A representative from Bandai Namco recently hosted a panel discussing the company’s approach to DEI initiatives.
DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies have come under fire in recent months after concerns of quality have arisen regarding games being used for social messaging at the expense of being fun and marketable.
Despite being one of the most widely recognized gaming companies in the world, Ms. Okuma Mirai from Bandai Namco expressed the company’s desire to expose their games to “wide variety” of players.
One of the examples Ms. Okuma gives is the addition of dreadlock hairstyles to Blue Protocol, which is something they hadn’t considered. It’s worth mentioning that Blue Protocol announced its end of service in Japan, and its global release has been canceled.
According to a recap of the panel from Japanese site 4gamer, Bandai Namco has gone all in with sharing DEI programs and articles among its internal staff saying:
Information about DEI was also shared within the Bandai Namco Group. Bandai Namco Entertainment in particular has strong ties with bases in the United States and Europe, and handles a large number of titles, so it seems that they were able to obtain useful information and knowledge.
Translation: Google
Ms. Okuma went on to defend localization practices, explaining English and Western societies as “low-context” due to their multiculturalism.
On the other hand, Western culture is low-context, starting from a place of no common understanding and placing emphasis on verbal expression, which is due to the fact that Western countries are multi-ethnic countries with immigrants and other factors. Therefore, it was shown that simply translating Japanese lines and explanations into the local language may not be interpreted well due to a lack of words.
This is in spite of the fact that English-speaking consumers are expected to trust localizers to provide an authentic product respecting the creator’s vision and intentions; with fans responding positively when translations are done faithfully.
In the coming months we’ll see how Bandai Namco intends to implement and represent these new values for the company.
