Localisation is a word for a number of processes all to do with ensuring a game is ready for a specific local market. this includes everything from creating a translation that stays faithful to the originally intended meaning, to cutting and amending content in line with different countries’ laws. the Yakuza series’ great localisation is an important factor in its success, and so i asked localisation producer Scott Strichart about the pitfalls of his job.

In order to localise a game correctly you need to have two things: text and context. As with any big creative project on a schedule, you unfortunately don’t necessarily get both at the same time. 

“Until recently, we’d never started localisation prior to the game being done in Japan, which was amazing, because we could just boot up every scene, every substory, every movie right in game,” Strichart says. I imagine him wistfully staring off into the distance. 

To finish everything on time, localisation now often begins before the original text is even finalised. In some cases Strichart and his team make educated guesses at who is talking to whom, how far away speakers are from each other and sometimes even their gender, the latter of which the form of address in Japanese can help with.

“Once a particular scene comes online, we’re able to check it out and adjust accordingly ... It’ll be an ongoing process to smooth this out with [developer Ryu ga Gotoku Studios], but I’m committed to doing that.” Strichart, who took up his current position prior to the release of Yakuza 0, is an enthusiastic spokesperson for localisation with an apparent love for language. 

Having started in QA himself, he acknowledges that building a translator’s skills takes time and teamwork. There’s no small amount of project management behind building an experienced team. 

“Usually our more experienced translators and editors handle the main story, while the supporting translators and editors get assigned swaths of text where it makes sense to group up. For instance, all the substories, all the minigames, all the tutorials, with some natural crossovers when it makes sense to do so. 

“To date, I’ve also stacked a ton of this work on my own plate, because I enjoy the creativity of it. I love having translators and editors on my team who grow with the games, because they’re already familiar with things like the game’s worldview and the styling we use.”

Magic words

Arguably the most important skills to develop are listening and research. ‘Intent’ and ‘atmosphere’ are two words that you hear regularly in localisation, and Strichart explains why. “This game is set in Japan, and I would never want to lose its sense of place and culture at the cost of a little confusion over street food with no one-on-one translation. Maybe you’ll even learn something from the game! Generally speaking, English is a more idiomatic language, so finding idioms that still match the intent of the Japanese dialogue without necessarily matching the line word-for-word is the touch of magic we bring to the game in hopes of making it sound like good dialogue to the English ear.” 

I bring up a scene from Yakuza Kiwami 2, out for PC this month, that serves as a good example for the magic Strichart is talking about. In it, Kiryu gets invited into a club where a gang of adult men roleplay as toddlers. When he refuses to play along, the gang leader shouts, “Let’s pacify this bitch!” 

“The line was originally ‘Let’s crack this bitch’ in Yakuza 2, but Jon Riesenbach, my editor for Kiwami 2, really took it to the next level. See? Magic.”

Changing accents

Localising also means finding a way to approximate local ways of speaking. Dialects use specific words and accents limited to one country. Western Japan’s Kansai dialect used in the series by characters such as Majima is famous throughout the country, but there’s no singular way to localise it, mostly because any accent (such as the Southern American accent Ace Attorney uses in its place) is also specific to one location. Scott weighs in on the tricky question of how to provide a consistent tone in a text several people work on. 

“I made a point to overhaul Majima’s accent starting with Yakuza 0. I aimed to remove any direct correlation one could make to an American South accent and embody what is generally perceived as being the root of the Kansai dialect—faster speech, colourful language, and high energy. This accent actually proved problematic, because I was the only one who could really write in it. “Sam Mullen, our director of production, recently came down on me for it, joking that if I got hit by a car, Majima would have to be written out of the series. I have since written an internal series accent guide and someday, I’ll be forced to let someone else write him.”

There will always be instances in which a reference is so specific to its culture that fitting idioms just don’t exist. Strichart says that even when a few Japanese puns are lost, there are enough ways in which the localisation team can make up for it elsewhere. I appreciate Strichart for shedding more light to a part of the game-making process that we tend to take for granted, especially as English speakers. 

Good localisations don’t just give us something new to play, they also hone our intercultural skills, allowing us to take a peek at the world behind a game.

Sega recently published its financial report for the year ending March 2019, and it's not been a great one. While overall sales increased, profits declined for the second consecutive year, with digital games and its slot machines seeing the worst results. In light of this, Sega is refocusing its efforts abroad, particularly when it comes to packaged games and ports. 

Initially, 12 purely digital games were planned for the year, but only eight of them were released. Delays, competition, market saturation and simply taking on too many games are all cited as reasons for the decline in profit. 

On the packaged games front, which includes Yakuza 6 and Football Manager 2019, sales decreased but profits rose thanks to repeat sales in North America and Europe. Sega expanded its efforts abroad and believes that, along with the higher quality of its games, also contributed to a successful year, at least for this part of the business. 

Sega's plan for the next year is to focus on what's already working for the publisher. It expects the domestic Japanese market to stagnate, so it will be looking to the rest of Asia, North America and Europe when it comes to mobile, PC and packaged games.

Expect to see more Japanese console games ported over to PC, too. Sega's plan is to put more of its series on more platforms, including Yakuza and Persona. We've already started to see this, with several Yakuza games making their way onto PC, and they've been very welcome additions to Steam's catalogue. Check out Phil's review of Yakuza 0, the best of the bunch.

I've definitely put too much time into Persona 5 on PS4 to even consider picking it up again on PC, but I'm still eager to see it make the jump. I'd prefer Persona 3, though. I got a bug that killed my save data after 90 hours, so I never finished it. C'mon Sega, help me out.

Cheers, TweakTown.

Sega has rolled out a new beta patch for Yakuza 0 that will improve ultrawide display support and add a FOV slider, as well as many other improvements to the gameplay and UI.

As well as the improved ultrawide support and FOV slider, players should find an improved camera control when using a mouse as well as added support for QWERTZ and AZERTY keyboards. A background audio slider and a UI toggle have also been added to the menus giving players more control over their experience. Various bug fixes have also been implemented, a list of which can be found in the patch notes here.

Yakuza 0 arrived on PC last August, following the announcement that it would be arriving on PC during E3, months earlier. While its the first patch had to be rolled back due to some pretty severe crashing issues, Phil thought it was great when he got to review it.

The beta patch is optional players are advised not to download the patch "if you are not experiencing any issues" with the game.

Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the original with some improvements from Yakuza 0, is due out next week. In the meantime, check out Phil's Yakuza Kiwami review. 

Humble Monthly bundles are occasionally underwhelming, but the latest one is worth paying attention to. Pay $12 and you'll unlock Yakuza 0 and The Division straightaway—both are worth playing—plus a bunch of other games when February rolls around.

Everyone should play Yakuza 0 at least once, in my opinion. It's a funny, heartwarming action game with plenty of minigames to keep you on your toes and the best setting of any game that came out in 2018. 

It came to PC last year, and $12 is the cheapest it's been (it's $20 right now in most stores). Think of it like this: you're getting a great deal on it, with The Division thrown in for free on top as well as six or seven mystery games next month, at least one or two of which you're bound to enjoy.

This is also the perfect time to play open world co-op shooter The Division if you ignored it the first time around. At launch, it was barely better than mediocre, but its updates have been kind to it. The sequel comes out in March, so you could put in a few hours in preparation. 

You can sign up for the Humble Monthly Bundle here. It's $12 per month but, if you want, you can just pay for one month and then cancel your subscription. 

Sega's Yakuza 0 claims our next GOTY award for its vibrant, quirky and beautiful settings. Find the complete list of awards and personal picks in our 2018 GOTY hub. 

Phil: Yakuza 0 is a hard game to summarise. There's the serious story about a young gangster framed for murder. There's the absurd sidequests that parody everything from toilet graffiti to Michael Jackson. There's the teeming neon streets, the arcade cabinets, the pocket racing, the karaoke, the chicken who can manage your real estate business, and the endless supply of thugs desperate to meet your fists. There's a lot going on, and all of it is designed to evoke a specific time and place: the over-the-top excess of '80s Japan.

The setting doesn't just come through the architecture, the furniture or the clothes that NPCs wear, but is also an integral part of every system. Money is earned and spent easily. It bursts out of enemies when you defeat them, and, when you need to upgrade your fighting styles, you do so by literally investing money in yourself. There's a satirical edge to its humour, to the point that—in one of its substories—you drunkenly suggest the tax policy that would go on cause Japan's bubble to collapse, leading to a 'Lost Decade' of economic stagnation. From the story about what it means to be a gangster in a world of greed and excess, to the aesthetic, the design and even the absurdly over-the-top humour, every element of Yakuza 0 feeds back into its setting.

Andy K: This is my first serious foray into the Yakuza series, and those two chunks of city are an absolute joy to explore. I’ve visited enough Western cities in PC games, so it’s nice to experience somewhere on the other side of the planet, and rendered with such a keen eye for detail. They might not have the fidelity of somewhere like Los Santos, but Kamurocho and Sotenbori are just as immersive, and totally transporting. You can almost feel the grime as you walk the streets in your preposterous, shiny '80s suit.

Samuel: I've never felt more broadly attacked by minigames than I have playing Yakuza 0. It doesn't ask me to spend more time in its world so much as insist on it. And that's how I lost two hours in the batting cage, and another hour playing Space Harrier in the arcade, a game I only ever play inside other Sega games (Shenmue 2 being the other). This game is weird and wonderful. I'm delighted it's on PC, and that when you beat people up, money falls out of them. Computer games.

Tom: I didn’t think I’d end up saying this, but I like the story a lot. Gangland dramas can sometimes be sadistic tales about heartless people killing each other pointlessly, but actually want to see Kiryu and Majima land on their feet. I also love the game’s tendency to shift instantly from slapstick comedy to intense melodrama without pause. One moment I’m helping a living statue get to the toilet without pissing himself, the next I’m punching my way through an entire country estate full of gangsters. Majima and Kiryu take it all in their stride with earnest goodwill, and I can’t help but get swept up in it all. 

Yakuza 0 shows that size and scenery don’t make a setting great. Personality and detail are just as important, and amid all the bluster and jokes, the game is making an effort to comment on a historical moment in big-city Japan.

Read Phil's original Yakuza 0 review here. 

With the holidays fast approaching, we’re rolling from one sale into another. Fanatical kicked off its winter sale this week, reducing loads of games and promising more in the days to come. And on top of the flash sales and deals, you can get an additional 10 percent discount with a coupon. PC Gamer Club members get a unique 12 percent discount coupon, so check your inbox later today. 

If you’ve got a grudge against orcs, Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Definitive Edition might be just what you’re looking for it. It’s at an all time low with its 75 percent discount. That deal runs out in just over a day, however, so don’t wait around. But if you prefer karaoke and organised crime, check out Yakuza 0, instead. It’s 46 percent off with the coupon. 

There are publisher sales, too. Get discounts on THQ Nordic games, including Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, the pretty platformer, and spooky mystery The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. 

New deals are being added every day, so keep an eye out. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

Fanatical's summer sale is now on, offering up to 86 per cent savings across thousands of new and classic games, including Doom, Alien Isolation, Yakuza 0, and Monster Hunter: World.

And if that isn't enough to pique your interest, from now until 23:59 (UK time) on August 26, 2018, you can also save an extra 10 per cent on all listed prices by using the code SUMMER10.

Tempted? Us, too. Here's our pick of the very best deals going right now:

• Doom - 67%
• Turok Bundle - 86%
• Alien Isolation Collection - 80%
• Yakuza 0 - 15%
• Fallout 4 - 67%
• XCOM 2 Collection - 55%
• Total War: Warhammer - 75%
• Total War: Warhammer II - 30%
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War Gold Edition - 68%
• Monster Hunter: World - 20% off

For more, head on over to Fanatical.

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.  

I didn't really know what a hostess club was before I played Yakuza 0. They are referred to as Cabaret clubs, but that creates the wrong impression. They aren't stage shows, they are clubs where men pay to drink and talk to attractive women.

The clubs are supposed to provide a platonic entertainment service, though inevitably there is a sleazier side. Yakuza 0 has a few adolescent side activities that make me cringe or sigh—collectible 'telephone cards', soft porn theatres, catfight arenas—and normally I walk back onto the street and hunt down one of Yakuza 0's bizarre sidequests instead. 

That did not happen with the hostess club, because the minigame is incredible. When you open up your club you take an overview of all the tables, and deploy your hostesses to match clients who wander in. Once seated, money starts pouring out of clients as they order more rounds of drinks.

Problems start popping up as the night wears on. When the hostesses need something for the table they show you a hand signal. You learn this sign language after a few sessions—more ice, a towel, an ashtray change. A wide thumb and forefinger gesture means the guest wants another drink. A tiny pinch means a small drink for her, because who knows how many more dull salarymen will want conversations tonight.

Sometimes the guests get angry. Maybe they don't feel sufficiently charmed by the personality they are matched with, maybe they can't hold their drink. You can appease them with gifts, or throw them out.

As I rake in millions I'm slightly baffled by the whole thing. We have strip clubs and escorts, but there's nothing quite like this where I live in the UK, as far as I know. Do the men believe the compliments they have paid for? Do they think the women, and the club, see them as anything more than a fat wallet? What am I missing?

The men never speak. You regularly see repeated 3D models walk in, a churn of workaday customers who might as well be identical. All that really matters are their preferences, and their wealth. I might allow a moneyed guest time with one of the club's 'platinum' hostesses, and I might offer them a session extension because my happy hour bar is almost powered up, and once that's activated I can really milk them.

Yakuza 0 mixes slapstick humour with serious crime drama and a bit of social commentary, sometimes all at the same time. The game is set in the midst of the asset boom in Japan, which resulted a few years later in a terrible crash and the so-called 'lost decade'. Given the context, the way the game shows money is ironic. Cash flies out of enemies when you punch them. You can mug gold-suited 'nouveau riche' for millions. The game's plot revolves around an ownership battle for a tiny alleyway which represents hundreds of billions in potential profit.

The hostess bar carries the joke. Money flies out of guests with every drink purchase until cash just pours out of the ceiling, covering everything. As a pure numbers game the club simulates the way customers and hostesses are mutually exploited for profit in ten-minute sprints. That all sits alongside a comedy caper that unfolds between opening hours, in which club owner and player character Goro Majima faces down against five evil club bosses.

I know I'm being worked here. Goro Majima's club is friendly and has a good working atmosphere, and Majima is friendly with his staff. It's down to your competitors to embody the worst aspects of the hostess bar scene. One boss works his hostesses to illness, another is violent. I get to feel like the good guy in comparison.

It works, somehow, because Yakuza 0 is so consistently funny. You train your platinum hostesses by roleplaying sessions. These are deliberately forced, full of faux pas, and the awkward flirtation ricochets off Majima who, like Kiryu, is a stubbornly sexless figure. Even though they are violent thugs wrapped up in gang life, Yakuza's heroes seem earnest and incorruptible, and that means Majima and his staff can tell the story of a family battling against the odds in the ruthless Sotenbori club scene.

And so, night by night, Club Sunshine catches a little overflow from the 1980s property boom. Recently I made my first billion at the hostess club and unlocked an achievement for spending it. Then I spent my winnings on making Majima better at hitting punks with his baseball bat.

I know I'm not getting the real story about hostess clubs. I haven't faced all the bosses, but so far the stories haven't touched on the abduction and murder of hostesses, or the exploitation of women working in clubs without visas. Yakuza 0 is too melodramatic to get very dark with its side-stories, so it serves up a polished-up vision of the Cabaret Club scene with its horrible features removed.

But Yakuza 0 isn't a historical document, and I'd rather see the Yakuza's characteristic reflection on hostess clubs than nothing at all. For a series dedicated to replicating the real world districts of Dotonbori and Kabukicho (called Sotenbori and Kamurocho in the game), it would be baffling to ignore that aspect of inner city nightlife, and yet in Yakuza 3 the western localisation stripped out hostess bars and sidequests referencing them. Since then SEGA has avoided messing with the series' strange alchemy.

Will Club Sunshine throw open its doors again? Yes, because I want some kicking upgrades for Majima's breakdance fight style and the club is the best way to make that cash quickly. The minigame is compulsive, and even though I'm getting it though  the lens of Yakuza, I have learned about an aspect of Japanese culture that I hadn't encountered before. Put the champagne on ice and line everyone up by the door and get ready to open, it's time to make another cool billion.

Yakuza 0 is comfortably the best, funniest and most heartwarming game about a desperate battle over real estate, reckons our Phil. He loves it. And while Phil explains he had no major issues with its PC port in his review, some players faced crashes at launch. In response, Sega released a patch. That's now been rolled back following further problems. 

"While our patch showed no issues in testing, it appears that Patch 1 is causing issues for some users who had no issues previously," explains Sega on the game's Steam page. "Therefore, we are rolling back the patch while we continue to investigate. Our apologies to all who are experiencing difficulties. We are investigating all issues raised here and will be back with more information soon."

The comments below Sega's launch day update suggest several players using 'non-English' usernames—those that contain letters with accents, for example—were affected. On the other hand, players who were otherwise okay at launch are now reporting problems, some of which cite Sega's INI tweak advice as the problem. 

Here's hoping it's all resolved soon. I need as many hands on deck as possible to suss out what's going on here:

As we learned at the PC Gaming Show at E3 2018, Yakuza 0 lands on PC today. As we learned from Phil's review last week, it's pretty good. And as you'll learn in a few seconds, its launch trailer is filled with handsome men in sharp suits kicking the shit out of each other.

There's also bowling, karaoke singing, dancing minigames, semi-clad women wrestling, and a pensive showering man in there for good measure. If you hadn't worked it out by now, Yakuza is pretty out there.

Publisher Sega bills all of that as the "glitz, glamour, and unbridled decadence" of the '80s. I'd say it looks brilliantly weird. And Phil says it's "comfortably the best, funniest and most heartwarming game about a desperate battle over real estate." When it comes to Yakuza, our Phil knows his stuff. Check out his 90-scored review in full over here. 

Here's Sega's official run-down:

A prequel to the long-running series, Yakuza 0 is the perfect entry point to the Yakuza series. With the legendary Dragon of Dojima, Kazuma Kiryu, and series regular Goro Majima, embark on a rich saga, experiencing their gripping origin stories of moral dilemmas as young yakuza.

Explore the neon-lit streets of Kamurocho (Tokyo) and Sotenbori (Osaka), beating piles of cash out of street thugs (literally) whilst using three different fighting styles. Help civilians in over 100 substories, run your own business and immerse yourself in 1980s Japan with SEGA’s arcade classics, telephone clubs, discos, pocket circuit car races and more.

John Clark, Sega Europe's executive vice president of publishing, reckons Yakuza is successful in the west because it commits to its original vision. If you fancy testing that theory for yourself, Yakuza 0 is out now on Steam for £14.99/$19.99.