(Un)known Polish Places: Strategies of Foreignization and Domestication in Polish Video Games

This paper examines how Polish video game developers deploy two localization strategies, foreignization and domestication, borrowed from translation studies, to position their products for international markets. Domestication is understood as standardizing gameplay, visuals, and narrative so that titles feel accessible to global audiences, while foreignization preserves local places, languages, and historical references to create something distinctive. The authors frame these strategies as production-level design decisions rather than purely linguistic ones, and argue that they reflect a tension between local cultural identity and a globalized digital market.

The analysis draws on three case studies: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts, 2014), Observer (Bloober Team, 2017), and The Medium (Bloober Team, 2021). The Vanishing of Ethan Carter domesticates its characters and literary tropes, which draw on Anglo-Saxon crime and horror fiction, while its Wisconsin-set environment was built from scans of Polish Giant Mountains. The Medium, written in English, uses hybrid naming and recognizable Kraków landmarks, and its developers credit English and globally familiar horror themes with broadening its appeal. Observer combines recognizable Polish urban architecture with cyberpunk conventions drawn from canonical international works. The CD Projekt Red Witcher series serves as a broader illustration, moving from a shift toward generic Anglo-Saxon aesthetics in the second game to a deliberate engagement with Slavic culture in the third.

The paper situates these choices within a commercial context: a 2020 industry report indicated that roughly 97% of Polish studios' revenues came from foreign players, which gives domestication considerable economic weight. The authors also note that foreignization can differentiate titles and evoke the "strangeness" valued in horror. The methodology is qualitative and textual, combining analysis of production, content, and reception, though the summary offers limited detail on reception data or sample sizes.