Localization During Video Game Pre-production
Game creation begins long before the production stage.
During a video game development project, pre-production is the initial planning phase that focuses on creating core concepts and writing initial design documents that describe the future game. This pre-production stage influences the overall success of the development cycle and the team spirit, as everyone gets aligned and ready to achieve the best results.
Having been in the video game localization industry for over 10 years, I can tell that localization stakeholders are not always included in the pre-production stage, although their contribution is also very important for the overall success of the game.
So why should localization teams be involved in the pre-production stage?
We won’t deep dive into all the pre-production phases in this article (if you are curious about the steps you can read more in this fascinating article by Room 8 Studio), but there are two critical steps in the video game localization process that should happen during pre-production and all beginner localizers should be aware of:
Culturalization (C13N)
If you want to take your game to an international audience, it’s important to assess the market in each territory and make sure you make the right creative and content choices. Sometimes your content will need to be adapted to a certain market in order to get more engagement from your players. Several culture-specific elements must be to be taken into account, such as history, religion, ethnicity, and geopolitics.
Internationalization (I18N)
Internationalization is basically everything that engineers (i.e. software, test, and content engineers) can do to enable localization to be done faster, cheaper, and with higher quality. It’s important for video game developers to know which steps they have to take in order for the game code to be able to accommodate more languages, and in many cases it is the localization team who will walk them through the process.
Do you want to learn about why involving the game localization team in the pre-production stage is a good idea? Sign up for the game localization master class, starting on June 14.
If you want to know more about the video game localization process, sign up for our next Game Localization Master Class.
Disclaimer: Copyright © 2021 The Localization Institute. All rights reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published, and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this section are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, including by removing the copyright notice or references to The Localization Institute, without the permission of the copyright owners. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE LOCALIZATION INSTITUTE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY OWNERSHIP RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
