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Page 1: Games Connection Paris 2016 - F2P Localization

Free-to-Play Localization

How to reach your quality goals despite small budgets and other limitations

Page 2: Games Connection Paris 2016 - F2P Localization

Video Games - Global Market Size By Region

Page 3: Games Connection Paris 2016 - F2P Localization

Global Market Size By Platform - Volumes & Trends

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Free-to-Play = Mobile?

F2P

MobilePC

Web

Console

Page 5: Games Connection Paris 2016 - F2P Localization

Comparison and Challenges For Free-to-PlayFremium Web, PC, Console & Mobile

(Free-to-Play)

• Free to try out, purchases only by engaged players, feeling compelled by the game

• Small/mid-sized dev budgets

• Marketing = User Acquisition

• Very high # of competitor titles

• Outsourcing, crowd-sourcing & machine-translation (a.k.a. ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’)

Classic PC, Console & Mobile (Pay-to-Play)

• Purchased up-front, at one-time fee

• Big development budgets, high quality assets (quality as USP)

• Marketing = PR

• Low # of competitor titles per genre

• Polished-decent localization (outsourcing)

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Elevator Pitch for F2P High-Quality Localization & LQA

➔ unless players decide to invest (time and money) in your and not the next game, there is

no revenue for devs+publishers

➔ goal needs to be to: hook players, lower barriers to spend money, avoid pitfalls to lose

players early on (crashes, bad UX, unclear instructions…)

➔ annoyed players quickly move on to the next title, won’t wait for fixes or later updates -

they are essentially ‘burned’, possibly not just for this but also your future games

➔ Good loca helps players enjoy a (hopefully good) game - and needs to be recognized and

supported accordingly

Loca head’s experience + clout with MGMT often deciding factor on a publisher’s approach to loca (‘enlightened leadership’ needed)

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Localization Management = Project Management?

Project Management● Proactive● Responsive

Crisis Management● Reactive● Mitigating

Disaster Triage● Best effort● Prioritizing

UPSTREAMHIGH involvement in schedules, GREAT access to stakeholders

DOWNSTREAMNO involvement in schedules, NO access to stakeholders

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How’d You Like Your Localization? (You May Pick Only 2)

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(F2P) Game Industry’s Main Challenges for Localization

Challenge #1 Pervasive “Localization as afterthought, LQA as unnecessary luxury” mindset

Challenge #2Perpetually young, inexperienced game development teams that re-discover localization best-practices only through own experience

Challenge #3Release cycles, peak times & headcount concerns

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Best Practices: Proactive Localization Management

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Plan Ahead● Select, groom and regularly evaluate preferred vendors (localization and LQA agencies,

freelance translators and reviewers, script doctors).● Prepare for contingencies and have screened backups in place for peak and worst-case

scenarios.● If you can justify the internal headcount, use SLV & freelancers over MLV and manage

workflows internally, for better control and scaling

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Identify Bottlenecks● Look for resource and capacity bottlenecks like insufficient number and specialisation of

vendors or internal team members.● Look for time bottlenecks like short lead times.● Look for external constraints like being less attractive as a client (and getting less

experienced resources), compared to other publishers.● Identify the parts in your localization workflow of a specific title that CAN be sped up with the

right interventions.

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Resolve Bottlenecks● Increase number of available and screened resources (people, hardware ...)● Make advance bookings for critical periods (esp. LQA); the additional costs are often well

outweighed by the benefits, and it can even be possible to negotiate lower rates.● Work with producing and/or developers to establish early visibility on project milestones like

Alpha, Beta, Code-Freeze and Text-Freeze as well as communicate minimum time requirements for localization.

● Make sure developers provide localizable assets as text (not bitmaps), with as much context information as possible, and recording script lines sorted in dialog flow (not alphabetically).

● Reshape the economic conditions and create incentives for vendors.● Make sure developers provide developer console/debug access or cheats in test builds.

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Prioritize● Focus money, time and people on mission-critical components of each localization project

(ex.: submission relevant tasks).● Conduct early text reviews looking for terminology violations (ahead of LQA).● Prioritize translation of recording scripts (also in text-freeze decisions), to have time for pick-

ups.

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Achieve Vendor Buy-in● Start discussing workload expectations for the peak season(s) with internal Producing and

localization vendors as early as possible, including them in your planning.● Identify differences in client/vendor agendas, and utilise them creatively to incentivise

vendors and build mutually beneficial trust relationships.● Provide vendors with all available reference material (and, if possible, test builds) ahead of

translation hand-offs.● Maintain and monitor a Q&A database between translators and developers/Producing with

quick turnaround times to provide missing translation context.

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Introduce Corrective Measures IN TIME

● In case of late hand-offs, increase the number of translators (quality trade-off).● Shorten test passes while booking additional testers per language.● Have developers provide savegames and screenshots when cheats or developer console

commands are unavailable.

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Use The RIGHT Tools● Make use of latest developments in text analyzing tools, for instance create, use and

iteratively fine-tune blacklists to screen for profanity, culturally sensitive translations or expressions that would not be in line with a targeted age rating.

● Maintain localizable text assets in online databases that are actually MADE for translations, allowing text updates with change highlighting and notifications, on-the-fly text exports into test builds by developers and translation-friendly interfaces, including glossary support.

● Use such online text databases also to have LQA testers trigger and check localized voice recordings, or make changes and corrections directly to the in-game text, while giving the game’s translators final approval of any such changes online.(If you don’t have or find these tools, don’t be afraid to create them.)

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Thank You!

For (more) Questions & feedback:Michael K. SchmidtSenior Localization Manager GREE Intl. Entertainmentwww.linkedin.com/in/michaelkschmidt


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