MENA players will assume that a localization is mid before they play a single minute. How? By a single font choice—Arial.
• Arial comes by default with our Operating Systems. • With our hastily made fast food menus. • With our cheap clothing labels. • With our browsers. • With our software.
It comes with our everything.
For us Arabic speakers, Arial and all of its Sans-Serif clones are synonymous with generic.
Arial didn’t gain its status as the ‘default’ everything Arabic font for the reasons you’d expect, because it isn’t especially nice to look at, it doesn’t have a rich typographical legacy, and it definitely isn’t unique in the slightest.
It’s the everything font because it’s the lazy man’s font. It’s bundled with every creative suite and works with every game engine right out of the gate. Nobody goes out of their way to pick it—it’s just that nobody goes out of their way to change it either.
But by using Arial, you give your target audience the green light to let their pattern recognition run wild, thereby associating your game with cheap products, ugly graphics, and spam.
This one font is a neon sign broadcasting that you’re fine with giving your Arabic speaking audience only the lowest hanging fruit—the most generic, widespread, and trite font possible.
And after decades of negative association-induced fatigue, it’s no wonder that your potential audience might file your loc, and your game, into the slop drawer at a glance.
Very few Developers & Publishers would be okay with shipping their English versions with Arial—so why are they okay with doing exactly that to every other Arabic game localization?
There are multiple mature, unique, and free & open-source Arabic typefaces to pick and choose from on Google Fonts. Among those, you’ll likely find something more suitable for your game’s aesthetic and less prone to snap judgment.
There’s no valid reason to stick to your engine’s default Arabic font in this day and age.
Remember that presentation matters just as much to the audience of every language. As shocking as it may sound, taste isn’t exclusive to English & CJK speakers.
Oftentimes, presentation will be the only thing players on the fence can gauge quality by. Don’t give them a reason to write yours off.
By Seif Chaib.
Originally posted on Linkedin.