How XDefiant flipped the script to give Arabic players a tailored experience

            In the global video game market, localization has become standard practice. A Korean studio may translate its game for a German audience, while a studio in the United States may do the same for players in the Middle East. Though translating by itself sometimes isn't enough to localize a game, as the XDefiant team discovered when working on the Arabic version of their first-person arena shooter.

            Integrating Arabic, which reads from right to left, into an interface designed for English, which reads in the opposite direction, was a delicate challenge. To resolve the issue, the development team decided to flip the game's interface to provide an intuitive experience to Arabic players. In the article below, we explore the team's work and discuss how their efforts contribute to wider advances in localization.

A smooth gaming experience

            Outside of voiceovers, most localization work focuses on translating text in menus and overlays. XDefiant's lead team in San Francisco was familiar with the procedure and worked with Ubisoft's global localization team to incorporate different languages. "It was a very collaborative process," says Brigitta Blair, technical artist on the user interface (UI) team. "We'd get the translations, integrate them, talk with the localization team to see if they looked right, and make alterations as needed."

As they were working on the Arabic version of the game, the team realized that the interface wasn't intuitive for Arabic speakers. "From a design perspective," says Nat Dart, lead UI artist, "you're coming up with appealing looking layouts that have a clear hierarchy, and for English speakers, that means left to right, top to bottom." But Arabic has one crucial difference: the language reads from right to left.

English and Arabic ability screen for the Cleaners faction

"For English speakers, their eyes immediately go to the left side of the screen to search for the beginning of information," explains Mohammed Alemam, localization & social media manager. "But for Arabic speakers, the eye immediately goes to the right side of the screen, so when things are not inverted, it takes a bit of time for the player to scan the screen for the start of the sentence." So, to provide a natural and intuitive experience for Arabic players, the development team decided to invert the game's UI.

            This undertaking would require tremendous effort, as it essentially meant revisiting much of the design that had been finalized. "We worked with the localization team to identify areas that were top priority versus lower priority," explains Brigitta. For instance, the options menu was a must-have, but the progression bar displayed during matches was left for a later date. "With each update of the game," she continues, "we'll make improvements based on the priorities we've identified."

A right-aligned "player of the game" screen.

            When XDefiant came out, Brigitta watched a few Arabic streamers, "and that was really neat because I got to see how they were navigating and if we needed to adjust any areas," she recounts. The team also received direct feedback from players, as well as from native speakers on the team. "Our team is really open to feedback," Nat adds. "We're all players here, and we rely on people who engage with the game every day to get that feedback. We don't design in silo."

Building together

            Much of the work on Arabic localization at Ubisoft was spearheaded by Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023). Set in ninth-century Baghdad at the height of the Islamic Golden Age, the game was fully localized in Arabic with menus, subtitles, voiceovers, and even some inverted UI elements to give players an immersive experience.

Mohammed explains that, in the Middle East and North Africa, "people view Arabic as a unifying language, and they take pride in seeing it in games." At annual Arab game awards, Ubisoft games consistently receive nominations and awards for localization. "On social media here," Mohammed continues, "people see Ubisoft as an example of a publisher that cares about the language, the quality of the translation, and the experience of Arabic players."

*Assassin's Creed Mirage *follows Basim Ibn Ishaq as he goes from street thief to freedom fighter and opposes the mysterious Order of the Ancients.

"To make the game work in Arabic, we went to the Snowdrop community to see how they did it," Brigitta recalls, referencing one of Ubisoft's main game engines. Developers from studios around the world have been using Snowdrop for nearly a decade, and a key feature they've developed is one to automatically align text for right to left languages like Arabic, removing much of the need for manual work.

            And the XDefiant team added a contribution of their own to the Snowdrop toolkit. "We created a feature that allows us to mirror objects," says Brigitta, to change lines of text and restructure the layout with minimal effort, giving artists more control when working in a different language. "We're also talking with other teams to see if they have similar needs," she continues, "so we can share our features with them to make their lives easier, no matter what project they're on."

Snowdrop nodes used by the XDefiant team to mirror objects.

"The work we do in a language benefits other languages," says Brigitta. For instance, the team had to create a font for the chat that could accommodate all languages and their various glyphs, like "A" in English, "ㅎ" in Korean, and "Ґ" in Ukrainian. "There were actually three different glyphs that Ukrainian had which we didn't have in our font, and we had to make alterations to include them," she continues.

 "The team added some Ukrainian glyphs that we didn't have before," adds Olena Berezan, junior associate producer. "The Kyiv studio team led by Oleksii Mytsyk devoted a lot of time to integrate the language. The result is that XDefiant is the first Ubisoft game to have Ukrainian localization."

Accessibility by design

            While the team has streamlined much of their work with Snowdrop, one way to further facilitate the process is to design UI that can be easily flipped from the beginning. "We're taking a more proactive stance now at the mock-up stage to come up with layouts that can be better mirrored to accommodate right to left languages," says Nat. A simple yet highly effective example is menus that are centrally aligned, which are easier to work with regardless of language.

            Mohammed explains that "the next step is to work with the Snowdrop team to have a universal solution for flipping UI instead of going through every menu, assigning priorities, and manually adjusting them." Such an achievement would, of course, require a tremendous amount of work, but if the past is any indication, the engine will only get better as teams get more experience and develop the tools they need to streamline their work. "I love that the teams build on top of what we've done in the past," Mohammed continues. "We're never taking steps back; we're always pushing ahead."

"It's really rewarding to be given the opportunity to design for everybody around the world and not just your immediate local group of users," Nat continues. "You really have to think about how people interact with the game to make it the best experience for everybody. It's a cool challenge as a designer, and it's part of what makes the job fun."

Beyond presenting interesting challenges, working on localization also has other benefits. "Learning about another language also teaches you about that language's culture," says Brigitta, "and learning about other cultures helps you learn about your own as well."