GDC Localization 2010: Sony's Buzz Presentation

The Buzz presentation at the end of the Summit was the most energetic of the day. It was given by Vanessa Wood (SCEE – publisher), Sophie Krauss (Relentless Software – developer) and Fabio Ravetto (Binari Sonori – language vendor).

Like most of the Americans in the audience, I did not know anything about Buzz. Buzz is a highly successful series of quiz games developed by Relentless Software for the PlayStation line of consoles and handhelds. The wild MC and writing immediately remind me of the “You Don’t Know Jack” series from Berkeley Systems, which I fondly remember from ten years ago. Only Buzz is much bigger, wilder and funnier.

If you haven’t played Buzz, at least look at look at this video to get a taste of it.

The localization issue here is immense. Some of the questions work well between countries (Elvis, DeLorean cars and science fiction movies translate well). However, some topics do not (Golf is popular almost wholly in English speaking countries, for instance). The problem here becomes one of not translation, but transcreation. Substantial parts of the game must created anew for the target countries.

How big a job is this? For some game types, transcreation might not be so difficult. For something as far ranging and difficult to quantify as a quiz show, however, the difficulty is extremely high. Fifteen years ago, when I first entered the game industry as a writer I was a member of the Hollywood Writers’ Guild (WGA). Of their members, the very highest paid writers in all of Hollywood were the question writers for Jeopardy, a quiz show. Jeopardy is a popular quiz program in America which has struggled in every attempt to take it outside of the US. It currently only shows in the US, Canada, Sweden, Slovakia and Russia.

Excellent and informed writing, in each language, is essential. Without it, the whole project flounders.

Target languages for Buzz are French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish and Russian. In each language, there is a team of ten including four dedicated writers — people to create original text for their countries.

Questions are divided into those suitable for an international audience and those that are not. Those that aren’t are further divided into those that require additional assets and those that do not. Everything is handled in a single CMS: Scribe.

The results are fabulous. A well reviewed, well liked game that appears to travel over borders seamlessly. Millions upon million sold. 16 total titles, numerous awards. This is a case study of a great success, in a field where failure is far more typical.

Screenshots from the presentation at GDC are below. Please click on them to see a full-sized, readable version of each.