As a video gamer, you probably haven't thought twice about how the latest and greatest CGI game came from.
In fact, you'll probably just run to the nearest gaming store to pick up your new favorite, pop it in the second you get home, and get lost for hours upon hours on end until you have exhausted either yourself or the hours spent to beat the game at long last.
But, lets say you did care where it came from? What steps did it go through to get those advertisements out? Who provided you with that much-needed information that got you off the couch to buy this game in the first place? Well, that would be the gaming localization specialist who works for the gaming companies throughout the world.
Game localization, also known as game globalization is the practice of preparing a video game for other locations.
While yes, it may be released in its home nation; these companies want to take it worldwide to gain as much as they possibly can from their newly released video game wonder.
There are many different things that a game localizer does, however, their biggest job is to adapt the video game that was once in Japanese, to English for you to enjoy without having to read subtitles during game play.
While it may be fine to read while you're watching a movie, many gaming fans would have a tough time playing an action video game with sub-titles to read along with fighting those big bads.
They also begin to work with linguistics, hardware, software, music, legalities, graphic identities, music, and cultural differences within the video games.
While yes, this sounds like a bit more work than it should take to get your video game from point A to point B, I can assure you that it is necessary if you would like your video game to function properly in your console.
The linguistics and cultural differences often times relate to the change of language and any cultural references that you may not understand, within reason, as they maintain the integrity of the video game to appeal to those across the world.
Then you will move on to the hardware and software, where they will begin tweaking the generals of hotkeys and game play to fit the controller specs on your video game console.
Music and graphics may also be altered, but this is rarer as they typically try to keep the graphics as seamless and untouched as possible.
Lastly, and most importantly, you have your legal phase of game localization.
These companies must ensure that the game ratings meet up with the standards in any one country.
While one country wouldn't consider crass language enough to make a video game rate MA, another might.
All of these things will vary greatly on where these companies are trying to sell.
But, what do you care? Really? Unless you are interested in gaming localization as a career, you will likely have a passing thought to thank these hard working people for bringing you your game release.
In fact, you'll probably just run to the nearest gaming store to pick up your new favorite, pop it in the second you get home, and get lost for hours upon hours on end until you have exhausted either yourself or the hours spent to beat the game at long last.
But, lets say you did care where it came from? What steps did it go through to get those advertisements out? Who provided you with that much-needed information that got you off the couch to buy this game in the first place? Well, that would be the gaming localization specialist who works for the gaming companies throughout the world.
Game localization, also known as game globalization is the practice of preparing a video game for other locations.
While yes, it may be released in its home nation; these companies want to take it worldwide to gain as much as they possibly can from their newly released video game wonder.
There are many different things that a game localizer does, however, their biggest job is to adapt the video game that was once in Japanese, to English for you to enjoy without having to read subtitles during game play.
While it may be fine to read while you're watching a movie, many gaming fans would have a tough time playing an action video game with sub-titles to read along with fighting those big bads.
They also begin to work with linguistics, hardware, software, music, legalities, graphic identities, music, and cultural differences within the video games.
While yes, this sounds like a bit more work than it should take to get your video game from point A to point B, I can assure you that it is necessary if you would like your video game to function properly in your console.
The linguistics and cultural differences often times relate to the change of language and any cultural references that you may not understand, within reason, as they maintain the integrity of the video game to appeal to those across the world.
Then you will move on to the hardware and software, where they will begin tweaking the generals of hotkeys and game play to fit the controller specs on your video game console.
Music and graphics may also be altered, but this is rarer as they typically try to keep the graphics as seamless and untouched as possible.
Lastly, and most importantly, you have your legal phase of game localization.
These companies must ensure that the game ratings meet up with the standards in any one country.
While one country wouldn't consider crass language enough to make a video game rate MA, another might.
All of these things will vary greatly on where these companies are trying to sell.
But, what do you care? Really? Unless you are interested in gaming localization as a career, you will likely have a passing thought to thank these hard working people for bringing you your game release.