With these new avenues for presenting voiced dialogue, an earlier study (Mangiron and O'Hagan 2006) commented on the strategic use of regional accents applied to re-voicing certain game characters. The technique is also associated with the use of humour to bring comic relief, which is often a significant and yet under-explored characteristic of video games affecting translation (Mangiron 2010). One important strategy for dealing with linguistic variation in the form of dialect in game translation involves the introduction of a dialect in the TT where there is none in the ST. This may be regarded as a controversial technique and tends to be used only in certain types of translations, such as children's literature, theatre plays, comics, or animation films. While this translation strategy is commonly used in games and international advertising campaigns, other types of translation are likely to be governed by the opposite "homogenizing convention", even if various sociolinguistic markers are already present in the original. Chiaro suggests that comedy is an exception to the homogenizing tendency and that "it is not at all unusual for comic or cartoon characters to be dubbed with stereotypical accents" (ibid., 159). This also seems to apply to audio localization for games, where originally unmarked speech is turned into marked speech with the use of regional accents, and this can be recognized as a distinctive translation approach used in game localization.

Several game reviews, such as one by the popular game site IGN, made special reference to voice acting for Xenoblade Chronicles (2011), which was originally released as Xenoblade (2010) in Japan. Commending the game for its “generally excellent localized voice acting", the IGN reviewer comments on the use of a variety of British accents:

[B]ecause Xenoblade Chronicles has been localised for Europe, the voice acting is all charmingly British-accented. Shulk sounds like he's just come out of finishing school, his best mate Reyn sounds like a plucky Londoner, and other characters contribute accents from Yorkshire man to Welsh. Only the Especially Evil Robot Bad Guys miss the mark with their way-over-the-top Cockney guffawing...

                                                 (MacDonald, 2012)

This Nintendo Wii game was first localized in 2011 for PAL regions in Europe, including the UK before its North American release in 2012 with the justified use of British rather than American accent. The way in which particular regional accents are chosen in game localization is significant, as in the case of this game, which targets a British audience. However, the English language version of the J-RPG Dragon Quest VIII (2004) used mostly British English, not linked to the target market as the game was first released for the North American territory. The game's Japanese publisher Square Enix normally prioritizes the NA region and tends to make American English their first choice. In this case, the use of British English was positively received by players, as stated by a reviewer who considered that it fit "the somewhat regal nature of the setting" of the game, and conveyed the "feel" of the game, achieving a critical objective of game localization.

The availability of an audio track for human voices afforded video games new scope to improve localization, and indeed localized games leverage various socio-linguistic devices through the use of human voices. For example, this particular game's liberal use of regional dialect is commented on by the above reviewer:

"[J]ust about every character sports an accent of some kind (mostly British, but there are Italian and Irish ones thrown in there too)" (Dunham ibid.). One supporting character, Yangus, a former thief and a friend of the protagonist, speaks with a Cockney accent and occasionally even uses Cockney rhyming slang. Interestingly, the original Japanese game did not include voice acting, but the publisher decided to voice the script for the localized versions, a decision that proved popular among target players. According to another reviewer who comments on the overall localization quality, the reception of accented voiced dialogue in the localized version was extremely positive:

...even if the story is pedestrian, the characters and especially the localization make the run-of-the-mill plot shine ... Some aspects of the translation (which has voice acting not present in the original Japanese release) are so good, they may actually bring you out of the game for a moment to marvel at how deftly and naturally the humor comes through.

                                                                                                                                                            (Maragos 2005)

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