From our visit this last week, I would tell you that Vegas is doing just fine. The crowds are all there and things are humming. If there is a downturn, most likely it is from well-heeled players refusing to lose substantial amounts. The $5 Blackjack tables were quite full, thank you.

Below are some photos of the CityCentre construction project as we passed through. Word now is that they are considering a bankruptcy filing.

Today, I’m going to scribble down a few of the general overview notes on the GDC Localization Summit. I may get a few things wrong—if so, please correct me in the comments. Digital recordings of the proceedings will be available in three weeks, and I expect to be able to give more detailed (and less prejudiced) material at that time. Stay tuned for updates!

Here are some of my semi-random notes:

Tom Edwards opens the session with a warm welcome and some numbers. Using figures from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he shows the global market for videogames should rise from $39 billion in 2008 to $48 billion in 2009, even with a world-wide recession. EA already reports that more than 50% of its business comes from localized SKU’s. The fastest industry growth through 2012 should be in India and China.

Personal aside: I take all sales numbers with a grain of salt. Nothing is more jealously guarded by any corporate entity than its sales figures. Even public companies are extremely careful what to divulge in their annual reports. Quoted, industry-wide figures can be quite wide of the mark even in North America and Western Europe. Once other parts of the world are included, these figures are no more accurate than their methodologies. Don’t take them too seriously.

A discussion of India sparked a number of comments. One participant mentioned doing studies on the 20 different languages of India to determine the best ones for localization from a business standpoint. China, fortunately, has solidified with spoken Mandarin for most entertainment (though voice acting in Cantonese and Min/Fukkianese/Taiwanese might be valuable).

As might be natural, Tom emphasized Culturalization, the concept of localizing titles entirely (storyline, art, text, voice, music, etc.) for their target markets. It’s an all-embracing concept, one that his company specializes in.

The number of languages translated has expanded immensely in the past three to five years. Every speaker and every active localization member agreed on this. When most of us entered the business, localization was strictly French, Italian, German and Spanish (FIGS). Today, all games coming from Sony Europe are routinely translated into ten languages: FIGS, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Portuguese. Over the next year, Russian and Polish will be added.

Personal aside: This fits with Apogee’s experience as well, though the language list is different. When we started in 1998, our orders were strictly for FIGS. As of 2007, Simplified Chinese was our fifth biggest language, with a substantial number of our orders calling for 15 working languages.

Additional aside: For whatever reason, the Summit speakers appeared largely concentrated on European languages and cultures. When Chinese, Thai or Indian languages were brought up, it was not typically for the opportunities that they presented, but for the problems that they posed. There were audience members from Japan and the Japanese videogame conglomerates, but they were largely silent during the presentation.

In a polling of the speakers, it was generally agreed that Polish and Russian were the “low-hanging fruit”; relatively easy to localize, with substantial business rewards for doing so.

Jaime Gine, Vice President of International Development Services for Electronic Arts gave the keynote address. I’ll place substantial notes on this once the full text is available, but here is an overview. His words should be taken quite seriously, as he handles the largest game localization operation in the world, costing more than $50 million a year with major offices in Spain and Singapore.

Jaime used three languages as his samples: Spanish (European), Swedish and Polish. He contrasted the market needs for localization of each. Spain, in general, expects all games to be full localized with recognizable voice actors where appropriate. Jaime gave a great example of the difference between Spanish and German soccer announcers. Swedes, with their relative fluency and comfort with English, were most interested in having subtitles on the screen and fully translated user manuals. The Polish market requires complete localization. Only the hardcore gamers will have fun playing through an alien language like English.

Jaime gave substantial figures on the effects of localization. He was able to do so by showing statistics of backlist (older) titles that were localized and re-released in Poland and other countries. Sales of FIFA, for instance, jumped 500% in Poland once the localized versions were available. In Russia, the effect was even greater.

While not sharing exact numbers, Jaime did mention that there were significant business differences to localizing for Spain and Poland. Being a full Western economy, games in Spain can be sold for 50€ each, while in Poland and Russia games more typically go for 30€. In other words, more games need to be sold in order to justify the costs of localization.

Jaime was clear that he was giving older information (from 2007). He expertly avoided discussing any of the Asian languages, beyond the obvious: “You simply MUST localize into those languages.”

I have not included the discussions of translation tools or a few of the other sessions, either for lack of personal notes or that there was little startling to be said. The take-away from this session is that the 75 people in the room there that day are essential to about half of the industry’s revenue—billions of dollars a year.

And the business is expanding.

Rapidly.

Until then, here are a few more reports from around the world.

HUNGARY: In the city where I live over 1000 people lost their job because a major firm closed down.  Besides that, whoever has a Swiss franc or Euro based loan has to pay 30% more because the Hungarian Forint has fallen so low.  They are talking about raising the VAT, but it is already 20%! Personally I think I am lucky because I have a stable job, I work for the government and I have no loans.

JAPAN: Out here in Japan I’ve had many people candidly tell me they’re angry at America for causing this world crisis.  I’ve even had cab drivers say that to me who didn’t know I was American!  Basically, America is “at fault” for being greedy.

CHINA (Beijing): My cousin graduated from college this year. She’s now looking for a job as accountant. This is really hard for her. “For every job posted, there would be hundreds of job-seekers applying for it. The employers always expect everything from the appliers, graduated from famous university, years of experience, good English speaker, low salary etc.” My sister planed to change her job at the beginning of this year; however, when she heard what my cousin said, she changed her idea.  There is good news also. The house price is declining; I hope I can buy an apartment this year. I am fighting for it.

SWEDEN: Personally I have not been very affected of the crisis, the first couple of months while mortgage interest was very high, we struggled a bit, but we were never in any real danger of loosing our home. I know a few people who had to wait for their salaries due to the employers financial problems, but this situation did not last long enough for them to get in any real financial troubles. I have however had less work working as a freelancer these first months, I suspect that it might be a consequence of the global situation.

ROMANIA: I’ll start by saying that a word of wisdom in Romania’s slang: “What does a Romanian do when he’s out of money? He exchanges 100 Euros!” and by this I really mean that even after so many years of “democracy” people are still keeping some of their money under the mattress. Besides we have a history of crashing banks. So the real crisis is actually going on on TV and media. Most of the country lives in small towns and villages and there self-sufficient small plots of crops,vegetables and livestock keep people alive. As for the big cities… well, here the real thing comes when intellectuals and most of the private workers receive smaller wages. Government business and related companies are being restructured but this is also because of a change of government. These changes happen every 4 years but this time it is a bit greater than usual. Other than that the most affected industries are construction and car dealers where the majority of loans where directed to. And these led to house prices above anything imaginable and an enormous number of cars on roads here. There is a global crisis but I believe ours is just over 50% fabricated.

And now for the most common response by far: “I’m really, really busy and will get back to you later.” This message comes from FRANCE, GERMANY, POLAND, CHINA (several times), SPAIN, JAPAN, TAIWAN, RUSSIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, FINLAND and others.

ITALY (Milan): “My sister’s boyfriend, who graduated in IT last year, finally found a job 4 months ago. Unfortunately, despite what they initially promised him, they’ve already reduced his contract from one year to 6 months. Also, the Northern part of Italy has been always the more active one, always plenty of jobs and opportunities but within the last several months, 3 major companies closed! One friend of mine used to work with one of them. He was fired after 6 six years and he is now a single father with two adorable daughters… That’s quite sad…”

ITALY (Bologna): “Well, I’m not feeling any crisis at all at the moment. Nobody I know are losing their jobs (though a friend of mine knows someone who did, he sees things differently. He said “The world is like it’s all over and the bad guys have won”), nor are they changing their lifestyles. All I can see is shopkeepers raising their prices “because of the crisis”. I am not denying there is a crisis, but I’m just not feeling it.”

RUSSIA (Saratov): “First of all I can say that the crisis has not affected my life significantly. Some of my friends are experiencing problems with work but those problems are not critical. Overall the mood of the people around me (regarding the economic problems) is negatively affected by the propaganda on TV.”

ROMANIA: “I’ll start by saying that a word of wisdom in Romania’s slang: “What does a romanian do when he’s out of money? He exchanges 100 Euros!” and by this I really mean that even after so many years of “democracy” people are still keeping some of their money under mattresses. So the real crisis is actually going on on TV and media. There is a global crisis but I believe ours is 50% fabricated. House and cars loans could have been managed to drop slowly and without that big fuss.”

BRAZIL: “My country went through a terrible economic crisis in the early 1990´s and in recent years has seen very positive economic growth. So people are used to hearing the word ‘crisis’, but the real situation can be sensed not in the TV news, but in the T-shirt of a presenter of a very popular Sunday night entertainment TV show: ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ – in the colors of the American flag. Of course people who work in the multinational industry sectors are at risk of losing their jobs, but then again job safety was never a reality here. The services sector is thriving, the summer sales are on, car sales are increasing because of more credit facilities. I think people in a way ‘want’ to be intimidated by the word ‘crisis’ because it is a fact in the USA and Europe, but at present Brazil is holding a positive and laidback attitude to this, as if watching from a distance a movie that we have watched many, many times!”

Here are some of their answers:

• GERMANY: “While everyone is talking about the economic crisis, its direct impact hasn’t arrived here yet. For me, nothing has changed at all.”
• SWEDEN: “Living in Gothenburg, the economic crisis has struck the city really hard. Since VOLVO is a big employer here, almost everyone you meet knows someone who has been affected by their cutting back. I see people around me who decided to sell their houses etc. since they can´t afford living there on a reduced salary.”
• SPAIN: “In Spain the crisis is being especially intense because a great deal of our economic growth was based on construction. Since getting a mortgage or credit line now is much harder, construction is totally down and unemployment is rising to 20% and above. Fortunately, people around me do not depend directly on construction and no serious effects are seen between friends and family, although everybody is concerned and worried with the unstoppable unemployment rate and the trend is to spend as little money as possible just in case they lose their jobs.”
• NORWAY: “Not much has happened here. Those who have stocks have lost half of their money. That’s all. Nobody I know have lost their jobs in Norway. It costs more to rent an apartment than ever. I’m working more than normally in order to prepare for bad days.”
• JAPAN: “About the economic crisis, nobody has been laid off within my family or among my friends fortunately, but the owner of an Indian
  restaurant I go often told me that the economic crisis certainly affected to their business since there are fewer customers after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. On the other hand, there are flash benefits to be paid (12,000 yen) by the government within a month, so my mother for example, is looking forward to buy a Blueray player with it.”
• INDONESIA: “People in my local region (Indonesia) are not much affected by the economic crisis that has occurred in USA. The situation is still tolerable and the effects not too significant. We were currently focusing on the political campaigns for the upcoming general election ”
• POLAND: “My personal view – one with which most people disagree – it that it is mostly panic.”
• BRAZIL: “I have a regular job (as a programmer) in an advertising agency. People usually say that when things get rough, the advertising budget is one of the first things to get cut. Not from what I’m experiencing. My agency is acquiring more clients than ever since I’ve been there, and hiring new people all the time. None of my friends are suffering any side effects from the so-called crisis either. My father runs his own thriving business as well, a marina. You’d think that during a crisis people would give up their high-priced luxuries such as boats, but again, that’s not what we observed. He’s been so busy lately with the summer and all that I barely even saw him during these last few months, except for Christmas and New Year’s.”
• LATVIA: “Everything’s just peachy. The government resigned last week. The new prime minister just made an announcement on his new government a few hours ago. Inflation rate hit 15.4 % in 2008 and the VAT has been raised to 21% since January 1st. Prices rise so fast you can actually see the difference from one month to another.  I guess the economic and financial crisis is everywhere. I miss living in the US.”
• RUSSIA: “I am not affected by the local brainwashing mass media. As far as I know, TV broadcast programs or any other mass media sources, including newspapers or radio shows, are trying to blame the US for the crisis (as if the cold war is back again) to distract people from the predicament in Russia – though it’s not a secret to anyone that the inflation rate (not the official number) is over 200% for the past year. … I see prices rising by a ruble for every small article of food every month. … The xenophobic nature, as well as envy of most people make them rebuke others, mostly the US, for the crisis. Which I can understand – people usually are conformists by nature and they repeat whatever they hear from the masses or the mass media. I, personally, blame no one for the crisis, every country had a large role in contributing to it. And I have no doubts that the larger portion might have come from Russia itself.”

This is a small part of the response I’ve received. Living in the Inland Empire of Southern California (good weather, good schools, wild property price swings), there has been quite a bit of effect. See it here.

More reports are coming in from around the world. Part Two is located here and Part Three is here.