Babil Games and the art of game localisation within the MENA region

[Music] thank you we are now joined by dial adeeb from babiel games how are you doing today I'm good I'm great is this your first Pocket Gamer connect show enjoy then I've been to the one in London before ah you were early in the year fantastic if people aren't familiar with Babel games what is it that you guys are all about Batman games is a mobile gaming publisher we publish a mobile game we our focus is the mini region but we also publish games internationally uh what what we do is we get a game we localize it we change the assets we change the language and it's not just translation but it's focusing more on the on the terms the like words that that connect to the culture to understand how the players think because from from different cultures the mindset changes as well so the language should also change and not just translation uh with

the Arts as well and yeah we have fun at Barbie games it's a lot more than just the text isn't it I'm speaking to spoken to a lot of people who deal with localization and I think people misunderstand quite how involved it is for you folks in the Mainer region what are there specific things that for example you most often have to change or tweak is it specifically to language is it colors or Graphics that mean certain things in this area yeah yes so from from culture to culture of course it differs and specifically in the main region like there there are countries that are sensitive to certain uh languages to certain phrases to certain assets uh let's say a character that's just kind of different than what the culture is used to we change that as well to accommodate to the culture so it's more than just translation Google translation uh there's so much more to it and it's an art by itself because you have to understand the people understand

the culture and Orchard in order to publish the game how does the main region differ from other areas or that people might publish games in for example people deal a lot with the West China is obviously a huge Market but looking at the figures you've got over here and for example the monetization rates you have and the fact that it seems that audiences in the main region are almost more willing to spend money than some other places is that true yes it's super true like I other countries the rppu with with the meaning reasons as well and it's it's huge like for example certain countries like let's say Saudi Arabia the UAE Qatar the gods specifically for them again it's not just the game it's for them it's a community it's embedded in the culture they they love it they enjoy it and they when they spend money they spend money and they're happy and they want to spend so this is also great for monetization like the culture itself itself helps a lot with the monetization

I understand you've obviously started the company by mainly doing localization for other games and other developers are you reaching out into development yourself yes so the focus was to localize and then publish but but now because we see there's so much demand and the gaming industry is growing and there's so much potential within the team as well like we have so many amazing ideas for games so what we're doing now is we're going and focusing on developing our own games as well so when people are bringing a game to you say I'm a developer and I want to publish within the main region what advice would you give me what's the first steps I should take to try and make sure that my game will be successful over here in in the mini region okay so the most important thing before publishing a game is to understand the market and to know how to market the game to the culture there's a like when when you do your user

acquisition marketing your influencer marketing there's a strategy there's a way to to have those players download have those players monetize eventually there's a strategy for for each culture as well and that's something that you guys have developed and have we do that and we tested so many things and uh so many experiments so many failures success and we learned so much and our database is huge so this is what's making us super successful these days and if you plan on developing yourself would would it be an interesting challenge for you to try and also publish in other region so be on the other end of the of the stick if you like yeah of course why not because we've published it not just in the Mina region but we published also internationally so we can publish internationally as well fantastic and is that maybe the first time that you've come to the event over here in Jordan we're we're surprised by the turnout I actually was I was I was a bit concerned because like I've I've been to the focusgamer in London and it was amazing

um and being a diamond sponsor here at Pocket Gamer Jordan we we were preparing for this and we're super excited but there was a tiny concern of the number I was worried the culture might they didn't know or it's been a while since we had the bucketgamer before but everyone is wow amazing there's so many people I can't even walk there's no space to walk or stand it's our booth so yeah I'm just happy and for a lot of us we came out of the lockdown period then we hadn't actually seen another human being for long time but people managed to continue doing business and Skype calls Zoom calls all the rest of it what do you feel are the differences from a company perspective how did Babel cope with that and then coming back into the real world inverted comments Bible during covert went so up like we hired I was hired during covert I was hired at the beginning of covet so like there was hiring online we grew we grew like 30 people from 2020 up until now are are the numbers grew the culture was amazing nothing stopped like okay our culture is

at wavel because we got the great place to work in Jordan the first base place to work certificate so that that's something amazing and we wanted to keep that culture even remotely so what we used to do we used to hold events breakfast together virtual breakfast dinners uh competition our meetings are so much fun we dress up in PJs and you know it was just so much fun and the culture kept going and growing it's good to turn something negative and it's been a little bit positive if you can well we're delighted that you're here and we're also very happy thank you for joining us [Music] [Music]