GDC 2011 is over and it’s time to take stock. One of the over-riding impressions of the Conference is the massive change going on in the business of games. Some 90% of industry revenue currently comes from the sale of packaged product: consoles and licensed- or first- party titles for them. The remaining 10%...
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Since we launched the Apogee Certified Translator Program, we’ve received a lot of queries, both over email and personally at GDC and the Localization Summit. I will try to answer them here now and later add them to the FAQ page. 1. Does Apogee Certify agencies? No, and here’s why. Agencies don’t do translations,...
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Today we are launching Apogee’s Translator Certification Program. Apogee will query, test and research all applicants to determine their quality of translation and ability to communicate with clients and colleagues. These translators are the best of the best. Publishers can feel assured that their valuable properties are being well taken care of in the...
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The presentation at LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association, see here) went very well. In the participant feedback forms, my presentation was ranked #1, 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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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