This platform is a bit like Kickstarter, Gamefound and Backerkit in that the projects only happen if enough people want them to happen. But the games here already exist, reviews and ratings exist for them and you can check if they would be great games for you. The focus is on reaching the minimum needed preorders so we can translate and print great games to new languages. It will still take time to translate, print and ship the game, but not multiple years like crowdfunding sometimes take.
Localization is traditionally focused on language-independent games, as they are cheaper to translate and multiple languages can be placed in the same box. To play these games it is enough if one player knows a language it is available in and teaches the others. On the other hand, games with even minimal text can be very hard to play if even one player in your group is not fluent in the language of the game. Our focus is to localize games where gameplay is improved by a localization.
French and German get about 600 localizations per year, Spanish 350-400, Italian, Dutch and Polish 200-300, Czech, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Chinese 100-200, 14 languages 10-100 each. There are so many great games that traditional localization have not managed to localize into all of these top 27 languages, and so many more languages where even a couple of localizations per year would do wonders to grow the hobby.
We want to make great games accessible to more players by translating and printing them in as many languages as possible. Join us and make sure it happens for your favourite games in your language! We will do 4 preorder periods per year, each period for 1 month. In each period we will have 10 games, with an individual project on this website for each game in each language that we get the rights to. Each project will have its own minimum goal in number of preorder copies that needs to be reached to make that translation and printing happen.
Translated Games is founded by Rustan Håkansson, a veteran of both the board games industry and the IT industry. He has worked in games distribution (both to hobby stores and chains), games publishing, games translation (both as translator and manager of translations), at BoardGameGeek (as project manager and business developer), as a game designer (Nations, Cities Skylines, Tribes etc), organized game conventions, managed IT system translations, started/grown/organized/led IT companies, negotiated contracts and licenses, maintains the boardgamemanufacturer.info list, been project manager and sales person. In short, a perfect fit for this project!
Translated Games was started in May 2024. This is a placeholder website with basic information. The real platform is in development and licenses with publishers will be signed. The plan is to launch the platform for real in February 2025. Subscribe to the newsletter above to get a notification when we launch! Do you want to talk? Please get in touch by email, [email protected].