Introduction

The main point of regional titles / names is the differences between regional naming, text translations, and text transliterations, and how to implement those in our data model. Regional titles mean that a game or platform is released under different names in different regions, a translation means bringing a text from one language to another, while a transliteration means bringing a text from one script to another without changing the language.

Now many sites out there, if not all of them, use the concept of a "main title", especially for games, with different titles then being "alternative titles" or similar. This concept is flawed to begin with, as there is no such thing as a main title. For any player, the title which he knew a game or platform under first is his / her "main title". This title depends on the region the player resides in, the platform he / she played a game on, even the decade he / she got to know the game or platform.

But the problem goes further than only games or platforms. Say print magazines, or developer names. Japanese developers need their name in Japanese script in the database, and we Latin script people need transliterations to spell it.

More information on the issue with examples can be found in this forum post and this blog post.

So we will use a different approach to this issue.

The main thing we want to do is to assign titles to top level objects like games with additional attributes, like region, language, platform, and so forth. With these data in the database, we will be able to show every user his / her appropriate title using the information the user entered about his / herself. Furthermore, we will need to implement a hierarchical fallback of titles, if the native title of the object isn't present in the database. Finally, these fallback options should be customizable.

Another important thing to achieve is the possibility for users to contribute translations and transliterations to titles / names, so we will have everything in Latin script in the database, but save the original script and spelling, too.

A minor thing to document is where and how game titles are used. Every release of a game comes with different locations where the title can be shown, e.g. the front cover of the box, the title screen of the game, or more exotic ones like the install program. So we want to be able to assign game titles to releases, too, saving its locations in the process.

UML overview

Property details

GameTitle attributes

attribute	type	description
Assignment Comment	text	If there's anything to say about why or how a game was named with a certain title, put it here.
Title Type	Tag List 7	see below
Display Title	boolean	From the myriad of titles that a game can have, we should be able to manually decide which title(s) to display in game lists, or rap sheets. Example: While the cover title of the latest Call of Duty game is "Call of Duty: MW3", we shouldn't use this title for game lists and stuff, because it's pure marketing, and easily overlooked, but should use "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" instead.
Time Period Start	date	Some games were re-released with different titles, so are known under different titles in different time windows. In order to map this, we have the "Time Period" fields with start and end, but as these cases are quite rare, the implementation of both fields can wait.
Time Period End	date
Region	id	ID of the region from the Region table, in which the game was known under the assigned title.
GamingEnvironment	id	ID of gaming environment for which the game was known under the assigned title.

ReleaseTitle attributes

attribute	type	description
Assignment Comment	text	If there's anything to say that goes beyond the title location data list, put it here.
Title Location	Tag List 8	see below

TransliteratedString attributes

See this documentation.

Involved tag lists

Tag List 7: Title Type

id	text	Comment
1	Original title	This is the full title the game was originally released under in a certain region. Example: "Final Fantasy IV" in Japan would become "Final Fantasy II" in the US.
2	Abbreviation / short form	This is for common short forms of titles like "HoMM" for "Heroes of Might & Magic", or "X-Wing" for the first part of the X-Wing series
3	Extension / long form	Although seldom, there might be cases where the release title is a short form of something, so we need to be able to specify it's long form, too.
4	Development title / Pre-release title	This regards to titles known to have been used by the developers / publishers before actual release.
5	Inofficial title / Nick name	This is for special cases where a game gets a commonly used nick name. Example would be "Dragon Wars" which everyone considered to be "Bard's Tale IV" because it was made by the same team.
6	Re-release title	If a game saw a re-release under a different title within a certain region, it goes here.
7	Series title	We should also be able to specify a title for a game which puts it in context in its series. If you look at the Might & Magic series, for example, you'll notice that a running number ala "Might & Magic 1" would be nice to have.

Tag List 8: Title Location

id	key	text
1		Front cover
2		Back cover
3		Title screen
4		Loading screen
5		Manual
6		Medium
7		Installer
8		Spine cover
9		Desktop Icon
10		Start menu

Open issues

References

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