Arabic video game localization is good business — after all, studies indicate that revenue will have grown nearly twofold over a few years from $1.76 billion in 2021 to $3.14 billion in 2025. But a successful game launch in the MENA region requires more than just running a spreadsheet through a machine. Both sophisticated regarding gaming trends and respectful of cultural traditions, the average MENA gamer is eager for more publishers to invest in regional localizations.
But what does a meaningful investment in Arabic game localization look like? Thanks to the successes and failures of Arabic localization over the past decade or so, that question is easier to answer than one might think. And much of it depends on simply finding the right partners who can guarantee the right quality for the job.
Perhaps there’s no major game publisher that provides a better model for Arabic localization than Ubisoft. Game release after game release, the company demonstrated a commitment to laying a strong foundation with localized Arabic subtitles to the fully voices and produced localizations of more recent efforts — a slow and steady process of iterative improvements.
The company acquired some serious experience in Arabic localization prior to the release of 2016’s The Division, an online RPG. In an interview with IGN Middle East, Ubisoft Localization Manager Stefan Petrica and Lead UI Manager Christian Savoie detailed how they achieved a great Arabic localization that fully immersed players in its world. And that’s no easy task considering Arabic is spoken in 20 countries with more than 50 dialects.
“The biggest challenge for us was to localize the game in 21 languages with half of them being dubbed,” they told IGN Middle East. “We had more than 850 people involved in the whole localization process. From translators, proof-readers, to actors, sound engineers and linguistic testers, each of them contributed in delivering a worldwide experience.”
The Division team started localization efforts with the Internationalization phase, where “the technical aspects are taken into consideration from the way in which languages are read, adapting the menus, font displaying, to creating specific development tools [for the] localization team.” They then moved into the Localization phase: “translation, voice recordings, text and voice integration and linguistic testing.”
Over the course of future releases, Ubisoft continued to iterate their Arabic localizations, including subtitles in Assasin’s Creed games Odyssey and Valhalla. For the next Assassin’s Creed title, Mirage, Ubisoft invested heavily into the Arabic version to better capture its 9th-century Baghdad setting, according to GamesIndustry.biz. Taking inspiration from the painstaking Japanese research and localization that went into creating the samurai epic Ghost of Tsushima, Ubisoft Localization Manager and Cultural Consultant Mohammed Alemam and Art Director Jean-Luc Sala aspired to create a fully voiced localization even non-Arabic speakers might utilize for a more authentic experience.
By choosing classical Arabic as its dialect of choice, the team already had a headstart in achieving that vision.
"Classical Arabic is still taught at schools today,” Alemam told GamesIndustry.biz. “So, people grow up in the Arabic region, learning [the language]. It's used in academia, entertainment, the news, and newspapers. Many books are [are also] written in classical Arabic as well. So people are used to it, and it's still preserved."
Of course, the most important ingredient toward a successful localization effort was putting together a top-notch team of talent committed to delivering a quality product no matter what. And there again, that speaks again to the importance of choosing the right localization partner for the job.
"Conversations were a back and forth almost every day at one moment about whether we could further improve something. Also, it was a common fight we had, not against each other but together, against potential difficulties. It was nice to see everyone had this [collaborative] mindset from the game's music to dialogues and visual representation."
Quality assurance is just one element of the process, though. It’s also important that an Arabic localization receive rigorous culturalization vetting — a topic we’ll examine in Part II.