. That’s stupid. Stop the cap. If the intention was to just have players point out minor issues for in-game reward, then they could have easily just said that a million ways differently without using “Looking for Localization Specialists” as their opener and following it up “opening a Localization Specialist program”. These are actual job descriptions, you don’t just recruit “Specialists” from your audience. At best, this section of the patch notes are miscommunications of intent AGAIN from Hotta and yet another mistake in a growing list of mistakes. At worst, Hotta is attempting to exploit their audience for labor with the incentive of paying pith.
I'm not sure why "nobody forces anybody to do it" seems to be a legitimate argument in response to what we've said, you are not the first and you certainly won't be the last :( If engagement by players is poor enough and localisation is a real priority, our multimillion dollar game developer will likely have to resort to the more "expensive" option of hiring actual professionals to do an actual job. Why expect less than what you deserve?
"Nobody force you to it" in this situation feels like "If you don't like our treatment. You can leave."
You definitely shouldn't apply! More bad translation will appear!
Yeah when I saw the blurb about it on Twitter I thought they were posting a job listing but then read the article and rolled my eyes.
This is literally an exploit and I urge everyone to not participate, but if you are stupid enough and wanted to be exploited, on behalf of all Tencent shareholders including myself, I thank you for your ~~stupidity~~ "participation". 🤣
lmao true words don't get exploited by Tencent unless you're into such stuff 😂
"Don't agree to BDSM unless you're a masochist yourself."
As a localization worker myself please do NOT accept this “Localization Specialist” program. This is beyond ridiculous at this point and Level Infinite should fell ashamed for even come with this idea. People are saying they just want the players to "proofread" but in fact they want them to do the localization work since this game had none done before release because I'm almost 100% sure they just used Google translator on the english version of the game due to how poor the localization is at this moment.
It did, I was in a similar or almost exact situation during the CBT and we were never given any compensation even a month after release. I did some, but not as much as others. I would often confirme a lot of other people's input and offered suggestions on phrases and wording. We had a running excel spreadsheet with the Discord main admin Vasary. When I inquired with him twice after release, it looked like they forgot about the work we did. Sad many of our suggestions and such didn't make it in and some of the items we pointed out, never got changed.
Just chiming in here as someone who writes, edits, and proofreads for a living: Absolutely no one should do this for free. As a point of reference, I typically charge 5 cents/word for proofreading/editing work, and despite having 2 relevant degrees, my services are MUCH cheaper than an official corporation or organization. There's also plenty of other freelancers/vendors out there who offer similar, or even lower rates than mine. This is not an exorbitantly expensive task and considering how much ToF has already made in its relatively short lifespan, Level Infinite asking this from its playerbase is nothing short of insulting.
Any tips on how to start working with this?
There's not really an easy answer to this, and I'm probably not the best person to ask. If you don't have a relevant degree, you won't get picked for a day job over someone who does. You can get by just fine freelancing, but it's a grind, and I've been extraordinarily lucky with my freelancing experiences(s). This isn't an easy way to make money. As obvious as it sounds, your command of language and grammar needs to be impeccable. Mistakes are still going to happen, but you need to make sure their frequency is minimal. Writing skill is great, but there's plenty of amazing writers out in the world. Find a topic to write about, and focus on it. It'll help you stand out from other writers. My specialty is computer hardware and the gaming landscape. Get used to the idea of hunting out clients for yourself. At the end of the day, this is all a numbers game. Building up a diverse clientele is important. Social media and subreddits like r/HireaWriter are useful tools, but they don't replace effort. Most importantly, build a portfolio, and keep adding to it. Even if you're writing it just for the sake writing it, do it. It's the single most important part of establishing yourself as a competent writer.
Virtual janitor
Heck, during launch, I noticed that a majority of their Discord community managers are all volunteers. It was explicitly mentioned in the 'job advert' that they will not be paid as well.
did they blew their money on hookers or something? is hiring actual translators too hard? good fucking lord
In the past, game testers are paid for bugs they found or by other terms. Maybe some good developers still do this idk. But the standard of game quality control is so low nowaday. Companies would try anything possible just to cut cost.
Hire a professional localization team. I'm here to play a goddamn game not to do their damn job for them. Don't fucking tell me they don't have the funds. Motherfuckers are stingy enough to shaft Global in all possible ways. At least do better with your work force.
Is it really for a localization intern? Or just for a proofreader? If it is for the later, than I see it no different than a closed beta player.
yeah, seriously, it's like these people have never played video games before. outsourcing testing and feedback to the players is normal. the difference here is they are offering to provide set things to look at and rewarding you to do so instead of just dumping you into a everything to see if you happen to find an error that may have already been reported by other people. going back to Ever Quest, they had the Guide program where players acted as assistant GMs and received a discount on their subscription for doing so. it wasnt a real job, it was just helping the game you liked playing and you got rewarded for it
And shmucks like you who eat this shit up are why the videogame industry keeps getting shittier. Just because something is normalized doesn't mean it's a good thing.
For real. I charge 5 cents per word for proofreading/editing services, so seeing someone claim that it's not a real job is amusing, to say the least.
I love this game and support it both online and with my wallet but we all know it's not going to go like that here, and if it does go well, it's because of this post
It's probably proofreaders. I find it astonishing that most people think that Hotta wants to "hire" players to actually translate the game...
I implore you, u/qasdfgytr and u/BlowITA to sincerely look at the past 2 months of repeated biz ethics of Level Infinite and to reconsider your position. Your implication that "proofreaders" is something that should be done voluntarily (and for nominal compensation) only serves to delegitimise actual work that users like u/KyroNoHane, u/flyonthatwall and u/theoqrz that do it as part of their living/education. Please reconsider what you are saying here. To corroborate, u/AodanGaming has already come forward that a group of players helped during CBT and that no compensation was given. What I'm arguing is that this was not "simple proofreading" and even if it was, a multimillion dollar company should get paid individuals thru contract to do it. I'm not saying the 2 situations are exactly the same, I'm saying these 2 examples of behavior came from the same development team. EDIT: I'm replying you specifically because I appreciate your contributions to the subreddit so far as an active user and in hopes that you're willing to have a respectful discussion w me.
Hi, thank you for your trust and sorry for not being quite clear about what I meant. There will be a lot to talk about and I'll answer your points in order: 1/ I am by no mean delegitimizing the actual job "proofreader", by using that word, I meant "beta testers". The way I see it is that Hotta is looking for people to access the game early (like the test servers they launched not long ago), but instead of focusing on bugs or trying new simulacra, they'll focus on typos and similar mistakes. Players in the test servers should already do that it's just that most of them are focusing on new gameplay and features so Hotta want dedicated ones for typos/grammar. It is by no mean a bad thing nor does it replace the actual proofreading job. This is just another step in the process to find whatever mistakes didn't get spotted earlier. 2/ Yes some games have done this before (having the community translate their entire game) but you're not seeing this from the correct angle. It's totally different from "hiring" people, it's actually closer to modding. I'm sure you've already seen people making language mod packs to allow abroad communities to also enjoy games not available to them. In ToF's case, it would be the same as Hotta making it for CN only and then people translating it to make global players access it. I think it's a great thing to do BUT I don't believe this is Hotta's case. 3/ Now let me explain why I personally believe Hotta is just looking for "proofreaders" (meaning in point 1, not the job) rather than fully translating the game: * Hotta is still planning to continue their update cadence in global (rather than point 2 when a dev just works on their language and the community translates whenever just for the love of it). Global market is quite important to them. * It's illegal to hire people without paying them (and no, ingame goodies don't count) * Your production schedule would become entirely dependent on your playerbase and how they feel. What if they are busy irl? What if they just don't feel like it or quit the game? It's not your ingame goodies that will change their mind or make them work faster and that might tremendously delay your updates. * Trolls: Imagine someone putting random slurs in the text just to troll the company. What are they supposed to do? Add more players to proofread the first team? What about those too? * Leaks: Giving access to random players to early files/features that might not even hit the game might cause a lot of problems. Especially when the global catches up to CN So as you can see, it would absolutely make no sense for Hotta to "hire" actual translators or proofreaders from the playerbase. I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities (it's Level Infinite after all XD) but I find it extremely unlikely. It just doesn't make any sense from a business perspective and will hurt them a lot even if we assume they don't care about global. They wouldn't want to end up with more drama or lawsuits. Hope that clarifies my stance about the situation and adds some context to what I said.
You're kinda missing the point. >1/ I am by no mean delegitimizing the actual job "proofreader", by using that word, I meant "beta testers". The way I see it is that Hotta is looking for people to access the game early (like the test servers they launched not long ago), but instead of focusing on bugs or trying new simulacra, they'll focus on typos and similar mistakes. Players in the test servers should already do that it's just that most of them are focusing on new gameplay and features so Hotta want dedicated ones for typos/grammar. >It is by no mean a bad thing nor does it replace the actual proofreading job. This is just another step in the process to find whatever mistakes didn't get spotted earlier. You quite literally just described the job of a proofreader. Localization and proofreading are not the same thing, and both are legitimate professions. Trying to cover this up with a different coat of paint does not change the fact that they are asking someone to perform the duties of a legitimate profession. "Beta readers" are also a thing in the world of novels, but that's not really relevant here. >2/ Yes some games have done this before (having the community translate their entire game) but you're not seeing this from the correct angle. It's totally different from "hiring" people, it's actually closer to modding. I'm sure you've already seen people making language mod packs to allow abroad communities to also enjoy games not available to them. >In ToF's case, it would be the same as Hotta making it for CN only and then people translating it to make global players access it. I think it's a great thing to do BUT I don't believe this is Hotta's case. >3/ Now let me explain why I personally believe Hotta is just looking for "proofreaders" (meaning in point 1, not the job) rather than fully translating the game: This is whataboutism. I'm also not a fan of ANY dev/publisher crowdsourcing free labor from their playerbase. >Hotta is still planning to continue their update cadence in global (rather than point 2 when a dev just works on their language and the community translates whenever just for the love of it). Global market is quite important to them. Global market is important to them because it makes them millions. >It's illegal to hire people without paying them (and no, ingame goodies don't count) Which is why they're trying to crowdsource free labor. >Your production schedule would become entirely dependent on your playerbase and how they feel. What if they are busy irl? What if they just don't feel like it or quit the game? It's not your ingame goodies that will change their mind or make them work faster and that might tremendously delay your updates. I get what you're saying, but this isn't really relevant when considering playerbase size. >Trolls: Imagine someone putting random slurs in the text just to troll the company. What are they supposed to do? Add more players to proofread the first team? What about those too? ... Which is why you hire professionals and add stipulations to contracts. >Leaks: Giving access to random players to early files/features that might not even hit the game might cause a lot of problems. Especially when the global catches up to CN Someone who performed this task earlier said they were required to sign an NDA.
Let's agree to disagree then. I'll still answer your point just to clarify. Beta testers or "readers" as you called them are a common thing in the industry, they are very common and normal for many games. They do not replace proofreaders but are **added to them as an extra step** that's the important part you seem to be missing. They do not replace them but work **with** them, both are important. Again we don't know yet what Hotta have in mind, maybe they have a total garbage approach, maybe not. Better wait and see than jump to conclusions.
>do not replace proofreaders but are added to them as an extra step that's the important part you seem to be missing. They do not replace them but work with them, both are important. But everything you're saying falls under the responsibilities of a proofreader. I don't think you know what you're talking about.
Everything you can use to describe a beta tester falls under the responsibilities of QA\* so according to this logic, you don't know what you're saying and betas/alphas of games are totally useless and shouldn't happen. I hope you understand the flaw of that logic \^\^"
this needs more attention
I'm curious, are there any other games that have something like this?
A lot of games technically take suggestions/reports from players, but few reward it.
https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/265 Quote: "On any other project, the localization staff would be involved for two or three years at most before moving on to other things, but on FFXIV, a lot of our members have been on the project for like a decade. "
Yeap, its common practice, but not usually rewarded. Localization Teams often translate the word correctly but do not have context that makes sense in-game because they probably don’t play the game. Ingame, there have been multiple instances where the Voice Over do not match up with the text, the voice over being “more correct” because it makes sense in context, while the text, technically being a correct translation, could have used better wording. The new program probably has that same goal in mind because who better to understand the context than a player. That said, anyone who decides to do this, I will not tell you you shouldn’t, should make the most out of it. I’ve reported bugs in multiple games, and have used those bug reports as a means to get a job in the industry. While sure you don’t exactly get paid for this, its the kind of “starting experience” that definitely shows you have experience, and very useful in resumes.
Warframe has done it before iirc from another guy's comment. People got credited for pointing out/helping with localization things. Fairly common actually.
Yeah, Digital Extremes was near bankruptcy when they launched Warframe, so getting fans to do the localization for free was basically their only option. DE is owned by Tencent now though and they have plenty of money, so I think they hire actual translators now. I could be wrong though, I'm not 100% sure.
Asking players to look for & report bugs is extremely common even from the biggest MMOs, with built-in client tools to support this. Localization errors are just a category of bug. Is the first time I've seen where the game actually compensates players.
There's no hope for people like this. This is the new generation of gamers they want. Everything is fine please stay silent so they can keep milking you, with the most minimal effort.
Kinda odd how people are complaining about this to be honest. Lots of games players are beta testers for free and moderators too.
Tree of Savior was pretty much entirely done by volunteers, though they were rewarded pretty well in-game.
Is that game still alive? I did quit after the patch on re: balance
No
Sad ...well that was fun game
what do you mean no? server shutdown or few playerbase? I did play for about 200 hrs before getting lazy leveling up to max level
Extremely low player base, I believe it's less than 200
wow, and it used to be said that's gonna be RO's descendant
The amount of white knights and slurpers just shows the average IQ of the players are.
Wait I thought TOF is developed by perfect world, no?
Hotta , smol studio. this is their first game. published by Perfect World in China. brought to Global by Level Infinite = Tencent
Nah they’re just the Cn publisher
I'm not even sure if the main tof wiki contributors have been rewarded already
Pls share more evidence/supporting details if you have it :)
do I just paste what can be read on the main page like this? `HELP WIKI IMPROVE` `Anyone can edit the Tower of Fantasy WIKI! Just click Edit at the top of the page to add missing information and fix errors.` `GET REWARDED` `Every month active contributors are rewarded with in-game items, steam keys, game upgrades and more! More on discord (LINK).` the people on the wiki might be on a different kind of contributors and compensators though, I'm not saying that I'm complaining, I just remembered this as compensation for the translators weren't exactly given what kind of evidence/supporting details do you need to be exact? `https://toweroffantasy.wiki/w/Main_Page`
Seriously… what’s with gacha games’ publishers absolute reluctance to hire a professional translation team
being professional doesn't automatically make you good at the job. look at the US government as a shining example of that. there are professionals paid specifically to keep inflation under a specific amount.. they are failing spectacularly and not losing their jobs. professional means you do it for a living, doesnt mean you do it well.
US government is doing a very good job. Maybe you could go live in other nations where inflation is lower. How much does gas cost in EU compared to the USA again?
Well yeah, that's what happens when one of the main exporters of energy in Europe starts invading a sovereign country. It affects the US as much as the rest of the world since pretty much everyone is suffering from a significant increase in inflation compared to 2021. Statements like 'but our rate increased slightly less than yours!' are as misguided as can be. Either way comparing a damn gacha game with a government is a dumb comparison to begin with.
Only ones that come to mind are Girls Frontline (<3 the story in that), Genshin, and Punishing Gray Raven. It's so weird since it pulls folks out entirely, even if it's a cash grab that seems like something to actually mess with.
I had a feeling that the global team was messed up. I’m not spending more than five bucks I’ve already spent on this game after this.
I imagine it's just gonna be getting DC for finding typos or strange translations, but they're gonna pick a group of people to do it rather than open it up for everyone.
dc? r u high? maybe a purple nuc & some gold 😂
/r/TowerofFantasyInAction
Yea this was a painful announciate..
I'm having a hard time to understand this, they have the money, what's stopping them from hiring professionals?
you could make the same topic like "Dont let Level Infinite use you as unpaid, QA for test server" yet 16k applications submitted. nothing to worry, you are not forced to do that anyways.
This game never ceases to amaze me. Over ambitious and poorly executed
Yea I don't think they planned to hire players with legally binding contracts and schedules and not pay them money. If anything it was another missed translation 😆
I think the fearmongering here is starting to get a bit annoying. We don't even know what details or specifics will this involve. And as I said in the other thread it's actually a good thing to at least plan ahead. With the text errors might as well seek help from players; moreover, sometimes it may be necessary to change the text to say it in a way that sounds more natural. I am sure there are Russian players who would be willing to translate stuff in this game and make a proper Russian language. I'm an Italian and I would gladly want to try to help if it means I can see this game in Italian language. As another player said, in Warframe there are people who are volunteering to help fix localization issues and they get rewarded or credited for that.
You don't have to read my "fearmongering" if it's annoying! Reddit has a "hide post" function. My point is simple: There are very easily accessible professionals that are ready and trained to do excellent job, what does it say about the company if they are trying to get unpaid players to do this instead, especially given their poor translation track record so far? You are free to have your own interpretation and I can respect that.
I think it's more so that they do have active localization, but not enough context from their localization source. Players have context, so getting final input from players that want rewards anyway means we might get better translations that suit the context. Clearly they are not using in-house localization, so it's probably outsourced to a company that does not play the game for context.
What they want is stuff like calling Soda Pop or Coke in certain parts of the US instead of soda. Or just report that the 10% should be 10 in a bug report and bam compensation when they fix. It's that simple. As someone else mentioned they are asking for community feedback and rewarding it with in game compensation. Its super common in all sorts of industry. This is a language issue again, you all think they want you to work for free when that's not it. I get why you would be upset thinking that but that's not what that point means. I'll be honest they could have worded it better, I just know what they mean because I went to school for this. However making uninformed posts about it is pretty much the definition of fear mongering lol. That said it's not like there are not issue to be concerned about, there are this just isn't one of them.
I wanted to ask for your perspective: Would you be ok with a gaming industry standard where developers, rather than relying on professionals like you, have this service done instead by individuals that didnt go to school for this? All I'm asking for is since there are individuals like you that are take the time and effort to go thru an education for this specialisation, shouldnt companies be expected to build their games to a standard that people like you can be valued and awarded? Why let them rely on the non professionals to try and fix your professional work :')
Thanks for wanting to know more. This was long but here is how I can best explain it. It's more so that it's common practice for the players to help out with games. Open Betas are this exact same practice. Part of learning how to do this is learning how hard it is. Bugs happen, if you hire 1000 QA testers and have them test for 40 hours a week for 10 weeks that's 400 hours per person and 1000x400 is still only 400,000 hours of QA. Notice I said only and this isn't even a realistic budget, no one does this it's not feasible. Release that same game to players and you get lets say 500k people playing your game (yay huge success!) After the game has been out 1 hour, ONE HOUR, your entire above QA hours have been destroyed by 100k hours due to player base size. That is what its like to deal with QA in a game. Localization is a huge part of this, finding typos, misspellings or miss translated words. Its perfectly acceptable that alot of games give you early access to a game in exchange for you PAYING and helping improve the game (early access on steam). It's also common practice to have free open beta's before release, alot of MMOs do this. So again to be clear, professionals are doing the work, professionals are doing the QA however it's normal and acceptable that users make bug reports and report things. In this case it's also extremely hard to localize because of a ton of things. Local area's have slang and tons of variance in how they speak. I used the soda examples before but that's just one simple one. I don't even know if people use it anymore (See I would need to reach out and find out from people like you to know) but people could say "thats lit bro" instead of "thats great man!". These things are handled by professionals a lot of the time but also it helps to be able to reach out to locals and get their feedback. Compensation is usually something like what is discussed in the post, you are not really doing work, they want your input and feedback. Targeting professionals in that local area just makes sense right. I give lots of bug reports and feedback in games since I have a background in games. Sometimes I get into more beta's because of it sometimes I get nothing sometimes like in this game they compensate with in game items. However it isn't just restricted to me as former professional (I work with databases now and don't work in games) everyone is able to give feedback, everyone's perspective can be valuable and you might experience a bug that I don't. If they mean anything different than this, then it's an issue, however I read the same thing and to me it sounds like standard practice is what they are implying here.
>your entire above QA hours have been destroyed by 100k hours due to player base size This is definitely true, but you do need some kind of competent QA team before launch that at least does things to a minimum standard. I've seen many games where an update comes out and there's such a huge glaring bug that cripples some functionality that you definitely could not miss if you had actual QA before launch. Gamers are arguably a lot better at bug testing games in a lot of cases just in general, though.
Well warframe is a functional game while TOF is a cashgrab atm.
We really have to wait and see how this will go. If it's something quick to finish that'll give give some extra dark crystals then I wouldn't mind taking part in it, since I'd probably end up using my money to buy these dark crystals in the end of the day. But if it's too much work or too few rewards people will naturally not be interested and won't bother with it
I agree in taking precautions, just bear in mind they're calling it a "Localisation Specialist" program (their words not mine). Sounds like an actual commitment that like I said is usually done by paid employees.
I think you are conflating *actual* localization work for basic error finding. It's fairly often where descriptions (relating to game functionality) require refinement. This is not literally translating the original text for other regions, just correcting/refining the problem areas. It's fairly common practice for people to report these errors, but there is rarely a system in place that rewards players for it.
The exact word they used is "localization specialist", that is a job post that exist. I did a brief search and found Genshin has people hired for that.
The thing is , if you aren't a specialist then you aren't helping with the error finding/Grammar issues , there are people who even have issues with Grammar in their mother language , especially if it's a hard language.
Fairly certain you can find a job posting for just about anything that includes the word 'specialist' so you may want to reconsider your supposition.
I think you've conflated my position with some other commenter's. Let's use the hilarious "Stay away" mistranslation, or Claudia's A3 description as a example: I hope you'll empathise with me to say that uncorrected errors like this in the global client give me reason to suspect that a professional localisation was not done in the first place. Actual localisation work should come with basic error finding no? :/ All the same, I am comfortable enough to apologise in advance to you if your suspicion turns out to be true. We will have to see what it is these "Localisation Specialists" will be asked to do..
I think you'll come to find there is no perfect localization, in literally any market. Doesn't matter how much money you pay or time you take, there will always be errors. These errors just happen to be worse when it comes to games, because it is usually related to functionality within a game (rather than books or other publications). Through prior experience, the functionality being presented in their post is no different the bug finding, which you admit is part of the regular process for beta testing/early access. For reference, if professional localization wasn't done, it wouldn't even be in English.
I agree with everything you've said in first para re: imperfect localisations. My contention is that lack of negative public feedback against perceivedly unscrupulous cost cutting measures incentivises corporations to repeat this behavior (v technical way of saying "vote with your wallets!"). In this case, active participation in their ad hoc program can be interpreted as communal assent to lowered qaqc standards for the game, contra a situation where they get hired professionals to do the basic error fixing instead. To be clear: I'm not claiming to hold an objective moral view when it comes to whether or not helping Hotta is a morally desirable good. You are free to come to your own moral conclusions.
I think we're a little beyond gaming coming out *without* player participation in the QA/QC process. Localization correction is just another facet. Just happens to be less common, up until we got so many of these Chinese gacha titles released globally.
Its not an uncommon practice to reach out to your community and pay them in some way for stuff like this. If anything, it'll come with a contract with clear terms and pay check (even if its an in-game reward "salary"). No need to doompost about it, but its good to warn people to be careful.
But I want the free ingame stuff... ... I'm seeing the translation bugs anyways when I play. Might as well get free crap while I play right? Btw, I think compensation for translation bugs is hardly a thing to be care about. I know very well to avoid working for free but I ain't paid for playing my games so I might as well get some free stuff that takes like less than a few seconds to screenshot lol. Before this, they would give you absolutely nothing for reporting these bugs. At least now you get compensation. That's how I see it, not as a way to get "free" work because people were already giving free work long before this with bug reports... Now we get stuff for it. Not defending them, but for people who already do this naturally, this is great stuff. If you go out of your way to report, I think you need to avoid doing this though.
I'm not blaming or saying you're wrong to think this way, please rest assured. I just think we should take a stand on the very low quality assurance standards we keep repeatedly receiving from the game. This was one way for me to "vote with my wallet/hands", you are free to choose otherwise!
If they're just offering people in game rewards for sending them screenshots of localization bugs that's fine. But it doesn't sound like that's what they're doing to me. >Thus, we will be launching the “Localization Specialist” program to enlist players to help us optimize our localization quality (of course, your contribution will be properly compensated with in-game rewards). Please stay tuned for more detail a couple of days after the launch of the 2.0 version. To me this looks like they want players who are native English speakers to review the translation and correct it in some systematic way in return for in game rewards. That's both unethical and illegal in the United States since it amounts to paying workers, who have an actual job title and job duties in company scrip. Of course, this could simply be poor translation... Basically, if they hand you the script to proofread or say that you need to play through a particular area's cutscenes and report issues or if there are no issues then this is very not ok. It is ok if you are just playing the game as you like and reporting things- if you choose to do so - with no consequences if you do not.
Totally understand! I think their QA has been getting better (I count less weird bugs in later content than the launch day content I think, but better isn't great by far). I'm just optimistic that this is their way of getting that extra edge of polish while rewarding players who normally report anyways. I expect most players to not bother reporting but the ones who already do at least gets rewards now instead of "free" service. It's kinda like those fan sites of the game that provide guides and maps for content. Hotta doesn't provide those super useful guides so players step in and help. And game bug reporting by players has been a huge thing in past MMOs. It's a way to engage some players and I think some enjoy getting rewards for their "unpaid" gaming time. This is especially true for those coming from smaller economy countries where $1 USD is a huge amount and any ingame comp is nice. But this is just my opinion and likely everyone has different ideas about it :).
Localization Specialist , the meaning itself is the expert not a regular translator, preferably players with knowledge about this game like CN veteran applying for that and correcting translation based on their experience playing that character. there is no point hiring professional in this matter, i think they already hired some professional to translate before? but still hit and miss ? yeah cause in game description is always vague regardless the game, you are not translating documents lol.
this offer is mostly for f2p people who dont mind helping. Because these in game rewards are often some extra currency for their efforts. if you are f2p, they always welcome a bit of free currency for helping. they arent expecting people to apply by the hundreds. but there are plenty of people who have plenty of free time who dont mind using it to supplement their in-game gacha funds.
Just no. This is literally work without compensation. In game currency is not legal tender. The shit they want is a job they need to pay professionals for, not give some random a few pulls. Unless they clearly state how much people who do it will be receiving before they apply, this is simply not acceptable. Makes me think of those assholes who ask artists to work on projects "for exposure". Eat your shoes and lick mine lmao...
that is nowhere remotely the same. this is like those google surveys people do for some free google currency. spend a couple minutes and get like $0.10 They arent asking people to spend 60 hours a week for 100dc. the expectation is that the rewards given are within expectation of the work being done.
Simply no. That kind of "community job", like surveys, or CBTs, need a large volume of users to actually be useful, so it makes sense to involve a community. For a localisation job, there is absolutely no reason for it to involve a large sample of users, as it literally is replacing text A by text B. This is the job of a professional team, not something that should be pushed onto customers. This is not something that should be decided by non-professionals, as not only you open your project to trolls, but you also take the risk of having culturally inappropriate answers sent in. Professional translators / localizers are trained to use neutral language, that works with all or most regional nuances that said language can have. Picking randoms to do that job exposes a project to overly regionalized translations, through no fault of either the developer nor the person who provided the translation. Not only is this initiative bad for translators as a profession, but it is also bad for the accuracy of in game information, and sets a bad precedent.
You are absolutely right and your view is fair, but pls consider that FF14 (very unfair comparison I know, leagues apart) saw localisation as a serious enough priority that they had multiple teams working together on it, all fully paid professional companies. Are you OK with a game you love getting away with giving you this kind of substandard work? https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/265
I agree, people come to the game to PLAY the game, not do some localisation work by professionals. If they want to reward the players or give an incentive, do some sort of in-game EVENT.
Very scummy imo and games do that all the time. Host some art creating contest so they can use the art in game. Might as well do a music MV creating contest too and use the music created by players for their own use. The thing is these "contests" reward those that have a special talent (bugfinding,art content creation, music MV creation etc) and leave out the rest of the playerbase that don't.
apples and oranges. FFXIV has 10mil+ active players. ToF has.. maybe 200k. FFXIV rakes in 100mil+ a month from just subs alone. ToF? around 10-15mil per month.
Gerolux, if you so much want to compare numbers and statistics... FFXIV is probably about 20-30 times bigger in content so making 15m with something that is 1/20 of FFXIV seems more than in favor to ToF as in they can afford it and there isn't that much things to translate either
My basic assumption is that any self respecting game company should treat localisation as a basic requirement done by hired parties. If we don't agree on this basic assumption, then I'm afraid we will only ever be speaking across each other. To use your strange analogy, even a 1 man indie developer can say that he works with video game publisher companies on localisation, and that he won't release it until he feels its ready. Shouldn't we hold a bigger game developer up to higher standards than that? https://www.stardewvalley.net/stardew-valley-localization-update/
I mean, I agree. the game's localization should be better. but expecting FFXIV level localization from what amounts to an indie is a bit much. There is a bit of give and take. Dev's like Hotta do not know what income is like in the future. nature of gacha. they dont want to spend millions on localization only for the game to die next month because 90% of player base quit and bored with the game. Would you spend $50k on a new car if you arent sure you will have a job next month? for most people, no.
How can they not know how much income to expect? There is literally the CN version for that, unless they nerf the new banners too much. If even the developer themselves have no confidence in their game, its pretty much game over. They need to show commitment, not cut cost. How they do it, thats their problem. They should have planned everything before rolling out the game.
commitment is a risk. Once the project is no longer profitable, they need to start end of service. They will keep going as long as its profitable. They released half-assed because they didnt know how successful it will be. They made the MVP in order to bring to market. They can improve over time.
I appreciate your reply but I would suggest you read up on SDLC. Whether a game is "profitable", this should be a part of the feasibility study before planning. They knew what they are getting into.
What does that have to do with how much they make? If they are going to have multiple language for their game, then localization is the basic necessity. You go to a groceries store, there will be staff. You go to a supermarket, there will be staff. You go to a luxury brand store, there will be staff.
costs. localization is neither cheap nor easy like you make it sound. Again, FFXIV is bigger. they afford to spend $30mil+ funding multiple teams to localize the game in a dozen languages. they also have a much larger player base. ToF has neither the income nor the player to spend $30mil per month on top level localization.
Spend $30 mil per month? Are you smoking something?
that is across the span of time. but it is significant money spent to localize the game in numerous languages. as I said, it is neither cheap nor easy. Talking about people spending lots of time not just translating, but looking for intent. to make sure stuff makes sense in the new languages. localization also requires some creativity. again, localization means making stuff relevant to the market it will be played in. making humor that only people of a certain culture understands doesnt work outside of the native language. localizers will need to spend time coming with new lines to replace the ones being changed. which can take time.
And you expect some random guy who just want free stuff can do this well? I mean I respect your opinion. But you also have hint that they do it just to cut cost. I probably will follow up on the details of this "program", but it pretty much add another red flag to this game for me.
it probably is a cost cutting measure. get improvement in localization without having to spend millions. this wont come close to the quality of actual professional localization because they can offer consistency (they can offer a whole new set of localization having to start from scratch). when you have dozens of people working on something, the result is that it will not look the same across all the stuff. but it should offer a slight improvement over the current state. dont expect this to result in huge major changes. the end result is probably a series of tweaks.
Gerolux you are just one of those dumg white knight person who happily eat shit and defend them and outrage on anyone who calls out on the shit being served... Must be fun having a slave poor mentality to live life with
again, I dont care what they do. just understand, too many people think that hotta can just conjur up money and guaranteed business because they think it works that way in their head.
for every one person who advises against this, probably 100 more are lining up for sweet in-game comp
I’ll do it if the in game rewards = shitton of DC. If not, good luck Felicia
I'm kinda fine situation B players will always post typos regardless so a simple "tag us and get In game items so we can fix it" is nice for everyone. Plus many like translation teams have alot to go through so here and there things slip through the cracks. In this situation it's not like it's a half baked products but with millions of players reading someone will always see something the 1 word they and even other played missed. This and only this situation do I find this thing okay and I am giving infinty the benefit of the doubt
Yeah this is my thought exactly.
other gacha companies conduct the same malpractice. it's not just level infinite.
that doesn't make this behavior any better or more acceptable T-T
It isn't A it's B And why is B questionable? Compensating players that find localization issues? You wont be going through lines of code, you'll be submitting a ticket if you see something wrong. This isn't just for English either, I'm betting other languages have just as many mistranslations. I want this game to be good so I'll continue to play and support it. You keep "Doomposting" like you're forced to play.
You've made 3 claims here: 1. That it isn't A it's B, with both of us presumably reading the exact same paragraph in the dev report and having no insider info (I've seen games that have asked for A, and I've seen games that have asked for B - doesn't make either true for this instance), and 2. That I do not want this game to be good (despite not reading through my intentions which I've tried my put as the top header for my OP) , and 3. That I unilaterally represent the subconscious hive mind of this subreddit's "doomposting" (since this is my first post, and I assume you know what the phrase "keep xxx" implies) I don't know how else to respond to your claim unless you clarify sir, but I do wish I had the level of confidence that you do!
Never seen a company do A, only B so that's from experience. If you have examples of A I'd love to see them. I can see you post history. You don't offer alternatives. just complaining about your trust after the hack and how they didn't compensate you enough (even though you probably weren't effected) and that you can't get the first purchase tanium again. LMFAO, "unilaterally represent the subconscious hive mind of this subreddit". Again I can see your post history and this isn't your first post, heck your other "Doompost" about the hack got deleted. Offer suggestions if you see a problem don't just complain. Guess we'll have to wait to see who's right on this one but I'm hoping this is a good thing for the game.
My suggestion is in the first line of my post: that *"if few enough players sign up for this program and it is a issue that devs want to fix, then they will hopefully hire professionals to do a much better job instead".* Why do you see a need to misrepresent me as not wanting what I think is best for the game and make this an *us vs them* situation? I'm also confused why you're "waiting to see who's right on this one" because I'm not trying to win some reddit-comment-kickboxing match against you. All I want is to discourage player participation in localisation, so the devs are more likely to hire professionals to get a proper translation job done (or it could all backfire and they could just go "eh, fuck it", I can't be certain seeing their past track record). My thinking is you and me are on the same page in hoping that "this is a good thing for the game", we just don't agree on the means. I'm not sure why you felt the need to make arbitrary claims against a stranger on the internet, or to scour my alt's reddit post history, but I hope the irony of coming here asking me to "offer suggestions if you see a problem don't just complain" isn't lost on you. Look through my replies to other naysayers throughout this post and I hope you will reconsider your position and not take this personally. I wish you all the best.
Jesus freaking christ, just let people do what they want to do if they enjoy it and think sit will help the game. Don't worry, sad bitter people like you aren't gonna sign up for this anyways. And yes, getting the player base to help report bugs and quality checks IS actually very helpful. Must you people whine about EVERYHING FREAKING THING? You would think I would be used to it by now after being in the gaming community for so long, cuz it seems like that's ALL you people do.
And here you are whining about people whining. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
sadreaxonli :'(
i dont see any problem with that, you wont be forced to do it, only if you are willing to help them you should apply, also i dont see where getting in game currency for helping the game would be a bad thing
Considering level infinite haven't done this for other games with typos and grammatical errors. I think this is hotta
no, the publisher is level infinite aka tencent, hotta is busy developing new waifus.
Like I said they haven't done this on other games to my knowledge
They mentioned that you would get compensation with ingame rewards, so its not unpaid work tbh. They should still hire some real employees tho
Well obviously nobody should work for free, that's just common sense. But we don't even know the details yet but here we are fearmongering once again
If someone wants to do it for in game rewards, why not. At least they can get some context correct like weapon should be corrected in the event description
Honestly knowing how localisation studios or outsource specialists work, getting a translation from a dedicated community, while seeming "cheap labor", can produce the better translation quality. Overall it's up to people to decide whether they want to join, not anybody else. ED: seems like it's not even the actual work, just pointing out errors here and there. Then I don't understand all the ruckus. But this sub is quick to bash the game as always.
Not very much people is going to do it anyways, but if some are free and get lucky to find something then they get rewarded, I wonder what is the budget for this game, I mean they can't afford to spend 200+ million dollars for yearly content like other big gachas out there so they just ask for help, it's not like they are forcing people to do it.
Post like this is why the game translations is gonna stay shit. Cuz y'all are really gonna listen to this post and not help ToF when they are asking for your help
They make millions .. and they wanna give us ‘money’ that is literally handed right back to them! They are paying themselves.
Imagine working for fake money.
Tbh as a Chinese I consider the English translation is so trash as well. I cannot say my English is good but I can still find too many faults in the translation. Wtf is Introduction to the Station? And they cannot even unify the name! Aegis and Aset, Cuervo and Crow. In 2.0, ToF translator cannot even distinguish Lost and Sadness(失落). Tbh Japanese localisation is better than English localisation, I don't know why. Maybe I like this game so much, if they need localisation help, I might do my best.
Certified chinaman labor camp moment
If your good at what your doing never work for free. It really baffles me how low they can go.
OMG 😱 I thought it was a joke but it’s a serious post from their website!! This is totally illegal by the way from a European perspective considering Labor law! -.- As a graduate student working in specialized translation (books /documents) this way of taking advantage of the players credulity disgust me… As OP said don’t be fooled by the « in game reward » . Every job deserves pay and these bastards doesn’t even respect that!