One of the most frequently asked questions is “when will this come to the west?” and my response to that is usually “not for awhile”.
While Smilegate RPG/Tripod Studio has hinted in the past they were looking at a “global” release, I still believe some folks took the 2014 Korea Times interview out of context. They did design the game to compartmentalize text localization and voiceovers (pretty much customary in most titles that aim to be potentially released in other languages) as well as having API’s that allow connections to different backend systems to support integrating with other publishers,
China was already a known (due to the Tencent investment) which is why their immediate plans after the Korean launch is to launch the game there (plus they already have a long term business relationship with Tencent Games which published CrossFire where it became a huge moneymaker for both companies). One of the locations in Lost Ark; Anich which has a strong Chinese influence in its artwork (like the main hub and outlying areas) including the martial art aspects of its story, was designed to appeal to that demographic. There’s also an island which is covered with bamboo and has pandas (with a life skill quest associated with it) as its main occupants.
And the game does make liberal reference to other cultures and their aesthetics while not limiting itself to ones that actually exist today like the steampunk inspired Arthetine. Given the level of creativity that already exists, there’s a lot of undiscovered elements that await in the other half of the map that is not yet available where they will potentially reference every modern day culture in some form.
Localizing text for stuff like the UI, skills, and items are the straightforward part. Where it gets complicated is with the story and lore where nuances are lost/changed depending on what language it is being translated to. I still remember an interview given by the Korean translator hired by Trion Worlds who worked on Devilian where she explained the rationale for why they ended up removing the SS ranking for dungeons. That came about when they worked on the German localization where the German translator made reference to its connotation with Nazi Germany and the SS.
Localization is more than just directly translating everything. It also takes into account these sort of cultural and social nuances/references that could otherwise be “lost in translation”. Lost Ark has a huge amount of text and voice dialog when it comes to the questing side and doing that correctly across multiple languages is seriously a huge task. That task is often times left to the publisher to handle.
Again, while I’m not a huge fan of Trion, the people who worked on its localization there did a really decent job with Devilian (except I completely disagreed with their choice of voice acting for the classes to the point where I eventually found a way to use the Korean voice pack). Even when the language text initially looked terrible on the client, they worked with Bluehole Ginno to get stuff like the kerning correct where I would say, 99% of the text in-game was positioned correctly (since double-byte characters like Kanji, Japanese kana, and Korean Hangul take up a different amount of display space compared to ASCII characters depending on font choice). Some publishers get around this (least amount of work on the developer side) by using the alpha equivalent of that character set which normally results in a generic looking Helvetica style of font (good examples are Riders of Icarus, Black Desert, and Bless Online). This is also why text chat also ends up broken when it comes to character limits (Trion’s original Devilian client suffered from the same short character limit that most Korean MMO’s originally had when brought to the west).
Digressing, this is where the business leadership side comes into play. After having had the opportunity to fully quest through what amounts to just the first of 3 lost arks that you need to find, the quality and care put into it tells me that this is a team that is serious about quality (walking the walk instead of just talking it like so many development studios do). So it must be one of their key anxieties of making sure that if they do make a business decision to bring this to the west, how it won’t be defiled in the process. For me personally, I’d just prefer the Korean voicing and have subtitles. But I also know that from a marketing perspective, this may come across to some as looking as cheap (in too cheap to hire voice actors).
Voicing however is integral for capturing the ambiance though not only of the players character, but also the key NPC’s and monsters in the game. While a lot of the main bosses use the standard low menacing baritone in most of these titles, the english dialog (when localized) in many are usually way too cheesy sounding and/or exaggerate the vocalization.
IMHO, Lost Ark really is something they need to self-publish and maintain direct control of if they intend to launch in the west. But that is easier said than done. The problem as always comes down to hiring the correct matches plus allowing that subsidiary, actually a voice in management. The management side with these Korean based studios is that they are beholden to their Korean management overlords (decisions need to be run through that chain for example). Thus having a properly structured subsidiary to handle a self-published global launch is integral to making sure this game does not get mismanaged on the publishing side. I know that Smilegate does have Smilegate West (in Canada) but recently closed their Smilegate Europe office (which was tasked with growing CrossFire in that region).
Smilegate West’s Glassdoor reviews aren’t surprising when it comes to the racial angle; that subsidiary would need to be completely restructured to properly handle Lost Ark in North and South America. Smilegate West publishes CrossFire and Lost Saga under the Z8games name and isn’t what you call a widely known publisher in the region (except for those who do play CrossFire). Running it from Korea (as they are doing now with CrossFire Europe), is also problematic because you still have to hire people who can support those languages (which is one of the other reasons for having subsidiaries closer to those regions where you can hire the right people).
I am sure they have received inquiries from western publishers expressing interest but were probably given the same vague PR responses they have provided in interviews. The Korean version is priority one for them now. After that launches, they will proceed with China and only until after that launches, will they really begin to evaluate releasing in other regions (part of that of course predicated on the business models used in each of those and their respective success levels).
