Milan, the main character of Vivat Slovakia. (source: Team Vivat)
From the very beginning of its early access phase, the upcoming Slovak video game 'Vivat Slovakia', also nicknamed Slovak GTA in the vein of the (in)famous Grand Theft Auto series, was completely in Slovak and also had English captions.
At the end of last year, the game received a complete and professional English voice-over, allowing its audience to grow and reach video game streamers from as far as Indonesia and Japan.
"When we watched those streams, we saw the kind of culture shock these players experienced. It's something similar to watching American movies in which actors jump between cars and planes, but the difference is that in our case life itself wrote the script," explains Roman Lipka, the producer of the game. Each main story mission is based on a real event. Once finished, a sourced explanatory text will explain to players what they just went through, complete with stories from period newspapers.
"Imagine being a player from the other side of the planet who just played a secret police officer that threatened a journalist to not go forth with a story. Then, after the mission, a real story from a real journalist will appear, saying that yes, that happened here a few decades ago."
The Slovak Spectator talked to Lipka about the challenges the independent developers have faced when bringing Vivat Slovakia to players from other countries.
Working with professionals
Vivat Slovakia is based on real events that took place in 1990s Slovakia. According to Lipka, what happened back then simply beats fiction. The team drew inspiration from consultations with people who had first hand experience with the events, such as big mafia figures' drivers and bodyguards.
Being a game so specifically tied to a country in a particular time, translating and localising it to another language is not an easy feat. The goal was to capture as much as possible from 90s Slovak slang and references. Nevertheless, many still had to be changed in one way or another. Luckily, the team worked with English actors who lend their voices to various characters.
