Game localization since 1999: What’s changed? Feat. Michael Souto

Hello my name is Tucker Johnson and I am your host today as we experience Nimsy Live where we talk about the latest and greatest in translation localization internationalization culturalization and all that fun stuff global companies need to delight their international customers On this program we invite guests who like to have fun and have some value to add for our audience of globalization professionals I'm always eager to provide a platform to those with a good story or a good data set So let us know if there are any topics you'd like covered or guests that we should reach out to for future episodes If you haven't already done so make sure that you are subscribed to Nimsy Insights We are coming to you live today on LinkedIn of course X Facebook and Twitter It's same as X and YouTube of course where all of our old episodes are archived If you want to check out uh past episodes of Nimsy Live head on over to Nimsy Insights YouTube page and find the playlist called Nimsy Live and you can learn all about it there We also are available as a podcast Not live of course but if you have a trip coming up and need to download some podcasts for that long flight go over to Spotify Apple Music Amazon wherever you get your podcast that's where you'll find us And just search for Nimsy Live and you can download as many episodes as you like Uh without further ado I'm going to get right into it today um because we're talking about something that I I always like talking about because it's something that frankly I don't know as much as I would like to about which is game localization and game localization has come a long ways from the early days of patchwork processes and last minute translations Today we are doing an episode featuring Michael Sto from Gridley as we rewind the clock to explore how localization used to be done and how far the industry has come Michael brings a rare blend of experience from both sides of the table Over a decade as a game producer on titles like Timesplitters 2 and Commandos followed by a transition into localization solutions with localized direct and now Gridley His journey gives us uh gives him a unique holistic view of where localization fits in the development life cycle and where it falls short And without further ado I'm going to bring you up here on screen Michael welcome to the show Thank you so much for for joining us today Thank you Tucker Lovely to be here Thank you for the intro That was uh absolutely perfect Yeah Although it made me feel kind of nostalgic because I was kind of thinking about okay the stuff that I'd done Actually kind of dug out the old copy of Cutthroats I don't know if people can see that Cutthroats Cutthroats That was actually the first title I uh I worked on at uh at Idos all those years ago Back when titles usually actually had packaging and you would wait in line at the store to buy them on release day open and stuff like that Yeah Back in the good old days before digital rights management and all of that horseshit that we deal with now And I'm assuming you're a gamer I see See that's how you can tell It's like the Junning Krueger test for people that play video games Like those that actually play video games are very hesitant to say "Yes I'm a gamer." Because they know the connotations that come with that And so it's like yeah I play video games but I'm not a gamer I haven't played like solidly for quite a bit I kind of I kind of dip in and out of stuff and then my son might be playing something then I'll sit down and we'll play together and stuff I was going to say you have kids That's what that that's what that tells me Yeah Um yeah Now I watch my kids play Minecraft and maybe once a month I'll log into my Path of Exile account and waste a weekend but that's about it Yeah it's funny that that kind of grind time like for like your Zeldas and things like that It's kind of like I really kind of got into Zelda got into Harry Potter and you know and sorry Hogwarts and you know you get into those but then you're kind of you have to really put a lot of time into those games I just simply trying to find that time to do that I wish I could It's hard to find a game these days that you can actually just like casually play like they they require a lot But anyways we're This isn't a gaming podcast This is a localization podcast Maybe we need to start another one Maybe we can co-host a gamer podcast But um I want to um I gave you a brief introduction but you have a really interesting background You've you've been client side vendors You you've been around You've worked on a bunch of different stuff Um tell us a little bit about yourself to get us started here Sure Well it was Yeah So started off at uh at Idos back in early 98 which is obviously hugely dating Um uh so I joined that actually in localization as a coordinator uh with uh with Idos and then went from that after six months then became an AP and then kind of just progressed through there Um and so started very much on you know on cutthroats and the commandos mission pack and so I kind of I managed to see from the very kind of the real kind of indepth kind of view on how localization was actually managed within a publisher Um and then kind of then taking that then all the way through to kind of looking after kind of other you know other multiple titles at the same time with with other APS and producers Um and uh and actually you know and you know having that experience of you know what the publisher kind of what they how they kind of grade and how they kind of how they conceptualize what they're trying to achieve whether or not you know it's actually just the pursuit of bottom line is it the pursuit of gaming excellence so you kind of see a real kind of a a blend of all kinds of requirements And then when you kind of when after seeing kind of a lot of the localization kind of issues and so many things that kind of repeated themselves over and over again it was then kind of right well there's definitely an area within this business where a localization a standardized lo localization solution would make a lot of sense Yeah And so that's why kind of moving into that we've now kind of developed a system that allows that to then happen Um so yeah so that's a kind of so so now that's been 15 years doing that Um so and we're still and I'm still today well not today so much but maybe a few years ago still seeing a lot of the same stuff that happened back in 1998 Yeah Still happening today And it's like well things have changed for sure but there's lots of things that haven't changed Well it's not just gaming localization And I want to get into all of that The you know the conversation about like how many people are still turning Excel files back and forth Um and I we'll get into it We'll get into it Don't worry But you know as I mentioned I've never worked in gaming localization I I've worked my entire career in localization and gaming localization Um I I always was interested in it and I've worked for companies I've worked on many RFP responses trying to get into gaming localization but in my I never worked at a company that specialized it In my experience it was always really hard to break into that field from the vendor side Um because clients wanted the known entity clients wanted um the experience clients wanted keyword studios right um they wanted and yeah exactly You know those companies and it was really hard to break into And I was always told well if you don't have experience you don't get it And it's super this is an industry where it's super important that you bring experience to the table specifically in gaming localization And I want to ask you like why why is that what is so different about gaming localization i think it's in part there's a few kind of levels to that I think there's the fact that we we were all exame people as well So the pe the the kind of the people that created localiz were were had that history of what's required from um from game localization in terms of how it then how it can then work with the developers themselves Um and I think that was a very vital part of it Also the fact that you have to be you have to have specialized translators as well And I think that because we we decided very early on we wanted to very much focus on games because of our own kind of histories as well Um then obviously we then recruited people that that was their specialty in actually working with gaming understanding gaming use understanding platform techn platform terminology um all of that kind of stuff that was very very was absolutely vital to us So we could then go out and say right we are offering this service These people absolutely know what they're doing These people have won awards These people are you know they're all the kind of the really really great people to to do this Um so yeah so that's kind of that's I think that certainly helped But what was the initial kind of attractor there was having that technology So we developed Lot direct first And so as that was then being used at various developers they would then say well now it's in here can we get somebody to come into the system and then work in the system rather than then having to deal with someone else And so from that point we then developed the team even further to then allow for those people that could work directly Okay So you're kind of tell me about look direct Um yes So it was kind of again it was yeah so it was a so direct was uh the brainchild of um of Chris and Matias who uh work at gridly as well um and uh so basically they kind of again felt the pain for years and years of this kind of you know you know changes need to be tracked you know if you are meant to rescue the prince and you the prince is now a dragon and that doesn't get then communicated related in the text itself then obviously it breaks the game and that's rubbish Uh so yes so it was kind of so it started from that point there and it was kind of right so because of that experience and then the the understanding that people could really um could really benefit from having this opportunity to to house their content effectively or efficiently um that then born that that then created lockdirect itself and lockd it had it was you know very very useful it wasn't cloud-based it was it was client server so that you And that was you know of the time as well And I think that what we've now found that you know over time we've been able to take lot direct and all the great kind of learnings that have been experienced from that and then develop gridly which is then which is what what's currently available now which kind of takes all the really good stuff in lockdirect and then makes it far more accessible and there's loads of other kind of functionalities in there But yeah so it kind of started from that point there of this is kind of broken and crappy and loads of first parties have their own systems and they've invested in their systems and back in the day Idos tried to and we had a system that's that worked um but it just required a lot of support as well and I think that you know unless you're willing to put all that support and the cost associated with that support into it then you were going to really struggle to kind of have a viable and everchanging and ever kind of supported uh platform So that's serious So a lot of people have those a lot of people don't have those And so we wanted to make sure that everyone could have that uh that access Well let's let's back up maybe a little bit and talk to me you know kind of the the title today is game localization since 1999 What's changed so maybe maybe let's go back to basics and start there Um what does game localization look like for for someone that's never been involved with it um is it is it very manual process is it super automated are there specialized tools and repositories um walk us through you know start start back in 1999 and walk us through the last quarter century Yeah Well this it was kind of it was super wild west back then I think you had you know there was things like early days of renderware Um oh render was certainly being used Um and certainly there was you know there was you know initial kind of unreal around that time as well Um but it was all very much you know there were text files and text files would be crammed with um source or there' be a file and it would be crammed with u with code for example and it's kind of like okay so how can we take this and then be able to then just take out the the translatable parts and then work on those And so there was no kind of real way for this to be achieved rather than kind of manually going through or and that's why a lot of people really didn't want to localize They were kind of like what you know can we give this to another company and so they would then have so some so actual kind of porting companies would come in that would not only kind of look after taking that code and then maybe putting onto PS1 or whatever it might be but also then actually doing the localization side of it And you would actually get companies from Russia or from um from Japan etc who would actually come to you as a developer and say can we do the Japanese version can we do the the you know whatever the version was and take it from at which point most people would go yes please you look after it but obviously this then changes over times where where you know people start and again this is the whole kind of thing where for those longstanding lock professionals they've kind of they've seen it they've done it when it comes to game lock they've seen it they've done it they kind of understand just explain so normally everything will be associated to a string ID that's the kind that the main thing and so that allows you to take that file and then export take that file have that file translated according to that string ID and what it will then do is that whatever um engine you're using will then look at that string ID and then if you have the English version loaded up or the source version or whatever it is it will then pull all of that relevant data into that version If you then change that flag to then be French or whatever then it would pull the French version uh French content in So it's all based on that string ID So we we regularly see a lot of content from non-games which don't have those types of things It's just like a big block of text or they might be using Figma or whatever it might be that maybe hasn't got a specific one that they can then reuse with their development environment So yeah So what we then have is so games very much string ID based ideally not duplicate string ids That's another thing which is kind of like h why isn't this working is there is there a duplicate string ID yes there is Right So we've got that So but what's changed over time is then obviously the the kind of the introduction of uh uh Unreal Engine of um of Unity which then which provided a a much a greater framework which allowed um the developers to actually create files that they could then provide to an LSP to a localization house to then have that local house work on it and then send it back So that really did evolve over time but you had those long long-standing lock people like um well I'm not going to say names but you know who you are and those guys would kind of know right this these are the pitfalls these are the things that regularly can go wrong so let's make that not happen and so that's fine and they will always look after that but you've just got so many people that don't and until it bites them then then they kind of understand it but even then the amount of times I was in post project reviews where these had been communicated but still happened every time was was amazing quite frankly But uh but yeah that's the thing Even with the long-standing guys there's always stuff that can jump up and bite you in the butt Oh yeah there's always something new in this industry And I I think from my understanding and when we're talking about gaming localization it's there's a lot of just standard pitfalls and things in localization that non-localization people don't understand Um that's why we have jobs because It's it's not their job to understand it That's why we exist right so um I understand that having to go in and solve all these problems that other people haven't even thought of You know even if they are conscious that this content needs translated so I need a way to be able to export it and import it You know maybe that's as far as they've thought They haven't thought about well maybe syntax across different languages is different Maybe you know text expansion is a thing you know leaving aside encoding issues for I mean that's a whole different conversation that's you know lar solved nowadays but these are things that are relevant to anyone working in localization but I think hyper um magnified when you actually talk about gaming localization is because of the complexities so you can talk about like you know say document translation website translation and then it gets more complex as you start adding more multimedia type of things so you go into multi media entertainment um you whether it's you know video um films or whatever it gets a little bit more complex I was talking to someone yesterday about you know dubbing and lip-syncing and all of that stuff And then you take it one more level especially with what we see in with games today because games have all of those complexities plus this dynamic environment right things are highly customized like you can customize your own character You can have you know if you're playing I don't know it's like The Witcher 3 It's been a while since I've really right but if you're playing like The Witcher 3 you know it's like there's so many different branching paths and the amount of content is just amazing right we're not talking about localizing a 2-hour movie or a 10-minute e-learning course We're talking about localizing hundreds of hours and that requires voice over acting right so even the actors you need to pull all these actors into a studio They need to record their lines They need to know the context of those lines in order to record It's just so complex Yeah And it flexes until the very end as well So it's quite it's very rare that a game will finish at the point it's meant to finish and then you can then have all that extended period to then test it and just fine-tune it and make it all delicious and all the rest of it because stuff always ends up shifting all you know it's I think it's just totally natural that it does that and of course but then of course then there's all the the market requirements of this has to ship by this quarter or whatever it might be So you've got all of these things to bear in mind as well And games very specifically games you know you are fine-tuning a demo until the last minute You are the demo sorry the tutorial for example you're fine-tuning that right to the like oh you know this could feel a bit better if somebody plays it in a certain way or whatever So that's tuned right to the end Now if there's audio in that in that tutorial as well then that knocks it all on as well So there's all these things that can happen right until the very last second which you know again all needs to be tracked properly and all you know and it all just takes then more testing time So you need to make sure your testing turnaround is crazy fast as well because if it's not then you're going to be losing day after day where you know I remember driving down the M4 in my car with the gold master you know from from a place called Bristol in the UK back to Wimbledon in London you know at you know 2 3 in the morning or whatever it was with the gold master in my in my possession to make it just in time to then hit you know this timeline to hit this timeline It's like geez you know thank god those days are gone now with a with a slightly faster internet Well that's one thing I want to ask you about you know with the um it's industry norm now not just in gaming but in a lot of different places It's industry norm norm now to be able to push real-time updates You know day one patches are a thing Yes Um so like the rush to make a game a title perfect before you hit the you know print and ship button Um those days are over It doesn't need to be perfect Your opinion is that a blessing or a curse for the industry yeah I mean it's it's defin I mean well I suppose I suppose there'll be people on both sides right i mean it's it's kind of a contentious thing on in certain like gaming circles especially online because it's like I I I think you know devs have lowered the bar a little bit because ah we can fix it you know it's like you know those day one gamers those days day one purchasers are kind of the new beta testers nowadays So as much as you don't want to say but yeah that does very much seem to be the case So so there is that But the good thing is it provides us the opportunity to constantly be improving things and there's you know if something is identified it's not just a bug that's going to live there in perpetuity It's something that you can come in come and fix at any time And how has that affected the localization workflow and process and the approach to localization well I think it's still you know people still want to developers still want to have that kind of that gold master that that that uh shippable product that goes out and then and then it can be added to think on the whole patching side of thing I think it was it was regularly a case of you know so in the UK we had PC zone and gamer and you'd have the discs on the front of that and you'd update that way and then and then and then obviously the the patches got bigger and bigger and then you know people were then and then you know games were being shipped and they actually had kind of you know pretty major bugs in them I think that's what you're saying where that whole kind of you know as a game as you know as a one of the kind of the first plays of a game you want it to be a perfect um a perfect place uh play experience but that's I think that's very very rarely a thing these days because you kind of go right day one people as soon as they kind of put the disc into their slot there's a there's a update happening at that point there so you've got that time from when the disc is gone to DADC or wherever it's where it's being manufactured to then arriving you've got that time there um so that's a tremendous thing from a localization perspective It does you know you the games used to ship I I would say that that localization was never really a big issue with physical product or you know actually kind of hitting hitting the market and being as it should be Um I think it was it was more a case of it was regularly it was it was functionality things that had to be fixed as people maybe had been uh had been had early access or whatever and they were able to then test those things and then feedback those things Um uh and so they then had to go into a patch I think localization wise I think sometimes there would be you know there were things like um it hadn't wasn't noticed but maybe swear words had made it into the Italian version or whatever and actually you know that was acceptable but didn't then work with the Peggy rating or whatever it was So that that was definitely a thing Yeah Whereas like right that needs to be patched It's a whole another um it's a whole another level of of consideration when talking about game localization because it is an industry that is regulated It's not regulated It's monitored let's say and those there's not really great international standards like globally accepted You know every country is going to have its own own laws and rules and regulations around you know violence and blood and you know language and different SWAT Yeah Stuff like that you know and you know I'm sure we could sit here and discuss 10 different case studies We probably studied the same case studies right um of fas in game localiz in localization Um so there's that There's that component as well that just makes it a little bit more tricky And how how much is that of that is the role of the localization team versus I mean is the localization team at a gaming at a developer for example are they responsible for knowing all that stuff and actually adapting it like true localization like localization as it should be and because in the rest of the localization industry we kind of use this term localization to refer to translation Mhm even though localization is supposed to include more and it's always been kind of my perception correct me if I'm wrong that in gaming localization that's like one of the last niches where localization actually means localization oh for sure I mean that's yeah that's you know you have so there's the translation side of things there'll be lots of questions go backwards and forwards and the actual kind of the the the changing of text um so yes so certainly on that side but then you actually have localization testers actually going through it and actually spending time And some of them are super crazy brilliant game players Uh but they're linguists as well So they're all obviously able to pick up things where stuff doesn't sound like that you know in that particular instance how that character would sound in in reality or or and how it should be in the game So there's always kind of these people are meant to pick up all of these things that even if there's and certainly if they're cultural or if there's something where you kind of think well that's acceptable in this um in in this territory but that's clearly not it's it's clearly irking me or this is something that I don't feel comfortable and I don't think that other people will feel comfortable then that obviously a bug is created back in the day back in bugzilla or whatever it was So that would then be reported on and they need to have that understanding But the thing is a lot of the time the people actually localizing it will pick up a lot of this stuff as well because they understand games too They're not just you know they're just looking at the language they're looking at how that is then used So more often than not a lot of the questions that we will receive or or that developers will receive will be contextual ones So you know so what's happening in there's always all the gender stuff of course Well okay you brought it up I wasn't going to go down that route but it's like you know you go into certain online spheres when it comes to gaming and there there's lots of there's lots of opinions out there with gamer circles And you know the good news I I would think about the industry is it's an industry where you don't really ever need to wonder what your audience thinks about you because they're very vocal online Yeah this is a great area Sure Go to Reddit and go to go to Twitter go to YouTube and see what the players of your game are saying about your game Um Nimsy Insights doesn't do a lot of user perception studies for the gaming industry because I think everyone kind of knows the feedback's out there Um but from what I can tell just you know kind of being around some of those like gamer communities online is there is this perception Um and you you actually hear the word localization used a lot because there's a lot of complaints about game localizers kind of changing things that they shouldn't or you know getting into Yeah you brought up the pronouns thing right um you know pronouns We we have a whole debate about the use of pronouns here in the US Um there's a perception out there that this is a very US- ccentric thing and some US companies want to are trying to impose it on other languages that don't want it I've talked to Spanish localizers that want to use about pronoun usage and gender stuff like that in in Spanish and other languages Mhm And there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this yet So in a world where there's not much of a consensus like you're either going to piss off side A or you're going to piss off side B How do you how do you navigate that as a localizer yeah that's I mean it was always and it's always been a recommendation as well is to try to make the character gender actually it makes life so much easier for everyone involved if that character could be completely gender neutral So really so what what you try to do so rather than kind of referring to he's and she's and and having characters that are very clearly one or the other or you know whatever you want to say is actually to have you know a blob of something or to have a a gender neutral ghost whatever those things might be is to then because then you can then just use they all the time or you can just you know you don't have to worry about that and make them gender neutral That was always kind of like always something that was that people always would like to do because then once you went into the localization space you had to then make sure that you had branches that would then cater for um for you know for for that kind of all that dialogue that happens within with the central character or the the main kind of avatar and then speaking to whomever that might be because that obviously then varies But then you've got the ability to then choose between a male or a female character at the start your actual avatar is one of the other which then adds a whole another layer of madness to the game as well So yeah so that then is obviously all all of these trees all of the um uh all of the placeholders have to allow for this for a system that will pull the correct translation for that particular interaction which is a huge testing uh process as well that's required So that's the thing I think that what will then happen is if it you know there will need to be an or potentially need to be another arm of okay so this is now going to be the the you know there's going to have to be a third option You're going to be able to choose the male the female and then a gender neutral one or whatever and it'll work like that Um or you just only have male characters in the whole game or only female characters in the whole game That's not problematic that could get rid of it But that's the thing you know and there's kind of this gender in kind of in weapons and there's gender in kind of and items of furniture whatever those things are as well So it's kind of it's really really complicated especially from a gaming perspective because of the flexibility of how things can work especially if it's truly free then Jesus Christ you know there's a there's a lot of work that needs to be done a lot especially from an English speaker perspective content author perspective because if if I'm an American and let's face it most Americans we've never we took a semester of Spanish in high school and that was about it And so we're completely oblivious to the fact that in other languages every noun has a gender right and it affects what the translation looks like Every not just every person every noun has a gender We we don't realize things like in some languages the words that I use are going to change depending upon the gender of the person I'm talking to right so we don't even think about these things but they're all things that need to be accounted for when when you go into localization And this is why like when when we're talking about you know hours and hours and hours hundreds of hours of voice over and you know a bunch of content you know I've seen some of the budgets for these big title localization but it's a lot of money It's a lot it's a lot of effort to localize one of these styles just for the sheer amount of content One of the reasons that Yeah because you have all of these branches It's not just like one set of dialogue all the way through It's like well okay we need to record this line twice depending upon the just the gender of the player character right or whatever it may be No absolutely I think you know there's you know a really kind of valid point there where you know you've got you know back in the day people really didn't So going back to the 90 1999 generally the you know people didn't really want to localize They they looked at localize as a real kind of pain point Yeah you know because of this you know doing it in the UK for example was like okay we just yeah this is how it works and everything's nice and easy and then somebody from the Spanish office then says right we need to do this and you're like oh Jesus you know we have to do all this stuff too so that's kind of it's like people didn't really want to do they kind of they people now understand that localization shouldn't be seen as a pain point it should be seen as a thing that should be done but is super beneficial but back then there was the kind of thought well I'm doing this work and I'm not really going to get huge number of units and whatever and there that would seem to be the general kind of um view on was it was it worth to localize or not and it took and it takes still now it takes a lot of convincing like well you know we're just going to ship English and that'll be fine because everyone speaks English right and it's like well you know they kind of don't but uh so what you should and especially you know European so uh for example pyro for example they would actually be developing a Spanish version uh to start off with so they already had that in mind So I think that what you found is with a lot of non-English-speaking development studios they would already have a concept of what needed to work there So actually their localization process wasn't anywhere near as complicated as going from an English source and an English studio into uh into those languages So regularly the Americans would and the Americans were the worst for this Sorry Americans Because we're not thinking about it right it's like well we don't want to do it So unless you know and there was you know there could have been contractual kind of well you'll have to sue us then if you want us to do this version you know kind of thing So uh so those things did happen as well and it was a real kind of reluctance because it because I think people saw it as well finish the English we QA it kind of wrap it up so it's lovely and beautiful and then we go on holiday They want to pop the champagne go Yeah We get our bonuses we go on holiday everything is good But now it's like now you got to this point well now we're going to have to do this too please Uh because then you can sell loads of units in all these lovely places It's like well we don't want to do that So well and I know English is correct me if I'm wrong here but my understanding is like Ubisoft for example French company they develop in English right like they speak English internally for the most part say I consess I I believe that's my understanding don't quote me on that audience um but from my conversations with other people in the industry like they develop in English however like Japanese companies they develop in Japanese for sure and so they're going to be inherently at an advantage because from day one they're thinking about the localization cuz they know that they're going to need to sell their product in other markets So you know they'll develop in Japanese and then they'll have that English translation going on simultaneously and they'll use that English as the source to translate into other languages So it's really important to get that English right But um so but they're thinking about it from day one And I guess my question to you is in the last 25 years in the industry how much awareness has happened or has come out of h how how much has it changed that people are more aware from day one in the dev cycle that this is going to be localized into other languages is it still an afterthought is it still oh crap I thought we were finished now we need to do localization i think it's involved a lot more in courses is I think you know the actual you know the idea of it being in a gaming course back then would be absolutely ridiculous Um but uh but certainly I think now you know there are modules that are dedicated to localiz to game localization So I think that so there's certainly more awareness of the requirement there but there's also the kind of the um I think you know back in the day as well because there was there was physical media regularly a lot of games wouldn't make it over to the US or to Europe if Japanese because it was like well that's the kind of game that's not really going to fly in Japan so actually let's not really worry about it and and vice versa as well So I think you know you had stuff like you know Golden Eye was one of the kind of the rare few uh first person shooters that really really did well over in Japan Um so it's kind of like you know you have you know there's there's certain types of games that wouldn't make it over anyway or just wouldn't that wouldn't make sense And then there's other games that actually they they're so wordy that unless they are unbelievably good games they're just simply not going to make it into those languages as well that where maybe English proficiency is quite low because there's just too much cost to actually make that into uh uh into that other language I think when it comes down to kind of considerations made as to whether or not things should kind of go into kind of totally different alphabet um territories then I think that people are far more aware of that I think you know the whole kind of playing Japanese games was reasonably niche back then but now you know people are playing a lot more Japanese games People are far more into anime manga than they ever used to be So I think that people you know and a lot you know the idea of making you know creating any kind of anime in in France or in I suppose you have Ulyses and stuff kind of but you know stuff like that being made in in Western territories was completely ridiculous but now you're seeing a lot of really good stuff coming out of uh out of Western territories as as as well as Japan So I think there's that kind of cultural thing has really kind of exploded So I think people are far more mindful of I really want to sell this in Japan because I think [ __ ] Japan will love this and vice vice versa I think Yeah Yeah Yeah I remember back in the day it's like if there was a Japanese game because I remember I was a big Final Fantasy fan you know It's like how come I can't get all of the Final Fantasy titles in the US right and I remember the day that I could like figured out I could download an emulator and get these just weren't for sale Not that I would ever pirate games on an emulator No No Of course Course I had I had friends that would play just just Japanese games They would they would just Yeah And it's like "What on earth are you doing how can how can you know what you're doing next?" It's like "Well you know you kind of get used to what does this and what does that?" And it's like "Wow that's some dedication right there." Well we've talked a lot about like these different complexities and you know and I I want I want to turn the conversation a little bit to Gridley Um you're with Gridley now and so you're you're you're shouting from the rooftops about Gridly And I know this isn't a sales pitch or anything but I do want to talk about Gridley because I think it's a good form or a good framework to have a conversation about what are some of the complexities in gaming localization or in entertainment or in any type of localization What are some of those complexities and what's being done to address those complexities and we can kind of use the tool as a framework to talk about those Um because obviously you're not developing a tool with for every feature that you release in a tool It's there's a story behind it There's a there's a challenge that needed to be addressed there So um walk us through um walk us through Gridley What is Gridly how long has it been around um what does it do who is it for um cool Give it give me the sales pitch to start and then I'll then I'll ask probing questions I'll I'll still keep it relevant But uh but so the whole kind of the purpose behind Gridly is very much that kind of that that single source of truth and I think that's what what we've you know what we discussed earlier on today was the whole kind of you know Excel files flying around you know text files with source code in them you know all the rest of that kind of stuff with you code in them You know what Gridly will do is it will then interface directly with the system that you're using So whether or not that's through Unity or Unreal uh plugins or whether or not you want to then use the API to hook in with with your particular system or if you want to hook into a a separate um uh solution that you're using So the whole thing is that it's still we're still finding ourselves in a position where there's still manual files being sent around and as soon as something leaves something then obviously it's open to whatever can happen to it Whereas if it's all being tracked if there's a full history if everything's kind of being monitored at all points and who made that change when that change was made etc then you have that ability to control Um with stuff like Google Sheets that's excellent That was a massive game changer But the problem you have is control again And then access rights is another problem as well So again you know Gridly allows that to uh to take place So you make sure that that the content you want to share with a particular group of people is exactly what they get what they get to see and what they can interact with It's also the fact that you know you having this kind of ability to press a button and that text to appear in Gridly to then be worked on by the translation teams wherever they might be at whatever time they are You're not waiting for somebody to manually push a file into somebody's uh uh into somebody's inbox or anything like that And you can actually pull that then back into the system as well So you've got that push from Unity or Unreal or whatever and then again then a pull So you can then press that button and then it pulls all of that content back in again So that in in itself is a massive game changer because you know again going back to the old days Pyro developed a uh a version you know uh people like EA etc they all developed their versions as well but again people outside of those big businesses didn't and weren't able to So that's you know so gritty does that It's the ability to branch content Well and that can kind of have dependencies Yeah Sorry to interrupt but that can kind of be problematic as well Um not to be like cat tool elitist or anything but like when you see developers or client side organizations developing their own localization tools you know I like stay in your lane right like let let us let the vendor side manage that right just because sometimes it's always done with the best of intentions right um but best of intentions but not a lot of forethought And I've just seen it happen so many times where you end up you know because I' I've worked my career on the vendor side just for transparency And I've worked with some large companies that have developed their own TMS content translation memory CAT tool whatever you want to call them tools And it was actually more work for us because we would have to develop all new tools to manage the inadequacies of that And my understanding here is like I think the gaming industry best practice is you know for a long maybe not best practice but practice for a long time has been managing translation via text files or spreadsheets right there's still a lot of spreadsheets going around So this kind of meets in the middle um kind of is able to inherit that spreadsheet culture um but put it into a more translation environment translation friendly environment is is it a cat tool is it a content system is it a TMS like what is it so if I'm using gridly would I then you know it syncs directly to the engine and pulls files out or pulls content out that's great it puts them back in am I translating or my translators translating directly in Gridley or do I need to have a third party TMS MS what does that look like your choice one's choice yeah so uh so basically from that initial push from wherever that that source is is is held if it's unity or unreal then once it's in gridly you can choose to create a file um so it's very much it's managing that content so you can create a file which you can then send to the LSP or you can choose to push it to memoq or phrase we have those plugins as well so they can go to LSPs that have those um so they can work that way But we have recently uh released um uh C uh TMS and CAT modules as well for people to try out well Um but certainly we want to keep it flexible So if you want to keep it within Gridly great And then you can have that You can invite the translators in they can work within there If you want to push it to to Memo Q and Phrase you can do that too If you want to create a file and then just send that file that's fine as well That gets tracked Okay so although that file's left the system it doesn't ever truly leave That's goes out it's worked on then when it comes back if anyone's changed any content or there's you know any value diffs in there then basically the warnings will be flagged and basically say this has changed since this went out for translation how would you like to manage that change um so yes so all those things are being uh are being catered for as well but yeah we wanted to you know the key thing was not creating this super rigid system where you have to go from here to here to here and follow these uh uh follow these steps so it's you know it gives you that flexibility and again with gridly itself the content side of things Again you you can kind of set it up in the way that you want to set it up It provides a very loose frame that you can then choose to kind of house things in databases in grids themselves You can have multiple grids The um like you were saying about Excel files you know the ability to work within a 17 tab Excel file and then track what's changed in that and all the rest of it It's like good grief And you know we know that you know the Japanese developers and Korean and Chinese developers they love an Excel file with loads and loads of tabs So basically we've kind of said right well we definitely need to make sure we can deal with that So yeah so the ability of taking that file and pulling it into a grid where it's easily kind of visual and you can find all the content you're looking for is kind of really important to us as well But yeah that's the whole thing kind of create some kind of some structure but allow people to kind of really kind of work with the way they want to work in it and you know that's outside of you know the actual kind of the housing of localization files you can have dependencies in Bridley so you can have so if you have a screenshot that is based on some text then you can then have it set up so that when the text goes out of date then the screenshot is also out of date and that's the kind of stuff that which regularly is broken too right it's always like well this screenshot doesn't relate to this text at Cool So yeah So anyway that's another off to you No no it's it's important in any project and I think this is one of the challenges about working vendor side and also one of the rewarding things if you like a good challenge is that no two localiz no two companies are the same No two localization programs are the same and it's impossible to build a tool or a solution or a process or a workflow that is that works for everybody So in order and there's a whole freaking marketplace environ you know market for TMS and lang language technology out there and the reason that whole market the market size of the lang market as far as like revenue um so the market size should not be able to support the number of players there are in the industry when compared to other industries right it very fragmented very there's tons of players out there for a market size that's really not that big in the grand scheme of things And the reason the market's able to support so many different players is because there is a need for all of these different little niches out there Um and you know I I say it many times I've said it many times is you know people ask me or they ask Nimsy you know what's the best TMS what TMS should I pick what CAT tool should I pick how should we implement our language technology um strategy roadmap and say you know it depends there is no best TMS out there it really depends and then I and then I send them an invoice say you're welcome thank you for your custom yeah the consultant life hashtag keep um no you're right you're absolutely right it's they they do vary wildly I think like I said you know Unity and Unreal have kind of bought them you know bought some development into into some alignment But it's just you know once you're in Unity and Unreal you know there's other you know there's different structures that you can have within each of those as well So those vary from from developer to developer too So yes there's no there you can't even from a gridly perspective you can't Yeah like you said we can't have right there's gridly enjoy Thank you very much And then off you go There's there's lots of handholding There's lots of kind of making sure that people are using it correctly But I think that would apply to you know anything that's out there There's there's just simply not a one-sizefits all out there Yeah exactly That's all And you know some some tools are very like you can kind of take a look at the tool and the features that it has and understand it's like oh this was developed by a translator It's like oh or this was developed by a developer right and it's hard to make everybody happy throughout the the entire um localization value chain localization workflow But that's like I said before you know if this if localization were simple then most of us would not have jobs right is what I tell people I've worked with my entire career And you know people complaining about oh this this client doesn't know what they want or this is so complex or they don't know what they're doing or the this the source team isn't blah blah blah blah blah I'm like "Good good It's job security Keep it going Don't educate too hard." No but surely we should be more giving than that shouldn't we Tucker we should We should be We should be providing that kind of one-stop shop that says you know okay don't worry We've got you Don't worry about Tucker and his consultancy We can look after that for you It's all good Exactly Well yeah but until then I I I will keep sending invoices Well how can you know just watching the clock here um what what's our call to action what how can people get in touch with you how can people find out more about um localization um gaming localization or the tool or is there a way to schedule a demo with you yes absolutely Yes So gridly.com you can uh just if you go to grid.com and then uh you can book a demo through the site itself Um and there's a 14-day trial on there So you could try out all three of the modules um uh for those 14 days And if you need even further enhancement in there then do you know drop us a uh a comment through Gridly itself Um I think there's you know there's that side of things I think you know there's I think what I would push the most is kind of you know is is speaking to someone about what your desires might be I think that's the thing I think so many people they don't even know what their desire is they kind of say "Right well I've got this game and I just want to localize it." And it's kind of like "Okay well that's cool but let's have a little chat about what you know you know what the potential pitfalls might be." For example you know how are you housing your audio how are you structuring your um your dialogue are you provide are you having to kind of duplicate loads of work over and over again and if you are why and so let's stop doing that So have that conversation about what else Gridly can potentially do for you But it's also a case of I think that if there's a kind of takeaway it's really you know having a structured plan about and localization is your friend Localization is great for you You know we should still you know we should be using you know the the best games translators You know we should be kind of really kind of making games really fantastic for those other territories rather than just taking this text and making it this text And it's kind of there's more to it than just that So I think that you know we need to kind of say structured we need to think about you know is there potential within the game that you're making that could that you could fine-tune to make it even more sexy for a particular territory Is there a way that we can make it you know you know making a character you know act in a certain way making a character speak in a certain way that then potentially makes it from a local from a you know again this is the whole kind of you know a globalization expert you know Kate etc would be you know involved in these kinds of discussions but it's very much a case of think about you know localization doesn't have to be this pain in your eyeball that you feel every time you want to release and this god we have to do this it should be seen as a this is a great way to really make things by like so many you know you hear about the stories of games flying in Turkey and it's kind of like what what you know it was doing kind of mediocre numbers in all these other places and in Turkey it went absolutely crazy and it's like all right well you made a Turkish version but then there was something within the game itself that really lent itself to the Turkish culture and they thought this is tremendous and they really really went for it So it's kind of like I think today you can do you can you know you can do far more languages than you could do back then because of physical media of course but it allows you to also test bed a lot of content as well So you know do you know do try to put it in as many languages as possible you know creating placeholder content small groups of people to to kind of test it for their particular location Let's do let's do more of that Let's really kind of embrace localization rather than going oh god it's localization time Here we go again Yeah So yeah Well it's always a you know you've served your time in the bisdev on the dark side right and it's always a hard conversation to have with a client who I imagine nowadays you're talking to clients that are more mature clients So you have this conversation less and less but it's always a hard conversation to have with a client because Yeah exactly Yeah Sometimes I'm being we're live here I was giving you an out Yeah thanks But it's always a hard conversation to have because at the same simultaneously you want to a impress upon the client like don't worry we got you This is manageable and but and B like localization is a lot more complex than you think it is right so you need to convince them that localization is a lot more complex than you even realize and you need to convince them in a way that's not insulting them or talking down to them Right this is why I I I don't like this term You know people say "I need to edu." We need to educate our clients I don't like that term because when you when I say I'm going to educate you it's kind of condescending right yeah Exactly Take out your number two pencil you know and listen up Yeah Yeah But that having been said Yeah we kind of do need to educate the client right behind the hand Yeah Yeah Right It's totally I think you know it's kind of we we still and it was always the case back then but is still the case now where you know developers will say oh we don't want to localize these things or this particular item or the weapons or whatever it might be And it's kind of like but there are they're going to sound so rubbish in the game when all the surrounding text is localized and then you have these weird kind of weapons or kind of items whatever they are in in English and it's kind of like this is where the education is It's like they need see a screenshot of this you know in with Japanese in there or with something that they they don't understand in there to then go would you like to play this game no you wouldn't like to play this game because this looks rubbish Yes So yes So people there is I I agree with you that you know when you say now sit down little Timmy I'm going to tell you about how stuff works in the real world Nobody wants to hear that at all I think that people need to be aware that you know if they're coming to the table with their first game then you know then sit down with an LSP sit down with with you know with a consultant sit sit down with somebody who can say right these are the potential dumpster fires that might kind of happen upon upon the way on and these and don't leave that late That's the problem It's kind of like oh we've done it now so really so we can't we've kind of hardcoded all of the the item names Um so we can't we can't translate them now We can't can't have those localized And that will happen regularly And you're like geez but this looks really crappy Yeah Um it's like well it is what it is Sorry Wish you talked to me first Yeah Right Speak to this guy Yeah Well if uh if you're out there I'm going to start wrapping us up here Michael But I'll say to the audience if you're out there and you want to learn more about all of these potential dumpster fires talk to Michael the expert in dumpster fires the expert in gaming localization Um you can find expert in dumpster fires Brilliant I'm going to get my cards changed I was going to say to put that on your business card You need to update your LinkedIn tagline Uh you can find Michael on LinkedIn You can find Gridley on online Um 14-day trial Um you can schedule a demo all of that stuff Michael it's been a pleasure Thank you so much for joining us today My pleasure Thank you very much for having me Yes So ladies gentlemen chat We are out of time for today If you enjoyed this Nimsy live experience and join us next time in an hour or two I I don't know But later on today I'm talking to the wonderful Marina Pancheva Um Nimsy consultant expert in all things Expert in all things This this lady's um very smart um hyper polyglot um really big into AI She has some new research articles published on nimi.com talking about artificial intelligence So if you are sad that we went the whole last hour and didn't once talk about artificial intelligence thank God fear not We'll be talking about that in the next hour or two with Marina I appreciate our guests today I appreciate my colleagues here at Nimsey Insights doing all the hard work so I can have these fun conversations And I appreciate everybody in our industry who fills out Ny surveys schedules briefings with our analysts and sees us at conferences It's good to see you out there And finally I appreciate you the audience who are joining us live today All the dialogue and chat everybody who left comments questions and especially criticisms And I look forward to next time Cheers.