Territory servers & UI design for international communities: Korean ratings & language district
Chinese ‘anti-indulging’ regulations: 18 yrs or under
Two problems with the Crane as a pet in China: The red crested crane is an endangered and protected species in China Using cranes as pets or killable animals can be problematic for government license application
Required one skilled programmer about 3 months to implement Asian IMEs: One Korean IME; easiest to implement Two IMEs for Japan both Windows compatible Four Traditional Chinese IMEs for Taiwan territory Ten Simplified Chinese IMEs; most difficult to implement Many different Chinese IMEs; 10 different 3 rd party IMEs Need to find 3 rd party IMEs and code custom interface Each OS (Win 98, XP, Vista, Win 2000) requires different IME versions Only players in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China had IMEs enabled **
55 hotkey controls in GW: Bind hotkeys to physical keys, not virtual values Core game controls adopted by international players bound to physical keys Some conflicts where common punctuation keys trigger hotkey combinations Keyboard layouts for US, UK, European and Asian languages are different – hotkey mappings can conflict and vary International keyboarding and localized documentation (eg. Keyboard command instructions) require thorough QA and verification
The prince is loyal but his father wants to stay and fight: Generational conflict and disobedience can be a problem for Asian cultures
Text files stored in source control tool Loc PMs dif/handoff XLS content files Vendors apply TMs & localize text Vendors handback localized content Loc PMs merge into source control tool Builds convert XLS XML text into C data Loc provides a 2 nd edit pass on English
Require separate strings for professions and male/female playing characters
Term glossaries/DBs key to consistency in distributed localization process Community management teams need access to term glossaries for reviews Text strings Highly iterative (loc PMs rarely end project with original schedule) Adaptive and statistical project management Loc PMs must liaise closely with Design, Dev’t teams and vendors Agile methodologies can be applied Localizing large volumes (1M words/month) in short times requires large teams of translators/reviewers with access to online reviews/TMs/glossaries Quick review of translator’s work is critical
GW English wiki links added in game for mission and quest summaries No equivalence between English UGC and localized versions of game Localized versions missing – internationalization difficult
Long tail, aggregate of smaller language communities (blue) can be tier 1 priority Conclusion: It can be worthwhile to support community localization ArenaNet in constant dialogue with international GW player communities through iterative development: Localization is no exception!