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Free-to-Play Localization
How to reach your quality goals despite small budgets and other limitations
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Video Games - Global Market Size By Region
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Global Market Size By Platform - Volumes & Trends
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Free-to-Play = Mobile?
F2P
MobilePC
Web
Console
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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