January 22nd, 2008
“When they called my name,” remarked Brigid Bergara, “I was completely flabberghasted. I planned to attend the annual online gaming web design award night for fun and the after-parties, but lo and behold I walked home with an award for best new analysis and statistical measurement in a online gaming web design project.” “Brislan Dente was right,” relays Cecily Steinhouse, winner of the best illustration of classical online gaming web design design implementation, “to win an award here really means something. I happily dedicate this achievement to my wife and family, who have put up with my work schedule for the past years.” Winning an award at this online gaming web design ceremony is a marked achievement. There are three specific groups in the online gaming web design industry that pick lucky winners. The first, honorary executives and legacy leaders, act as character references for new awardees and long standing figures alike. The second group, a randomly selected group of online gaming web design employees, votes amongst themselves to choose who best represents their interests. Finally, the academy itself, made up of corporate executives and the general public at large, vote on all finalists. The winners are name according to simple majority. “All in all,” surmised Stiteler Riecke, who oversaw the organization of online gaming web design award presenters, “I think everyone had a great time. We definitely showed the local crowd and the media about the positive forces at work in our industry, and this can only help us as we move forward into more aggressive, larger projects.” A few notable politicains joined in the evening’s festivities, including long time online gaming web design industry supporter Mcconkey Furlan, who currently holds a seat in the state senate. State representative Englehart Dienhart, who also works closely with top online gaming web design industry execs, made an appearance during the second half of the show to present a special public service award to Mindy Shams from the Marquerite Reining & Jeane Aquero Corporate online gaming web design Design team. The public service award is given to someone who “Exemplifies selflessness, service, and optimism.” As always, the online gaming web design ceremony organizers pitched the crowd numerous times about joining local firms and teaming up with the professionals to work on design and production projects of their own. Several ads for executive level openings and administrative work were found in the ceremony’s program notes, all boasting solid fringe benefits and some of the most competitive salaries in the online gaming web design sector. Morgan Gladin and Hollingworth Mcphie, who were responsible for organizing the night’s after parties, recieved a surprise round of applause after being mentioned by name when Jenkin Donaghe, Online gaming web design Academy President, officially announced an open invitation for all ceremony attendees to celebrate beginning immediately after the close of the curtain. “The fact that the selection process for recognition int he online gaming web design industry is so complicated demonstrates a lot forethough and consideration for fairness,” said Weinstein Kurian VP of Operations for the Lamott Bueti INC Corporation, “and this goes hand in hand with the level of quality we as a online gaming web design industry demonstrate to the general public.” “Maybe next year…” smiled Vilello Kuehne, who missed an award by a mere tenth of a point to stalwart competitor Behymer Culcasi from the Weld Svedin firm. “I know the academy of online gaming web design design and production respects my work and I’m confident that I will win an award one of these days!”
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The web is a communication machine, breaking through political, cultural, and geographic boundaries to reach billions of different people around the world. As a tool, it stimulates social relationships, creates business, and most importanly shares the vast expanse of human knowledge. The commercial use and ramifications of the web seem to be limitless. Big ticket companies like Ebay connect hobbiests and sellers with buyers from around the world, while search giant Google has indexed the internet in multiple languages and consolidated billions of pages of human creativity into one massive index.
As with any technology, there are of course some road blocks that get in the way of its use. On the internet, a universal medium, it is the way in which we communicate. If there was only one language spoken in the world, things would be a lot simpler. Unfortunately for web marketers, grabbing customers from different countries and cultures means that websites must be created in a multi-lingual fashion, complete with word for word translations so that other, non English speaking customers can be customers. The need for multi-lingual translations is especially apparent in the cyber gaming services sector, where there is no actual "location" of the service, since it exists on the web (although it is physically bound to the Earth at a datacenter). Furthermore, the competition for internet traffic is grueling, so segregating customers who speak different languages would be costly and ultimately inefficient.
After recent legislation effectively banning most forms of online gaming was enacted in the USA, online casinos and most all web sports betting websites were left high and dry. Their customer base was literally wiped off the map overnight. The solution: open up to the rest of the world, even if it meant a significant investment in the creation of multi-lingual websites and translations. Accordingly, those online casinos that survived the USA legal situation became focused on the European and Asian markets, which naturally necesitated websites in multiple languages and multi-lingual customer service representatives.
Though the USA was clearly the number one sports betting market, online gaming sites had to find a way to make money. Some simply closed, consolidated, or stopped accepting US traffic. The sites that survived, however, began to focus on the European Market and its slate of sporting events. Whereas most in the USA enjoy basketball betting and NFL betting Europeans clearly are in love with football, cricket, car racing, tennis, and other sports. The European soccer leauge UEFA is huge, and attracts millions of fans yearly. Likewise, betting on La Liga soccer, or the British Premier league, is in high demand in their respective countries, much like NFL betting is in the USA. The only noteworth cross-over among the USA and Euro gaming cultures is basketball betting, due mostly to an active European basketball leauge that feeds the NBA with top players each year.
Non sports companies did much better in the transition to the European market. Each major online casino hired new staff, and translated their websites into as many as 12 different languages. Unlike sports, however, the games offered by most online casinos are universal. Everyone is familiar with Las Vegas, Montenegro, and Macau, so the demand for online blackjack and other games is universal and requires no new technology or marketing to attract players.
Despite differences in sporting taste, however, there are some USA sports events that are followed around the world, mostly due to large marketing and TV audiences. Accordingly, Super Bowl betting is enjoyed the world over on the NFL's last major game of the year. On the more traditional side, Americans, Brits, Australians, and others love Kentucky Derby betting due to the fact that horse racing is a time tested industry that is very popular in many countries. As a result, in order to get these international customers, gaming marketers had to not only translate languages on their websites, but also tailor each respective marketing campaign to different populations of people in a way that would attract the most attention.
As you can imagine, cross-lingual, cross-cultural gaming marketing can be expensive, but the rewards clearly outweigh the costs. Diversifying to Non USA markets is the way the industry is headed, and new jobs for multi-lingual website designers, programmers, marketers, and client services staff are being created on an almost daily basis. So, no matter what the USA legislates with respect to online gaming, the show still goes on: even if it's now in Spanish, Russian, French, Polish, or Cantonese...