[game_edu] Localisation

[Tom Dowd]

I completely agree with Ian’s perspective on this. We cover it as an aspect
of our fundamental game development course, primarily as an information
point, and then it comes up again a time or two again in other classes. I
know that the current Little Big Planet incident was discussed in multiple
classes, not only from the perspective of technology, but of music
licensing, content vetting, and cultural considerations. The requirement to
localize the current senior capstone project into Spanish was part of their
project spec this year, but we have four concentrations of students working
on the project – design, programming, art/animation, and sound – so I think
it is more feasible for them, as per Ian’s comments. 

 

That said, and don’t tell them this, but given that they are already having
to deal with a somewhat overscheduled project I expect it to be dropped as a
feature at the last minute
 or maybe not. A couple of them are already
working on a string management tool for the designers to ease the pipeline.
So, we shall see


 

Tom Dowd

Columbia College Chicago

 

From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf
Of Ian Schreiber
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 8:14 PM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Localisation

 


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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