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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Culturalizing a mobile game means adapting more than its words: it can involve interface direction, imagery, events, community participation and how players discover the game. TapBlaze’s work on Good Pizza, Great Pizza offers a concrete example. In a GamesBeat interview, the studio described beginning Arabic localization with Egyptian Arabic, reshaping parts of the experience, and drawing lasting content from player ideas. The account suggests how those choices fit together, but does not prove that any single change caused the game’s reported growth.
What culturalization meant for Good Pizza, Great Pizza
TapBlaze CEO Anthony Lai and community marketing manager Yuni Cho described culturalization as learning about players in a specific region and using that understanding to shape the game and its outreach. Translation was one part of the work, alongside interface and visual changes, locally relevant activity, and community involvement. Their examples are a single studio’s account, not a universal formula or an independently measured experiment.
The sequence they described is useful: choose an audience and a starting point, bring cultural and game knowledge into localization, adapt the experience where needed, and keep listening after release. Distribution and community work then help players encounter and shape the game.
Why TapBlaze started with Egyptian Arabic
Cho said TapBlaze decided in 2020 to localize the game into Arabic, looking at potential audience rather than immediate revenue. The team chose Egyptian Arabic first after its market research identified Egypt as an entertainment hub for the wider MENA region. This was the studio’s market choice, not a claim that one dialect represents every Arabic-speaking audience.
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For the translation work, the team sought someone with both cultural familiarity and experience playing the game. Cho explained: “We wanted someone that grew up in that culture, someone who really understood the demographic there.” The goal was to have a collaborator who could advise on language and on design decisions that might affect how the game reads to its audience.
Adapt the interface and imagery, not just the dialogue
Arabic reads right to left, so TapBlaze adjusted the interface to support that direction. As Cho put it, “Normally the text would read from left to right, but Arabic reads right to left.” A localization plan that translates strings but leaves layout assumptions untouched can produce an experience that still feels designed for another language.
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The interview also describes changing some pork imagery to beef or cows. Cho discussed a Muslim character whose visibility increased after localization for Arabic-speaking regions, while cautioning that the character alone did not account for the game’s popularity. These are specific choices made by TapBlaze; they should not be generalized into assumptions about all Arabic-speaking or Muslim players.
How the reported Egypt growth unfolded
Cho said the game took three years to become popular in Egypt after the localization decision. She reported that in 2023 its daily active users (DAU) spiked to 1.5 million, and that it reached number one in Egypt’s game charts and overall app ranking for about a month. She also described a subsequent ripple into Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These dates, rankings and explanations are interviewee-reported; the interview does not supply independent chart records or data that isolates the effect of localization from other factors.
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GamesBeat’s 2024 article also reported more than 300 million downloads and over one million daily players for the game. Those are historical figures reported in that article, not current totals. The interview does not establish a causal link between any one adaptation and those broader metrics.
Let community ideas become part of the game
TapBlaze described several ways of turning player participation into product input. Contests invited players to design a country flag using pizza ingredients, a pizza box, or a character; the studio selected winners and incorporated some designs as lasting game content. Cho said that visible influence showed players “that they also have the power to change the course of the game.”
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The garden feature came from detailed suggestions in Reddit and Discord communities, according to Cho. The team developed and tested it during a summer event. She said it gave near-lapsed or endgame players another reason to return, but the interview provides no retention figures or test design to quantify that effect.
The platforms had different ownership models in Cho’s account: TapBlaze started the subreddit and later gave users more ownership, while the Discord was fan-made and fan-run. The interview’s estimate of 55,000 to 57,000 subreddit users is historical and should not be read as a current community size.
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Reach players through more than one channel
Lai said the team initially treated daily active users as its north-star metric and looked for regions with large potential audiences. He recalled a streamer hypothesis from around 2018: viewers watching a streamer play the Steam version might use their phones to download the free mobile game. The effort reached South Korea rather than the intended US target. That anecdote illustrates an audience-discovery idea, not a controlled comparison proving streamers were more effective than other channels.
Cho also cited local shows, jokes, events and items, along with activity on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other communities. The interview gives no channel-level spending or attribution data, so it cannot establish which activity contributed most to growth.
A practical culturalization checklist
- Choose a specific starting audience. Treat a language or regional launch as a deliberate decision, and avoid assuming that a broad language label captures local differences.
- Involve people with cultural and product knowledge. TapBlaze wanted a translator who understood the audience and had played the game, enabling feedback beyond word choice.
- Review the whole experience. Check reading direction, layout, imagery, characters, events and items—not only dialogue and menus.
- Build a route for player feedback. Contests and community discussions can inform content, but explain how suggestions will be considered rather than implying every idea will ship.
- Connect discovery to the product’s audience. Streamers and social communities may expose the game to new players, but treat channel performance as a question to measure rather than an assumed outcome.
- Separate correlation from proof. Track launch, engagement and retention outcomes, while being cautious about attributing regional growth to one cultural change without evidence that can distinguish its effect.
What the interview does—and does not—show
GamesBeat’s interview, published June 5, 2024 and updated June 18, 2025, presents TapBlaze’s own account of its choices. It shows how localization, design, community input and distribution can be considered together; it does not provide independent verification of the company’s metrics or establish which practice caused which outcome.
Lai also described the game’s revenue mix at the time as 40% in-app purchases and 60% advertising, and said the studio had not raised venture capital. Those are interview-era statements, not evidence of TapBlaze’s current finances. The interview’s value is in the decisions it documents—not in treating its historical figures as current benchmarks.
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