Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

It’s not often that my home country features in the international gaming news – actually, it never does – but my BBC Wales RSS feed threw up an interesting tidbit the other day. Imagine my surprise that it’s now been picked up by gaming communities and reported around the world. And whilst it might not be entirely pertinent to the international gaming agenda as a whole, it does suggest something about bigger issue surrounding gaming and minority/home languages.

I’m Welsh, but I don’t speak the language. That’s true of 73% of people who live and work in Wales, UK. That said, it leaves 27% – just over one in five people – who do use Welsh everyday, 37.7% of whom are aged 3-15 – the next generation’s gamers. And the numbers are rising.

Arberth Studios are a small development studio based in Ceredigion, west Wales. Their latest title, Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches, is based upon the Mabinogion, a classic collection of Welsh myths, legends and fantasies sprinkled with historical events. Already available in French, German and Russian, you’d expect a game steeped in Welsh mythology to be available in the native language … right?

Not when translation costs of the game’s 30,000 words tops £16k ($26k), apparently.

“We have to try and translate this game into Welsh,” Arberth’s Noel Bruton told the BBC, “but there’s just not enough Welsh speakers in the gaming market to justify the translation costs.”

So whilst there are 600,000 or so Welsh speakers, a lesser number would be gamers, and only around one in 20 of those might be interested in an adventure game. Not sound business sense, says the developer, although they state that while a Welsh version “is probably not commercially viable via conventional publishing routes [it] doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.”

Therefore, the company is looking for volunteers to help translate the game – they helpfully suggest a school or Welsh language group – with the somewhat non-committal possibility of compensation afterward. I’m not sure how successful they’ll be (work for a commercial company? For free? With no guarantee of anything in return? It’s not an internship) but you have to admire them for even asking.

With this story so easily duplicated across the world with a myriad of different ‘minority’ languages, what’s the answer? Should we continue to churn out games in the world’s foremost languages, with no option for alternate languages, or should developer’s be working towards being truly inclusive? Or should it depend on big (read: how much money) a developer/publisher has available? Surely it shouldn’t be down to ‘volunteers’ to translate games?

What do you think?