Industry
Successful Presentations at LISA Suzhou
The presentation at LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association, see here) went very well. In the participant feedback forms, my presentation was the top ranked one for the Workshops, and only one of the plenary sessions (from HP) ranked higher than mine. Pretty good! Personally more important, this was my first trip to China in 21 years. My first localization agency —... »
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... »
GDC Localization 2010: Sony Online Entertainment
We all watched while Bioware gave us the in's and out's of how they handle large RPG localization. Two titles in one year with a total of just less than 1.5 million words. Wow! And they did a great job. (A Japanese version of the presentation is available here.) Now, let's switch gears. Imagine you have an MMO on your project list.... »
Economist Claims Minimal 2009 Recession in Games
The Economist reports today that the videogame industry had a very mild recession in 2009, with strong indications that growth is now firmly back on track. The article appears here (subscription required) and draws heavily from statistics by Piers Harding-Rolls of the Game Intelligence division of Screen Digest. Relevant points are below. There were indeed some very bad months in 2009.... »
GDC Localization 2010: Global Spanish
Victor Alonso Lion and Diana Díaz Montón gave perhaps the most useful presentation of the day with their Localizing for the Global Spanish Speaking Community. The vast number of Spanish speakers in the world is daunting, made worse for marketers and localizers by the array of dialects. Victor and Diana did their best to synthesize all of the data. The... »
GDC Localization 2010: Winners and Losers
This post is about the surprising changes that came to light at GDC this year. The spectacular rise of Polish, and the disastrous fall of Spanish and Italian. The inevitable, short-sighted contraction of the language basket was indeed severe, but looks to be recovering. 2010 is a year of recovery for the Games Industry. The Great Recession hit with full force... »
GDC 2010: The Free Android Phone
Attendees of GDC this year received a free Android phone. After standing in a long, long line to clear all of the documents, attendees were handed a random choice of phone: Verizon Droid or a Nexus One. I, unhappily, received a Droid. And I am not the only unhappy one. There was a line of attendees with Droid in hand at... »
GDC Localization 2010: Bioware Presentation
Ryan Warden and Chris Christou from Bioware gave a solid and stunning look at what takes place at their very large projects for localization. The summary of their presentation has already been well documented for the non-localization reader here. Read it now, if you haven't already. Some bits of data that weren't included, or came out in the question-and-answer period: Mass Effect... »
Game Localization Business
In this post, you can find the four primary slides created for our GDC presentation on the business of games localization. The biggest take-away from these slides is that localization is still in its early days. Companies are still relying too heavily on their home language markets. Between 20% and 30% of publisher income is from localized SKUs. Only relatively small... »
GDC Localization Summit 2010
The GDC Localization Summit 2010 is over for the year. Tom Edwards and Miguel Bernal put on one hell of a show. They had a big success last year, and they worked hard to try to improve it. In some ways, it was bigger and better. Attendance was up (I figured about 90 to 110 people at the 2009 summit; 140... »