Outsourcing Games to China

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Gamasutra has cast a look on the growing practice of outsourcing some or even all the work in game developing companies to China in order to minimise the costs. Here's an excerpt:

For Gamasutra's coverage of the Chinese game market thus far this week, we've been covering the Chinese MMO and casual game business. The bulk of the country's own game revenues are via these PC online games such as World Of Warcraft. However, there's another major market that is particularly important for Western game professionals - that of game asset outsourcing to China.

Though there are only a very few Chinese game companies capable of high-end outsourcing (mainly formed by ex-Ubisoft Shanghai employees, the only Chinese studio producing AAA console titles for many years), it's clear that game outsourcing is rapidly scaling up. The top companies located in Shanghai can produce art assets, programming elements, and even entire console game projects at a cost significantly below that of Western titles.

Read the rest at Gamasutra.

 

And we all know how that is going to work out:

*groan*

 

Ah, very funny, Morgoth.

 

I played and enjoyed a Chinese game, Prince of Qin, both online and the single player game. Wasn't bad.

I didn't buy the related game "Seal of Evil" simply because the voice acting was terrible. At least in the demo.

My point is that they can do a decent game. I don't know who was responsible for the voice overs in 'Seal of Evil'.

 

I've seen Polish programmers lose jobs in Poland to Indian programmers. And our wages aren't exactly the highest (the average salary is around 500 USD). How is this for outsourcing?

 

This is all just part of rebalancing inequalities in global wealth that have been anomalous for a large part of the 20th century. There is no logical reason why wages in India and China should be lower than in the USA, other than for temporary historical reasons. Expect to see decreases in Western incomes as this imbalance is redressed over the next few years, and start preparing for it now.

 

And as money flows into a country, standard oif living goes up, desire goes up, demands go up and eventually salaries go up.

So we get more balanced.

In the Seal of Evil demo it wasn't just the translation. The voices were obviously rank amateurs. If I ever run across the game for 10US$ I might buy it but no way will I pay 40 or more US$ for something were I have to turn off the voice so I can play it.

 

oh come on, chinese is easier than english. Chinese has no grammer, per se, because rigid Chinese characters cannot be declined nor conjugated.

in chinese, it would be,
i go today,
i go tomorrow,
i go yesterday.

aaaaaaaaaaand,
chinese words make sense. For example, algebra, the first time you encounter it you might need to check dictionary. But, the first time you see "replace number" in chinese, you might understand what is it all about. The same goes with "electronic brain", "fire arrow", "type B liver inflammation", they all easy to understand.

and,
Some chinese likes to use comma all the way until the end of a paragraph, as you might see sometimes in my messages.

but,
language barrier is just temporarily. China is a big country. Among themselves, they already have several dialects. And now you want them to learn a language that they might not encounter person that speaks it in their life time, i.e. english. it takes time. Besides, english is at the bottom of the bottom of their educational priority anyway. Demanding English from a developed country, say Japan or Korea is more practical.

 

Any business which wishes to deal with a foreign country, specifically one with a different language should have at least a couple of good interrupters on their staff.

 

I'm good at interrupting people. Can be an interrupter?

"Excuse me, excuse me, just let me interrupt you here!"

Sorry, Nakia. Couldn't help but take advantage of your typo. It was too good an opening.

 

China, as is, already has more english speakers then the US, it is really just a matter of time now.

 

HB, the limits of spell check and not rereading a post carefully. I'm not editing it either.