2.1 The Economic Context: Popularity of Gaming

The official website of the US International Trade Administration states that the global gaming industry was ‘valued at $159.3 billion in 2020, with 2.7 billion gamers worldwide’ and that statistically ‘75% of US households have at least one gamer’ (International Trade Administration, n.d.). By comparison, the media and entertainment industry – which includes VGs – is valued at ‘$660 billion … enduring an estimated $53B or 7.3% decline due to the pandemic’ (International Trade Administration, 2020). In contrast, however, they report that globally, ‘the impact from the pandemic has driven sales [of VGs], with the U.S. seeing a record 31% increase in consumer spending on video gaming and subscription services’ as well as over 13 per cent growth in 2020 mobile gaming revenue, to 77.2 billion dollars. Furthermore, they state that ‘80% of U.S. gaming companies are looking abroad to expand sales’. The popularity of esports is also mentioned, with their projected growth ‘estimated to surpass $2.5 billion by 2024’. In the context of competitive gaming spectacles, the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA, 2020) reported that ‘[i]n 2020, e-sports are projected to enjoy viewership of more than 70 million people for final matches. That’s more viewers than the NBA finals, NHL Stanley Cup finals or the World Series’. They also uphold that ‘almost a third of people on this planet are gamers [who play routinely]’ and that ‘1.2 billion play on a PC’. Games are an object of globally operatingFootnote ¹ businesses, both high-budget and independent ones. They are made by professionals as well as amateurs. More broadly, VGs can be seen as a new, growingFootnote ² industry that is ‘important politically and economically’ (Reference WongWong, 2011: 3).

2.2 The Socio-Cultural Context

2.3 Myths, Controversies, Anachronisms and Stereotypes

2.4 Potential and Utility

Contrary to some of the claims in the previous section, gaming is repeatedly portrayed as beneficial beyond recreation (cf. Reference GeeGee, 2005). As Reference Bavelier, Achtman, Mani and FöckerBavelier and colleagues (2012: 1) claim, ‘Over the past few years, the very act of playing action video games has been shown to enhance several different aspects of visual selective attention. … [A]ction game players may allocate attentional resources more automatically, possibly allowing more efficient early filtering of irrelevant information.’Footnote ⁹ Accepting this, it may not be surprising that the potential of VGs have seen widespread use in niche contexts outside of entertainment.

2.5 The Medial Context

3.1 Relevance of Medial Specificity for the Processes of Translation

As indicated by Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino (2020: 298) – and pivotal to this Element – (g)localisation of video games requires ‘much more than text-to-text translation’. Assuming a similar position, Dietz emphasises the idea that there are ‘unique translation challenges which arise from the specific medium of video games’ (quoted in Reference O’HaganO’Hagan, 2009: 214), which, according to Langdell, may require ‘developing games with localisation in mind with a practical focus to elicit pitfalls leading to unsuccessful localisation’ (quoted in Reference O’HaganO’Hagan, 2009: 214). Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino (2015: 131) discusses this issue in relation to the processes of translation and, importantly, essentially what we deem to be OSL:

Bernal-Merino also suggests that successful localisation necessitates translation strategies balancing the locale’s awareness of cultural differences: ‘legal, religious, and political issues … may influence … the success of their [the developers’ and publishers’] product’ (80), thus pointing to the appropriation of content in terms of ‘playability’.

This notion of game-world logic seems pivotal to translation in Bernal-Merino’s reasoning that ‘game interactivity and immersion through the maxim of playability severely affect translators’ tasks which results in video game translation falling somewhat outside of the realm of AVT’ (97),Footnote ¹⁴ since the player’s reception of the game can be positively or negatively impacted by the quality of the localisation (41; Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino, 2020: 300). It is also central to the pragmatic linguistic quality assurance, with ‘linguistic bugs’ (drawing on the programming terminology for errors) grouped into four levels from unsellable to ‘barely visible’ (306). He moreover proposes a similarly formalised qualitative formula for the measurement of playability, resting on eight layers of semiosis and the pragmatics ‘elicited’ by them to guarantee the developer-intended experience (308). And since ‘all signs are semantically intertwined’, and the semiotic networks across all possible layers need to be maintained to preserve playability (303), one of the parameters is the appropriate localisation of image textures, although mainly in the context of self-censorship: for example, adding ‘clothing to naked body textures’ (309).

However, while changes made for the purposes of localisation should not hinder the original’s utility, functionality and reliability, it is an imperative not exclusive to just gaming: ‘Today’s video games are essentially a piece of software and thus game localisation shares many commonalities with software localisation. The need for ‘localisation’ beyond translation arose due to the shift to an electronic medium in which the text subject to translation is couched’ (Reference O’HaganO’Hagan, 2009: 212). In other words, as expressed by Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino (2020: 299): ‘As a complex polysemiotic creation, coded into a digital computer, each of the game assets has to be programmed and activated at the correct time and in the correct place.’ So, for example, a localised element should be contained in a similar amount of data allocation and disk space on the device’s hardware, while performing identically quality-wise. The localised product should not cause the system to fail in capacities beyond formal programming, like comprehensibility, storytelling, interactibility, or in general, disrupt the player’s immersion (the suspension of disbelief) or worsen the originally intended gameplay experience or playability (Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino, 2015). What it could mean is that a localised product should in theory be virtually substitutable with the original in these terms. However, to what extent this can be applied in practice is often a contested topic.

3.2 Terminological Clarification

Solely focusing on the topic of VGs and software, the content-oriented distinctions between translation, screen translation, multimedial translation and transadaptation (e.g. Gambier, 2004) can be contrasted with the more functional or macro-unit-oriented approaches of terms such as audiovisual translation and globalisation, or micro-unit-oriented terms like product localisation and culturalisation. More complex terms, which can function outside of the boundaries of the aforementioned ones, have also been proposed, like glocalisation (cf. e.g. Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino, 2020: 311–12; Reference Patel and LynchPatel & Lynch, 2013), the model of transcreation (Reference Mangiron and O’HaganMangiron & O’Hagan, 2006: 11), adaptation of MIES (Multimedial Interactive Entertainment Software; Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino, 2015: 22) – as perhaps a ‘tighter, more functional definition’ (39), which ‘incorporates the key concepts that set video games apart from other forms of entertainment’ (37) – or, in relation to preparation of the product as a whole, GILT practices (Globalisation, Internationalisation, Localisation and Translation; O’Hagan, 2016) so as ‘to accommodate different languages and cultures, allowing … the simultaneous release of titles’ (Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino, 2006: 23).Footnote ¹⁵ However, we do not suggest that because some of these terms function hypernymically to the others, they somehow make one another obsolete: ‘terminology has spread in all directions, with new terms being coined, and old terms being appropriated by the industry to convey new realities’ (22).

4.1 Material

Our analysis covers two games: Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (TCTD2) and Shadow Warrior 2 (SW2). The motivation behind this choice is that both games are three-dimensional (as opposed to side-scrollers and technologically two-dimensional games), open-world (non-linear), adult-targeted shooter titles. Both titles also have strong RPG elements, crucially being exploration-driven and rich in textual language. All the while, they have also been professionally localised into – among other languages – Polish.Footnote ¹⁶ In both games, the Polish version consisted of localised subtitles and a localised user interface, but no dubbing – both games played the original English audio.

At the same time, these games differ in terms of the perspective of the player character (third person in TCTD2 versus first person in SW2), game-world setting (Western versus Eastern, using Eurocentric terminology), development team (studios located in Malmö, Sweden versus Warsaw, Poland) and their roles in the industry (AAA (highest-budget) versus indie), among other variables, notably time of release.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is a tactical action role-playing game, as a case study presenting different types and facets of OSL. The game revolves around the events following a fictional bioterrorist attack, initially believed to have been aimed at the population of the United States. Not long after the tragic chain of events that it ushered in, the virus of Variola Chimera Green Poison, with its estimated case mortality rate of over 80%, led to the necessity of an unprecedented activation of the classified last-resort federal unit, the titular Division. As the crowd-sourced fan-made encyclopaedia states (‘Strategic Homeland Division’, n.d.), the player assumes the role of one of these elite sleeper-agents equipped with bleeding-edge technology, whose task is primarily to restore societal order and ensure governmental continuity at the brink of destruction, with perhaps most tellingly, their insignia resembling a flame-reborn phoenix and the precept bearing a statement ‘extremis malis, extrema remedia’.

The game is a sequel to the first title, the story of which concentrated on the immediate action of the Division agents during the original outbreak in New York City and its outlying areas set vaguely in the early twenty-first century. The second game focuses primarily on quelling the chaos escalating in the eastern part of the United States and the capital terrain, with the player/playable character’s main objective being, aside from protecting and reinstituting civilian settlements, unearthing any suspected political intrigues connected to the source of the virus.

Shadow Warrior 2, on the other hand, is a comedy-driven quasi-sandbox (in this case, partly procedurally generated) first-person shooter, a sequel in the rebooted 1997 series from the creators of the classic Duke Nukem. Story-wise, the game continues to follow the unpredictable life of a fearless and sharp-tongued loner-mercenary named Lo Wang. He is once again tasked to risk his life and limb for gold, fighting mystical creatures and magic-wielding mafiosi to, among other things, rescue a dying daughter of the Yakuza leader from the hands of the Zilla Corp zaibatsu and stop the corruption oozing from the unsealed gates of the arcane Shadow Realm. Being part of the remade original series, the game setting was a given. Yet, with it never being specified to be either China nor Japan (Culture.pl, 2016),Footnote ¹⁷ the fictional location of the game treads the fine line between facetious fiction and real-world Orient-inspired atmosphere (see Section 6.3).

4.2 Preliminary Remarks

This section should be prefaced by the caveat that because of their oft multi-threaded stories, there are different ways games can be considered ‘played through’, especially for titles that offer many collectibles, achievements, side-quests and after-storyline content, as well as downloadable content (DLC), which may include expansion packs and extra purchasable questlines.Footnote ¹⁸

While both games provided a degree of multiplayer playability,Footnote ¹⁹ neither of the two play-throughs of the respective titles strictly adhered to multiplayer play-styles, considering the unconventional nature of their main goal: methodical exploration. It is worth mentioning, however, that TCTD2 is an online-only game, even though one may try to play without the help of other players. Therefore, a marginal portion of the TCTD2 play-through has included multiplayer, much of which was the exploration of the PvP hotspots, the Dark Zone. Shadow Warrior 2 was played in single-player mode entirely.

4.3 Methodology

5.1 Grades of Prominence

To begin with, instances of OSL will naturally vary in terms of prominence. A relevant caveat applicable here will be that – compared to what is the case in film – the prominence status of OSL in games is more difficult to ascertain. This is because while in a film attention allocation is to a large extent guided – for instance through camera angles and shot composition – the more non-linear games are – leaving aside in-game cinematic sequences – the more the player has the choice and agency to explore locations more freely.Footnote ²⁵ Crucially for OSL identification and processing, players – as opposed to viewers – can approach a particular object (e.g. by using the controller to move through the 3D environment, change the camera angle on two axes, rotate the camera 360° or zoom in on the object) and keep it in their field of vision as long as necessary to be able to make out an inscription and possibly even ponder over it.

In the rest of this section, we present a working threefold categorisation within a continuum: with OSL that is prototypically, non-prototypically and liminally prominent.

5.2 Prototypically Prominent Visual-Verbal Components

Examples of the first category – prototypically prominent visual-verbal components – are provided in Figures 2 and 3 for TCTD2 and SW2 respectively. The rationale behind categorising these instances of OSL as prototypically accessible is that given their text’s size, legibility and colour, as well as their placement in locations that the player is expected to or required to visit, they are arguably highly likely to be noticed by a player.

Figure 2 Prototypically prominent OSL

(in TCTD2)

Figure 3 Prototypically prominent OSL

(in SW2)

5.3 Non-Prototypically Prominent Visual-Verbal Components

The screenshots in Figure 4 demonstrate multiple cases of OSL that can be categorised as less than prototypically prominent: ‘WAKE UP SHEEP’, ‘USA IS FUKKED’ and ‘USA’ in the upper screenshot, and ‘CERA FAILED FUKK THEM!’, ‘WE ARE FISH OUT OF WATER JUMPING FOR AIR’ and ‘YOU ARE A GRENADE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT’ in the lower one. Notably, in addition to factors like text size or legibility, the very fact that these instances of OSL co-occur within a single frame can be an important factor behind their cognitive status. Similarly, the likelihood of encountering the stimulus in the presented world of the game and the frequency of such encounters as part of the play-through will plausibly also have an effect.

Figure 4 Non-prototypically prominent OSL

(TCTD2)

5.4 Liminally Prominent Visual-Verbal Components

Finally, Figure 5 exemplifies liminal OSL that arguably will not be identified by most players – unless they happen to approach its optional, secluded location and also intentionally invest time and effort into carefully inspecting their surroundings. The OSL takes the form of a notice – ‘PAINKILLERS TAKE ONE! – which is handwritten and partly obscured by a shelf. What is more, there are some salient competing stimuli, most significantly the image of the Great Seal of the United States, since this is supposed to be the interior of the US president’s airplane. The authorial intention behind such an element could be seen as ludic in nature, since the assumption that the element is expected to be processed by the player contrasts with its designed exclusivity, contributing to the postulated liminality of its ostensiveness and the ambiguity of its translational status (cf. Reference Deckert and JaszczykDeckert & Jaszczyk, 2019).

Figure 5 Liminally prominent OSL

(TCTD2)

6.1 World-Building

The overarching rationale behind in-game OSL is for it to serve as an ‘authenticating’ world-building or atmosphere-building factor. Such a function can be ascribed to all the occurrences of OSL. Remarkably, at the same time – as we show further on – OSL can be designed in such a way as to perform other functions alongside the more rudimentary one.

6.1.1 Amount of Language per Case

The screenshot in Figure 6 neatly illustrates OSL’s world-building function. At the same time, the image exemplifies the remarkable meticulousness with which these elements are designed visually (e.g. in terms of colour choices and typography) as well as linguistically (in terms of wording), and subject-wise. The player is able to read the text of the parking information shown in Figure 6, including details such as the parking fee for a particular duration of stay as well as some additional details like the note ‘Staying longer? Ask inside for our special offers.’

Figure 6 Detailed information in OSL

(TCTD2)

The amount of information provided through OSL can vary from single words to long stretches of text, as shown in the selection of examples in Figure 7. In TCTD2, these are: blocks of wall-engraved text relating to American history, then a handwritten whiteboard elaborating on some ballistics technology, followed by a placard with zoological information. All of these are perfectly readable in-game, provided the game’s customisable texture quality settings are set ‘high’ enough (see Section 2.5.2).

Figure 7 Differing amounts of information per single OSL

(TCTD2)

Materials showcasing a similar phenomenon in SW2 were more difficult to capture, however. The inclusion of highly detailed information through OSL may not have been a priority in this game.

If the developers decided that the game’s rapid pacing could be threatened by frequent optional linguistic stimuli that encourage longer intervals of processing time, they could have decided against deploying complex OSL structures. In other words, it is possible that time spent on deciphering lengthy OSL text was in this case seen as detrimental to the highly engaging gameplay activities offered by the game, including in-game combat, movement, collectible ‘hunting’ and plot progression, and was therefore redundant.

Another possibility is that the experience of encountering such stimuli could have been negatively impacted by game optimisation processes. These seem to have included the limiting of the quality of certain graphic components through textural asset compression. A lowering of fidelity (level of illustration clarity and details) may have resulted in decreased readability of more complex texts, especially if they were to appear on smaller game-world objects – this seems to be the case with the few captured instances of comparatively more complex OSL cases in this game (see Figure 8). These include: a scattering of various newspapers (in which for the most part only the headlines are readable due to low-resolution textures), container type details (mostly comprising irrelevant numbers) and two low-resolution renderings rich in non-English OSL. One of these is a street-adjacent recycling dumpster and the other an ancient, magical scroll. Another instance of heavily compressed OSL happens to be an homage to a classic Japanese cultural item, shown in Figure 17, discussed in the context of culture-bound and multilingual OSL components in SW2 (see Section 6.3).

Figure 8 Differing amounts of information per single OSL

(SW2)

6.1.2 Recurring Cases

A significant mechanism employed to reinforce the world-building function is to deploy variants of a given instance of OSL in a recurring fashion – for example the same brand name, or a slogan with repeated wording – sometimes even likely produced by the same person across locations that can be inferred from handwriting. An illustration from TCTD2 is provided in Figure 9 with the inscription ‘VIRUS IS A PUNISHMENT’ alongside two tags; Figure 10 shows a similar mechanism in SW2.

Figure 9 Textures recurring across locations

(TCTD2)

Figure 10 Recurring textures in different locations

(SW2)

As previously mentioned, however, it is essential to remember that reusing assets is useful from a technical standpoint as well, saving storage space on both the original carrier and gaming machine’s disk, decreasing the time necessary to download or install the game as well as optimising asset loading and rendering times (see Section 2.5.2). Therefore, this could be another logical explanation for employing such a strategy, besides building the atmosphere of the world presented.

Similarly, it could be argued, however, that due to advances in technology, nowadays there is little incentive to graphically compress textures to the point where OSL is hardly decipherable, unless the developers specifically need just that, or want to improve the accessibility of their game for the users of lower-spec or legacy systems (as well as mobile devices, potentially), which would still be in circulation at the time of release.

On the other hand, retaining low-resolution textures could be seen as maintaining a gaming convention, which stems from the era of game development when authors had to compromise between keeping games’ visual appeal and their playability on bygone consoles and computers with limited processing power. Arguably, high-fidelity textures nowadays can add to the immersion and realism of the game’s setting.

6.1.3 Realism

One way of adding realism is via wall-inscribed OSL, which is exemplified in TCTD2. To increase their plausibility, the game’s authors might decide to insert a spelling error, as can be seen in the word ‘ABONDED’ (Figure 11) – most likely a misspelled variant of ‘ABANDONED’.

Figure 11 The ‘ABONDED’ case

(TCTD2)

6.2 Narratives in OSL

Another discernible function of OSL is to construct narratives, as is notably the case in TCTD2. From the perspective of the game’s story, the world-building instances fall into two broad categories: pre-apocalypse and mid-/post-apocalypse ones. The former include names of places like shops and restaurants, advertising text and standard information found in streets and on buildings – for example, phone-use restrictions or safety notices. The latter are primarily sprayed inscriptions on building walls, but also realistically repurposed traffic signs (see bottom left in Figure 2), which point to a central property of OSL. Conforming with the notion of environmental storytelling (Reference Fernandez-VaraFernandez-Vara, 2011), these instances play an important role in building the game’s discourse by linguistically representing the society formerly living in the now desolate surroundings.

The believability of TCTD2’s game-world is reinforced by the plentiful graffiti and street art, as well as cryptic and enigmatic tags, the meaning of which is likely understood only by the game-world artists and, potentially, the game developers. In the process of examining the collected screenshot material, the number of individual inscriptions has been documented to exceed at least 250 distinct, untranslated messages – not including other types of untranslated OSL. A preview list of the verbalised entries can be found in the Appendix. Again, it is worth mentioning that most of them can be observed repeating throughout the game-world, likely to make their discovery more probable – a standard practice for some open-world games – or to enhance realism, as previously stated.

The linguistic evidence of this type, produced presumably by former inhabitants of the city, creates at least two discernible and internally consistent narratives that can be tracked by players. One focuses on the citizens’ dissatisfaction with the handling of the crisis by the authorities who, despite potent reaction, ultimately could not prevent the overwhelming chain of events and large-scale destruction. The other provides insight into the routines and struggles of the District’s many fractured communities, trying to self-govern during or shortly after the crisis. Both of these narratives are exemplified in the ‘stories’ represented by the OSL instances in Figure 12.

Figure 12 Storytelling function of OSL

(TCTD2)

The players can find the OSL presented in the top right-hand corner of Figure 12 by stumbling across a residential district near the Potomac River. The peace and quiet of nature overtaking the garden of the residence coupled with the gigantic banners hanging from its balcony tell an ominous story. The words read: ‘NO TOMORROW: END OF THE WORLD PARTY; INFECTED WELCOME – 9 PM’ and ‘WE WERE BETRAYED’. Those two simple utterances can be interpreted rather unambiguously as a defeatist call for the infected as well as those yet uninfected by an extremely contagious, untreatable and deadly disease, central to the game’s story, to gather under one roof. What is left, among the stillness of a once roaring city, is a remnant of a desperate carousal for those who have lost all faith in the authorities to save the people in need. What might be inferred here is a story of people deciding to share their final moments in a ghastly bacchanalia, rather than scrambling to survive the end times self-isolating and quarantining. The OSL may thus constitute a piece of environmental storytelling about a slow and horrific doomsday mass suicide – a tale told with just twelve words displayed in a neglected garden.

The second instance of OSL, visible in the bottom screenshot in Figure 12, is expected to be seen by the player during one of the missions, in a staircase of a raider-occupied high-rise block adjacent to a mall, transformed into various drug-making facilities.Footnote ²⁶ To interpret this particular instance of OSL, we should briefly discuss the presumed diegetic author of this writing: the aforementioned raiders. The luminescent light-green paint, like the one in which the OSL is diegetically written, is to be interpreted in-game exclusively as a sign of ‘the Hyenas’. The animalistic name of this pack of raiders is likely an intentional device to help the players characterise them among other enemies. The name may relate to their willingness to scavenge and kill with no respect or empathy and is consistent with the conceptualisation of the Hyenas as a savage, dehumanised mass, or an unsympathetic barbaric force opposing the civilisation supposedly represented by the player, who is tasked with bringing them to justice for their crimes against the struggling civilian population.

The OSL in Figure 12 is a green-sprayed imperative to ‘TAKE CARE OF THIS’ with an arrow pointing to a makeshift barricade. The barricade is presumably a remnant of the early stages of the viral outbreak – a result of quarantining – and might have already been there when the Hyenas settled in. From one point of view, the OSL serves an instructive function (see Section 8.2 for further discussion) – telling the players that the fiends are not to be found upstairs, as they could not have got there without moving the barricade first. The player is thus provided with a believable motivation to instead decide to move downstairs (where their linear mission is heading), rather than upstairs (where they could have gone otherwise, missing their objective).

From another perspective, however, it can also be telling a rather flippant, ironic tale: that the Hyenas’ procrastination in cleaning their base has ultimately proven to be the bane of them. Since the barricade can still be seen in their base when it is being neutralised by the authorities (i.e. the player – the Division), the criminals, through their sloth or incompetence, appear to have helped the Division find their way inside. In this sense, the game presents the player with an opportunity to evaluate the Hyenas as a collective. The situation would suggest that their cruelty may be a façade of a fundamentally puny and inept gang – not a truly organised group. Using OSL and environmental storytelling, the game invites the player to draw this conclusion themselves.

The previously discussed examples of OSL represent stories that have presumably taken place in vastly different periods of the game’s timeline: one before the nadir of the catastrophe and one afterwards. This creates a clear continuity of time in the presented world, which reinforces both its verisimilitude and potentially, the player’s motivation to explore. A case in which the two narrational time periods apparently interweave is provided at the bottom of Figure 13, captured in a Hyenas hideout. What can be assumed to formerly have been a market stand selling food – indicated by the signboard ‘WAFFLES, SANDWICHES, SOUPS, DRINKS, ICE CREAM AND MORE’ – is now probably repurposed to warehouse stolen supplies for the Hyenas – as indicated by the liminally perceptible ‘COLLECTION POINT’ OSL sprayed on top of it.

Figure 13 The ‘WAFFLE BOOTH/COLLECT POINT’ case

(TCTD2)

Incidentally, there is yet another instance of OSL in the same screenshot: the word ‘ENTRANCE’ is visible deeper into the booth structure. One might be inclined to judge it to be non-prototypically ostensive, yet the small, diamond-shaped marker on the door suggests that the player is in fact expected to go through it to progress through the mission.Footnote ²⁷ They are subsequently very likely to read the OSL, thus fundamentally making it a case of the prototypically ostensive structure, by our definition.

6.2.1 Multiple Interpretations of OSL

Another interesting choice on the part of game creators is to include OSL that can have several possible interpretations. In the case of ‘KILLING TIME’ in Figure 14, there are at least three available interpretations. First, the writing on the wall can indicate the time when killing happened/happens. Second, it can be understood as a gerund variant of the metaphorical expression ‘to kill time’. Finally, it can be taken to function as an intertextual reference since there exist at least two VGs, a film and a TV series entitled ‘Killing Time’.

Figure 14 The ‘KILLING TIME’ case

(TCTD2)

The ‘Killing Time’ case is a neat illustration of variable degrees of asymmetry involved in translation whereby it might not be possible to render the phrase in such a way as to open analogous paths of interpretation. Depending on the structure of languages involved and the expected overlap in the players’ background assumptions, some of the layers can be much easier to translate than others. For instance, Polish uses a metaphorical expression of ‘killing time’ in a fashion similar to English but once this target variant is selected, the other two interpretations may not be available for the TL receptors.

Indeed, some OSL instances could even be seen as poetic due to formal characteristics that prompt multiple interpretations, requiring all the intricacies of a more literary translation approach to successfully localise them. As an example, some claim that ‘lineation is the defining characteristic of poetry’ (Reference HazeltonHazelton, 2014), and indeed, in lyric poetry especially, the intentional insertion of linebreaks can be, among other functions, used precisely to create meaningful ambiguity expressed through that visuospatial presentation (cf. Reference Koops van ’t Jagt, Hoeks, Dorleijn and HendriksKoops van ’t Jagt et al., 2014).

Thus, whether intentional on the designers’ part or not, the enjambment of the three lines of text in Figure 15, despite the laconicity, invites comparisons to poetry, because of the dual meaning. The text can either be interpreted as one of the many comments disapproving the fall of Washington, DC to such a ruinous state – as in the exclamation ‘Freakin’ chaos[!]’. Alternately, it could be seen as the alias of the diegetic tagger (the person assumed to have written the inscription) – as in a ‘Freak in chaos’ – in which case it invites further potential for interpretation. The diegetic tagger could have chosen such an alias precisely because of the play on words – making it more storytelling in nature – or to note their capacity to indulge in their passion of tagging more freely, owing to the authorities being much less inclined to seek out any alleged vandals due to the anarchic unfolding of the game’s cataclysmic plot.

Figure 15 The ‘FREAK|IN|CHAOS’ case

(TCTD2)

In this vein, another example from TCTD2 is the name ‘SLANTER’ (see Figure 16). While dictionaries record the word ‘slanter’ as obsolete, it is also markedly negative, associated with deception. That this name should be given by the game creators to a construction company could be surprising, or perhaps humorous (see Section 7.1 for further discussion) if read as intentionally ironic, especially given the company’s advertising line – ‘In cooperation with the local community in creating a liveable cityscape’ – contrasting with the demolished ruins of the cityscape, housing gangs of dangerous scavengers and fiends.

Figure 16 The ‘SLANTER’ case

(TCTD2)

6.3 Culture and OSL

One of the mechanisms reinforcing the storytelling as well as world-building functions is to embed culture-bound elements within OSL. It is of particular utility for settings that try to convey a sense of realism or are directly linked to a factual location and time, such as the one in TCTD2 (see Reference VitkaVitka, 2019). This may be why SW2, located, on the contrary, in the fictional country Onishima, with its comedic tone, does not seem to offer many examples of English OSL that strengthen its verisimilitude, instead opting for clear authorial aesthetic inspirations from various Asian cultures and their art.

Onishima is flauntingly fictional, with mythical demons, futuristic robots and super-(anti-)heroes co-existing there. It presents both rural and metropolitan characteristics of contemporary Japan and China, richly incorporating tropes from classic action cinema, Asian mythology, history, folklore and pop culture of the Far East.Footnote ²⁸ In an interview with Culture.pl (2016), Tadeusz Zieliński, then PR and marketing manager for the game’s dev team,Footnote ²⁹ reveals the following: ‘The setting [of the game] was given, because SW2 is a remake and we needed to keep that part of the original. … [T]he entire graphic art was inspired directly by Japan, especially the architecture of Kyoto.’ In the same interview, Paweł Kowalewski, the lead gameplay designer behind the game, explains:

It is possible then to consider the non-English OSL of Oribe Yasubei Taketsune (1847) by ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Figure 17) as not just an easter egg,Footnote ³⁰ but on a meta-level (not directly relating to the content of the OSL but its significance as a reference) a device that can operate as both a Far East atmosphere-building component and a storytelling piece. It could be suggesting that Onishima is located in a ‘post-apocalyptic’ Japan – as is presumed by the Culture.pl (2016) interviewer – or at the least that the members of the Yakuza were able to smuggle counterfeit copies of the treasured Japanese piece into its borders, as substantiated diegetically by the reappearance of this texture throughout different locations.

Figure 17 Culture-bound OSL

(SW2)

Similarly, the examples from TCTD2 in Figure 18 portray elements from the American cultural context, while embedding text created by the developers. Their significance arises from being coupled with images of historical figures and referencing an event, such as, in this case, the Second Indochina War of 1955–75.

Figure 18 Culture-bound elements alongside OSL

(TCTD2)

An intriguing consequence of deploying such an element in localised media is that they will almost certainly not be equally recognisable for players from American, Japanese or other cultural backgrounds. In literary translation, an attempt to mitigate such asymmetry could be made, at least in some part, through the use of non-diegetic footnotes. This even happens, to a much lesser extent, in audiovisual media – as seen in amateur fansubs, where there exists a phenomenon of adding translator footnotes to subtitles (cf. Reference Liew and Che OmarLiew & Che Omar, 2018: 116).

Culture-bound OSL can also relate to other aspects of meaning-making connected to a specific language as well as the socio-culture utilising it. The penultimate culture-bound instance of OSL in Figure 18 has the name of one of the most important political figures in the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, written on stacks of money. This could be read as a critique of the supposed corruption inside the fictional Congress, a version of the ‘money = power’ metaphor or a general reference to the idiom ‘money talks’. Narratively, however, it is implied that this was written by members of a vile gang of scavengers, whom the player is not encouraged to sympathise with.

In the concluding instance in Figure 18, names of historical figures are explicitly inscribed on the wall. While the name Abraham Lincoln will be, at least on a basic level, familiar to players, irrespective of their cultural background, the name Royal Cortissoz will be challenging even to some of the SL players, and even more so to those from other cultures.

A case that requires even more advanced background knowledge is presented in the image in Figure 19, an instance of OSL that reads ‘LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE MONUMENT’. Given the definite article and the location where the game takes place, this is a rather unambiguous reference to the Washington Monument. This interpretation is then corroborated as the obelisk actually emerges in the background. On the one hand, a literal reading of the inscription can be activated – that of actually living close enough to the monument for it to cast a shadow on the building (and the fact that this is a residential building is supported by the laundry drying on a line). On the other hand, a metaphoric interpretation can be activated, with vast meaning-making potential. The coupling of the literal and metaphoric dimensions creates an interesting mechanism for meaning to be constructed but the prerequisite is that players have access to particular cultural assumptions. In reality, these background assumptions will not be symmetrically accessible to players – within cultural and linguistic communities and all the more so across languages and cultures.

Figure 19 The ‘MONUMENT’ case

(TCTD2)

Figure 20 presents another case of OSL the interpretation of which presupposes certain cultural assumptions. This instance is additionally interesting because it creatively distorts the name of the US presidential aircraft. First of all, ‘one’ is distorted into ‘gone’. Second, on close inspection we notice that ‘O’ in ‘FORCE’ has been reworked for the word to be read as ‘FARCE’. If we analyse it even further, the letter ‘A’ can be decoded as the so-called ‘circle-A’, recognised as an anarchic symbol.

Figure 20 The ‘AIR FARCE GONE’ case

(TCTD2)

This case constitutes a localisation challenge on multiple levels. The first possible decision-making crisis point (cf. Reference PedersenPedersen, 2007; Reference LörscherLörscher, 1991) is whether to attempt translation in the first place. If such an attempt is made, a major challenge would be to render the layers of signification added through the manipulation of letters in the English name, especially since the plane’s name is typically used in its original form when referred to in Polish.

7.1 A Humorous Dimension

The writer’s creative engagement with the addressee can assume humorous or ironic characteristics. The SW2 development team was so prodigious in utilising OSL to contribute to this aspect, that humour in this case could be argued to have become characteristic of the narrative, the game-world’s comedic setting and its atmosphere in general. It is possible to say, then, that humorous function in these cases interlocks with the world-building function, which corroborates the claim that OSL functions can overlap.

7.1.1 Allusions

A substantial amount of the OSL design in SW2 was based on pop culture references, such as the selected few shown in Figure 21, where one of the companies advertises itself with a slogan paraphrasing the lyrics of a popular 1985 rock song by Dire Straits: ‘Money for nothing and commission for free’. There is one more notable musical reference, visible in Figure 21. Among alcohol bottles, many of them carrying OSL jokes as well, there is one labelled ‘Ace of Spades: Lemmy’s spirit’, this time most likely referring to the song ‘The Ace of Spades’ originally sung by Ian Fraser Kilmister of Motörhead – stage name Lemmy.

Figure 21 Pop-culture-bound elements in OSL

(SW2)

We showed these examples to Michał Mazur, a representative of the SW2 development team. He elaborated on them, intriguingly implying that indie studios are almost expected to implement tongue-in-cheek meta-jokes. We can speculate that this is to say players appreciate the inclusion of optional fan-serving elements (which could be cut based on time or budget), and is an indication of a passionFootnote ³¹ driving the creative process that is not motivated by profit:

Sure; some people on our team like rock and metal. Perhaps someone suggested those [textures] to be included, without telling the higher-ups that it’s a musical reference – thinking it’s so obvious. And the supervisor hasn’t recognised it. Honestly, I haven’t either, at first. Or maybe they’ve just missed it. Those don’t get much attention, relative to the bigger picture. Another thing is that we are seen as this indie studio – we were, now we’re no longer ‘indie’ – so adding these kinds of flavours suits our image.

He moreover pointed out:

I think such initiatives [to add real-life references] might be viewed differently in bigger studios,Footnote ³² where they risk interfering with the plans, or could go against some qualitative rigour. There might even in general be different expectations at work. … But it does take discipline to, say, leave your work in a state that would allow someone else, on another continent, to immediately continue it. There must be more transparency [e.g. in the game’s code] than in smaller studios – these tend to almost be like communes.

From the point of view of translation, such cases are especially thought-provoking because elements like song lyrics and song titles – as opposed to film titles – typically remain officially untranslated and therefore are more recognisable in their original form. Notably, however, the player’s ability to associate an on-screen expression with a particular artist or song does not entail that the player understands the expression. This gets even more complicated when the SL wording is somehow manipulated – as in the Dire Straits example earlier on where the fragment ‘and your chicks for free’ is replaced – because at that point the semantic content of the expression acquires additional significance, and the player might merely link the OSL to the Dire Straits song – or even more generally see it as an underspecified musical reference – without realising that there is more to it in this particular instance. With this in mind, translation would be a way of offering players a fuller experience. At the same time the TL should be implemented in such a way as to enable the player to identify the original phrasing in the first place, as that would serve as an access point.

Another instance of OSL, shown in Figure 21, can be found hidden on the textures of a repurposed-tool weapon, a chainsaw. In addition to possibly honouring the legacy of the most esteemed first-person perspective games, such as Doom (1993), which also featured a chainsaw in its arsenal, it carries an OSL – ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’Footnote ³³ – on the front side of the weapon. Since SW2 does not offer any diegetic way to look at weapons from the front-side (being a first-person shooter), without modifications to the game, the players can only find the OSL by looking inside the game’s codex for more information on the weapon, making it even more liminally ostensive as an OSL. On top of that, it should be noted that the weapon is named ‘Warrrsaw!’, an homage to the capital of Poland, where the game was developed (Culture.pl, 2016).

Figure 21 shows yet another noteworthy instance of humorous OSL – ‘And all the cake is gone. You don’t even care, do you?’ – which can be found inside an openable fridge. It is a direct quote from one of the games in the Portal series (2007–11), used by an antagonistic artificial intelligence to gaslight the player after they disobey her tyrannic programme. The series even spawned an idiomatic expression, ‘the cake is a lie’, used throughout media and discourse to refer to a situation in which a person who naively expects a positive outcome is being deceived.

If the intertextual reference to the Portal series were to be translated, it would require the translator to consult the target-text variant from that series to enable players familiar with that particular variant to detect the link. Translating the expression from scratch – which would likely be less time-consuming – would encompass the risk of proposing a variant that is simply very different from the official translation, however straightforward and unambiguous the English SL text may seem.

We asked Mazur about the instance of OSL that jokingly references the name of a popular car manufacturer (see the bottom of Figure 21). He revealed a rather unique, innovative perspective to jokes like this, once again relating it much more to the practical dimension of decision-making processes in game development:

This [solution] is quite established, just like the fictional Acme [the corporation – a running gag in cartoons]. I believe some cars in other games – games by different studios – have also had their logos altered in this fashion. … We can creatively base our in-game models on the design of branded products, but we can’t use their actual names. So, even if we wanted to use a non-fictional name on the textures of that in-game pickup truck, we’d have to ask for permission – probably buy it. But most people should know what [car brand] we’ve referenced and – since we’re primarily aiming for the anglophone market – most should probably get the joke, too.

7.2 Breaking the ‘Fourth Wall’

The quality of provoking thought and inciting the player to utilise the active/acting role in VG narration can take different forms in games, also with the help of OSL. In Figure 22, we can see curious examples of provocative OSL in TCTD2 – the graffiti ‘IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU ARE DEAD’ and a hacked bygone-era programmable road sign. This once again (see Section 6.2) uniquely merges the two narrative periods – ‘pre-apocalypse’ and ‘post-apocalypse’ – and adds to the game’s realism, as the programmable sign now displays a vulgar affront: ‘FUCK OFF AND DIE’, presumably an act of the diegetic vandals.

Figure 22 OSL engaging the player/the player’s persona

(TCTD2)

These two OSL cases creatively draw on the mechanism of addressing their reader, in a process arguably more engaging than that of the more frequent, cosmetic world-building. In a medium where the player is immersed in the role of a character, this creates a direct – and in this case unsettling – relation between the message and its recipient.

While in most OSLs covered in this Element and throughout the game the addressees are possibly both the playable character and at another level the player who controls that character, there can also be less canonical configurations. An example of this, presented in Figure 23, is the abandoned protester sign, reading ‘ANGRY SIGN’. The text can operate on at least three communicative levels: firstly, it can be read as a hidden joke among the game developers (see Section 7.3.1); secondly, an easter egg made for the players, intended to draw them out of the player’s character role momentarily to appreciate the nonsense of such an odd-one-out; or thirdly, as a story-piece: that of a rallying crowd, with one protester creatively producing a ‘meta-sign’, which could genuinely be a way of venting anger or possibly even mocking other protesters.

Figure 23 The ‘ANGRY SIGN’ case

(TCTD2)

It is also a good illustration of the interaction of sub-optimal OSL prominence and its function, as well as its potential to affect the player. It could be postulated that the text here is particularly potent, because a number of conditions need to be met for the player to come across it. Firstly, the player needs to stumble across the correct location on the map and not be distracted – for example, by combat. Then, they likely need to intentionally scan for elements to interact with (i.e. OSLs). The sign is moreover located on the ground level, where players might not typically allocate their attention without good reason. Additionally, this ‘anomalous’ sign needs to be detected among the ‘regular’ ones.

7.3 Authorial (Quasi-)Intrusion

In that vein, an intriguing case of what could arguably be viewed as language is presented in Figure 24. The game’s place of origin is referenced as the binary code reads ‘Greetings from Warsaw’, providing the players with a riddle of sorts to solve (see Section 8.2), as long as they are able to find the OSL – or consult external sources in order to do so. It adds an infrequent puzzle-logical component if found through exploration in an otherwise action-driven title, and potentially even creates an opportunity for intercultural dialogue.

Figure 24 Binary-ciphered message from the developers

(SW2)

We asked Mazur if he found this element to be potentially inaccessible to some players, to which he responded:

A different, however similarly intricate, case of non-canonical communicative set-up is illustrated in Figure 25. Here the playable character is – at least to some extent – excluded from the communicative event. The participant status of the playable character is inferior to that of the player since it is only the latter who can retrieve the additional layer of meaning communicated by the game’s creators. The screenshots illustrate this with a library poster that features quotes from well-known authors. Beside quotes from Oscar Wilde and George Orwell – which are not extremely out of the ordinary for a game set in a realistic world – there is one from Tom Clancy, whose name is instrumental in the game (series).Footnote ³⁴ While the playable character can be seen as a legitimate addressee of the quote by Tom Clancy, that character is not aware of being a part of a game closely associated with that name and cannot retrieve the reference that had been skilfully deployed by the development team.

Figure 25 The ‘QUOTE FROM TOM CLANCY’ case

(TCTD2)

Mazur also commented on another possible aspect of this element: its relation to other titles from the Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s video game series, rather than to the novelist himself (see Section 8.3.1 for further discussion on the promotional function of OSL): ‘This could also be a form of promotion. It’s like a little wink towards the players, because I assume the games in the series are similar enough to attract the same [demographic of] players.’

7.3.1 Authorial Exclusion of Meaning

Yet another extraordinary communicative set-up is found in SW2 (Figure 26; 27). The primary participants this time are the game’s developers. The player who detects these cases of OSL will most likely identify them as inside jokes but might not be able to appreciate the references in some of them.

Figure 26 Logos and signatures as OSL, FWH dev team group photo

(SW2)

The first case (Figure 26) explicitly presents the name of SW2’s game studio and its emblem, alongside a photograph of the team. In the other two samples, the autographs of the SW2 developers can be found on top of desks in what looks like a gamedev (game development) studio, perhaps that of the game authors.Footnote ³⁵ Other developers have their autographs furthermore hidden in a secluded cave in the middle of a demonic forest, among other places. Some of the autographs are surnames, others are rather what seem to be aliases or diminutives of the developers’ names, which in both cases could cause trouble to players unfamiliar with Polish names when deciphering the function of these texts.

Remarkably, there are cases in which this developer–developer communication is so hermetic that it is virtually impossible to understand for any player based on the information provided in the game, coupled with encyclopaedic knowledge. This is true of the examples in Figure 27. It can only be speculated that the Polish word ‘żenada’ (pragmatically comparable to the contemporary meme-cultural usage of ‘cringe’ or ‘pathetic’ labels) may relate to a stereotype of a Polish malcontent, especially contrasting with the edited-in monocle, twirly moustache and top-hat, a conventional attire of the social elite, which may produce further associations.

Figure 27 Possible ‘inside joke’ easter eggs

(SW2)

Similarly, we would argue, ‘Beware of Flying Wild Hogs’ – one example of the many variations on this reference – could potentially falsely alarm players who confuse the humorous function of this OSL with a tutorial one (see Section 8.2 for further discussion), instructing them to literally be weary of any flying wild hogs. After all, in the unstable and wacky world of SW2 it may not be such a far-fetched idea to expect, for instance, a boss fight with a demonic boar, especially if one does not recognise the emblem or name of the studio behind the game.

Ultimately, ‘LEAVE THE BUNNIES ALONE, YOU SICK BASTARD!!!’ could be a direct appeal to the player and their character, as numerous missions take place in forests with harmless bunnyFootnote ³⁶ NPCs (non-playable characters), which the player might have attempted to kill. Conversely, again, it could be another extra-diegetic instance of dev-to-dev communication, whereby one author scrutinises the other for making the bunny entities ‘killable’ in-game in the first place.

We shared our speculations with Mazur, asking if he could explain the origin of those OSL textures:

Those are inside jokes, yes. Shortly before the shipping of the game, one of the developers prepared a batch of such jabs at their colleagues from the office. ‘Żenada’ relates to one of our team members, who would use this word a lot whenever he expressed his dissatisfaction. The sheep was similar. … It had something to do with mocking some stereotype. There’s no way anyone would understand these. Though this sort of developer-to-developer communication should not surface [so that players could see it]. So again, I can’t say this was utterly ‘planned’. Someone had the time, thought it would be nice, and added an interesting ‘zest’ for those who find it. A ‘zest’ which unfortunately doesn’t work globally. It’s too hermetic and fairly unexplorable.

Perhaps as an explanation for not removing these cases of OSL from the final or subsequently patched releases of the game, he moreover added: ‘When I see something I don’t understand, I don’t dismiss it as foolish. I’m hoping that players do the same.’

7.4 MultilingualityFootnote ³⁷

Remarkably, our findings also illustrate a trend in SW2 to insert non-English OSL, using the studio’s native Polish language (Figure 29), but also what seems to be Japanese, Russian and German (e.g. Figures 28, 29 and 36). The same can also be said about certain OSL elements in TCTD2, especially visible in the ‘Red Dragon’ location, which appears to be a destroyed, raider-occupied Chinatown in the Downtown East district of the fictional Washington, DC (see bottom of Figure 28). This removes the players who speak (only) English from their oftentimes privileged position of being able to assess OSL in its original form, as is the case in TCTD2 and many other games.

Figure 28 Multilinguality in OSL

(SW2 upper, TCTD2 bottom)

Figure 29 Polish OSL

(SW2)

We asked Mazur about the different languages used in the game’s 2D graphic design and whether or not we might be over-analysing what was supposed to be trivial. His input was as follows:

7.4.1 Insertion of Polish

The cross-cultural and cross-linguistic idiosyncrasy of the expression ‘Château Srato’ visible on a wine bottle in Figure 29 is that, for a non-Polish speaker who is not offered translation and makes no attempt at translating it themselves, it looks innocuous enough as a reference to an actual or made-up wine-making estate. The rhyme itself – while perhaps attention-grabbing – is in all likelihood too little to make the player suspicious about the name’s legitimacy. However, for a player capable of decoding the Polish fragment of the French-Polish name, the expression will instantly be clear. Wiktionary.org, a service for crowd-source multilingual dictionaries and etymologies, lists the stem ‘srak-’ for the adjective ‘sraki’ and adverb ‘srak’, and defines ‘srak’ as a ‘vulgar, impolite and abstract answer to the question jak?’ (Eng. ‘how?’; trans. KH), so a response that is purposedly diminishing and mocking. Considering the rhyming similarity of ‘jaki? – sraki’ patterned in ‘château – srato’ it is undoubtedly supposed to be read as a rather simple verbal joke, possibly meant to ridicule the sophistication stereotypically associated with fine wine.

Other liminally ostensive cases of Polish OSL (bottom of Figure 29) are also notable: the player may come across a recurring three-month folding calendar, with the names of the three months neither in English nor Japanese, but in Polish, contemporarily to the game’s development process: ‘Grudzień’, ‘Styczeń’, ‘Luty’ (Eng. ‘December’, ‘January’ and ‘February’ of 2015/16). Likely, the texture was simply scanned from one of the calendars available to the game design artists at the office in Warsaw, functioning as a humorous easter egg, mostly directed at those able to recognise what language the names are in.

Similarly, in the headquarters of ZNN (almost certainly a reference to CNN), one of the plot’s hotspots of the main antagonist, Orochi Zilla, the players may find various clusters of television screens (see bottom of Figure 29). These bring to mind notions of surveillance and privacy, weaving news items with menacing flashes of other familiar snapshots – including OSL textures that could have been previously spotted throughout the game. Together, they may resemble a collage of subliminal messages, motivating the player to confront Orochi Zilla about his nefarious plans. The screens moreover show seemingly banal photographs, likely to captivate the player’s imagination as to how hungry the Zilla Corporation is for even the most mundane information, screened to the masses at will. This evokes the image of cyberpunk dystopias with intelligence-hungry corporations and media conglomerates.

However, these more seriously toned thoughts may quickly be dispelled for players able to spot a rather humorous Polish easter-egg in an instance of OSL at the very top of the television screens cluster. Presented like a banner scrolling across the screen as part of a financial news broadcast, this OSL includes updates on ‘WIG20’ and ‘WIG30’, market-value-weighted stock indexes of respectively the twenty and thirty largest companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Without acknowledging this immersion-breaking component, the scene will most likely be interpreted as predominantly eery or contemplative, once again creating potential for an almost completely different interpretation of the scene’s atmosphere, depending on which optional linguacultural elements are recognisable by the receptors.

When asked if these elements were directed at Polish players or perhaps were to spark interest in the Polish language among people from other cultures, Mazur responded with doubt:

I don’t think so. The wine was designed so that it could realistically have had such a proper name, Srato [and one might not necessarily know it’s Polish]. … We didn’t really talk much about the implementation of those assets. No careful calculations of like, their overall ‘serious’ to ‘funny’ ratio, or anything like that. Usually, the way we design these is just like you’d think we do. We sit in a room, just the several of us, joking around. …

Figure 30 presents a comparison between the in-game OSL of a signboard and a photographFootnote ³⁸ portraying a kiosk in Gdańsk (Poland) from 2012. This case of OSL stands out for a few reasons, which at the same time make it a translation challenge. First, the Polish noun ‘buch’ – in addition to denoting an exclamation referring to a sound caused by an object hitting something suddenly and strongly – can more informally refer to inhaling smoke, which seems to be the intended reading in this particular instance.

Figure 30 In-game ‘BUCH’ OSL (SW2) versus real-world RUCH stall

Another layer is created by the graphical design of the OSL, its font, colour palette and non-linguistic elements, which allude to the branding of a Polish newsagents’ chain. The company’s kiosks are commonly found in Polish streets, which makes that visual style fairly easy to recognise. However, the allusion becomes virtually unambiguous when the name of that company is considered – ‘Ruch’– which differs in only the first letter from ‘Buch’, and that word-initial alteration is not major given the visual similarity of ‘B’ and ‘R’.

The cultural-embeddedness of the name is clear, with its physical presence in the cityscape, but we can extend this by considering at least one eminent case of ‘Ruch’ making a film appearance. It was in a cult 1980 comedy Miś (Teddy Bear) directed by Stanisław Bareja, where a scene takes place at what is in the dialogue referred as ‘kiosk Ruchu’. In that scene, one of the sources of humour lies in the fact that the shop’s goods include fresh meat that can be bought unofficially, both metaphorically and literally ‘from under the counter’. For a receptor with no specific background assumptions – about life in Poland under communism – the scene would be hard to parse, assuming that the receptor got to see the film (or scene), possibly thanks to the OSL in SW2, in the first place. Finally, the notion of multilinguality acquires an additional dimension since ‘Buch’ could be decoded by some players as a German word (‘das Buch’) for ‘a book’.

For a player who cannot decode the Polish expression to then associate it with marijuana smoking, and who cannot access the RUCH/BUCH allusion because of insufficient cultural assumptions, a partial hint comes from the image, as a cannabis leaf is visually represented. Therefore, the central component of the message is cross-culturally secured, but the additional finer layers of meaning will not be accessed across languages and cultures.

Mazur also pointed to an aspect that we have only fleetingly covered in our analysis – the reusing of textures across completely different games:

But there’s another juicy thing. This asset [‘BUCH’], if I remember correctly, comes from our older game, Hard Reset [from 2011]. Sometimes, the reason a certain asset is added to the game is quite prosaic: if we’ve got it in our archives, if we’ve retained the rights to use it and if we need to plug a texture-hole somewhere in the gameworld, we might be tempted to ‘recycle’ such a texture from earlier. Of course, everything’s within the remit of the art director. But assets alternate throughout the games of the same studio, unless their rights of the assets get reserved.

He did, however, agree that the BUCH/RUCH allusion is deliberate and is an example that creates meaningful asymmetry of reception between the locales:

Certainly, this is an asset that is suitable exclusively for the Polish audience. It is much too exclusionary, as it’s been reused from a game made by roughly thirty people. I suppose someone added it [into SW2], everyone laughed, and that’s just why it stayed. … That’s not the way to go about it, though. [It should be] something more inclusive, or at least something more aesthetically pleasing.

(Laughs).

He then elaborated on the decision-making process in terms of the deployment of humorous elements:

We try to consult everything we do, so as to never cross a certain line. But in the end we are just people. Some things may get ‘smuggled’ rather incidentally. … Another thing is that the Shadow Warrior series is almost ‘notorious’ for its earthy jokes. People downright expected that. I personally find [ideas like] Chateau Srato to be a bit on the weak side. But for the record: plenty of our ideas are like that. (Laughs). … The times are changing though, in a positive way; it’s good to be wary.

7.4.2 Foreignised English

In an interview with Culture.pl, Tadeusz Zieliński commented on the cross-cultural aspect of SW2, alluding to the fascination among the development team with the land of the rising sun, saying it was intriguing for ‘a bunch of Poles basically, to draw on a foreign culture and play with it in a creative way’. Paweł Kowalewski moreover adds: ‘Even though Shadow Warrior is set in Asia, it includes plenty of references to American culture’ (Culture.pl, 2016).

This could account for the curious usage of English that is stylised to resemble or even repurpose Japanese kana in OSL (Figure 31). This, combined with the characteristics of the fictional Onishima, leaves ample space for story- and atmosphere-related speculation. Better still, since the respective signs can be found in the many districts of the gargantuan (relative to other locations in the game) Zilla City, they have most likely also been implemented with an instructive function in mind (see Section 8.2 for further discussion), to indicate which part of Zilla City the players are visiting.

Figure 31 The ‘EAST DISTRICT/LEVEL’ case

(SW2)

Furthermore, the English in SW2 can also be polonised: ‘The Metropolis Tajms’ (Figure 32), possibly a reference to then newspapers The Metropolitan and The Times, rendered ‘times’ phonetically into Polish.

Figure 32 De-anglicised English: ‘TAJMS’

(SW2)

These cases convincingly show that multilinguality in VGs can be put to use in highly creative, if translationally demanding, fashions. At the same time, the examples show that OSL successfully serves as a vehicle for nuanced uses of multilinguality in multimodal media, which has so far remained under-explored not just in VG localisation but also in film-centred audiovisual translation more generally, where multinguality has been researched quite extensively with a primary focus on language coded aurally (cf. e.g. Reference Badstübner-Kizik and DeckertBadstübner-Kizik, 2019; Reference Bogucki, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Thelen, van Egdom, Verbeeck and BoguckiBogucki, 2016; Reference Parini, Bogucki and DeckertParini, 2015; Reference Chiaro and Valero-GarcésChiaro, 2010; for an overview, see Reference Chiaro, De Bonis, Bogucki and DeckertChiaro & De Bonis, 2020).

8.1 Mechanically Discernible Patterns of Other OSL Typologies

At this point, it is necessary to indicate that OSL can also be categorised by way of how it is wired into the multimodal machine of the VG. It seems to be possible for OSL to be coded into the programme in different ways, either ‘statically’ or ‘dynamically’. Static OSL is referenced and loaded from a ready-made graphic file, while dynamic OSL, although sometimes pre-programmed, can also be ‘mechanically’ generated in real time. The former can be semi-dynamic in a sense that it could display technically static, but visually dynamic material, such as short video clips or animations. Static-type OSL is also observed to be typically non-interactable. The latter’s main function seems to be interactive in order to utilise its changeableness. The dynamic type also seems to typically provide non-diegetic information – although this is not always clear, as will be discussed later in the analysis of Figure 33. It is also worth considering that developers, like any creative artists, break conventions depending on their vision – there is no ‘one’ way to make VGs.

Figure 33 Dynamic string-based non-textural diegetic OSL, translated into Polish

(SW2 left; TCTD2 right)

In all the cases studied here so far, ‘non-static’ (dynamic) instances of OSL appear to be created through string variables (programming code used for storing, displaying and manipulating words or sentences impromptu), rather than graphic game textures (two-dimensional illustrations rendered on top of three-dimensional models – ‘coating’ in-game ‘skeletons’ of the presented world’s architecture, characters or objects – and capable of portraying any graphics, including words or sentences) (cf. Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino, 2015: 86). This division seems crucial, because the localisation process typically covers the translation of string variables in textual formats (Reference Bernal-MerinoBernal-Merino, 2015: 86), as they are easily editable/customisable (see Unity Technologies, n.d.). Perhaps since texture modification is a rather invasive process,Footnote ³⁹ which requires graphical processing in dedicated editing software (86) able to ‘seamlessly apply multiple layers to an image’ (130), it is not usually done. A moderately frequent exception to this was the act of (self-)censorship in games, as the law or the market’s culture may necessitate graphical changes in order to be able to distribute games officially with no impediment (92). It therefore does not seem to be a coincidence at all that the image/texture variant of OSL is translated much less often in any capacity, even though it is the string/text variant of OSL that appears to be widely under-represented, going by the sample in our study.

We have consulted Mazur on whether a categorisation into textural/static and textual/dynamic elements is sensible for him as a developer and what terminology would be most intuitive from a programmer’s perspective, upon which he remarked:

The example on the left in Figure 33 plays with the idea of a prophecy hidden inside a fortune cookie that can be found in the game-world. The visible text is a string instance of OSL translated into Polish, showing a fake quote, attributed to Shakespeare.Footnote ⁴⁰ Much like in other instalments of the Shadow Warrior series, the player can find fortune cookies scattered around the game-world to fill achievement gauges, but also functionally be rewarded with humorous aphorisms and – fictional or factual – quotes from famous authors, including but not limited to Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie and Philip K. Dick. Moreover, it is noteworthy that, although the cookies are secrets for the players to seek out through the game levels – thus limiting their prominence in the game-world and the player’s access to all OSL instances insideFootnote ⁴¹ – the quote displayed upon collection is on par with the always-visible non-diegetic player HUD (a heads-up display – an interface, often communicating status information like the played character’s health, the game level map, the weapons’ ammunition counters, etc.) as it appears on the user interface for a few seconds. As a result, their ostensivity can be categorised as prototypical and this instance of OSL can be comparable to subtitles. This comparison could lead to an argument that their status as an element of the presented world might be liminal – rather than diegetic – but the immersive visuals and the animation simulating the opening of a fortune cookie that plays upon collection suggest the opposite.

The screenshot from TCTD2 in the right of Figure 33, lastly, showcases an extraordinary instance of an arguably highly diegetic user interface. In TCTD2, the played character is equipped with a fictional enhanced-vision augmented-reality technology known as ScanTek, part of the Division’s special ISAC field systemFootnote ⁴² for all its agents. This, quite inventively, suggests that the player’s HUD, in addition to mediating player–played character communication, is an element of the presented world for the played character, as much as any other element seen on-screen. The mechanism here is presented in-game as ‘ScanTek’s ECHO system’, a fictional piece of technology able to spectrally reconstruct the events from certain crime scenes. The technology is used by the Division agents to investigate crimes. When the player interacts with some of the crime-scene-related prompts visible on the screen, the game plays an in-game cinematic of the events that have transpired. The prompts themselves provide brief summaries of those cinematics – like the status of the victims and evidence. They are unfortunately quite cosmetic, as the player has limited agency over the investigation quest-line itself. Despite this, they are translated into Polish and appear to be string OSL.

8.2 Hints, Solutions, Puzzles and Riddles

The first screenshot in Figure 34 presents another example of string-based OSL, with the preview of an upgradeable character-skill item – not untypical for RPGs – which contextually visualises its properties. In this game, the item is stylised as a Magic-The-Gathering-esque collectible card and portrayed as such as an in-game object, possibly in diegesis. Its ostensivity, compared to that of the fortune cookie, is more nuanced, as the contextual prompt appears only when the player comes close enough to interact with it. The preview text itself, however, functions almost non-diegetically, instructing the player of the upgrades their played character will be able to utilise after collecting the item. It has been, perhaps consequently, fully localised, with the use of dynamic textual OSL layered on top of the non-OSL graphic texture of the contextual prompt.

Figure 34 Dynamic (uppermost) and static (lowermost) OSL of tutorial function

(SW2)

A different example of an instance of OSL that functions tutorially for the player is a piece of cryptic writing on the wall, referencing The Wizard of Oz (1939), which can be seen in the second part of Figure 34. Seeing that this instance of OSL is placed backstage of a live music space, the player may be led to believe it might not be accidental for the game’s authors to use a quotation like that in such a fitting place. They may consequently be tempted to disregard the advice to ‘pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’ and start to investigate the collision-less (traversable) door further down the corridor. Thus, they will fulfil the actual intention behind the implemented OSL, as they will then be able to find a secret ‘developer room’ and be rewarded with in-game collectables and easter eggs (some of which can be seen in Figure 27).

We asked Mazur if it would be possible for this OSL to be of a string-type, instead of texture-type and if it would be possible to then translate it, to increase the accessibility to this crucial instruction. Notably here as well, we prefaced this by saying we have not set out to criticise their work, but to look for potential long-term solutions to language-version asymmetries. He answered:

As mentioned before, OSL can also aid navigation throughout a complex level geometry. Figure 35 shows a typical example of this from SW2. The player’s mission is to obtain access to ‘Level 3’. The OSL informs them that they are currently on ‘Level -2’ in the Zilla Lab location. This may already suggest the general direction they ought to be headed: upwards. An instance of OSL almost identical in function can be found in TCTD2 (bottom-left in the same Figure 35). During one of the missions, a map of a multi-level building is drawn in a prototypically ostensive manner next to one of the doorways. The map contains details explaining the different stages – ‘control room’, ‘metro’, ‘silo’ and so on – which the player will have to fight their way through. Acknowledging this, the player can proactively prepare a suitable tactical plan for the location’s raid, for example using a manoeuvrable weapon or melee weapon to reclaim the cramped control room, thus preserving heavy ammunition for more open zones, such as the metro, or the silos.

Figure 35 Tutorial function of OSL: Navigation

(SW2; TCTD2)

In the same game, a similar function can be attributed to OSLs found throughout the operational hub for the DC Division agents (bottom-right of Figure 35), the White House. The fictional White House accommodates multiple resources for the players, ranging from useful to pivotal for the game’s progression. These include: the clan’s base of operations, the bounty officer room, the munition vendor, the equipment re-calibration station, the shooting range, the specialist quartermaster and the rally point (used for cooperation matchmaking – finding others to play online with). The directions to all these locations are correctly indicated by arrows and OSL throughout the White House. It might not be far-fetched then to assume that the OSL in the hub is not exclusively for aesthetics and realism. Since players need to frequent the White House, the developers might have suspected that some players could require additional instructions to fluently navigate such a complex base of operations.

While discussing the typologies, Mazur also remarked that this sort of OSL tends to be useful in multiplayer games, where players of the same team can use call-outs to quickly relay important information while locating it on the map using the laconic OSL information, like ‘level B’.

8.3 Marketing

8.3.2 Fictional ‘Product’ Placement

Some games, as mentioned earlier (Figures 21 and 30), opt for generating such ‘alternative products’ as a means to avoid legal trouble or, less trivially, to enhance the world- and story-building aspects – for example Nuka Cola in the long-lasting Fallout series, the addition of which established a tone of satire and humour contrasting the bleak, post-apocalyptic setting.

Shadow Warrior 2 provides ample examples of promotional OSL, too, but many of them do not seem to be product placements per se due to two main reasons. First, most are hidden away from the players, like the names of the games Juju (2015) (the same studio as SW2) and the then upcoming Ruiner (2017) (the same publisher as SW2) – in secret rooms, as shown at the top of Figure 36. Second, they are incorporated into the world of the game in a way that makes it difficult to discern whether they are fictional or not – for example, the OSLs at the bottom of Figure 36, one using the name Flying Wild Hog almost as if it were a clothing company, the other two referencing a factual brand alongside what seems to be a fictional one (Rodont), but curiously suggesting these are games or arcade stations, which in reality is not the case.

Figure 36 Promotional function of OSL (SW2). ‘Alienware logo’ & ‘Alien Head Design’

©® Dell, Inc.

Mazur was also asked about the nature of promotional elements in SW2, to which he responded:

There are in-game arcade machines with visuals of other games, like Hard Reset, Serious Sam or Hotline Miami. I speculate that our publisher initiated those, since they also happen to be their publisher. I suspect it’s a marketing strategy, so that those games stay in circulation, get sold in some bundles. This may be a form of brand-building.

Adverts appear in TCTD2, too, and their damaged state reflects the diegetic apocalyptic events. Examples range from made-up fast-food chains (‘Admiral Burger’) and carbonated drink companies (‘Lix cola’) to fragrance manufacturers (‘Merét aroma’) and clothing retail companies (‘HxC’). While some of them may resemble real-world counterparts, they are arguably functioning as world-building – and to a lesser extent storytelling – components, not as a promotion of real-world existing brands. Since the game world of TCTD2 is verisimilar, it could however be argued that this type of promotionally functioning OSL would not be out of place in its setting. Yet it could, perhaps, shatter the thin line of illusion of believability for some players during gameplay, especially those who are able to recognise product placement marketing strategies and interpret such procedures negatively – which might be why TCTD2’s dev team have not prioritised this function in their game’s OSL.

9.1 Diversity in OSL

What the discussed cases of diegetic OSL from the Polish versions of TCTD2 and SW2 notably have in common is their perceivable tendency to be worded in the source language in both the source and target versions of the analysed games. Static OSLs also appear to remain untranslated more than dynamic instances in the localised Polish versions of the two games. This, we argue, magnifies the mismatches in what meanings are constructed by players across linguistic and cultural boundaries. When it comes to differences, as we have demonstrated, the cases of OSL identified in both TCTD2 and SW2 vary qualitatively and functionally. The findings therefore make it necessary to expand the functions proposed by Reference O’Hagan and MangironO’Hagan and Mangiron (2013: 162) – drawing on Reference ReissReiss’s (2000) functional typology of text types – beyond ‘informative and cosmetic’ or cases where such text is ‘used for the third-party advertisement of a product’, which they alternatively summarise as ‘informative/expressive function to give the player certain information such as clues in an authentic atmosphere’ (Reference O’Hagan and MangironO’Hagan & Mangiron, 2013: 156).

First, OSL is implemented to functionally strengthen immersion, by creating a more believable presented world (with road signs or graffiti), and to contribute to the process of atmosphere-building (e.g. through the utilisation of cultural references in both games). Second, it can be employed as a narrative device, to convey a game’s lore (e.g. the civilian stories from before, during and after the incidents of TCTD2) or to help understand the overarching plot. Third, it can serve to entertain the player by pulling them from the game-world with a brief, less serious moment of meta-narration (e.g. the many gags of SW2 or the appearance of Tom Clancy’s name in TCTD2). It can also serve the purpose of promoting real-life products (e.g. Juju and Ruiner in SW2). This also relates to the capacity of more prominent instances of OSL to grab the attention of the player to instruct them or provide with details that could be useful in-game – especially strategically, as was the case with the numbering of levels in SW2 and naming of rooms in TCTD2. In certain cases, it can even be used to further gameplay, as was the case with the OSL hints of secrets in SW2.

This does not mean there is no potential for other sub-categories to be discerned from the general ones proposed; for example, relating to the communicative potential of ‘fully’ customisable spraypaint texturesFootnote ⁴⁴ or inter-player conversations,Footnote ⁴⁵ arguably a sub-function of storytelling. There is also the educational value of players learning some history of the United States – as rendered at times in TCTD2 – or – if they are engaged enough to translate from other languages on their own – exploring the multilinguality of SW2. Such an educational dimension can, for example, be seen as a sub-category of the tutorial function.

A dimension to be further explored is OSL optionality and how OSL may influence advancing in VGs. It could be postulated that if an instance of OSL is deployed to assist the player in progressing through the game, the developers should also consider creating early-stage frameworks allowing for the translation of such elements – for example making those particular cases of OSL dynamically typed, for ease of localisation. In fact, there seem to exist cases where OSL identification is ‘required’ for the player to progress, although a case like that has not been identified in either SW2 or TCTD2. It is worth noting that the understanding of ‘being required’ and ‘to progress’ does not seem that straightforward in the context of gaming. First, it may mean that an instance of OSL simply hints at or relates to – which itself may present a spectrum of options – the progression of the main story, thus helping the player come to the required realisation on their own. For some players, that much might be required to progress – as is likely the reason an instance of OSL of such a function was implemented in the first place. Second, it may also mean that an instance of OSL functions to enable a deeper understanding or ‘fuller’ completion of the title – opening further content of the game or the game’s series to explore.Footnote ⁴⁶ Third, it could entail the ‘expectation’ that the player finds the OSL element on their own, processes its content and utilises it to, for instance, solve a puzzle. Such is the nature of many linguistic riddles, exemplified in detail by the localisation of a 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City (cf. Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino, 2020: 297–312), or many of the puzzles in the atmospheric survival horror/thriller video game Silent Hill 2 (2001).Footnote ⁴⁷ Alternatively, one could use the example of the Alternate-Reality-Game-esque promotion of the Portal series, which required the acquisition of a username and password from an instance of OSL on a wall in the original Portal (2007) to be used in a website outside of the game. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that entire game premises can be based on the manipulation of OSL, by proxy necessitating their retrieval to even play the game, such as in the rather unconventional game Baba Is You (2019), inspired by computer/programming language.

Mazur suggested that he would categorise OSL elements, broadly speaking, as either essential or optional to the game. The essential ones would be immersion-building, while the optional ones would be fan-serving, in the sense of, for example, easter eggs. The cases of the latter type, he says, are ‘inserted at the final developmental stages, because the game could be shipped without them’. This pragmatic view also allows for more liminal cases, like our examples of the tutorial function. As Mazur stated: ‘Yet another thing are the elements that help the players move around the world …. I suppose those might entail some issues in [language] localisation, though.’ Relating it to navigation through the game-world using OSL, he thus also opened up a discussion on the localisation of such elements, pointing to important considerations such as space constraints (cf. Reference Mangiron and O’HaganMangiron & O’Hagan, 2006: 7) and resources required for such processes. He added:

9.2 Attentional Resources and Competing Stimuli

In a broader psychological perspective, the cognitive mechanisms discussed in this Element can be accommodated within a line of inquiry into the selective nature of attention, as mentioned in Section 1. Given that the observer can only concentrate on a ‘small area of the visual field at a given moment … in detail’ (Reference Zhang and WeisiZhang & Ling, 2013: 3) and at any given occasion a multitude of stimuli is available, only a subset of these stimuli will effectively be attended to. A notable explanatory notion is that of change blindness, which dates back to the nineteenth-century observations of William James, essentially entailing that detecting changes is possible through attentive focus. This phenomenon has been researched and proven to occur frequently (cf. e.g. Reference Simons and RensinkSimons & Rensink, 2005), with experiments yielding connected findings (Reference Hall, Johansson, Tarning, Sikstrom and DeutgenHall et al., 2010). One of them is especially pivotal for the understanding of the importance of visual stimuli in VGs, and came to be known as inattentional blindness (Reference Rock, Linnet, Grant and MackRock et al., 1992). It denotes cases where despite one’s ability to discern an unexpected stimulus in other situations, they go unnoticed where attentional resources are allocated elsewhere, as convincingly argued based on empirical findings (Reference Chabris and SimonsChabris & Simons, 2010).

This is eminent for the discussion of attention allocation in a component-stimuli setting because VGs, as audiovisual products, are by their nature heavily reliant on simultaneously presenting the player with elements that can be considered as ‘competing’ for their selective attention. Thus, many of them can potentially go largely unnoticed by the player-base, pointing to interesting questions, as phrased by Reference BerryBerry (2015: 60):

9.3 Meaningful Experience

Findings suggest that gamers may demonstrate more advanced visual-selective attention skills and ‘superior abilities in several attention-related tasks compared with non-gamers’ to a statistically significant degree, ‘suggesting that video game playing has beneficial effects on the player’ in cognitive terms (Reference Matern, van der Westhuizen and MostertMatern et al., 2019: 6–8), which in the context of our study highlights the potential of meaningful cognitive and experiential phenomena related to gaming. For instance, a paper by Reference Nacke and LindleyNacke and Lindley (2010: 1) argues that ‘clear and testable definitions’ of constructs relating to subjective player experiences ‘would be invaluable for game designers, since they are considered to be the holy grail of digital game design’. This brings us to an overarching question about the meaning of games.

Crucially however, the term ‘games’ attempts to encompass a vast (and ever-growing) set of very different interactive and multimodal phenomena. Thus, one perspective on the medium is that of ludic play. The editorial by Reference Musselwhite, Marston and FreemanMusselwhite and colleagues (2016: 2), for instance, scrutinises the idea that play is ‘unnecessary, discretionary’ and instead advances the belief that ‘to live is to play’, arguing that ‘informality, curiosity and humor’ – all well exemplified, for example, by SW2 – are aspects not at all insignificant to ‘a truly fulfilled life’. Another perspective would acknowledge the aspirations of certain titles to leverage the potential of an interactive new medium to perhaps transcend informality, becoming yet more intricate, art-like and ostensibly serious – not unlike TCTD2. Either way, the traditionally common view that games are a superficial form of unsophisticated entertainment seems to be seen more and more as a misconception (see Section 2.2.1) even by individuals who do not engage with games in a professional, scholarly or leisurely fashion. Along these lines, Reference PaulPaul (2014: 459) opens his chapter by succinctly stating that ‘(v)ideo games matter’. He goes on to expound that they ‘mean something to the people who play them, the designers and companies that produce them, and the cultures in which they are made and played’, then arguing for three categories of meaning: ‘the meaning of games, the meaning in games, and the meaning created around games and game culture’ (459).

We also asked Mazur about the notion of ‘exclusivity’ in OSL in audiovisual media in general, especially in relation to the backgrounded elements. These elements may become liminal in terms of perceptibility, yet carry potential to transform the playing/viewing experience for those able to spot them, which in a sense creates a rather ludic relation between the creation and its recipients (i.e. challenging them in order to ‘unlock’ further content). He related it to environmental storytelling, while also adding:

We wish to posit that OSL, especially its liminally prominent instantiations, contributes to the meaning of a game in valuable ways. The very property of limited accessibility of these visual stimuli constitutes their value, all the more because that property is introduced intentionally by the creators, which need not always be the case when such elements appear in films where chance can play a role. The players who are able to retrieve these elements have the opportunity to construct additional meanings and appreciate the effort of the game creators. At the same time, we should keep it in mind that players differ, which can be consequential in at least two ways. First, players will be differently likely to register cases of liminal OSL in games. Second, once registered, liminal cases of OSL will be more or less positively evaluated depending on several parameters ranging from the player’s background knowledge – not limited to games – to psychological considerations like individual differences and personality.

9.4 Towards ‘Accessible Gamedev’?

A productive framework for thinking about game development and game localisation could be constructed by extending Reference Romero-FrescoRomero-Fresco’s (2013) proposal of ‘accessible filmmaking’ (AFM). Starting from the observation (Reference Romero-Fresco, Bogucki and DeckertRomero-Fresco 2020: 545) that the standard had been for translation to be conceived of as ‘an afterthought’, a process ‘involving zero contact with the creative team’, Reference Romero-FrescoRomero-Fresco (2019) argues for an approach where translation, or more broadly accessibility provision services, are integrated already into the media production stage, thus challenging the ‘industrialised model that relegates accessibility and translation to the distribution process’ (Reference Romero-Fresco, Bogucki and DeckertRomero-Fresco 2020: 561).

On a practical plane, that critically encompasses collaboration between the translator and the creative team, which has already been attested (e.g. Reference Romero-Fresco, Bogucki and DeckertRomero-Fresco, 2020: 557–8; Reference Zanotti, Ranzato and ZanottiZanotti, 2018) but is far from standard. While such collaboration will to some extent alter the professional practices for all the parties involved, it will be mutually beneficial. First, as Romero-Fresco observes, from the perspective of the original creators:

Then, conversely, from the vantage point of the translator, AFM allows for a more informed decision-making process whereby any mismatches between the original and its accessible as well as translated versions are minimised while critically keeping track of the filmmakers’ vision.

Following this line of reasoning, we wish to propose that new prospects for translation, but also accessibility beyond linguacultural barriers, could be opened if the approach is taken even further. The proposal is to consider translation and accessibility when the audiovisual product – in our case, the game – is still under development. A like-minded view of AFM’s potential in wider contexts is voiced by Romero-Fresco, with special focus on sensory impairment and theatrical performances. That view – perhaps somewhat tellingly given in a footnote (Reference Romero-Fresco, Bogucki and DeckertRomero-Fresco 2020: 558) – is as follows:

When it comes to VG localisation practices, that approach does not (yet?) seem to be deployed with interlingual and cross-cultural considerations in mind when it comes to OSL. At the same time, there is already a fair degree of recognition of the position of language in the multisemiotic set-up of VGs. Such a view of the current gamedev trends is voiced by Reference Bernal-Merino, Deckert and BoguckiBernal-Merino (2020) who observes that ‘many interactive entertainment companies (e.g. the Polish CD Projekt Red) are starting to embrace’ such a business model (310), whereby ‘localised versions are produced almost in absolute parallel with the original’ (298). Most importantly, however, he exemplifies how theory already meets practice, describing how the implementation of the ‘glocalisation strategy’ can influence the quality and sales of such products (307–12). For instance, he points out that the team behind the critically acclaimed The Witcher 3 ‘worked with translation agencies to make sure that they preserved playability and the unique adventure style of the game’ across locales (309). Nonetheless, on the whole, the industry is far from fully adopting such a model:

Michał Mazur of Flying Wild Hog pointed out that at his studio, the writers of the original language version indeed collaborate with other members of the development team in a way that ensures space for negotiation. The designers are thus willing to revise their original ideas to better accommodate the language component – for example, adjustments can be made in the amount of time or space allocated to a particular case of language use in the game, whether implemented in the audio or visual layer, if brought up early enough during the development. Still, that is the case with the original – mostly English – version of the game, which is motivated by practical considerations of market size. A step further would be to keep in mind the language- and culture-specific constraints of other markets to be better suited to minimise the asymmetry of player experience as games are distributed globally.

9.5 The (Research) Potential of In-Game OSL

When it comes to further avenues of inquiry, a characteristic of the methodology we have utilised for this Element is that it draws on manual and interpretation-driven analysis. Leaving aside its markedly labour- and time-intensive character, it comes with a degree of subjectivity, even if measures are taken to minimise it, such as collaboration – involving two researchers in our case. To further systematise OSL in a translation perspective, a future study may utilise a localised version of an offline-only game with open-source programming code to extract all game textures from the game’s files, selecting the instances of OSL and categorising them quantitatively based on features like how many of the instances have been translated into the target language. A further step would be to factor in the dimensions of function and prominence. That research could employ (large-scale online) questionnaires as well as verbal protocols, and a range of physiological measures to probe reception, with eye-tracking appearing particularly well-suited to investigate player processing of OSL. Such an empirically grounded reception perspective is still emerging (cf. e.g. Reference MangironMangiron, 2018: 292) and it neatly corresponds with the proposal of ‘user-centered translation’ (Reference O’HaganO’Hagan, 2019: 153; Reference Suojanen, Koskinen and TuominenSuojanen et al. 2015) as well as proactive user-centric postulates and solutions from audiovisual translation and media accessibility (Reference GrecoGreco, 2018; Reference Romero-FrescoRomero-Fresco, 2019; see also Section 9.4). In-game OSL could therefore serve as a proxy for expanding our understanding of how players engage with games across language versions.

By way of conclusion, let us consider the following point by Reference BishopBishop (2018: 10):

This conceptualisation of VGs highlights the significance of in-game OSL and – given the global nature of VG distribution – brings into the equation the translational facet. The Element has therefore aspired to highlight in-game OSL as an under-explored layer of VGs. With their variable cognitive status and multiple underlying mechanisms, OSL brings great meaning-making potential and can cause significant cross-linguistic and cross-cultural player experience mismatches. These mismatches need to be addressed in the context of VG localisation to truly maximise the analogousness of access to content globally.