Authorial Shadows: Shadows of the
Damned and Translational Authorship
Stephen Mandiberg
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr.
La Jolla, CA, USA 92093
858-534-4410
smandiberg@ucsd.edu
ABSTRACT
Using the game Shadows of the Damned, this presentation will argue that that any
understanding of a game as an authored text or global commodity must take into
consideration the complex interactions of the localization process, which reform the game
for its new target audience. This is particularly relevant in the movement between
Japanese and English, as it is the North American ‘translation’ that then travels around as
the ‘global’ version.
Keywords
Japanese games, authorship, translation, localization
EXPANDED ABSTRACT
Created through the Electronic Arts Partners program that funds third party developers
creating risky or risqué titles, Grasshopper Games’ Shadows of the Damned (2011) is an
interesting and yet representative example of the interactions involved with localizing a
title from Japan to the United States. Nothing like the typically imagined black box
translation where words and sentences from an original language are mechanically altered
into derivative language, the localization for Shadows of the Damned involved delicate
interactions between the Japanese developer and English localization agency, which
produced not a ‘translation’ of the Japanese, but a ‘global’ game that traveled around the
world. By mixing textual analysis of the game's Japanese and English localizations and
interviews with the translator and localization project manager, this paper argues that any
understanding of a game as an authored text or global commodity must take into
consideration the localization process.
While extremely under-advertised, Shadows of the Damned was billed as a powerhouse
production combining the authorial might of Mikami Shinji of Biohazard/Resident Evil
fame, Suda Goichi, or Suda51, the creator of cult hits like Killer7 and No More Heroes,
Yamaoka Akira, the composer of the Silent Hill series, and director Massimo Guarini. In
contrast to such big-name emphasis, this paper shows how the game is highly indebted to
the combined influence of the translator and project manager at 8-4 Ltd., the company
that orchestrated the game's North American localization. Through complex interactions
between the original writer and director at Grasshopper Games, and the translator and
project manager at the localization company 8-4 the game was not merely translated from
Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies.
© 2013 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of
this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
Japanese into English, but completely rewritten from the ground up in English and sold
around the world.
A claim that such extensive translational rewriting is important poses a challenge to the
existing game studies literature that rarely looks at the work of video game translators as
authorial outside of a few specialized works focusing on game localization (BernalMerino 2006; Mandiberg 2012; O'Hagan and Mangiron 2013). Existing work tends to
approach authorship as either a distributed act between the multitude of developers
(Huber 2008), a distributed act that combines both industry and fan communities (Jenkins
2006), or the work of directors, producers and writers alone as 'authors' (Aarseth 2004;
Demirbas 2008). Following an established tradition in translation studies (Pym 2009;
Venuti 1995; Zeller 2000), this paper argues that many Japanese games, like Shadows of
the Damned, are equally authored by the localization team, as the current practice of
localization is not one of original and derivative, but construction through translation.
The argument that modern localization works to create the core game, and that localizers
are in fact authors, is important for humanities understandings of games as textual
artifacts, as it changes the contextual and cultural background of the text itself. It is also
crucial for cross cultural, social and behavioral science research, as any study into
cultural or player reception must necessarily be understood through the lens of the
interactions that went on in order to tailor particular versions for particular audiences.
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