The Use and Reception of Varieties of Spanish in Videogames

Abstract

With more than 585 million speakers, Spanish promises to be a profitable target language for videogame sales. However, as Spanish has such a wide geographical distribution, the question of variety deserves some attention. Companies and websites alike have recently started to differentiate between European Spanish and Latin American Spanish. This paper presents a three-phase study to delve into the matter. Based on a catalogue of 3003 videogames available on Steam in Spanish and published between 2006 and 2016, a survey among 172 developers is carried out to confirm the companies’ preferred varieties. Then, the analysis of a small corpus extracted from the catalogue shows whether in-game text actually represents the chosen variety of Spanish. Finally, a survey among 569 gamers provides some insight into their tolerance for foreign varieties. This paper aims to describe the current situation and provide a starting point for further reflection on some of the questions posed by the results of this study.