Localization

Okay, so this is a strange one.

Are all of you familiar with localization?

Localization is the process of adapting a product to a specific country or region. It includes multiple steps, the most obvious being translation. However, it is rarely that simple and cultural adaptations for specific countries, regions, cultures or groups are often needed to account for differences in different populations. 

In fact, localization is often still needed even when adapting a product between areas that share a common language. Products trying to make the leap from Britain to the US or visa versa is a common example, but it can even happen with regions inside the same country or between groups in the same population.

Say, for example, a department store is trying to spread from the US to Canada. Someone might look at this and suggest that simply opening the store there would be enough, but experience shows that not addressing the cultural differences between the two places will guarantee the effort will miss it's TARGET. *cough*

This is a common practice with videogames. The will be "localized" to a specific version for a specific region or market.

So, with that established, moving on now.

The setting and plot of this game are almost immaterial.

Which is weird to say.

But, the idea that I want to play with could be applied to a wide variety of titles.

So, for the sake of a consistent bed to explain the idea, I'll be using a standard boy goes on adventure and dungeon crawl to save village plot, but honestly, substitute whatever you like. I haven't decided yet which would work best with this.

Anyway...

The central device of the game is the protagonist's ability to change the localization of the game on a meta level.

Meaning, say the game was written for an American audience, but the player discovers a remote control left by a sloppy out-of-place technician popping in to check the "game code" whatever that is.

By pressing this remote, they can change the localization of the game to Britain.

Which doesn't only change small things like spelling, but also cultural differences, like moving the drivers side of car from the left to the right, or vocab differences like fries vs chips.

This allows for distinct puzzle solving, like being able to access the driver's side of a car because you switched to British localization. Alternatively, you could order fries in diner, switch to British localization, snag some chips into your inventory, and then switch back. You know have "chips" in your inventory, but because you're in the American localization, they function in the game as potato chips instead. This process could work both ways.

As the game progresses, you gain the ability to switch the localization to new regions or demographics, allowing more complex puzzle possibilities and also an opportunity to get a player to dip their toes into using different languages in a non-token way while playing.

For example, if you had French localization, you could switch back and forth between the American and French localizations to puzzle out the meaning of the French descriptions without necessarily needing to immediately use a machine translator.

At the same time, you would begin to suspect various things might not be a one-to-one translation, not only in language but also in culture, so it causes you to look deeper into the meanings of individual words. 

A point I would like to do is to have multiple versions of the story that start in different places with different characters. So, for example, if, in the American version, you start the game as Edith the sickly child waif in the town square, and as you play along, perhaps 1/3 the way through the game you encounter Peter the head baker in what the player calls the King's bakery, of which he corrects you many times to insist it is the royal pastry shop and not a common bakery. It is in this "bakery" that you first get the ability to switch localizations to French instead. So, you can switch to French localization, and it is now Pierre, the décorateur en chef for the Pâtisserie Royale.

However, when you start the game, you can select which langauge you would like to play the game in.

Which, if you pick French, makes the protagonist Pierre the Head Baker, and now Edith the sickly child waif is an NPC.

All the locations in the game, and where you eventually gain other localizations (like, you would need to travel to the town square as Pierre to gain the American localization) would be the same.

What would be different is the goal or central struggle of the protagonist, and how each environment is now viewed in a different way to solve different obstacles.

Any insight into Edith's story and goals and personality can be acted upon by Pierre in his journey as well, and visa versa for Edith regarding Pierre, although neither would be necessary to finish the game successfully.

This builds in an incentive, after beating the game based in your own language, to try reapproaching the game in other languages.

I want the parser to stay true to the base language the player initially selected, so, if you were playing as Edith, you would interact with Pierre in the French localization by:

>Talk to Pierre

However, if you were playing the French version, and came upon Edith in the town square and wished to give her a pastry, even if currently in the American localization, you would instead type: 

>Donne une pâtisserie à Édith

This would have to be done with multiple versions of the same game packaged together as a single game.

The language selector at the beginning would choose which parser game to boot up.

As for how to do this as smoothly as possible, that's up to you to figure out. Maybe you could do something like a very simple Twine envelope that shows the title screen in all its glory, that then allows the player to select a language and any other relevant settings, then plays the appropriate prologue to the language (and thus character/story) chosen, and then seamlessly boots into the correct parser game with the language specific parser matched to that choice. Or not. Your game, right?

That's the idea, what there is of it.

Due to the scope of this idea, it has been loaded into the re-enrollment and seedbank to allow more time to come at it if desired.