5 most popular countries for the app stores.

If I where to have 5 flags that people could choose from and a 6th that was "Other" What would be the best flags that would cover most users. And I know this is super subjective based on a lot of things but i'm asking where YOU would cater for.
I am an Aussie so here's my list.

- Australia
- America
- Canada
- Japan
- India

Anything to add that I should consider or should I just go off a list like this....
https://sensortower.com/blog/top-countries-by-app-downloads-q4-2018

Ty

 

I wouldn't use primarily english speaking countries as separate options - just one "English" option and perhaps have combined image of the flags for those countries, or instead of flags at all - maybe only use languages to keep things simple, maybe with a little flag icon next to each language to make it look nice.

Spanish is a very popular language worldwide, although there are small differences between some of the places people speak/read/write it differently, for instance Portuguese is very similar to spanish, but not identical. I'd try and at least combine some of those into a single option if your translation is not really speech heavy. If your going to make a translation of a single player campaign with lots of dialogue, then that might be a bad idea to combine spanish with portuguese.

Sensor tower is a pretty good source for mobile information and stats - I would trust the data they have is pretty accurate, and perhaps base the original list off those numbers.

I'd also consider info like this:
https://www.fluentin3months.com/most-spoken-languages/

 

I should have mentioned this is not really for translations it's more for some personalisation on the users part as well as changing things like kph to mph.

 

As a person, who was born in "Other", I would pass on your application.

Seriously, do it well or don't do it. Maintaining a less than 200 entry list for country names and maybe for flags if you're generous is nothing.

Edit (and ps.): You mispronounced "Europe" somewhere in your list, entirely

 

Just use IP, to detect location and set flag accordingly. Will save tons of headache.

 

If you're not going to create an exhaustive list, I'd probably include an options menu where the player can just choose those options themselves. Otherwise you're going to unnecessarily offend some of your players by telling them they aren't important enough to make the list, or by making them choose a neighboring historical adversary of their country (Koreans having to choose Japan might piss off some older folks for example).

You've never been to Australia if you think they speak English
(just kidding, love you Australia!)

 

Go all in with 195 flags. (Plus geofencing to add/remove various areas around china based on who is looking).

If you must restrict your flags, go with supported languages. These are typically UK (for English), US (for incorrectly spelled English and archaic measurement units), plus whatever other languages you support.

Or just ditch the flags and make everything an option.

 

fixed

 

And downing a bunch of planes in the 80s.

 

My advice is to either go with all countries, use 'regions' instead, or create a good reason related to your game story to only use specific countries. Otherwise people will just feel like you didn't bother with them.

 

Even NASA has given up on Imperial English units. And after loosing a very expensive Mars orbiter, who can blame them? The mars orbiter wasn't the first problem caused by imperial units either, although its easily the most expensive one.

(Also, can we just pause for a moment to appreciate the irony of an American defense of the Imperial English system. Seriously in all the upheaval of the American and French revolutions you choose to keep that. You changed the spelling of innocent words, just to be different. Started drinking coffee instead of tea. Even changed the side of the road you drove on. Invented baseball to replace cricket. And yet no one thought that abandoning the Imperial English system of units was a good idea? American scientists pretty much developed the system along side the French.)

Edit: Forgot the

 

It was just a bit of friendly teasing, not a serious defense of the imperial system.

 

That what happens, when you poke in to wrong rabbit hole
Same applies, to whole concept of selective flag / language approach vs all vs one (no alternatives).

 

Mine too. I forget not everyone on here has the same sort of humor as a hardened chemical engineer.

 

I mean, all humour aside, I am from england and I can vouch that not many of us actually understand the imperial system despite everything being in it. We use miles, but most people cant tell what 1 mile is equal to in kilometres.

And then theres weighing ourselves, we usually use stone to weigh ourselves but not many people really know what a stone equals in kilograms, we just know that if its a bigger number than the last time weighed in stone we have put on weight.

Thats the thing about imperial vs metric. You can get along just fine using imperial, but you very rarely actually know what things measure. So you know the shop is 4 miles away, you know how long that roughly takes you to get there ,but god knows how many kilometres or metres that is.

Conversly, metric just is easy to work out. Everything goes up in magnitudes of 10,100,1000 etc, instead of nonense numbers added to more nonsense numbers.

So now most of us just use a crazy combination of the two. Driving? Its in miles. Weighing? Could be kilograms or stone depending on the household. Distance measuring on a small scale? could be centimetres or inches. Its for reasons like this that I really wish we just put the imperial system to bed already.

And dont even get me started on crazy units like furlongs, chains, yards, perchs etc. Their all as bat**** crazy as their naming suggests.

 

Ok I think it's clear. Ditch the flags and I'll just have them choose there metrics. kph for normal people and mph for the spuds.

 

Nah, just use meters instead flags, no one will complain then

 

*metres

I can complain about everything!

Edit: Proper localisation can be tricky.