Lost In Translation

There is a mobile music game I have been playing for years. Honestly I have never thought myself to a mobile music game player, but after watching my girlfriend playing it for half an hour years ago I thought to myself: hey it looked fun! And it is. And over the years I have tried a lot of similar games on different platforms and this one is still the best for me. Oh BTW it's called Rythem Master and in case you never heard of it outside China don't blame yourself, I will do some explaining why later. But a recently past ridiculous ruling in China completely ruins the game for me.

It's a simple rule indeed, imposed by some part of the government I never knew exist or care to know, forces all mobile games operated within China to use Chinese and English and other languages should not appear. The logic behind this is puzzling and its effectiveness doubtable but, for the game I care, BS happens.

As you may or may not know, music games involve music. Great number of them. And most pieces of the best music in this Rythem Master game are foreign. After the ruling came out there is an update to the app. All the music titles and names of the artists are *machine translated into Chinese.*

( To be fair I don't know for a fact they are machine translated but from the quality of the translations it certainly seems plausible. And, one step further, I can hardly blame the devs behind the scenes, they are coders, not English/Korean/Japanese to Chinese translators! Poor quality is within expectations for some small time game like this)

With this update because of the need of "Chinesification" some of the best features for pro gamers are broken. Boy I was pissed.

To be fair the devs know this, and they are in no position to fight a ridiculous ruling past by a mono party famous for suppression of oppositions. As for the ruling itself I think there is something more to it. For years the Chinese gov has been pushing for so called "soft power". It probably finally noticed the fact that Chinese people are more fond of cultural products of foreign origin. It's not like that we as a nation dislikes our culture. It's simply that our similar products are laughable at best. That's where those old man sitting up there decides to do something about it. Forcing Chinese into mobile games is not the best of ideas. But forcing music titles and artists names translated into Chinese is just plain stupid.

I remember some remarks by an American friend, he said China is boring, wherevet you go it's the same. The same people, same language same dressing same way of life. Yeah. He is right. And it is the ultimate goal of the ruling party. By imposing a rule like this would certainly help. And ruining a game, and looking dumb in the process, it's acceptable loses.

And for the fact that this game, Rythem Master is hardly heard of else where? Well there is never an English version of the game. Login needs a working QQ/Wechat account which most foreigners cares nothing about, and payment system relies on services that are China only. But I think the most likely reason is, most of the music within the game has no copyright, the game pays nothing to the artists or music labels. That's why once in a while a music within the game would change its name, or its cover art or replaced by a live version. But still, best mobile music game out there😅

posted from Bloggeroid