games connection paris 2016 - f2p localization

Free-to-Play Localization

How to reach your quality goals despite small budgets and other limitations

Video Games - Global Market Size By Region

Global Market Size By Platform - Volumes & Trends

Free-to-Play = Mobile?

F2P

MobilePC

Web

Console

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)

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)

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

How’d You Like Your Localization? (You May Pick Only 2)

(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

Best Practices: Proactive Localization Management

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

Thank You!

For (more) Questions & feedback:Michael K. SchmidtSenior Localization Manager GREE Intl. Entertainmentwww.linkedin.com/in/michaelkschmidt