WWW.MCVUK.COM
MCV 10/09/10 37 QA & LOCALISATION Putting it to the test
Testing upcoming games and services is the most crucial part of the development process. Dominic Sacco speaks to leading players in the QA and localisation sector to discover the new challenges they face…
TESTING AND LOCALISATION may be one of the last steps in the production process, but it is by no means the least important. With the games industry more competitive and bigger than ever, there is an increasing need for publishers’ products to ooze a high level of quality. One major area of growth in the sector is the rise of digital distribution and casual games on mobile, social networking and online platforms. These developments may provide the localisation and QA sectors with fresh new opportunities, but they also throw plenty of new challenges its way. Longer-term obstacles still exist.
With the recession gradually coming to an end, some localisation firms are making cutbacks to spearhead them through the financial downturn. Others believe they’ve seen the last of the recession and are flourishing. As the market continues to expand worldwide, companies are also continuing to see an increasing demand for other languages. But what has caused this new demand and how can companies cater to it? To find out, we asked several key industry figures…
ON THE INCREASING DEMAND FOR OTHER LANGUAGES… Images courtesy of Anakan
Richard Leinfellner, CEO, Babel: “Last year there was much more of a focus on core languages like French, Italian, German and
Spanish. This year we are seeing a lot of additional requests for Latin American, which is very exciting. There are also significant requests to take Korean properties into the US, UK and Europe.”
Gagan Ahluwalia, President and CEO, Global Step: “The demand for localisation testing is rising. The market is
fiercely competitive and publishers realise that if a product is customised to local context, it will be better appreciated by consumers. Localisation can provide a good return on investment. Publishers with small budgets are opting to localise text even if their budget does not allow for voice- over localisation.”
ON COMING OUT OF THE RECESSION…
Clement Debetz: “The video game industry is starting to recover from the recession. The main issue for a service provider, like us, is that
projects which were cancelled in 2008 and 2009 are not going to hit the shelves this year and next year. This gap is an issue for the whole industry and many companies have had to revise their strategy. You can already see the results if you take a look at recent announcements. Some companies have also decided to cut their QA budget. We believe this short term strategy can be damaging to publishers, studios and IP.”
Richard Leinfellner: “We are definitely seeing more titles this year compared to last year. This seems to be a combination of increasing publisher
confidence in the market and better matching of internal and external resourcing. The recession also seems to have really boosted pre-owned and I do not think this trend will reverse even with the economy picking up. It’s good to see that all publishers are looking to find a way of monetising it to ensure they have funding for new titles.”
Graham McAllister, Director, Vertical Slice: “Vertical Slice was started in the recession – we began with a modest startup grant from the
University of Sussex. Having a limited budget forced us to to innovate with our approach to technology. Rather than spend large sums of money on high-end video capture solutions, we made use of lower cost innovative approaches that were emerging from the university. This build-it-yourself approach has in the end turned out to be more flexible and higher quality than off-the-shelf products.”
Clement Debetz, Business Development Manager, Enzyme: “We have seen the emergence of some new languages being requested
and South America is becoming a high potential market. Localisation is now a big part of many publishers’ success. As production budgets increase with next- gen platforms, being able to deliver games in multiple languages provides a bigger market potential and a better return on investment. Unfortunately, this can be a gamble as some companies can't afford to fail when marketing games, but it happens.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96