Localization summit report in Japan

Localization Summit now!Kenji Ono [email protected]

Note:title has a little relationship with content

Let me introduce…

Kenji Ono

Videogame journalist

SIG-Glocalization member

Please search “SIG-GLOC”

(sorry, only Japanese)

Twitter : kono3478

The business card with

presentment are good at

GDC!

Well,

GDC10 was

held in San

Francisco.

I tripped to Los Angels, because of my airtiket

reservation mistake…

It was hard trip, but

I had a good exeperience

There were great vintage SLOT MACHINEs!

There was a Airport museum in the passage

in San Francisco domestic terminal,

and we could see many vintage Slot Machines there!

I thought that I should change my speech theme from

Localization summit to

But…

I feel boredom…

When will you start?

I am sorry,this is my style.

Localization summit 2010

It started in last year and this is 2nd time.

Advisors: Tom Edwards(Englobe) & Miguel Á. Bernal-

Merino(Roehampton University)

The room became small(120 person) and there were

some guys who couldn’t be attend.

Publishers:1/4,Developers:1/4,Translator:1/2

We discussed about many topics and one of them was

“Localization award”.

Overview of Summit(1)

Localizing large RPGs (Bioware)

Standardizing the Localization Process(SOE)

On the fly Player Messaging (EA & Lingoona)

New Distribution, New Marketing, new Localization (THQ)･･･Keynote

Localizing for the Spanish Speaking Community (Pink Noise & Wordlab)

Overview of Summit(2)

Make your games appealing to the Asian Market(SCEK,

EAK)

Advanced Localization Methods for Japanese Games

(SCE, Capcom, Game Arts)

A case study: Buzz Localization (SCE)

Game Market Graphs

Localizing large RPGs

Theme:Large RPS’s localization process in BioWare

Mass Effect 300000 wards– vo 25,000 lines

Mass Effect2 450000 wards – vo 30,000 lines

Ready for Localization kit in parallel with original

(English)version

Voice guide（for voice recording）

ＩＰ（check of trademark in each areas）

Ｑ＆Ａ（ efficiency improvement of translation work ）

Character bible（overview of characters）

BioWare publisher translator

I guess that this tool

was customized for

translation based on

Mass Effect’s character

conversation tools…

A case study: BUZZ! Localization

BUZZ! Casual quiz game of SCEE

Trivia quiz with a direction of TV quiz show

With special controler, 4 playres

8 million copies for PS2,PS3 and PSP except Japan

18 local areas and languages

The number of quizzes：6000 quizzes

International English, French, Italian, German, Spanish,

Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish,

Polish, Russian, Czech, Croatian, Greek, Australian

English, American English

Each territories have own culture and common sense:

There is no mean for literal translation.

Global quiz and Local quiz = 50:50

Global and Local

“Is the subject of the question known in all

territories?” and ”Is the difficulty level of the question

consistent in all territories?”

2 conditions apply→Global quiz

The other quiz →adaption and Local quiz

Respect of the opinion and judge from local vendors

You should decide Directory Structure, Trackers and

Naming Coventions before translation (6000 questions X

18 locales)

supplement：how to learn English

for Japanese developers

I have met many western game developers and

translators who came to be able to speak Japanese by

playing Japanese games before.

（not Asian countries, but north America and Europe）

There are few Japanese game developers who came to

be able to speak English by playing Western games.

Why？

1: Populous

I retraced the western games I had played in college days…

2:Sim City

3:Flight Sim

There were no story games

But, the situation changed!

In very dramatically now･･･

Reason:there were no western story games I had

wanted to play strongly at that time…

ＤＶＤ：different region code

Blu-ray Disk：same between Japan and US

And there is no region limit in PS3 format disk.

If you change the language option from Japanese to

English in Uncharted 2(Japanese version),

You can play English version!

Let’s play western

AAA story games in

English

I will recommend you to play “International” version.(ex: Star Ocean 4)

See you again at

GDC 2011

[email protected]