I was talking about the developer/publisher. The developer has to make either multiple versions which is additional work or combine them in one game (which is often even more work). Also they have to dig out all the code and resources. The publisher has to secure all the rights or he can’t publish those localised games.
Actually it didn’t occur to me that there could even be a problem with distribution platforms.
Are there examples e.g. on Steam how this is handled? Surely there must be older multi-language releases on there already with languages not combined in one game?
EDIT: While the MI 1 & 2 Special Editions are multi-lingual, the LucasArts Classic edition of Full Throttle is not. I just checked it out. It’s the original game, even though it lacks an installation program. I can be run directly from the CD and savegame files get saved on the hard disk. They might have done exactly the same with CoMI back then. Therefore, there hasn’t been any multi-lingual edition of CoMI yet.
Ah, Sorry. I thought you meant that the people at GOG have additional work.
Yes, but there could be a clause that the developer gets the rights back - for example if the foreign publisher gets bankrupt or if he haven’t sold the game for x years.
There can also be licensing issues (even when the developer owns the IP) especially with voices which may have to be licensed again (or something like that) for a re-release. Didn’t Ron talk about this once? This may be a speciality in the USA though and most foreign countries don’t have this issue. I don’t think this is a thing in Germany for instance.
You mean that the developer has to pay the voice actors again?
Depends on the rights and the circumstances. For example the german film “Das Millionenspiel” is based on the english novel “The Prize of Peril”. The producer of the film (a german TV channel) wasn’t allowed to show the film again due to the licensing issues with the copyright holders of the short story.
Maybe it’s the kind of situation where you have a licensing deal for a limited amount of time? (Say, a decade.) But besides that, the rights to a dub and/or subtitles are often owned by the local distributor, who is also often the one that paid for the localization job in the first place.
PS The voice actor? They wish, I’m sure. Just the rightsholders.
In practice, the chances will be higher if you ask/convince GOG first. They’ll have a better negotiating position towards Disney than a bunch of individual fans.
So on one hand you have the developer who can’t or won’t re-release the localised game to avoid a lot of legal costs for a renewed licensing deal, and on the other hand the owner of the localisation but not of the game IP, who for sure can’t re-release it. As always, I only see laywers getting money out of it on the back of fans.
I have bought some humungeous games like Putt-Putt on Steam. You select which language you want to install/download. Since I only installed it for my kids, I didn’t check the English version and installation though. But surely, no in-game menu for language selection.
Tomb Raider (2013) has an in-Steam menu for language selection. When I selected French in order to replay it in that language (to practice French) it downloaded new language data. From a user’s perspective I’d say it doesn’t matter too much if you technically download a second copy of the game or just different audio+text. With these older games it’s probably just a few 100 MB wasted at most.
Because in this case, there would be a German version of CMI available even in the years that the English one wasn’t. Most probably neither party really cares and the one holding the rights for subtitles/localised voices cared even less (if they even still exist 20 years further down the road).
That’s exactly why in the era of CD-ROM games with voice-over, different localisations couldn’t be combined on the same disc(s)
But why? Why is that for sure when “Most probably neither party really cares”?
What’s that in response to? Has there been an argument to the contrary?
Sorry, but what case? I was explaining that through the settings in Steam you can select a different language. Steam will then download different language data if necessary and it takes care of the rest. For the UX it doesn’t matter if this automated process actually downloads the data or if it downloads another copy of the whole game.
Focusing on in-game seems a bit odd regardless, when so many games have a special settings dialog outside of the game, Curse of Monkey Island being one of them!
Telltale games are localized very poorly anyway, imho. No big loss there. Of course, it’s sad they didn’t care for better localizations in the first place.
Those LucasArts games on the other hand, have quite good localized translations and voice acting most of the time. It’s a pity when those are not available anymore.
Multilingual games were rare to begin with. AfaIk, the Monkey Island enhanced CD was the only multilingual title from LucasArts in the 90’s. Usually, you had to buy each language separately. I think, it wasn’t before download shops became commonplace that multilingual titles took up. Thankfully, most games are multilingual nowadays.
Well, @Nor_Treblig asked “surely there must be older multi-language releases on steam with languages not combined in one game”.
Older = older than CMI, which we are discussing here. Think 1996 and before
Not combined in one game=Meaning even if all localisations were available at the developer’s side at the time of physical release, they wouldn’t fit on the same CD-ROM anyway, so no single release containing all languages was ever made.
The example you gave how it is handled on a release of a modern game that afaik sold more digital downloads at release than physical DVD copies (too lazy to look it up), is not comparable to the year the original Tombraider was released, coincidentally also 1996. Back then, even downloading a patch of a few Mb to get the 3DFX working wasn’t a walk in the park (dial up connections, 3.5" disks holding 1.44Mb so you had to make filesplit archives)
Flash forward 20 years. Let’s release CMI on GOG/Steam. The original developer that could implement an in-game language selection doesn’t exist any longer. So there’s only some legal rights owners left for the English and other versions. Once the rights are cleared, GOG/Steam minimizes their cost/maximize profit and provide them as completely separate installations. Just as they did for similar old games with localised voice acting like Putt-Putt.
Which means the lack of German CMI means either they couldn’t locate a copy (unlikely), either they don’t care for the extra market potential for Lucasarts P&C adventures in Germany (even less likely) or they weren’t able to clear the rights yet (for whatever reason).
The German version of “Tales of Monkey Island” was made by Daedalic (Deponia series). I can only speak for myself but I liked the translations and voice overs. They weren’t superb but good.
