Is Xbox making the right decisions? Plus, how AI is (and isn’t) transforming game localization

This week, we go deeper on the latest changes at Xbox. I report back from Tokyo Game Show and we dive into the world of video game localization. [music] Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This week's edition is sponsored by Unreal Engine. Now, Unreal Fest Chicago took place back in June. And [clears throat] if you are too busy making the next Smash 8 video game to attend, well, it's not too late for your team to benefit from the abundance of free technical content that was featured there. There are well over 60 sessions available now on the Unreal Engine YouTube playlist, ready to watch on demand, with more arriving every day. Delivered by both Epic's own developers and your peers in the industry, including Halo Studios, Unknown Worlds, and Riot Games. These sessions cover everything from world building and characters to optimization and profiling and more. Plus, you can take a good look at what's just arrived in UE 5.8 and see what's next for Unreal Engine. You can check out the Unreal Engine YouTube channel or go and click on the link in the newsletter attached with this very

show. Speaking of show, let's begin. So, I am just back from Tokyo Game Show. I'm fully branded, I don't know if you can see, with the Nintendo Museum as um it was fascinating. Uh but before I give some thoughts on Tokyo and Japan, I think we best dive into the big story of the week. And that big story is of course Xbox merging some studios and making further cuts as part of its reorganization or rather reset that it announced in July. Now this week it has done several things. It has cut back the Halo Studios team significantly just the core group supporting existing Halo titles that are in the market already. It has now handed the Halo IP to Activision, which will be building a new purpose-built team to work on future Halo projects. It has announced that it's failed to find a buyer for Ninja Theory after two deals fell through, and the studio now faces closure, barring any lastminute saviors. Undead Labs' buyer fell through, too, and the studio is now going independent with an unnamed publisher taking over State of Decay 3.

As a result of the independence, Undead Labs is now making cuts to the team. UK developer Rare by the team behind Sea of Thieves is now part of Activision 2. There are a handful of cuts at that studio. Age of Empires production House World's Edge is also reporting to Activision. There are numerous cuts at that studio, too. Grounded developer Obsidian will now report to Bethesda. It was already making a new Fallout game before the publisher. Turn 10, which used to make Forza Motorsport is now largely just managing the Forza tech engine, is merging with Playground Games, the studio that uses the engine for its Forza Horizon and Fable games. In total, there were 206 job cuts that are happening as a result of all this, including a number of losses from the Xbox Game Studios central and leadership team. Xbox says it is twothirds the way through it was planned cuts. It's quite significant news. And to kick off today's show, I'm going to provide some insight, explanation, and maybe some insider information what this is all about, plus opinion, of course. But let's sort of recap how we got here. Earlier this year, Xbox leader Phil Spencer stepped down from his role. He was replaced by a newbie to the video

game world in Ashes Sharma. Now Sharma made some immediate changes. Some of them minor like changing the Xbox branding and some of them more significant like reducing the price of game pass and hiring a new leadership team including chief strategy officer Matthew B and COO Helen Chang. She has inherited a business that is in poor shape. Xbox has spent a lot of money buying a lot of studios in an effort to bolster its games portfolio, primarily to accelerate its Game Pass subscription business. It hasn't worked. For numerous reasons, Game Pass hasn't grown to the expected level. The games themselves haven't connected. Xbox console sales have fallen and the business is facing some serious challenges. In particular, the margin on the Xbox business is poor and growth is non-existent. That needs to change. The company has come up with a plan that focuses on big bets and core franchises and not smaller indie like games. It wants to push the platform harder and is making certain titles

exclusive to the console to try and boost console sales and engagement. This new strategy requires the company to invest in certain areas and it is investing. It's just signed a big game from Hideiojima, for example, with a budget reportedly around $400 million and is investing in a new Halo team as well. But it also requires cutting things it doesn't need that isn't working and streamlining operations. Those cuts include divesting of certain studios, the studios Double Fine, which is known for Cycling or Keeper, and Compulsion, which is known for South of Midnight, have been returned to independence. Now, both studios face an uncertain time right now, but they've been able to retain their IP, which gives them a fighting chance in a challenging industry. Xbox had planned to sell state-of-the-art Undead Labs and Hellblade Studio Ninja Theory. In July, they said they had buyers for both studios, but deals have fallen through. At one point, Undead Labs was being acquired by Splash Damage. That's the UK studio that Xbox fans might know as the team behind Gears Tactics. It used to be

owned by Tencent. Splash Damage is now backed by Ammona Capital. Emmona Capital was provided the money for this. Aimmona also funds Secret Mode, which is the publisher behind Star Wars Galactic Racer and Relic, the strategy studio behind, you know, Company of Heroes. You probably heard of them. For whatever reason, though, that deal has fallen through. Um, I I've heard of there were other deals being discussed. I don't know anything about those. Somebody mentioned Career at one point, but regardless, I I know about that one. Now, Ninja Fury had two interested parties according to Xbox. I have heard names and who they might be but have been unable to verify them so I won't mention them here. Both of those deals collapsed. Um I know two investors that kicked the tires on Ninja Theory and just sort of investigated and looked into the business and they both told me the cost of the team was very high which was ultimately what deterred them from going further. And it's a shame. One of my friends at Xbox Game Studios told me that Senua, which is the next game that Ninja Fury is making, is shaping up very well and is a significant improvement over last year's Hellb Blade 2. Now, UK

law means that the studio isn't being closed today, but staff are being put on consultation, which gives Xbox around 6 weeks to try and secure a buyer before closing the Cambridge-based company. It feels unlikely at this stage, but you never know. We've had lastm minute saviors before. The fifth studio Xbox is divesting from is Arcane Leon, which is working on a Blade game. Um, the consultation that studio extends to the end of the year. French uh law is very different to most markets. And Xbox will hope it can secure a new home for the team before uh then. Now, over at Rare, there have been some cuts to the firm's operational teams, HR and places like that, but not the development team specifically. The studio's main title is Sea of Thieves, which are one of my favorite games, which has been a big success, but it has been declining over the last few years. Last year, it had its Ever Wild project cancelled. That led to some redundancies at Rare, but the company was able to mitigate that a little bit by moving staff onto CF Thieves and instead cut back on the amount of outsourcing it was doing. Rare is working on other

projects. It will be down to Activision to decide whether those projects continue. I hope they do. I've got an entire thesis on Rare. It's like almost an entire other episode where I can make this case. I believe they would be a very successful independent business, assuming they can keep their IP. I think there's a huge opportunity with its legacy content. They have 40 years worth of games, the vast majority of which are not available on Steam on Nintendo. In fact, you can get more rare games on a on I've got it over there, like a Blaze handheld than you can on most platforms. I'm not sure um that sort of a big focus on legacy business and porting and remastering fits with what Microsoft wants or needs. I think they need growth. I'm not sure that delivers growth. It just delivers a strong foundation of of profit or revenue, but I think that can be quite significant for an independent business. I also think as a studio they offer something different in terms of games they make. CF is a very family focused live service experience. I used to do these events at EGX and Comic- Con. I was always fascinated by watching like moms and dads and their kids who play CFS together. I thought it was wonderful. I think it's a unique company. I think

they make unique games and I'm sure there will be investors interested in that and maybe hey maybe Activision is interested in that. We'll have to see. One little observation about Rare in 2002. Nintendo had a first option to buy Rare. They already owned 49% of the company and they had the option to buy the remaining 51%. The owners of Rare Chris and Tim Stamper wanted to sell their 51%. It declined to do that. Nintendo said they weren't going to do it. So that triggered a bidding war for people to buy Rare. By the end of that war, two companies re remained. The Rare had to choose between two offers. One of those companies was of course Xbox which eventually acquired the studio. The other Activision. Anyway, moving on. World's Edge is also under Activision. It isn't quite likely the studio is World Edge as it typically partners with other developers to make the games um and remasters that and those games are specifically on the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology IPs. It's more a central production group basically, but even so, the team has been severely impacted by cuts a result of this move.

According to reports online, they had a game cancelled. Obsidian is now under Bethesda. It'll oversee grounded, which is the uh sort of Honey, I sh the kids type game, and is now working on a new Fallout. According to my sources there, people aren't happy. They had their own autonomy. They were able to make the games they wanted to make. They were given plenty of freedom. Now, frankly, they don't have that. They're now part of a different organization. This wasn't the dream. It wasn't what was pitched. But ultimately, the games it released last year, they released three of our The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded, they were wellreceived. They're decent games, but they just didn't connect for whatever reason. They didn't reach a large enough audience. It's a shame. The studio just hasn't been able to deliver the commercial success that Xbox required. Being able to keep some of the team together working on a big brand like Fallout, I think, given time will be seen as a good result considering what what was the other option. Let's just hope they get to retain what makes Obsidian Obsidian. And I'm sure that, you know, everybody wants that. Now, there are now there is industry anger and frustration at Xbox for the decisions that have led to this

situation. But few in the business will argue that change hasn't been necessary. And as brutal as these changes are, they do seem, at least in my view, to be the right cause. Xbox is removing studios that, yes, have made great games. They've not been financially successful. In fact, they've lost money. More importantly, they're not making the games that Xbox wants to focus on. Is cutting double fine going to make a material difference to Xbox's bottom line? Not really. But by removing the teams in its game, Xbox can put its energy into other more potentially lucrative areas, areas that it feels is better suited for them. And hopefully these studios can still find their feet in an independent capacity. The biggest news from all this, of course, is around Halo Studios. Halo Studios is now just supporting the Halo games that are already in market. That's games like the the Master Chief Collection for instance and Halo Infinite. Activision is building a new team to take the series forward. This move is less about cutting costs and more about getting Halo moving again. Ever since Bungie left the franchise in 2010, Halo has never been the same from a business point of view.

It was once one of the world's leading shooters. In 2007, Halo 3 was the biggest entertainment launch of all time back then, bigger than GTA. Today, it is a shadow of that. Bungie was succeeded by a new studio called 343, which was later rebranded Halo Studios. It's not had the best success despite some bold attempts. It's also missed deadlines. Halo Infinite was supposed to be a major relaunch for the IP, but it arrived a year late and underperformed. There are analysts and competitors in the industry that highlight that as the key moment when they knew this generation for Xbox was lost. Now, there are many reasons Halo has waned beyond the product themselves. The genre has moved on and sometimes franchises just fade away over time. and there's just nothing you can do about it. Nevertheless, Xbox believes they can rejuvenate it. There is something still in that Halo brand and Activision is charged with building that team. Actually makes a lot of sense. When Xbox bought Activision, I commented at the time, I argued at the time that it might make sense to put the Call of Duty publisher in charge of all of Xbox's studios, including the Bethesda

studios. Actually, look, Activision isn't flawless. It's made plenty of mistakes, but broadly speaking, its games are generally good quality. They arrive on time and often on budget. Putting Halo under the control of the Call of Duty company feels like a sensible move. In fact, putting most of these companies under Activision feels like a sensible move. It's no guarantee of success, of course. Activision had Bungie's Destiny for a while and struggled with that in the end. Call of Duty is having a bit of a low moment right now, too. Although, I hear good things about Modern Warfare 4. But on paper, you can see why Activision would be given the keys to Halo. And that's something worth commenting on, actually, because on paper, this makes sense. But games aren't made on paper. They're made by people. They're made by teams. They're made by studios with distinct voices and visions and cultures. These things take time to cultivate. Building a new team might sound exciting, and it is, but actually there's an argument to be made that an existing group who know each other, who have worked together across multiple projects, they might be better placed at take a crack at rescuing a franchise like Halo. But hey, [clears throat] perhaps Rare might be

interested in taking on Halo. It's actually a shame that Xbox is letting Arcane Leon go. I'd bet they'd make a really unique Halo game. Now, moving beyond uh uh this week's news, there are three studios that remain within the Xbox Game Studios ecosystem. So, there's three divisions to Xbox. Bethesda, Activision, Xbox Game Studios. The three studios that still under XGS, Halo is studios as well, actually. So, maybe it's four. It's Gears of War developer, The Coalition, Fable and Forsa, Horizon Studio, Playground Games, and Clockwork Revolution Creator in Exile. All three studios have a new game out over the next 12ish months. It feels like Xbox is keeping things as they are while these companies work on these projects. Let's not let's not distract them. But you'd have to imagine they too will end up reporting into Activision or Bethesda at some point and thus the Xbox Game Studios organization will close entirely. Will this save Xbox? In the immediate term, these changes will largely just help Xbox's margins. So, you've got over 3,000 fewer

employees combined with hopefully a better year for Call of Duty and a GTA bump on hardware. All of that could really benefit in the near term, hopefully. But Halo going to Activision, the signing of another Kajjima game, we're not going to see the results of these for five, six, maybe even seven years. But what this tells me is that this is an Xbox that is in it for the long term. And of course, success will be decided, as it always is in this industry, on the strength of the video games themselves. Right, before I introduce our interview this week, which is with Keyword Studios, we're talking about localization. I wanted to tell you what I've been doing this week because I've spent the last eight days in Tokyo. It's my first trip to Japan, and I was there specifically to attend Tokyo Game Show and to get to know the video game industry over there. And it was a really fascinating experience. Now, if you watched Here's the Dring this week, which is the little podcast I do on Monday for paying subscribers. If you be interested in becoming a paying subscriber, please do it. It's really important for us to help support us. Um,

you all know I had some takeaways from the event, and I'm not going to repeat all of them here, but I wanted to dive into one element that I didn't really talk that much about, which is just how nostalgic the Japanese video game industry is. If you take Tokyo Game Show specifically, it was a wash with remakes and reboots. You know, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation led the way and Crazy Taxi was there and Mega Man and Castlevania. Pokémon developer Game Freak was showing a new mobile game, but promoting it by bringing back a fanzene it used to make in the 1980s. For those that don't know, Game Freak started life as a video game fan. There's still a thriving games retail scene in Japan. I visited multiple shops while I was there and they had huge video game sections like I used to be in the UK. Okay, the majority of those sections were just Nintendo stuff, but it's been a long time since I've seen quite so many games and merchandise being sold in physical shops. And of course, all those shops have big displays promoting the ultimate nostalgia game that's coming out, The Legend of Zelda or Queen of Time remake. There wasn't a GTA 6 in sight. A trip I did for myself one in Japan was the Nintendo Museum. I actually might write

about that next week because it was fascinating. Um, but that whole concept is nostalgia. It's not really a museum. There's very little information there. There's no audio guide. It's just lots of pretty pictures and displays and reminders of Nintendo's past with some fun interactive exhibits as well that also do the same thing. The nostalgia booming games and entertainment is everywhere, but it's apparent to me it's a real driving force in Japan, certainly on console. Now, could there be a risk of stagnation? We're seeing an increasing number of Japanese gamers turn to PC titles. That segment of the industry has doubled over the last 5 years in Japan. And PC games on Steam are typically more experimental. That's where you get a lot more new IPs and indie projects. So, is Japan's gamers crying out for some new things which they're not necessarily seeing on console? Yeah, maybe. But there was new stuff at TGS as well. You know, it's not fair to say it was all big brands. As I say, Game Freak was there with two new games. Strangers in Heaven from SE is a new IP mostly. Kajjima's upcoming two games are all new as well. So, there is a smattering of new stuff going on and

I'm sure there's more working behind the scenes. But my big takeaway from TGS was just how the industry feels a little bit old, a little bit stuck in the past. Maybe that might come across as a criticism as an older gamer myself. Kind of loved it. Anyway, right, our big feature segment this week is on video game localization. Now, during our visit to Gamescom, which feels like a lifetime ago, but was actually only last month, I managed to chat to two major experts in video game localization in the form of Dominic Kelly, who is CE senior technology and solutions director at Keyword Studios, and Ramina Francesa, who is director of products, offers, solutions, and implementation at Keywords. Very big job titles there. Um, I used to work in localization. If you don't know, it was my first job in video games. I worked in localization QA which meant I would play games in all sorts of different languages from a standard one like English or German to more complicated languages like Greek or Turkish. My job was to play the game identify any moments where the text didn't fit in the text boxes or where the text over overlapped or was clipped

because of the language their word lengths are different right I also had to basically play the game for the translators and take screenshots of all the text so they could spot any moments where things didn't read right or how they could cut things down so they could all fit that kind of stuff. Now, that was a long time ago. You know, you're talking I think I started in 2006 and I was there in 2007. But I've always had a strong fascination in that work because since then video games have become more complex, more global, more culturally important. So, I thought why not take up a chance to chat about this world, find out how it's changing, what role is AI taking in sort of changing this space. So, check out my interview. Here's my chat with Ramina and Dominic. Hello, welcome to the show. We were just on the show floor at Gamescom and I had an interview with uh with Pearl Abyss who did the Crimson Desert game and I was talking to them about where they think the next bit of growth was going to come from and they were telling me they were fully localizing the game in a bunch of languages. I mean I think it was localized a bit in some but you know they were doing the full voice work. Um and I was a bit surprised they hadn't done that already. Is that is that still

a thing? Do people do games still coming out that aren't you know hitting most major markets?
Unfortunately yes. Um, languages clearly do represent cost, right? And our customers need to think about where they want to launch their games, whether the local markets speak English as a as a fluent language within the market. So, unfortunately, yes, you will be surprised how many games still struggle to come language first, right? Or at least release at the same time. Yes.
What's the biggest roadblock? what's what's uh is it is it money?
Um I would say yes money is a a significant contributor to that but also you know when you talk about localization and kind of the storytelling language can also be a barrier in terms of how you talk to another culture. You know how do you translate the message um and it needs strategy and strategy takes

time. So you know leaving the m the financial side aside localization requires the time to think about the strategy of localization. So when you do release it the strategy is right and and it does justice to the game. Yes.
So give me some examples of that. It sounds interesting. So when you think about strategy for translation, you you not only think about the content itself, but whether you want to bring the gamer to the game or you want to take the game to the gamer, right? And the process of designing that takes time. It takes iteration. It takes um it takes effort. It it takes the the time to think what is the strategy how to apply it and you know what are the mechanisms in a way to make that happen properly because it's not just part of the game it needs to carry the strategy needs to carry through. So, when you say bring the game to the gamer, do you mean like
you're going to take a game that might be built? The what springs to mind here

is Jagex? I spoke to them recently. They've just had a lot of success with Runescape in China
and they didn't think they were going to because Runescape's incredibly British,
right? And they thought, "Our game is very British. We can't change that." They decided to take their game to China. And actually, it's turned out there was an audience that liked that sort of thing in China.
Yeah. The uh strategy doesn't necessarily mean you digest things on behalf of the gamer. Strategy means you make a decision on how much you stretch them. So there will be situations where staying true to the culture of the source is what will interest the gamers. Yeah. Right. So the example that you're giving clearly there was an audience ready to digest the game in its more um natural form. But there will be other games that need a little bit more explaining or a little bit more adjusting so it becomes more familiar to the gamer. And that's what I mean by

stretching the gamer or stretching the game. I'm surprised there's not more companies in it because I I well maybe maybe I'm not surprised but I look at I look at the popular the WIA games for instance coming out of China into the west. I look at the success of K-pop and uh and Squid Game and Kdramas and all that stuff coming out of how many companies at Gamescom from the east and they they're coming to Europe and rather than hey how do we adapt this for Europe? How do we adapt this for the UK? How do we adapt this for America?
They're kind of leaning into the fact that it's unique to that culture. We're starting to see things that we assumed wouldn't work in other markets work. And I would have thought that would be a
a wonderful opportunity for a lot of companies that perhaps don't realize that their game might do really well in markets they don't really even think about.
Um I suspect there is a little bit of timing, right? So um through other media markets are exposed to cultures, right? So there may be in you know I'm sure this is a more complex thing than just the games resonating. Yeah. um there is

a readiness to uh digest or or maybe consume different cultures. So it's it's convenient. It gives you an experience without necessarily having to travel far. Um so there is that readiness and there is the exposure. Now the secret of success is not necessarily ready made right. So you can't just say oh yeah any K-pop game will be successful. there will have to be something brilliant in that storytelling. Yes, of course. Of course. Um, for people to want to consume it. Um, and you know, we we know that through history, you know, there are different periods where there may be uh games from a specific region that become more of a general interest or a specific genre as well. So, this is where the elements or the um all of the moving parts needs to be ready for the consumption of the game. But again, with consumers having access to cultures, I think that being able to bring a game to

the audience, it's easier than it's been before.
Yeah. Well, digital was kind of beforehand, if I wanted to watch something from, I don't know, Korea, I'd have to find a special shop or something that sold the DVD. Yeah.
Now it's on Netflix, right? It's a
Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a very good point because the kind of things we're seeing in games now, uh, they're everywhere, too. So, uh, Netflix is, uh, producing serieses, Amazon is producing serieses, and then there's a game or vice versa, there's a game, and so it's being exposed, and then they might be seeing, okay, like the Jagex example you give us, right? Very, very British colloquial Montipython, Knights of the Round Table, jumping around and all this kind of stuff.
Did you listen to that episode? [laughter]
Um, there there was lots of it, right? Um, and I know cuz I've I've seen lots of that content and kind of, you know, I know them quite well. I've been out to see them and they're they're great people and and they understood
that that uniqueness of their game was was what people loved about it. But Montipython as the actual cultural stuff that exposed that probably wasn't when

when like we were watching it, it wasn't in China,
but it slowly creeped out like Montipython was not anywhere near in America. Now it's huge. Everyone's out there. So sometimes it takes that timing to creep out, you know, for those kind of like uniquenesses. It's like you know for me being Irish like a father Ted thing is very colloquial Irish right and once you understand that you can understand most Irish humor because there's a lot of it there so um that that kind of stuff it doesn't really get exposed to people but now it's on Netflix now it's everywhere and you can see it a lot more so yeah the exposure to it
are there any things that uh customers are asking for languages or or regions that that's different that's new that's sort of exploding or blowing up for you at the moment
I I think they're asking a lot about emerging markets Um, so they they obviously have been producing their games in lots of different countries. Um, you know, they have stable user bases, but now they're asking the questions, well, if we were to localize in this language, would would we get a user base in that? And they have to do a bit of research behind it themselves.

So, are there games that are already translating in those markets? Is there a user base for that type of game? Um, is there something trending out there that is linked to our game that we can use? Um, and then what's the level of English in that market? And just because it is in English doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't that they speak a lot of English. Doesn't mean that they wouldn't want to use it more if it was Dutch or more if it was I don't know Hindi or something like that.
Is there is there any specific markets you're thinking of when you say that?
At the moment we're not Korea that you you gave it as an example right there is a lot of interest um in that. So I would say at the moment the way the games travel is going both ways, right? So we don't only have games going from west to the east. There is a lot of interest to bring games from the east to the west. Um and I don't know if you've seen it, this may be tangental, but I don't know if you've seen the news about this new Disney World type of city that is uh

being planned in France.
Yeah. that will be dedicated to manga and anime. So, you know, an investment like that shows the interest in that type of content coming from uh east to west. Yeah.
I worked very briefly in in localization QA. And I used to test games in like Greek or um uh Polish or something. And what I used to be amazed used to amaze me sometimes is that there'd be a word that doesn't fit in the box, right? And so they would have to cut it down. and they would cut it down to the point where it was almost meaningless. Like I thought that does any do people in Poland know that what those two letters supposed to represent? Um does that still happen? Because is that that feels like
kind of misses the point of potentially appealing in that market?
Yeah, I unfortunately it's not a problem that has disappeared.
The idea of culturalization of games has become very prominent. developers understand it

and the industry is very matured as well. So you know um making jokes work etc. There are so many bad examples out there. Uh there is enough history I suppose um to indicate what are the the things that forget about the content itself. You know individuals working in the industry want to get it right. They want to make sure that there isn't an oversimplified version of the content that doesn't tell the story anymore. Yeah,
are there cases? I'm sure there still are. Um, but interestingly enough, with some of the technology that is out there, you know, some of the automated translation, etc. Some I I want to be careful with this point, but some of that technology is allowing the cultural experts to spend more time on the content and the storytelling rather than the mechanism of translating the content itself. Yeah. Yeah. Um so I am hopeful that some of the changes and the introduction of new ways of working will

create even more space for the creative process in the localization.
A bit.
So um I I think the technology part um what it does is it gives access to people that otherwise wouldn't understand a language. So if you're a developer, you don't understand Chinese, you don't understand Germany, you don't understand what the impact of what localization is. And like Mina said, those technologies like LLMs and AI kind of stuff. Um, that allows you to, it's not perfect because it doesn't really understand all the time what you need to do. It's still humans needed, but you can throw it off to a machine, put that, give it to a developer, let them look at it and go, "Wow, I didn't realize my game looks like that if I were to do it in Chinese." And then they might go, "Oh, okay. Well, maybe we might need to do something about that."
It's really interesting. So, uh, you can get access to the the language or the possible bugs and issues earlier if you do international checks early on. And machine translation allows you to kind of do that a little bit. It's not going to tell you is the game good and how does it read and how does it write and is the narrative flow, but it can show a

developer, hey, you guys are going to have lots of bugs and the user experience is going to be really bad because they can't play through the game because the directions or the instructions can't fit on the screen. Um, and that's really what the developers want. They want a game that people love to play, not a game that they feel they have to work hard to play. And that that's why some technology is going to really help developers see these things before. It will never remove it completely because sometimes people just design it and they haven't thought of it before, but they should be thinking about this because this it's not really a heavy load effort to do it either. So
So I got a note that said that your customers are getting you involved. Is this I might have misread this getting involved earlier and earlier in the process. Is that something that's you're seeing? Is that happening? I would say that um it can depend on the project because sometimes we're brought in last minute to fix things. Yeah.
And in that case, no.
But in some cases, we're brought in really early. We say, "Look, we want to take this game and we want to take it to a new market or we want this game and we want to create the same user experience

for all our players, no matter what the language are." And if they have that kind of mentality, bringing us in early is really good. Um because then we can start to talk about things like that internationalization checking. uh we can start to talk about okay well these are the kind of features and functionality that um really work well when you localize them so therefore they're really good or do you understand the narrative design of the game where you have multiple choices that have multiple outcomes in the game that can be really complicated and when you localize it that means your game's going to become extremely complicated because uh as you have decisions you need to worry about how you're going to check it and quantify does that flow correctly through um you know if you look at polish with different kind of uh versions you know you can um plurals and you know different genders and things like that they add complexity and um getting involved early means you can start to consider those as you build
the the one thing I would add to that is that when we talk localization we don't just talk about the words right so um in the cases where developers bring the

cultural expert early the cultural expert has the ability to influence the content in a in a richer way So um how you build characters, what they wear, what colors um they use. So you end up communicating the story or the message or you know you tell the story in a richer way in a more inclusive way. Now again going back to the beginning of this conversation, wanting to stretch the gamer so they experience the game as the key priority totally fine, right? So, it's not like one thing is better than the other, but that can enrich the experience and it can make the game be more inclusive. I guess
we're losing the lights, but is there any examples of things that surprised you recently? And
I cannot think of I've got one story.
Uh so, um I've got a few stories from my from my days over the years. I think I've been working in localization for 20 odd years. Okay. Um there's lots of

listening stories, but um like uh working out of context has often lead to surprises and I won't mention brands and names because that would just get me into trouble. But um you know uh if if you have a tag or a slogan, you know, like just do it or you know the taste of life and things like that, right? Everyone knows who their brands are. But if you don't know or understand what you're translating and then you're given it and then someone doesn't understand it's going on a billboard, before you know it, you can have really really caused a load of trouble. Um and once that's out there, you can't take it back. It's it's out there. it's never coming back. But then you have other people um who can go into so much detail about this has we have to make people believe
actually really believe that this game happened in that time not just the language but the time. So we've been asked for example um to look at some Arabic kind of situations where you know um let's say you were going to buy a pack of cigarettes. Well that pack of cigarettes wasn't available then. What kind of brand would be available? what kind of uh what kind of language would

it have on it and actually go into that level of detail. So that can affect like the artwork you do as well as the translation. That's more of a transcreation kind of part. So you've got some really funny stories where people have done stuff out of context. But they've also got some really great stories where people have said no no we want to make people believe that this is real or as real as it can be like they're back in that time and date and make them relive that experience. So that that that's the cases we've seen. Um but I can't give you specifics. I think you might I think there's a lot of them out there, you know. You know, I think there's Yeah, there's too many probably to mention.
How much of an impact is AI having on your business? Is it a good thing? Is it helping you? Is it is it is it a threat?
I think it's like any technology any technology uh in the right hands with the right understanding can have great benefits.
But in the same case, in the wrong hands and with the wrong use cases can have really bad outcomes. Um also it gives a lot of people some false expectations. Uh I often get and I actually did um a webinar quite a while ago about this um

where it's like we get asked can AI do that. Um sometimes yes, sometimes no. Let's see. Um and then let's see how good is it? Let's see does it work and let's set the expectations correctly. It doesn't always meet the expectations because
the the dream of AI is that it will do everything for you and the reality is often a little bit further away. uh implementation and uh you know vision are two very different things and it's really key that you know you set expectations early as possible. That's why you know like I mentioned about machine translation for example and LLMs giving the developer the access to see it and then say look how bad this might be or how good it might be. This is might be something we could use but use it in the right way. Use it when you're doing your QA early to give them access to it. See if they can fix it. Don't do it with dialogue because the AI will never really understand how a conversation flows in Japanese between a father and a son and then a son and a dog. Uh, you know, in your game, it it doesn't really get that. So, you need to

think about um the complexity of of the language. Um, and the machine will only know what you feed it as well. So,
cuz obviously I guess the companies that mostly tempted to use AI are smaller companies, right? an independent team and how can they get involved in in in what you know with you I guess an affordable way because they they often don't have that the capacity of a bigger bigger business.
Yeah. But what like we're not telling people not to use it. Like if the only option they have is to do that then you know okay that's something that they can do and it might expose the game and they can come back to us and they can fix it later because maybe they don't have a player base. Maybe they don't have you know a region out there that they think is going to buy the game. But uh if they want to use it responsibly then doing the evaluations and looking and forecasting of what the quality could be and looking at your content and saying okay well what's risky what's not risky and trying to like understand okay well this workflow works really well this one no we don't like I mentioned about the dialogue for example really complex you're probably better off you know using humans and doing it the right way

from the start
I often find with AI it's good at speeding things up it's not necessarily good at it's not necessarily better than so you know you always need someone to, you know, make sure it delivers.
Yeah. So, when you use AI, there is a risk because because it's so good sometimes, um, and this is true because it can be very good. Um, that the hallucinization or the mistransation parts, they read really well, but they're probably wrong.
Yeah.
And they're even hard as a catch. So, the expertise you need and the linguistic skills you need to catch those things that would make it of human quality, um, you need really good linguists. Um, and you don't need someone who's maybe just like a, you know, doing French part-time. And that's not you want someone who's like understands the game really well, who studied linguistics, can catch those things. So you need the right level of expertise for it.
I'll ask one final question. Where do you see sort of localization going in the next 5 years?
I think Mina, we should uh ask that together, but I'll let you go first.
Sure. Um I um localization as a a as a

concept, I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.
No. What is changing is the methodology to get there. The authenticity of the voice of a person, right? The way um a message gets transferred will continue to be led or be be more real or more enjoyable um through the experience of a person. Now the reality is the some of the processes within localization are maybe ripe uh for some technology but I don't think I think audiences will continue to be delighted by uh the content that gets created um by developers and it gets um shared better through through the authentic voice of a human
maybe with a little bit of help of technology but as I say it's the processes that may change not necessarily the discipline itself. Yeah. And uh I I would agree with Reina. You

know, the the process will change and the main reason why is that games are getting bigger
and they're getting more complicated and um you know uh the way that you they structure the complexity between conversations and outcomes in the game are getting more complicated. Um so things will have to change and things will have to get better, but we've been getting better every year, every month, every week, every day where we can. Um so we innovate on technologies when it comes to workflow. We innovate in terms of um you know the applications we use today at work. We innovate in how we report back. Uh we're doing it all the time. So it's it's important that it's not just AI. Um you know there's lots of things that um we're doing to make things better over time. Um and you know the the speed in which information flows through organization straight through from QA into localization into localization testing and then out into the market. That that's really the key thing because the more data the bigger the game is more complex the speed in which the information travels through those business units and out is is the challenge because that's why AI is being used a lot of cases is often because

translation is done at the very end.
Yeah.
And you have very little time and that's often why people start to look at it. Um and that's not really like where you should be looking at it for you should be looking at how can you improve the whole thing through technology AI and expertise.
You've got a lot going on. You got uh more markets opening up as the industry gets tighter. People are looking to new territories and you've got AI technology disrupting everything. You've got your hands full. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate learning all about what's going on.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you Reina and Dominic there. I actually had another chat with Keywords at the time with someone called Jenna who sort of works on accessibility at Keywords. Really interesting. We'll we'll run that at a later date. So do join us for that one. Now before we finish, it's time for the news roundup. Not too many stories this week, but you know, some big ones. Let's begin with Bungie. The Bungie says it will return to Destiny and has announced plans to reinstate old campaigns, raids, and raids, and destinations to the existing game. It also said it's going to evolve Marathon towards a more survival-based experience to reach more players. Bungie

had previously released a final update to Destiny 2, which resulted in the loss of over 290 employees. Um, they're trying to regain the trust of players a little bit there. I heard good things about Marathon. Not many people are playing it, but I've heard good things about it. Two Swedish unions, UnionN and uh pronounce this Severis Inenor have issued I ruined that I'm sorry have issued a strike notice against King after executives rejected a proposed collective bargaining agreement. Mediation is ongoing but if no agreement is reached King staff will strike uh on September 25th which is tomorrow. The EU Commission has published a draft proposal for its kids act. to the act suggests a ban on social networks and video sharing platforms for under 13s and restrictions for under 15s. However, there are some rules that will also apply to online games, which could cover everything from Roblox and Fortnite to multiplayer modes in traditional games. The app discourages online game makers from using techniques that entice young users to play for longer or to log in more frequently. I'm going to do something on this I think next week. Um, it doesn't seem that unreasonable, so

I'll be interested to see how the industry responds. And finally, Minds Eye developer Builder Rocket Boy has undergone another wave of redundancies which insiders claim uh insiders have claimed the developer has now been completely wiped out. Builder Rocket Boy was put together by Grand Theft Auto online creator Leslie Benzes in 2016. It was building a big metaverse thing. It ended up launching a pretty disappointing sort of GTA like story game um that came out last year uh and it just hasn't worked out for them. That's it for this week. Um, we do have a lot coming up on the Game Business Show for you to look forward to. I'm becoming a bit wary of telling people what the next episodes are because things keep dropping in at the last minute. I'm going to run that now. I'm gonna run that now. So, I I don't want to tease necessarily what's going to run specifically next week, but I'll say some of the features we've got. We've got a we've got a piece on EA Criterion coming up. We've got a piece with Tencent coming up. Got a piece with Roblox coming up. We've got an interview with Ken Kusharagi coming up. We've got an interview with Commodore. I love that interview. I can't wait to show you that one. went with Bing Gordon. Loads and

loads of big shows coming up and lots and lots of deep dives as well um into other areas of the industry on our news analysis show. But for now, that's it for me. If you want to make sure you don't miss an episode, go to the game business.com and stick in your email address. If you are already a free subscriber to the game business, do consider becoming a paid subscriber. We are a reader supported brand basically. I do we have sponsors at the moment which is very very helpful. Um but um it's not enough and and ultimately ideally it would be a reader supported thing. We're hammered by a little bit but we give our stuff away for free except for our Monday show. So I understand why you you don't need to support it but if you were able to support it that would be amazing. But that's it for me today. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.