General / Off-Topic Frontier is hiring Chinese Speaking Customer Support

Cosmo

Cosmo
On the Frontier website there's a job opening for Customer & Technical Support (Fluent English/Chinese Language).

It seems the investment in July 2017 where Tencent bought 9% of Frontier Developments is part of a plan to launch a localized version of Elite Dangerous in the Chinese video game market (and/or other games like Planet Coaster and Jurassic World: Evolution).

If this is true it could increase revenue a lot for Frontier, because Chinese gamers don't mind micro-transactions much. The Chinese Communist Party censors a lot of things though.

China is infamous for shamelessly copying western Intellectual Property and producing knock-offs. If Frontier puts the game on dedicated servers in the People's Republic of China, it could be very risky if the whole game gets copied and stolen that way. It's best to keep all the servers in western countries, make one dedicated to the Chinese market. So be careful, because if they copy this game it could be far more costly in the long run.

In the last few years Chinese companies made major acquisitions and investments, because the central bank of China gave huge loans to acquire western companies, technology etc.
Such as Volvo Cars, Motorola, the London Taxi Company, General Electric, Pirelli, MG are all Chinese owned. Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games (the creators of the Unreal Engine).

P.S. the biggest language in the PRC is called Mandarin, the second biggest is Cantonese.
 
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SpaceScania

S
I am learning Mandarin Chinese. Lovely language I love it. I would be so happy if I could give my ships Chinese names and it showed up on the nameplates and so forth. That would be ridiculously awesome!

加油！
 

knowles2

K
Cosmo said:
On the Frontier website there's a job opening for Customer & Technical Support (Fluent English/Chinese Language).

It seems the investment in July 2017 where Tencent bought 9% of Frontier Developments is part of a plan to launch a localized version of Elite Dangerous (and probably other games) in the Chinese video game market.

If this is true it could increase revenue a lot for Frontier, because Chinese gamers don't mind micro-transactions much. The Chinese Communist Party censors a lot of things though.

China is infamous for shamelessly copying western Intellectual Property and producing knock-offs. If Frontier must put the game on dedicated servers in the People's Republic of China, it could be very risky if the whole game gets copied and stolen that way. It's best to keep all the servers in western countries, make one dedicated to the Chinese market.

In the last few years Chinese companies made major acquisitions and investments, because the central bank of China gave huge loans to acquire western companies, technology etc.
Such as Volvo, Motorola, the London Taxi Company, General Electric, Pirelli, MG are all Chinese owned.

P.S. the biggest language in the PRC is called Mandarin, the second biggest is Cantonese.
Click to expand...

Volvo and London Taxi companies were both welcome takeovers through, The Chinese investors have invested a tonne of money into those companies an their factories in their own countries. In the case of London Taxi built a whole new factory, a car and I believe a small van is currently being produce.
 
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Hooplah

Hooplah
Oh my!

The population of China in 2016 was 1.4 billion. If 30 percent of them decide to play ED that is 420 million who won't care about the gripes we soft Westerns have on the Forum. They will just go for it loving the game rarely posting on the Forum. And you thought your petty issues were important. We'll have to learn Chinese to access their own ED Forum they will create to see what they are up to! I'm loving it. Let's get some real talent into the game without preconceived notions as to how everyone else is supposed to play the game. Frontier ED sales will add Chinese Renminbi to their store list of acceptable currency. Then you will know that serious players will be looking for you!

精英危险 'Elite Dangerous' in Chinese. Maybe Bladerunner and Firefly are closer than we think.

Regards
 
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MissMeYet

M
Quiz: What's the greatest, most repeated, meme-like request of the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds fanbase?

I can't tell you, but it rhymes with "pregion lock Chyna".
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
I suspect ED won't see Chinese localisation due of peer to peer and network nature and rather adult themes touched upon game. Just too much hassle.

Planet Coaster and JWE however is perfectly matched for release there. Planet Coaster might have to release separate version, because I suspect Steam is not much working in China either, but that's doable. As for JWE and other casual sim games they most likely plan it is no brainer.

As for that investment being planned as part of going to China - duh :)

Anyway, smart business moves there. Despite what I think of their oppressive regime, there's huge amount of gamers in China.
 
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biohazard15

B
Cmdr Eagleboy said:
I suspect ED won't see Chinese localisation due of peer to peer and network nature and rather adult themes touched upon game. Just too much hassle.

Planet Coaster and JWE however is perfectly matched for release there. Planet Coaster might have to release separate version, because I suspect Steam is not much working in China either, but that's doable. As for JWE and other casual sim games they most likely plan it is no brainer.

As for that investment being planned as part of going to China - duh :)

Anyway, smart business moves there. Despite what I think of their oppressive regime, there's huge amount of gamers in China.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, Steam works nicely in China.

The main problem with localization is not adult themes (there's any?), but FD's utter inability to properly support character sets other than Latin in English version.

For Russian version, this manifests as: if you play non-Russian version and someone writes Cyrillic in chat, all you see is rectangles. But if you play Russian version, you can see both Cyrillic and Latin characters.
 

krylite

krylite
Good to know. ( Sad to hear GE bought off by the chinese though. ) I'd think the audience there would welcome the gameplay and the bgs dynamics. Not to mention one of the three major stations around Earth was named after a chinese historical figure since Elite2: Frontier.
 
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Lucifera Danzig

Lucifera Danzig
Cosmo said:
On the Frontier website there's a job opening for Customer & Technical Support (Fluent English/Chinese Language).

It seems the investment in July 2017 where Tencent bought 9% of Frontier Developments is part of a plan to launch a localized version of Elite Dangerous in the Chinese video game market (and/or other games like Planet Coaster and Jurassic World: Evolution).

If this is true it could increase revenue a lot for Frontier, because Chinese gamers don't mind micro-transactions much. The Chinese Communist Party censors a lot of things though.

China is infamous for shamelessly copying western Intellectual Property and producing knock-offs. If Frontier puts the game on dedicated servers in the People's Republic of China, it could be very risky if the whole game gets copied and stolen that way. It's best to keep all the servers in western countries, make one dedicated to the Chinese market. So be careful, because if they copy this game it could be far more costly in the long run.

In the last few years Chinese companies made major acquisitions and investments, because the central bank of China gave huge loans to acquire western companies, technology etc.
Such as Volvo Cars, Motorola, the London Taxi Company, General Electric, Pirelli, MG are all Chinese owned. Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games (the creators of the Unreal Engine).

P.S. the biggest language in the PRC is called Mandarin, the second biggest is Cantonese.
Click to expand...

The second most common language is Wu. The ninth most common is Yue, of which Cantonese is a dialect.

And since the game doesn't use dedicated servers, but the Amazon cloud, I don't see China getting dedicated servers just for them.

biohazard15 said:
AFAIK, Steam works nicely in China.

The main problem with localization is not adult themes (there's any?), but FD's utter inability to properly support character sets other than Latin in English version.
Click to expand...

Perhaps localization through the use of pinyin transcription?
 
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