The Game Localization Summit at this year’s Game Developers Conference is set to highlight to publishers the importance of “quality localization to drive revenues and increase gamer mindshare.” While it may sound like the event focuses on the nuances of localization and narrative, that isn’t quite it.
The GLS is being sponsored by XLOC, a company that specializes in providing developers with middleware solutions for better integrating localization into the game development process. While you may never have heard of it, their middleware is used across a wide range of high-profile, mainstream western games, which are often required to be translated into several different languages during the development cycle itself, in order to allow for a shorter gap between release in several territories. Most recently, Capcom used it for Dark Void, which was shipped in 8 different languages simultaneously.
The summit, then, will accordingly focus on the more technical and managerial aspects of localization, such as planning, minimizing bugs and maximizing the return on investment. The Game Localization Summit will last for an entire day and will feature a variety of panels, lectures and post-mortems.
Perhaps some of our friends at localization publishers would be interested in attending?1
