Quote from: BedrockBrendan;521662Pundit, is the biggest barrier on the publishing end in your opinion, just a matter of a getting translated editions of the games out there? Or is translation even an issue; alot of our customers from countries like Germany and France seem to have no problem understanding and using our RPGs (which are all in English).

I don't live in Latin America, but I'd like to give my uninformed opinion anyway.

The biggest barrier, in my humble opinion, is that there is no local industry (except in Brazil, more about it later). This means all RPGs, whether they are written in English or Spanish, have to be imported from somewhere else (the USA, the UK, Spain, etc), which can get expensive when you compare the exchange rate of the Argentine Peso to the US Dollar or the Euro.

As I said, Brazil is the exception to the rule. Devir, a Brazilian firm, publishes D&D, GURPS, and World of Darkness in Brazil. They got so big that they created Devir Iberia, the publishers of D&D in Spain. The question is, if Devir has the rights to D&D in both Portuguese and Spanish, why don't they make the effort to promote D&D in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia etc? After all, Argentina is closer to Brazil than Spain is. I wish I had the answer to this question.

And I have another question, why aren't there local publishers of RPGs in Argentina and Uruguay? In many countries of Europe, where the hobby gets strong enough, there always appears someone who thinks "I can write an RPG too". The hobby is strong in Argentina, but there are no Argentine RPGs as far  as I know. I wonder why.

Maybe I'll go to an Argentine RPG forum, like Derol (the old Juegos de que), and I'll ask them.

Quote from: Claudius;521799(...)In many countries of Europe, where the hobby gets strong enough, there always appears someone who thinks "I can write an RPG too".(...)

Unfortunately not all efforts are equally worthwhile. Then again, I'm not even sure if the hobby is "strong enough" here... :rolleyes:

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;521662Pundit, is the biggest barrier on the publishing end in your opinion, just a matter of a getting translated editions of the games out there? Or is translation even an issue; alot of our customers from countries like Germany and France seem to have no problem understanding and using our RPGs (which are all in English).

In places where there's already some nascent gaming community (certainly throughout south america) its not even about translation, no.  Like I said, here in Uruguay everyone pretty well uses the English rulebooks.

Its mainly about awareness and access, ie. distribution.

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Quote from: DominikSchwager;521725There used to be a lot of RPGs that got translated into german. Though most people didn't want to wait for the translation, so most groups played with the english rules anyway and the companies stopped translating.
Also, most translations were extremely terrible and often riddled with errors.

It was exactly the same case here with spanish translations.

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Quote from: Claudius;521799And I have another question, why aren't there local publishers of RPGs in Argentina and Uruguay? In many countries of Europe, where the hobby gets strong enough, there always appears someone who thinks "I can write an RPG too". The hobby is strong in Argentina, but there are no Argentine RPGs as far  as I know. I wonder why.

Maybe I'll go to an Argentine RPG forum, like Derol (the old Juegos de que), and I'll ask them.

Yeah, that's a total mystery to me.  Uruguay maybe because its a tiny country, but Argentina is huge, has a relatively big middle class, has a thriving gaming community already, and yet no one there has ever produced a local RPG for publication.

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