Bridging the Culture Divide: NCsoft's Brian Knox

[Cynic]

Steve [MMOGamer.com] had the opportunity to interview Aion Producer Brian Knox from NCWest, an NCsoft studio. The conversation focuses on Aion's attempt to bring Eastern and Western players together.

The full interview can be found here.

Nothing ground breaking but quite an interesting little dialog regarding westernization and the game as a whole, perhaps the first time I've ever seen Knox not pull the 2k quest card which has earned him many nicknames here at Aionsource

Enjoy!

[Ryuzaki]

Nice find :P

Thanks ^^

[Chalky]

In before anyone QQs about the speed of "westernisation".

[niuniu]

As far as the actual Westernization, a lot of people are like 'Agh, why does it take so long after they've already released the game??



Brian Knox: In the end, the good news is that means they want the game out now, because they want to play it now, so it?s good to have that excitement.

But, ideally, we?d loved that everybody launched at the same time, and we?d all love flying cars, and everything else in the world?

The reality is that there is a process, we have to translate it, and we?re not going to be satisfied with just translating the game and putting it out.

There are so many things that go above and beyond just literal translation. For instance, if you put in a Korean fable into the game that everyone?s going know, like, ?The boy got lost and found his uncle.?

Everybody in Korea that plays will go, ?Oh yeah, that?s a good little tie-in to that!? But for us, it?s ?Huh? Okay??

So, we may tie it in and talk about someone chopping down a cherry tree and not telling a lie, or something that would automatically resonate with a North American audience, or a European audience.

I think it?s important that we have to rewrite those culturizations. And then on top of that, we go in and we study the controls, the layout, the process of entry into the game, and the proper business model.

All those things that can be tweaked on the surface so we don?t necessarily change what Aion is, but we allow the user to be comfortable with it, to be familiar, and to be able to be drawn into the great world of Aion.

So we actually have a team, I think it is ten plus writers going at it, and they?re taking the initial translation, and rewriting from there.

These are not just editors that are cleaning up the punctuation. We have real writers that have written games before, some from Guild Wars, some have written strategy guides, some have worked on Dungeons and Dragons.

We?ve got all these talented writers that are writing the game, so it sounds really good. It?s our goal that somebody logs in, and they don?t know the history of Aion, and they don?t ever think ?Oh, this game looks like it came straight out of the East and it?s translated.?

[RiGoRmOrTiS]

Originally Posted by niuniu

As far as the actual Westernization, a lot of people are like 'Agh, why does it take so long after they've already released the game??



Brian Knox: In the end, the good news is that means they want the game out now, because they want to play it now, so it?s good to have that excitement.

But, ideally, we?d loved that everybody launched at the same time, and we?d all love flying cars, and everything else in the world?

The reality is that there is a process, we have to translate it, and we?re not going to be satisfied with just translating the game and putting it out.

There are so many things that go above and beyond just literal translation. For instance, if you put in a Korean fable into the game that everyone?s going know, like, ?The boy got lost and found his uncle.?

Everybody in Korea that plays will go, ?Oh yeah, that?s a good little tie-in to that!? But for us, it?s ?Huh? Okay??

So, we may tie it in and talk about someone chopping down a cherry tree and not telling a lie, or something that would automatically resonate with a North American audience, or a European audience.

I think it?s important that we have to rewrite those culturizations. And then on top of that, we go in and we study the controls, the layout, the process of entry into the game, and the proper business model.

All those things that can be tweaked on the surface so we don?t necessarily change what Aion is, but we allow the user to be comfortable with it, to be familiar, and to be able to be drawn into the great world of Aion.

So we actually have a team, I think it is ten plus writers going at it, and they?re taking the initial translation, and rewriting from there.

These are not just editors that are cleaning up the punctuation. We have real writers that have written games before, some from Guild Wars, some have written strategy guides, some have worked on Dungeons and Dragons.

We?ve got all these talented writers that are writing the game, so it sounds really good. It?s our goal that somebody logs in, and they don?t know the history of Aion, and they don?t ever think ?Oh, this game looks like it came straight out of the East and it?s translated.?

either too many chefs from different backgrounds spoiling the broth or he's talking out his arse. it doesn't take this long to translate and westernise unless your totally incompetent. We have heard the whole "cultural references" excuse many times already (from NCSoft); but anyone who has been following this the last 2 years knows this isn't why.

anyway, that is all.

[Koukin]

Yes, I hope all the people who keep complaining that its taking too long read that.

[starsky-sama]

/enjoyed.
/thx.

[Baensidhe]

Maybe they can explain why there's freaking 3 foot tall munchkins everywhere.

/facepalm

[Daeven]

This was one of the most frank interviews I have ever seen from a NCsoft representitive, so in that regard it was quite surprising and enjoyable to read.

[danstaff]

There are so many things that go above and beyond just literal translation. For instance, if you put in a Korean fable into the game that everyone?s going know, like, ?The boy got lost and found his uncle.?

Everybody in Korea that plays will go, ?Oh yeah, that?s a good little tie-in to that!? But for us, it?s ?Huh? Okay??

So, we may tie it in and talk about someone chopping down a cherry tree and not telling a lie, or something that would automatically resonate with a North American audience, or a European audience.

....I wont really notice...i dont read the quests. So for quests it'll be more like this...

"I don't wanna here your sob story just tell me what you want and what your going to give me for it."

[Knite]

Originally Posted by Daeven

This was one of the most frank interviews I have ever seen from a NCsoft representitive, so in that regard it was quite surprising and enjoyable to read.

Agreed- nice interview. Though I was really hoping for more duck-related questions.

[XoXo]

dammit. i was just writing an article on how WoW coming to an end is going to effect Aion development.

>.>

[langlang]

But people started to see new things and they wanted to try new things. Aion is not like that.

No new things in aion, straight from the horses mouth. Also aion is no longer using the CryEngine but rather the crytek engine! It sounds so much better to lie and change the name instead of telling everyone you are using an engine from 2004.
-----------------------------

Originally Posted by RiGoRmOrTiS

either too many chefs from different backgrounds spoiling the broth or he's talking out his arse. it doesn't take this long to translate and westernise unless your totally incompetent. We have heard the whole "cultural references" excuse many times already (from NCSoft); but anyone who has been following this the last 2 years knows this isn't why.

anyway, that is all.

It took 1 guy only 6 months to translate the entire bible over 600 years ago but a team of more than 10 people with access to unlimited resources and modern technology can't translate a game that brags about the lightness of text in it's quest? He said it himself... it's all about the epic minimovies! It would be pretty laughable if it wasn't so insulting. Anyone who has played the "beta" knows that the translations look machine translated anyways, with double/meanings posted twice and sentences that don't make any sense what so ever to an English speaker. Ncsoft draggin their feet for years, pretending they are doing it because they care. 10 years experience of translating games from korean to english and still they are slower then a medieval monk.

[Knite]

Originally Posted by langlang

No new things in aion, straight from the horses mouth. Also aion is no longer using the CryEngine but rather the crytek engine! It sounds so much better to lie and change the name instead of telling everyone you are using an engine from 2004.

Oh you, always so negative.

Aion uses a modified version of the CryENGINE, so simply calling it the CryENGINE would imply that it's more outdated than it is. They're not claiming its CE2, they're saying it is the CryTek Engine, which it is- an engine from CryTek. Besides, there are enough screenshots around of Aion to where they don't need to talk up their engine. The results speak for themselves and people can make their own conclusions as to whether it's outdated or not.

[niuniu]

Wow, AION looks gorgeous. No way can you complain about the graphics.