Game Localization Summit

View All Sessions | View All Speakers | Advisors | Sponsors

March 9, 2010

More than ever, game publishers are realizing that their industry is not only benefiting from localized versions of their games, but is wholly dependent on quality localization to drive revenues and increase gamer mindshare. The demand comes from a growing number of countries and emerging markets around the world, and has prompted publishers to partially or fully localize more products into more languages to maximize their ROI.

The Game Localization Summit at GDC is supported and organized by the IGDA Game Localization SIG, and it is aimed at helping game professionals understand how to plan for localization in order to minimize bugs and maximize ROI. Professionals from all departments and areas of expertise are welcome to attend this full day of lectures, panels and game postmortems.

Keynote

New Distribution, New Marketing, New Localization!
Philippe Juton, Director of Localization, THQ

With more territories, new models of distribution, and multinational marketing campaigns, video game publishers are faced with many new challenges; repairing for localization is certainly one of the keys for success. However cozy and approachable the global village concept sounds, the world is still a very big and varied mélange of considerably different cultures, languages, legal systems. Read more...

Highlighted Sessions

Advanced Localization Methods for Japanese Games
Speakers: Peter Fabiano (CapCom), Fabio Minazzi (Binari Sonori), Mark McDonald (8-4), Saeko Inoue Game Arts), Yeonkyung Kim (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Standardizing the Localization Process
Speaker: David Kim (Sony Online Entertainment)
Make Your Game Appeal to the Asian Market
Speakers: Taiyoung Ryu (University of Southern California), Charles Chang (Sony Computer Entertainment Asia), Robert Song (Electronic Arts Korea)
Localizing for the Spanish Speaking Community
Speakers: Diana Diaz Monton (WordLab), Victor Alonso Lion (Pink Noise)

View all Game Localization Summit sessions here.

(back to top)

Advisors

Tom Edwards

Founder & Principal Consultant, Englobe

As the founder and principal consultant of Englobe Inc., a Seattle-based niche consultancy for geocultural content management, Tom Edwards is a gamer who became a unique hybrid of an academic geographer by training, a global program manager and educator by experience and a geocultural strategist by choice, coexisting with a passion for cultures and games. Formerly as Microsoft's Senior Geopolitical Strategist in the Geopolitical Strategy team (a position and team he created and managed), Tom was responsible for protecting the company against political and cultural content errors across all products and locales. He implemented a "geopolitical quality review" process in the Microsoft Game Studios and was personally responsible for reviewing the potential sensitivities of nearly every 1st party PC and Xbox game between 1995 and 2005 as well as many 2nd and 3rd party titles. Tom is also a regular columnist for Multilingual Computing and he is the founder and chair of the IGDA Game Localization SIG. As a consultant, he has worked on numerous titles including Dragon Age: Origins, Ninja Gaiden 2, Ninja Blade and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino

Lecturer & Researcher, Roehampton University London

Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino is a lecturer and researcher in multimedia interactive localization. He has worked non-stop for the past four years to raise awareness about the issues involved in the localisation of video games within both the industry and academia by coordinating several events in Europe and the US. He believes passionately in localized versions that play as wonderfully as original ones, and views the challenging road ahead with a positive determination and excitement. He remains committed to building the bridges that will allow developers, publishers, localizers, and academics understand each other's work better, and ultimately improve overall quality, player satisfaction, and ROI. His expertise lies in the translation of rich-media texts such as video games, films, etc. He has several publications on audiovisual translation and game localization, and although permanently based at Roehampton University London, he is a guest lecturer in many universities around Europe. After the success of the Game Localisation Round Table within Localization World, Miguel together with the Localization SIG Steering Committee collaborated with Think Services to establish the Game Localization Summit at GDC.

(back to top)