Atari to Zelda by Consalvo Mia;

Author:Consalvo, Mia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262332170
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2016-04-12T17:35:40+00:00

Found in Translation: Interpretations and Integration

  When Urry writes of the cosmopolitan disposition, he seems to suggest that after a person has experienced and interacted with new cultures, places, and peoples, such a person is changed via the process if the experience is to be considered successful. Travel, curiosity, and risk taking can lead to new understandings—both of the world and of oneself. Can we say the same of a corporation and its potential cosmopolitan “self” if it has undertaken such actions? One measure would be to see how Square Enix’s travel and risk taking have potentially changed its practices over time. We can see some elements at work. The company continues to purchase studios, open them in international locations, and experiment with new mixtures of intellectual property, new types of platforms, and new ways to reach players.

Square Enix’s commitment to Eidos and its studios in Montreal, for example, speaks to its support of games far from its original lineup. Likewise, its pursuit of new venues (such as the iOS platform—via both Final Fantasy ports and the creation of new titles for the platform) demonstrates its attempts to cater to a wider demographic of player, including original JRPG fans who may wish to replay a series on their phones and new players who own a smartphone and are curious about its potential for games as a (new to them) leisure activity. Square Enix also has been serious about seeking out new technical platforms for development. In late 2011, the company was reported to be developing an action RPG using the Unity 3D platform (indicating its “increasing preference for third-party development solutions”) and that it is using the Western-created Unreal Engine 3 for multiple projects. One of those has been confirmed as Kingdom Hearts III, which uses the Unreal 4 engine developed by Epic Games.70 Such news is surprising for a company renowned for its in-house development and for a general preference by Japanese companies not to use Western tools. Square Enix’s embrace of such tools suggests that it has integrated knowledge of other systems and cultures into its corporate culture and determined that such experiments must continue for global success to follow.

One area where Square Enix continues to stand out in terms of reinterpreting and reintegrating knowledge of the other back into itself is its increasingly sophisticated use of localization across a universe of game titles. Localization has progressed far beyond giving one translator the game at the conclusion of a project and telling him or her to produce a translation within a few weeks. Those early efforts led to translations for games such as Final Fantasy II (US)/IV (Japan) that were considered “laughable” and “barely comprehensible.”71 The current process encompasses multiple languages, voice acting, and a consideration of the facial and body expressions of a game’s characters and avatars. This is compounded by pressures to have simultaneous releases. In the past, “a Japanese version would lead, followed nine to 12 months later by the U.S. version, with a European edition coming as much as a year after that (if at all).

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