Those of you who know me for any amount of time may know that I'm not white. My parents come from small Caribbean country called Cuba, and most of us from this country tend to speak a language called Spanish*.
(*:Just so we're sure, this is sarcasm)
Now, many Spanish-speaking people from places like Cuba, Mexico and South America also play video games. I quite enjoy them, myself. However, the increased trend toward multi-lingual games - a necessity for bringing games outside of pathetic mini-game compilations to people who don't necessarily speak English very well.
Now why am I talking about this? Very simple. For some reason, I've noticed that there are several games of varying profile that are still without multilingual features. The most egregious of these is Call of Duty. Now, I understand that Activision is an evil company who probably laughs at people in the Americas who might want to play a game in another language and probably wouldn't even dub their games for European audiences if there was any way they could get away with it, but is it really that hard to put in some extra dialogue options in games that everyone knows aren't using the full disc (this isn't exactly Final Fantasy XIII we're talking about here).
However, the problem isn't magically excused by lack of disc space. There have been separate discs with separate languages for games released on this continent before. The most obvious example is the Halo series, which only has audio for the country the game is being sold in (though they at least have multiple sub tracks). Is there any reason for these Spanish versions not to be released in communities where they would be welcomed (IE, Florida, Texas, California, et al)? And while we're at it, why not French versions for Canada? I'm sure there's lots of folks north of the border who'd like to play more of their games in French.
However, the worst of it is when we get to digital content. Is there any reason I have to have a Spaniard account and import Spaniard PSN cards to play Final Fantasy VII in Spanish, othat than perhaps a prevailing, poisonous attitude that "if they come here, they should learn English"? Come to think of it, why the hell does the PS3 version of Megaman 9 not have Spanish while the Xbox 360 version does? There's absolutely no excuse for any digital release not to be multilingual.
Gaming has come a long way since the days of the NES, and has become the staple of men (and women) all around the world. It's high time that game companies started catering to the more diverse pockets of society, especially here in the US. "Dumb it down" shouldn't be the only way to make a game accessible.
