Emerging Asian markets for game localization: Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand

2024-10-31 | Anastasiia Osypenko

When game companies plan their localization strategy, they usually focus on the major European languages and the biggest East Asian countries. These markets are indeed a good start, as they represent the biggest communities of players in the world and make up for around a third of the global gaming economy.

However, if you want to reach diverse communities and have the resources for more localization projects, you should also consider emerging markets from the Southeast Asian region (SEA). In some cases, this market will be even more beneficial than, say, the world’s largest market in China, if the target audience is really into your genre or theme.

In this post, we’ll discuss the major countries in SEA and the tendencies of their game industry. We’ll also cover proven tips to properly localize your game for these emerging markets.

WHAT’S COVERED:

• The benefits of entering the Southeast Asian game market
• Game localization best practices for SEA countries
  • Game localization for Indonesia
    • 5 rules of effective Indonesian game localization
  • Game localization for Vietnam
    • 7 rules of effective Vietnamese game localization
  • Game localization for Thailand
    • 7 rules of effective Thai game localization
• How to take the most out of emerging Asian markets

The benefits of entering the Southeast Asian game market

SEA counties are demonstrating rapid growth in different aspects of gaming. First of all, the economy is growing, leading to an increased number of people being able to afford to pay for games. Second, the smartphone penetration, which has doubled from 2015 to 2020, and investments in 5G, have been causing a massive spike in mobile game popularity. And third, a keen interest in gaming and esports is fueling a growing number of industry events and a demand for game localization across genres.

Here are some key statistics about the region that will help you get the picture:

• You can enter a flourishing market. According to Statista, the game market on SEA will generate revenue of $13 billion in 2024 and reach $19 billion by 2029.
• You can reach around 300 million players. The number of players in Southeast Asia is estimated to reach more than 344 million by 2027. The average revenue per user stands at $63.90 in 2024. Steady economic growth in the region leads to increased spending power and more people investing in entertainment.

• You can reach a vibrant gaming community. Local audiences showcase a growing interest in competitive gaming and esports events. Professional teams and dedicated esports arenas have become an inevitable part of the local gaming industry. 

• You have a high chance of gaining success in the mobile sector. While the industry is growing in general, mobile gaming is gaining the biggest momentum as more people in the region get access to smartphones and affordable data plans. Its volume reached $3 billion in 2024, and it’s considered the fastest-growing mobile game market in the world.
• You gain traction in popular genres such as multiplayer online battle arena. For instance, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has up to a million users in Indonesia alone: its Discord community amounts to almost 300,000 members.

Game localization best practices for SEA countries

There are 6 biggest countries in the SEA region: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Most of them have a rather diverse linguistic situation, with hundreds of native languages spoken, but we’ll focus on one most common language in each country that is the most suitable for game localization. 

We’ll take a closer look at Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, as they represent the biggest gaming audiences in SEA. As for Singapore, we’ve covered it a bit in the post about Chinese game localization: the majority of users there play games in English or Mandarin.

Game localization for Indonesia

Indonesia is the biggest market in SEA, and it can give you access to almost two hundred million players. In line with the whole region, it offers the highest earning potential for mobile games. Despite its cultural diversity, the official Indonesian language is written in Latin script, which makes the localization process easier.

To learn more about gaming in this country, check out the following facts:

• There are over 185 million gamers in Indonesia, and a large part of them engage in games daily. It’s the biggest market in SEA in terms of both audience size and revenue.
• Mobile games are the biggest share of the Indonesian market, with a revenue of $142 million in 2021. It’s dominated by the Android operating system: 87% of smartphone users own Android devices. 
• PC and console games also have a dedicated audience that steadily grows each year. For example, 62% of men and 50% of women play console games in Indonesia according to a 2019 report.
• Action games are among the most popular genres: these titles encourage a lot of downloads and purchases. Apart from that, simulation and casual games drive the most downloads, while role-playing and strategy games generate the biggest in-app revenue.
• Indonesia is a predominantly Islamic country, with 87% of its residents being Muslim. Religious sensitivities play an important factor in digital entertainment, so you’ll need to consider Muslim representation to market your game. 
• Indonesia has certain regulations for publishing a game on its market. You’ll have to be registered as a local legal entity and go through an evaluation procedure that will classify your game according to age criteria and check its content against possible violations.

5 rules of effective Indonesian game localization

Let’s discover some aspects of the Indonesian language and culture that will help you prepare for successful game localization.

1. Be prepared for text expansion. Indonesian phrases will often take up much more space than the ones in English. You should make sure that your designs can be dynamically resized without impacting the layouts.

Here’s an example of how simple phrases in the UI of the Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja game are much longer in Indonesian:

2. Mind levels of formality. Indonesian has very distinct differences between formal and informal language. Even though you’ll only need a spoken informal language for most cases, sometimes, it might make sense to incorporate a different level of formality to reflect the nature of certain character relations. Besides, Indonesian has tonal properties to it, despite not being a tonal language, so it’s important to acknowledge these properties if you’re going to work on dubbing.
3. Incorporate local festivals and celebrations. Don’t miss out on opportunities to boost interest in your game through special events or items dedicated to Indonesian holidays. For example, the Indonesian Independence Day, Balinese New Year, and the holy month of Ramadan can serve as a pretext for game promotional campaigns.

4. Avoid sensitive subjects. All countries in the region are unfavorable to depictions of violence, gore, and illegal activities. Given that the majority of the Indonesian population is Muslim, the country also doesn’t welcome references to religion and sex in digital content. Some popular games have been labeled as sinful (PUBG) or banned altogether (Fight Of Gods) for religious reasons.
5. Localize marketing content as well. Your localization project shouldn’t end with the last line of in-game text. There are plenty of things you can do to make your game more appealing to the Indonesian audience: collaborate with local stars or companies to promote your product, run ads in the Indonesian language, organize local events, and so on. The more attention to local culture the better.

Game localization for Vietnam

Vietnamese players are a community of predominantly young people, and the local gaming market is dominated by mobile genres.

Here are some major facts about Vietnamese players:

• The overwhelming majority of internet users in Vietnam report that they mainly access it for gaming. A 2022 survey by Rakuten Insight revealed that 86% of young respondents play online games, and the majority do so every day. 
• There are over 30 million gamers in the country, with more than 8 million accounting for mobile games. 
• Over 18 million users regularly played esports in 2019, more than 75% of them being Gen Z. 

• 65% of Vietnamese smartphone users have Android devices, and 35% have iOS. If you have a mobile title, it might make sense to localize the version for both operating systems.
• Casual games are among the most popular genres in Vietnam, and there’s been a tendency to shift from hyper-casual titles to hybrid casual and puzzle games. 
• Vietnam has a specific set of rules for foreign publishers to release their games on the local market. You’ll have to register an entity in the country and pass the content check according to your game’s classification (there are 4 age-based groups and 4 categories that depend on the type of user interaction in the game). Some topics are forbidden and will likely be rejected by authorities: brutal scenes, depiction of illegal acts, references to gambling, images or sounds that are offensive to national customs, etc.

7 rules of effective Vietnamese game localization

Given the specific nature of the Vietnamese language, you should know about the following nuances before planning the game localization process:

1. Choose a proper font and mind special characters. Modern Vietnamese uses a Latin-based script and features some characters with diacritics. Multiple diacritical symbols can be stacked on a single letter. Make sure that all the fonts used in a game support the Vietnamese alphabet.
2. Allow for considerate text expansion. Compared to English, Vietnamese phrases would often take much more space. You should prepare the designs of your text fields beforehand so that they are displayed correctly with up to 30% expansion.
3. Be careful with personal pronouns. Vietnamese has a lot of pronouns that differ in the level of formality. Given that pronouns are often used in game dialogue, make sure that your translators double-check all phrases so that everything fits the context.

4. Incorporate regional differences. Northern Vietnamese vocabulary is considered standard, but sometimes, it makes sense to use words and writing styles from other regions. For instance, if you want to distinguish the linguistic style of different characters or if you want to localize marketing materials for different regions of the country.
5. Pay attention to the tones used in Vietnamese if you want to localize dubbing. Vietnamese is a tonal language, so you should only cooperate with native-speaking professionals.
6. Consider regulations and cultural sensitivities. Vietnam has a specific game review process and might reject your title if the content features something that goes against local customs. In general, the depiction of extreme violence, illegal acts, nudity, and gambling activities are forbidden. Anything that can be perceived as offensive to local culture is a no-no as well.
7. Collaborate with local stars. After the game itself is localized, you should think about marketing initiatives that might work well on the target market. It’s always a good idea to feature local stars in ad creatives or invite them to promote your game. For instance, famous Vietnamese footballer Đoàn Văn Hậu accompanied announcements of the Call of Dragons game, sparking engagement among local players.

Game localization for Thailand

Like many other countries in the region, Thailand is characterized by a predominantly young demographic of players and a huge popularity of mobile games. Unlike others, Thailand has a very low English proficiency level, which makes game localization even more relevant for this market.

Here are some facts about gaming in Thailand:

• The country is experiencing tremendous growth in the gaming industry. The government has even launched special programs aimed at supporting local developers and the market in general. Esports was officially recognized as a professional sport in 2021.

• There are around 32 million gamers in Thailand. The majority of them are young people, especially in PC gaming that requires high-end computers (73% are between 18 to 24 years old). For a lot of people, playing has become a regular activity: 76% admit spending an hour a day on games.

• The rising internet penetration and smartphone affordability drive the growth of the mobile game market. The number of mobile gamers is expected to reach 6.7 million by 2027, and the average revenue per user in this segment is estimated at $105 in 2024. 
• In-app purchases make for the largest share (65%) of sales on the Thai market. According to Newzoo, Thai users mostly buy playable characters and in-game currencies (the most popular categories of in-app spending for men and women, respectively).
• Besides mobile games having the most engagement, PC and console gaming also have significant shares in the local market and generate increasing revenues.

• Thailand has one of the lowest ratings in the EF English Proficiency Index (101st out of 113 countries). High-quality localization is a must to enter the Thai market. 
• The most popular game genres in Thailand are RPG, flighting, casual, and action/adventure.

7 rules of effective Thai game localization

Thai language and culture have some nuances that you should understand before planning the process of game localization. Here are the best practices you can follow:

1. Choose a correct font and mind writing nuances. The Thai language has an abugida writing system, which means that words are written in units that consist of consonant sound symbols and vowel diacritic marks. Chosen fonts should have enough room for all diacritics so that words are displayed correctly.

Some companies that localized their games to Thai resorted to language romanization. There’s an official set of rules for that (Royal Thai General System of Transcription), and romanization makes it easier to translate the game and control the process. However, the non-romanized script will obviously better resonate with the local audience. 

2. Make sure your translation software doesn’t add unnecessary spaces between words. In Thai, you don’t separate words with spaces like in most European languages. This might cause technical issues if translators work separately on some phrases that will be incorporated into larger sentences. Invest in detailed LQA to avoid such mistakes. 

Note that there are certain rules when spaces should be put between words in Thai. Cooperate with native-speaking professionals who are experts in complex linguistic nuances.

3. For mobile games: optimize for mid-tier devices. Despite the growing affordability of smartphones and decent data plans, a lot of users in Thailand own devices that have comparatively small memory or don’t have access to a stable 4G internet connection. What you can do here is optimize your application’s size and test it across older smartphones to make sure that the user experience is equally good. Consider supporting high-quality or low-quality graphics and letting users choose a suitable option based on their network and device.
4. Use the Thai calendar to be more relevant to the audience. Thailand has its own calendar that differs from the Gregorian one and is rooted in Buddhism. You can use it if it’s relevant to your game to address particular cultural preferences of local players. On top of that, every day has its own color in Thailand, and you can use it to culturalize your game.
5. Learn about the evaluation criteria applicable to your game. To get published in Thailand, you’ll have to pass a review by the Film and Video Inspection Committee. Thailand is not very open about official regulations, and it’s advised to consult a private evaluator who will guide you through the process. As a rule, Thailand prohibits explicitly violent or sexual scenes, as well as anything that might be considered culturally inappropriate. For instance, a massively popular messenger LINE had to delete stickers of the Thai royal family, as it’s a culturally sensitive subject.
6. Incorporate local symbols or celebrations. You can use national celebrations like Songkran to create promotional events or release limited skins to gain additional traction.

7. Collaborate with local stars or companies to boost local marketing. If you have the resources, reach out to a Thai video streamer to promote your game, collaborate with stars for ads, or partner with local businesses that can create exclusive merch, menu items, or anything else.

Take the most out of emerging Asian markets

The SEA region is one of the most rapidly growing in terms of urbanization, internet coverage improvement, and game industry development. Increasingly more people are able to afford smartphones and dedicate some time to mobile gaming, while PC and console players are also growing their communities.

With that said, you can reach hundreds of millions of new players if you localize your game to different Southeast Asian countries. But to do so efficiently, you’ll need to follow some rules:

• Learn about local regulations of game publishing
• Remove any depictions of extreme violence or references to sensitive topics (religion, sexuality, etc.)
• Carefully choose fonts for languages with non-Latin scripts and make sure your text fields allow for 20-30% expansion
• Incorporate local symbols or holidays to create items or in-game events to stay relevant to the audience

Looking for professional game translators to localize your game for Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and other Asian countries? Check out our game translation services and reach out to us to discuss the details of your project.