I still don't get it... I imagine it took nearly as much effort to remove the trivia game as it would've to translate the game
Not even close.
1) You say translate, but there's a lot more to it than that....
A) Cultural references have to be fixed.
B) The way questions are phrased has to be adjusted. (All your base...)
Assuming that goes well, and you have the questions converted to something an english-speaking person can understand, then you have to worry about presentation:
A) As 1 kanji character can translate to a complete word in english, you have to store all the questions.
B) Then, you have to make sure each and every question will fit on the screen, in a pleasing mannner,
which essentially means re-writing -all- the display code.
Assuming that goes well, then you have to figure out where you're going to save all this. In english, its probably 4 to 5 times as large, so some kind of compression is needed, which also has to be written. And all of the code has to be shrunk to make room for the new text....
Get the picture?
As for removing the Trivia game? Comment out 1 line of code (ie, RunTriviaGame() ), and you're done. :-)
And it probably didn't make much sense economically, either. It's not an integral part of the game, so it is hard to justify a team of people working on it for a month vs 1 quick change almost anyone could make.
