Etkileşim alanları olarak bağımsız oyun yerelleştirme toplulukları

Abstract

An Indie game may be described as a game developed by a single person or by a rather smaller community often with a minimal budget. An indie games requires localization to be more visible on the market and to access a wider audience, however, they generally allocate minimal budgets (if available) for the localization practices, thus, the developers tend to depend on fan - volunteer localization practices or low-budget localization by freelancers. Online communities of indie game localization bring developers who tend to make use of “free” or “cheaper” labour and translators of fan or volunteer localization communities who wish to attend a career in localization industry, freelancers, smaller localization or translation agencies together and serve as a medium of interaction. The analysis of interaction and exchange, the nature of the communities would provide insight into the aboıvementioned field of exchange. This paper aims to trace the footprints of “agents” through their profiles, posts, discussions and and produced content on the web with a specific focus on Indie Game Localization Facebook Page and based on the data gathered, to define the limits of online community, to describe nature of the agents and to draw the borders of the “online” mutual relationship among translators, translator candidates, localization agencies and gama developers.