Anyone who’s seen Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) knows about Pac-Man’s naming quirk.
For the others, paku paku (パクパク) is an onomatopoeia to describe eating with great enthusiasm, similar to “chomp”. It led to the yellow pellet-gobbler guy being named “Pakuman”, then westernized to “Puck Man”, until Namco realized the P in Puck could easily be scratched off into an F on the arcade cabinets. Well, Pac-Man it is!
There is, however, an important underlying challenge behind that anecdote: how to name a game abroad.
Obviously, the world is much more interconnected and culturally homogeneous than it was during the golden age of arcade gaming. Situations like Contra becoming Gryzor and then Probotector in Europe don’t really happen anymore. So, is title localization dead?
Not quite. Kind of? Depends.
Many non-Commonwealth cultures got Americanized over the last few decades, to a point where it rarely makes people tick when movies, books or video games are presented with an English title. Among the big markets, one stands as an exception to this rule—more on that later.
Sometimes, fate forces your hand
There are still good reasons for which a game cannot (or at least, really should not) keep its title in certain regions. Mainly:
- if some of the words have a different meaning in a specific language. Mortal Kombat: Deception became Mortal Kombat: Mystification in France only, because “déception” means “disappointment, letdown” there. Not a good look!
- if the title violates regionally specific copyright. Not every protected name is registered in the US, and such was the experience of Microsoft when they released Trenched as Iron Brigade in Europe, because a Portuguese company was protecting their board game called Trench.
- if the title is too close to a locally influential intellectual property. Fahrenheit, by Quantic Dream, could’ve released as such worldwide, except that a scathing political documentary called Fahrenheit 9/11 was causing some rumble in the States. To play it safe, the game released in North America as Indigo Prophecy.
If these scenarios have been ruled out, the need for local titles becomes much less serious, and even has the potential to stab you in the back if done wrong.
If you do it, do it right
If your game is part of an established franchise, forget it. You’ve built recognition for a brand already, enjoy it! It’s not worth squandering for crumbs of local relevance. What you can do, however, is keep the franchise/series name intact and localize the subtitle. If you just released Bunny Fighter 2: Karatekarrot, it would be wise to preserve the Bunny Fighter franchise and only localize the Karatekarrot subtitle.
Timing matters too. If you’re localizing post-release and the original title already gained some traction on search engines and social media, you would be missing out by not banking on that buzz. Localizing along the late stages of development is a different and situational approach, but it gives you more time to strategize on names.
Not to mention all the logos, visuals, promotional materials and such for which you will have to adapt the game’s name - easy to forget, intense to account for.
The Chinese exception
With all this being said, there is one outlier, one country in which adapted titles are strongly recommended, and that’s China.
It’s not just translated titles either. We’ve had fascinating exchanges with our Chinese localization specialists about the expectations of Chinese-speaking players, practical aspects, and the creative process to get the name right. To put it simply, English names stick out like a sore thumb in Chinese marketplaces (especially considering there is a dedicated Steam store for China) and they can hurt chances of getting government approval to sell in the country at all.
The process itself is pretty much transliteration and transcreation playing tug-of-war. When translated (too) literally back to English, Chinese names for AAA franchises yield interesting results. Let’s see if you can guess what these three are:
- 俄罗斯方块 | Russian Blocks
- 星海爭霸 | Struggle for Galactic Hegemony
- 動物森友會 | Gathering of Forest Animal Friends
Unless you are working exclusively with machine translation—in which case additional risk isn’t recommended anyway— you should have professional translators, often native, you can reach out to. Their opinion on this is invaluable. They are locals, they are gamers, they are trained for challenges like this. Don’t take their gut feeling as gospel, but do use their insight to feed your decision making.
That should cover your bases on game titles. Now go and turn Bunny Fighter into a million-dollar IP!
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