Submitted 3 days ago by frenchfrynoob@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
I personally could not care less about a company’s growth, or redemption arc when it comes to how I feel about a game.
I would also tend to avoid games that are focused on being patriotic or nationalistic.
Is this game fun? That’s really my only criteria.
Do you give a ratings bump for smaller studios and indie games? For example giving an indie game a 7.5/10 instead of a 7/10 if it was a small studio?
Not directly but cost:fun ratio definitely comes into play which often favors indies. A $5 game will get a lot more leeway than a $60 one.
Nope
Besides, most user reviews these days aren’t even that granular. Its thumbs up or down usually, X/5 stars sometimes.
No
Thanks for that compilation, it’s always interesting to read about different cultures.
my reasons for positive review:
My reasons for negative review:
In general I give most things the benefit of the doubt and can enjoy certain positive parts in a mostly bad game. so my reviews are mostly positive, as I curate already strongly what I buy.
While I can understand why / how most of the reasons you talked about came around, I’m a bit baffled about the missing chinese localisation. Does that mean a significant number of chinese players buy a game simply to give it a negative review on steam? In the steam store it’s shown what languages are supported. So if you can’t speak any of those languages, why would you buy it?
If the localisation is bad, then I can understand buying it and giving it a negative review due to feeling scammed.
And I can give you an explanation for the number 1 negative reason: Poland, Czech republic and Turkey are all regionally close(ish for Turkey) to each other and you have it in your mind as European. Similar to probably Chinese having Korean in their mind, which most Europeans likely don’t think about.
Maybe the translation company they asked had those languages and so they ordered it. And yeah, I can understand the developer. If I never intended to support a language due to unfamiliarity and then those language speakers are giving me negative reviews… feels unfair.
Entitlement is the way I would describe it. Again, I can unterstand people wanting to play something and I can unterstand feeling left out for your language not being supported. But then buying the game and giving it negative reviews for that? Just don’t buy it or make community translations like so many others do.
“That’s a really fair question, and I appreciate you asking it in good faith. Let me explain the context that’s probably missing.
First: Why buy a game with no Chinese support?
For many Chinese players, buying a game without Chinese isn’t a mistake — it’s a bet. We buy it hoping the developer might add it later, because it’s happened many times before. Games like Dying Light, The Witcher 3, and Dark Souls all added Chinese post-launch after community feedback. So when Chinese players see a game that looks good but has no Chinese, they buy it — not to leave a negative review, but to signal: ‘We’re here, we’re paying customers, and we’d love to play your game properly.’
The negative review isn’t the goal. It’s a message.
Second: Why leave a negative review instead of just not buying?
That’s where Chinese platforms work a little differently. On Steam in China, the review system isn’t just for other players — it’s also one of the few direct ways to communicate with developers. A negative review with ‘Please add Chinese’ is often seen as a polite request, not a punishment. Developers regularly respond to these reviews and add languages based on demand. So to Chinese players, it feels like a normal way to get attention — not ‘entitlement,’ but ‘this is how the system works here.’
I completely understand why that looks weird from the outside. But for us, it’s not about being angry — it’s about being visible in a market we spent 20 years being invisible in.
And just to be clear: Most Chinese players don’t buy games specifically to leave negative reviews. That would be expensive and pointless. We buy them because we want to play them — and we hope the review will help make them playable.
Hope that helps explain the logic behind it. Thanks for the thoughtful question!”
Ah okay, thanks for explaining the background. Now I can understand it better.
Is it not possible to use the discussion forums on steam for that translation request?
Slay the Spire 2 got review bombed by Chinese players after a balance patch (its in early access) nerfed an easy playstyle that trivializes the game and bypasses all challenges. Apparently they felt directly targeted by that and took it very personal.
Some of this is very hard for me to relate to, because I come from a small nation with extremely high fluency in English and a tradition of using subtitles rather than dubbing. So I can’t help but think: English is the Lingua Franca of the world. If a nation has the resources but refuses to prioritise educating their population in English out of a sense of national pride, then that’s not the rest of the world’s problem. You can be isolationist if you want, but that is on you.
And similarly I can’t relate at all to giving games positive or negative reviews based on how good or bad they are at being propaganda for your nation. I don’t like nationalism, actually I think nothing good ever comes out of hardcore nationalist thinking.
My only grounds for reviewing a game are evaluating the game on its merits. Is it fun? Is it well made? Does it provoke interesting thoughts or feelings? Do I think this is a worthwhile use of someone else’s money and time? If it’s a sequel, does it live up to the previous titles and continue the series in a satisfying fashion?
Nationalism and language aren’t a valid reason. This remove 2 positive and 2 negative reasons.
I don’t expect a Chinese movie to be available in Arabic or Bengali. The same logic applies for a salvic dev team.
Similarly, a game portraying a region in good light doesn’t deserve up votes if the game is shit
I mainly give positive reviews to games where you see and feel that it is a labor of love by someone who has a coherent vision of what their game should become. This fits for example Star Valor , Tiny Rogues , Core Keeper , (and of course Terraria), Repetendium , Utopia must Fall and so on. Bonus points if the Devs actually have an eye on the Steam Forums - for communication with their players and to accept Bug Reports - they can have a discord if they want to, but don’t make it mandatory.
Workshop support is a big plus from my side! It’s very much the same reason i like things i can repair myself - it simply increases the lifespan of the game for potentially decades. That is good value!
Language support is dead last for me. English isn’t my birth language, but nearly every media i consumed in the last 30 years has been in English, and most german voice actors are absolutely awful in my opinion compared to the original - the only exceptions are games that were actually developed in german-speaking areas, like the Gothic - series.
Promoting my local culture is also not important to me. I have my own culture at my doorstep - i’m more interested in what other cultures do. Nationalism is a pretty hard no from my side. I also don’t care about quick price swings since i am a patient gamer; my last preorder was Cyberpunk 2077, and then i had to wait years until it was finally ready to be played the way it was supposed to. That taught me that it’s for the best to just wait anyways; It’s cheaper, and it’s more stable.
Honestly, I'm most likely to ignore reviews by people in the PRC. At best, my interest will be to see if PRC reviews differ from US or European reviews, and lean towards games where the PRC is opposite of the West. I might also compare both to Japanese reviews.
This is the first I’ve heard about the reaction from BZZZT - which is a shame because I thought it was a cute game. In any industry customer feedback should be taken with as much grace as you can manage. You don’t want to alienate your community even further. Then again, with a solo developer and the sort of people this industry attracts, I’m not surprised to see an emotionally driven response to negative feedback.
I’ve dabbled in game dev, and I have to say that - especially as a solo developer - localization is an intimidating problem. Ignoring the technical concerns, for me the biggest problem is in being assured of the accuracy of the translation. Getting that right is important to me, but I don’t have a very good way of verifying that a language I don’t speak has been accurately translated. I’ve played lots of games with poor English localization and it can be quite jarring, especially when the rest of the game is quite polished.
This is a tough problem for me too, because like, accessibility is super important to me. I want everyone who wants my game to be able to play my game. But at the same time, I’m intimidated into inaction when it comes to localization. It feels paradoxical.
As far as how to localize your games, I like the community-driven approach. Sooner or later, I’ll have to take it on faith that the quality of the translation is good enough for the community, and if the community does the translating, well that makes me feel better about it. I could also see hiring a professional translator, but I’m not really sure how you vet those services, nor do I have the budget to hire them. You’ll definitely see AI grow in this area, but I’m staunchly against its use so it’s a non-starter for me.
A question for you: how do you feel when a game provides no localizations? I understand feeling slighted if other languages are included while your market is excluded, but if the game is only available in the developer’s mother tongue does that bother you too?
Okay, I’ve completely derailed that without addressing what you actually asked.
Your reasons for leaving good and bad reviews resonate with me. I feel the same way about most of them, although not being Chinese I naturally don’t have a particular draw to Chinese culture and localization. Marketers who misrepresent their games and the betrayal aspect definitely motivate me to leave a negative review.
To your point 3: I don’t automatically feel that way about my own country’s games and culture. However, I do thoroughly enjoy a game that feels culturally significant while being authentic to its people. Particularly if those stories feel deeply personal or are an underrepresented culture - especially indigenous peoples or queer stories. I also thoroughly enjoy a game that is satirical or otherwise critical of the establishment.
I’m far more likely to leave a good review than a bad one. Reasons for a bad review:
If the game is good, it gets a good review. Goodness is entirely subjective. Sometimes I think about value for time/money, sometimes I think about how fun it is, and sometimes it’s about the level of polish on the little details. A game that is a joy to play is ideal, so a game that is accessible and has low friction when interacting with its systems. Bonus points for cozy games.
For me, the best reason to leave a good review is if the game evokes an emotional response. For me this is commonly a heartfelt story, or a plea for activism.
There‘s a current trend in AAA to not properly localize games in other languages than English and many German players are very vocal about it in comment sections of reviews on Youtube.
If you‘re an indie game it‘s kind of expected to not ship with a German voice over but Germans expect it when they pay upwards of 50€ for a game.
Things simply are properly localized in Germany. People expect things to be German. Even Nintendo understood that when they started to voice Zelda games for example. I think a lot of AAA studios are about to learn this the hard way.
Finnish game studios don’t even bother to add Finnish subtitles in the games half the time and nobody cares, because nobody expects them to, or even makes a fuss when they don’t, and the devs wouldn’t care even if some people would, since domestic market is an afterthought. Such is the fate of a small language zone, lol. It’s a bit weird if Chinese isn’t among the first 2-6 languages to get translations, if they care about widest possible global market and sales, and the game isn’t just in english with no language options at all. I don’t know if it’s harder to get good Chinese translators in some places to do that kind of work to get both message and the tone right?
It’s also not just that the domestic market is an afterthought, but that fluency in English is so high that nobody cares. Same here in Sweden. Everyone speaks English anyway so no point wasting money on translation to our own language.
I find surprising that being fun is the first reason for a positive review but the last for a negative one.
I can’t speak for western gamers in general but for me reason for positive and negative reviews are thee same but inverted: good game, as in fun, good gameplay, controls, settings, story and graphics and being a good PC game/port.
My interesting take on this is to remember how Chinese gamers use “review bombing” (it’s not really that what’s happening) because it is the only feedback channel available to them. Due to internet censorship laws in China, they can’t get access to typical discussions, community features, forums, discord or whatever the devs are using to gather feedback. So their only resource is to leave or change a review on the steam store. Since there are just so many chinese gamers, this looks like review bombing but it’s not the intended effect, they are just using the only interaction method they have. Furthermore, both Valve and developers know this, but won’t do anything because they don’t know how to tackle the issue other than just waiting for the scores to average out.
Found the fellow Grind Thunder player. 😄
Interesting. The story in the west was that the translation for silksong was shit and that’s what pissed everyone off.
Well the question is why would the difficulty be such a strong point in China but outside it isn’t? The translation thing makes more sense in my opinion. Why would Chinese players be worse than non Chinese ones? The difficulty of Silksong was criticised outside of China as well.
Oh he’s just using an LLM to write all the posts. That’s why it’s garbage.
VonReposti@feddit.dk 3 days ago
The thing about language is probably the stupidest hill to die on. If you’re a small European indie dev, chance is you know somewhere between 2-5 European languages shared among the devs (maybe even a few more). It’ll be free to join forces and create the translations for some of those. Voice acting can also be quality-tested in-house if your game includes that. But if you need to add Chinese you’d often need to hire external QA. I wouldn’t get mad either if a Japanese, Korean, or Chinese game didn’t support anything from the western hemisphere besides English. I’m not even mad that the amount of games that support my native tongue is likely less that 1%. If they didn’t even support English? That’s fine too. That game isn’t targeted me anyway, and I would leave it alone. I don’t go review bomb Fortnite either because it’s not for me.
Triumph@fedia.io 3 days ago
That's fair, but it sounds like the dev reacted very badly. Could have all been avoided if they just said "Yeah, you're right. But I'm working with what I can, and I'd love to add Chinese. I want to do it right, and I'd love your suggestions."
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 3 days ago
It’ll take away dev time they could be working on other things. Those devs get paid for their time. That is not free. In fact, depending on the type of developer, it may actually be cheaper to get someone else to do it, as software devs tend to be on the higher end of the earning scale for office drone type jobs.