Thinking outside the localization box

Goodgame GLQAM Workshop

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

Female characters in video gamesand challenges in localization

Stats About The Demographics of Video Games

● There are more than 2.5 billion gamers around the world.

● 45% of US gamers are women.

● 56% of the most frequent gamers play multiplayer games.

“Video games are silently becoming part of our everyday lives. And it’s not only teenagers who are playing.People of all ages, sexes, and walks of life are joining in the frenzy.”

https://techjury.net/stats-about/video-game-demographics/#gref

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

4

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

“Women's football growth and development within Europe remains consistent.

Research compiled by UEFA for 2016/17 shows that the total number of

registered female players now numbers over 1.270 million.

More and more young girls are playing football, with the number of registered

players under 18 now standing at over 827,000.”

https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/football-development/womens-football/

Women's football has risen in both profile and popularity in the last few years

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

https://www.easports.com/uk/fifa/women

Introducing Women's National Teams in FIFA 16

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

FIFA 19 The Journey: Champions

“There’s a really good yearly article found by feminist frequency where they break

down gender in games at E3 every year. They had a really amazing quote: "We rarely

encourage boys and men to fully project themselves onto female characters. When

players are encouraged to see the game universe exclusively through a humanized

female character, it helps challenge the idea that men can’t or shouldn’t identify

with women as full human beings."

https://www.ea.com/news/fifa-19-gameplay-design

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

VOLTA FOOTBALL gives you countless ways to

customise and personalise your player. From how

they dress, to their hairstyle and tattoos, and new

celebratory emotes, create your MALE or FEMALE

player and showcase them across the various game

modes in VOLTA FOOTBALL.

FIFA 20 - VOLTA FOOTBALL

https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/news/volta-football-fifa-20-overview

“It's true that the number of games in which you either control characters of different genders or get to choose the gender of your hero character significantly outstrip those with established male or female protagonists.”

https://www.wired.com/story/e3-2019-female-representation-videogames/

FIFA 20 - VOLTA FOOTBALL: Challenges

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

We were dealing with the gender neutral

localization into 20 different languages, and

this required quite some effort for specific

languages, in particular: French, Italian,

Spanish, Portuguese.

Although it required a big localization effort,

this did not affected either budget or timeline

- and all went as originally planned.

https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/news/volta-football-fifa-20-overview

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

FIFA 20 CAREER MODE

https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/fifa-20/fifa-20-career-mode

Create and customise your manager with more

options than ever before.

Change body type, skin tone, clothing, and

hairstyles, and create female managers for the

first time in FIFA.

“It's true that the number of games in which you either control characters of different genders or get to choose the gender of your hero character significantly outstrip those with established male or female protagonists.”

https://www.wired.com/story/e3-2019-female-representation-videogames/

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

FIFA 20 CAREER MODE: Localization Challenges

In the weeks before the content was finalized, we received

the estimate for the expected volume, and we realized that

we had enough resources to deal with only half of it.

After analyzing the content, we noticed that we could use

some workarounds to make sure to have all the content

translated in time, and within our limited resources.

https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/fifa-20/fifa-20-career-mode

“Translators working with electronic formats (file-based translations) and a good translation memory, can achieve anything between 2,500 and 3,000 words.But this may also differ across languages.”

https://www.pangeanic.com/knowledge_center/how-many-words-does-a-professional-translator-translate-per-day/#

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

FIFA 20 CAREER MODE: Localization Challenges

We realized that a big part of the content included

English duplicates. This would allow us to start sending

out the unique strings containing the text to be localized.

The idea behind this approach was to translate the

unique strings at first and then process all the remaining

duplicates through the TMs.

“Translators working with electronic formats (file-based translations) and a good translation memory, can achieve anything between 2,500 and 3,000 words.But this may also differ across languages.”

https://www.pangeanic.com/knowledge_center/how-many-words-does-a-professional-translator-translate-per-day/#

Female characters in video games, and challenges in localization

FIFA 20 CAREER MODE: Localization Challenges

We were able to deliver on time, and stay within the

remaining budget we had left for FIFA 20.

It was important to keep actively communicating with

the testers throughout the entire translation cycle.

Due to the tight timelines - testers also jumped in for the

review of the localized content coming through the TMs.

https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/fifa-20/volta