[game_edu] Localisation

[Ian Schreiber]

I actually do mention this in my classes (in the same category as saving/loading functionality and audio pipeline) as things that tend to get forgotten or neglected early on and end up being a serious pain to shoehorn in at the end if the team hasn't been on top of them for the entire time. My students go off to the industry fully aware that these are issues that their first project is likely to get burned on :)
 
In practical use for student projects, all three of these are difficult to fit in the schedule at all, simply because they are a bit of work and take time and focus away from the essential core gameplay. For student projects, just getting a single working game in their native language is challenge enough, and having multiple languages, the ability to save the game and having interactive audio are things that just aren't in the cards most of the time.
 
In a curriculum where students have the time to work on multiple projects and multiple teams (which is rare -- in many cases, students get maybe one or two shots at this), I could see the case for devoting one project slot to a "maintenance" class. The idea would be to take a working project from a previous project that a totally different group worked on, learn the code, refactor it, and add this kind of functionality. The benefit to students would be exposure to real-world tasks, as well as experience working with someone else's code (which it's extremely likely that they'll be doing in their first job).
 
- Ian

--- On Fri, 10/24/08, m.bernal at roehampton.ac.uk <m.bernal at roehampton.ac.uk> wrote:

From: m.bernal at roehampton.ac.uk <m.bernal at roehampton.ac.uk>
Subject: [game_edu] Localisation
To: game_edu at igda.org
Date: Friday, October 24, 2008, 3:15 PM

Hello everybody,

I am glad to see that there is an important group here trying to improve
standards in education by suggesting curriculums, modules, topics and the
branching and pacing of the content delivered.

I would like to participate with modules/sessions on game internationalisation
and localisation. I believe this part of the globalised game industry is often
neglected in development and production, creating more problems than it should.
Just recently the issue with SCE "Little Big Planet".
A bit of planning and team awareness in time would eradicate such issues and
smooth out localisation, as well as save time and money in testing, etc.

What do you guys think?


Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino
Lecturer in Media Translation
Roehampton University London
Roehampton Lane, Putney
SW15 5SZ
LONDON
Tel: (00 44) (0) 208 392 3799

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