Episode Transcription

MELISA: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Melisa, I’m here with Lara and Ale.

LARA: Hi!

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone!

MELISA: And today we have a little different of an episode. So what we did is ask our community what they wanted to hear, what they wanted us to talk about. And after a few days of voting, the people spoke, and the topic that was chosen is culturalization. So this is what we’re going to talk about today. And it’s a term that we use a lot in the industry and sometimes it’s mixed up with localization. So how would you guys define culturalization?

LARA: For me, culturalization is taking that little step forward from localization because it’s just a little bit more than just localizing our content, because we know that localization, it goes with words, with everything. But culturalization just makes it more of the culture, more of the target culture. You can see things that, yeah, maybe I localized these texts, but this is offensive in my country. You know? That’s just an example. So it has to be rewritten or it has to be rethought or… I don’t know.

ALEXIS: Yeah. I mean, it’s tailored even more to the game, even regarding current events or news that are relevant to when the game takes place. It’s taking a step further.

LARA: Yeah, it’s taking a step further in the meanings of, I don’t know, making something more accurate or something more relatable because maybe, if I have this joke and I localize it, right? Maybe the joke doesn’t have the same punch if I add my culture into that joke, you know what I mean?

MELISA: Absolutely.

LARA: So it’s just like, yeah, it’s taking that step forward from localization and trying to own that content that you’re trying to localize.

MELISA: Absolutely, and it makes me think of our episode about Spanish from Latin America and Spanish from… European. If you haven’t watched it…

LARA: Please, go watch it. We explain a lot about the differences and how to appropriate your own language.

MELISA: Exactly. And how can these cultural differences, in the case of, you add that step of culturalization, how can that change a video game?

LARA: Well, in the case of video games, it changes because sometimes you have this absolute great idea of a video game, but you don’t realize. I don’t know, for example, in Fallout, you don’t realize that cows are sacred in some religions in India. And in the Fallout series, you have a two-headed cow that you can actually shoot and kill. So it’s just like, that had some sort of repercussion over the culturalization part of it, because maybe if the game was culturalized for that specific market, you can remove the cow entirely. I mean, it’s just like you can remove it. Just it won’t be as offensive as it looks like right now. Even though it was not the intention, of course. It is unintentional, right? But because only one person cannot know all the cultures that they have in the entire world. So that’s why I think also it’s so important, because you do your research and you try to make your game for that specific market.

MELISA: Absolutely.

ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, also it’s taking into account the symbols, body language, gestures… even hands, I mean. In Japan, fictional characters like, I don’t know, Crash Bandicoot has five fingers instead of four, like it has in America. Even Bart Simpson has four.

LARA: Yeah. It’s amazing because I remember seeing pictures of the Simpsons, and in this side of the country… in this side of the world, we have four fingers for all of the characters, but in Japan specifically, they have to have five. And it looks so weird.

MELISA: It’s so interesting. Yeah, definitely.

LARA: And another example talking about Japan is that, in Fallout, you have a gun that is called The Fatman and the name has been changed. This is not like a major change of the entire history of the game, but it has been changed because it was too close, it was too relatable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so they had to change it for cultural respect and everything. But yeah…

ALEXIS: But it can get extreme, like Far Cry 3. I mean Far Cry 3 was completely banned from Indonesia because the local authorities thought, they weren’t that wrong, but the game makes it as if living in Indonesia was a living hell. So they don’t think that that’s appropriate for their culture, for their people, and they banned the game.

MELISA: Yeah, so I think culturalization must be like really important to avoid these type of things from happening, like when you have your game banned from a country, and you want to reach that audience and, you know, sell your games in those countries. So in that way, would you say that culturalization is a market enabler for video games?

LARA: Yes and, at the same time, I would love to add that culturalization for me is that little step that you’re taking to take care of your community. Because you might find some things offensive. I don’t know, I’m thinking, if you’ve seen the latest episode of European Spanish and LATAM Spanish, I mention this Grim Fandango character that is supposed to be evil, right? And he was Argentinian, and the depiction of the Argentinian character and how… It didn’t sound right. It was just like, “Um…”

MELISA: Yeah, it’s like a stereotype…

LARA: Stereotyping. Yeah, you could’ve done your… I know it’s a really old game, but I think you could’ve done your research. I mean, it’s a matter of researching or having a diverse team on your own team so you can see different perspectives or in which ways this can be offensive. So to open these kinds of discussions between the teams and make the game go into a very much interesting direction, I believe. Another example that comes into my mind regarding culturalization and laws is that, for example, there was a law in Germany that prohibited every single thing that had to do with Nazi propaganda. So when you have, for example, the game Wolfenstein…

ALEXIS: Yeah, you can’t even show Adolf Hitler’s mustache.

LARA: Yeah. Or the Nazi symbols and everything. But then, when the law got removed, because I think they removed that law, the game was patched so that everyone could see how the game was in the rest of the world. So it’s just like, it is a constant thing of changing, of making the game more suitable.

MELISA: And adapt it to different…

ALEXIS: As the world changes, I mean, video games should change as well. I mean, culturalization is a market enable… a market enabler, sorry, if you think about it as a tool, you know, in order to better reach the market that maybe the game that you originally made has things that just don’t see eye to eye with, with an audience, you know? But it’s a tool.

MELISA: Like a tool to avoid disasters.

LARA: Yeah, and as a translator, I believe it’s so important to be, like, the gatekeeper of your own culture and flag the things that you believe are going to be offensive on your culture or on your language. I believe it’s so important because it’s going to deliver a better experience, and maybe the client is going to be thankful for your input.

MELISA: Yeah, so culturalization goes beyond just language, right? It can be a lot of things in your game, so it’s kind of a bit more like a holistic kind of view of your game in general, how it impacts different cultures, different, like, geopolitical situations. And I think our point in this episode is also just to bring awareness again to a topic that is really important in our industry.

LARA: I believe also what is really important in terms of culturalization is context, because, without context, how can you culturalize something, right? And we have, I believe, as translators, we can culturalize things in a way, but sometimes we don’t have the chance to change completely or an entire video game, right? So sometimes we have to adjust things as we can, or maybe the client doesn’t want that, so we have to take also that into account. So, as a translator, we want to be, like, the gatekeepers of our culture and everything, but also taking into account what the client says, the content…

MELISA: Having enough context for sure.

LARA: Enough context is just… Yeah, absolutely.

ALEXIS: I like that expression, the gatekeepers of our culture. I mean, in order to do that, you need a clear communication with your client so that they’re satisfied with what you’re bringing to the table.

MELISA: Yeah, and it shows that you really care, right? About your work.

ALEXIS: “Hey, this is not gonna work.”

MELISA: Yeah, because you want the game to be successful in the market that you want to…

LARA: Absolutely. And talking about context, because imagine what kind of culturalization you could do if you had enough context and if you knew your culture. Then you can maybe transform this into transcreation.

MELISA: Yeah, that’s another term that is quite used in the industry. And, yeah, like transcreation, culturalization, and they all refer to different aspects…

LARA: Transform… Yeah.

ALEXIS: Yeah, not translating, transforming into something that makes sense in the target language.

LARA: Exactly. I’m just thinking, when the first thing that came into my mind is, we all know Pikachu, right? But there are other Pokémons that have changed names in different countries, in different languages. There are a lot of examples of this.

ALEXIS: Well, just to name one, Lickitung, that we all know in Spanish is also Lickitung, in German, he’s called Schlurp, like the onomatopoeia. Or, I don’t know, the first three legendary Pokémon. I’m gonna mention the first era because I lost after Cyndaquil, Totodile and Chikorita.

LARA: We’re too old.

ALEXIS: I’m too old.

LARA: Even though I played Pokémon Scarlet, I don’t know why I’m throwing myself away from…

ALEXIS: But I don’t know where to start if I… It’s fine, let’s talk about it later. For instance, the first legendary birds Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos. That’s clearly, like, one, two, three, you know? But actually, in Japanese, the names are Freezer, Thunder and Fire, straightforward names with the elements with which they attack, right? Like, the legendary bird of thunder, Zapdos.

MELISA: Yeah, and it definitely, of course, has to do with the culture, what they think will impact…

ALEXIS: Be appropriate.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly, like people will, you know, get it a bit more if it’s more straightforward, maybe. Like, you know, all of that has to do with the culture, the country that they’re targeting.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes, not taking these extra steps as a developer, right? Because, as a translator, I believe we all do this, we all try to gatekeep our culture and everything, but sometimes developers don’t take this extra step. And sometimes there is like some bad and negative information or, like, repercussions with that game. Maybe you even kind of have legal problems with this too. And I believe you want to avoid that at all costs. So maybe your game that is doing so well in America will not be properly done if you want to launch it in Japan. I don’t know.

ALEXIS: You need to make some changes that are things that don’t actually impact the game, but they’re gonna work best, they’re gonna be better.

MELISA: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s what part of culturalization also, what’s known as, like, the proactive and reactive culturalization, which depends on the moment in the process. And there are certain things that you can think when you’re planning your game, you know, you can think, “Ok, these aspects, I can change them a bit around so that people…” Because you already know you wanna ship your game to different places, so you think, these things can be culturalized and they can connect a bit more with the target audience. What types of things do you guys think can be adapted?

LARA: To me… Yeah, there are some things. For example, there’s no need to adapt everything, because I know you might want to keep the essence of your game.

ALEXIS: Yeah, you’re gonna lose something in the process.

LARA: And you’re gonna lose something. But to me, the things that have to be changed, the things that could be prohibited because of religions or insulting or offensive, or goes against any laws. So to me, those things have to be changed.

MELISA: That is more like the reactive side of…

LARA: Yeah, that’s more the reactive side of things. For example, if you have a game like Far Cry 6, right? And you want to create this cultural immersion into the game and to let you know that you are in Latin America, that it’s today and you are in Latin America, you’re in 2023 in Latin America, the first thing that comes into your mind is the music. Because, for example, for me, that’s the best case, because whenever you get into a car with Dani and she turns on the radio and she starts singing with the radio, all these Spanish songs and all these… I mean, at least for me, that I know, Gente de Zona, all these bands that are so welcoming and from Latin America. The level of culturalization that they have done to make things culturally appropriate for that game is just, to me, amazing. I cannot believe how… how is it possible that you make me feel like I was at home.

ALEXIS: On that same spirit, I think it’s a constant that we mention Ubisoft as doing many, many things right.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: Like keeping the players in mind first. But I also remember some cultural aspects that were taken care of with absolute love in the latest Assassin’s Creed games. I mean, in Odyssey, they worked with Greek actors with actual insults that they used back then. And even in one game before that, Origins, one of the key elements of the story is Bayek finding some stones in a certain form or shape help him remember things and has some visions that each of these stones represent constellations that were meaningful for the Egyptians, even back then. So all of those things that are from the developers themselves, are so well-thought-out, you know? And that’s what I appreciate as a gamer.

LARA: Yes, absolutely. And sometimes you hear music, for example. I just… When you hear, for example, the radio in GTA 5, you are transported into the place, you know? And… yeah, I love it because they took like normal songs and, for some reason, your brain now is attached to that memory, and you’re like, yeah, I’m driving my car into the highway like… It’s so good. I mean, when the culturalization is taking part in the development of the game, you can really tell.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly, because there’s these, like, tools that you can plan ahead and then connects really well with your audience.

LARA: Absolutely. We had last year Kate Edwards, she worked on Age of Empires. If you haven’t seen that episode, please go check it out, because, when she talks about culturalization, she takes it to the absolute next level because she’s a genius. And when she explains about the maps and how that could be culturally inappropriate, you start thinking, oh, my God, this is not… good. I mean, you have to make it good. That’s what she does for a living, she just goes researching culture everywhere. So yeah, maybe also it would help having a diverse… I know I always say the exact same thing, but for me it’s important to have different perspectives of the world because it will make the game more rich and more beautiful, in general, right? Like, it is going to hit that spot.

ALEXIS: On that same note, one of the things that is important to have culturalized is what gamers see in the stores, right? The message that comes to them before they buy the game. And even the currency that they buy the game in.

MELISA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The marketing content, I mean, how important it is culturalization, transcreation in marketing. I think that’s already really established, as well.

LARA: To me, it’s just simply, to make like a conclusion of this, it’s just do your research. If you want to get to a specific market and you think that the content that you have is not going to be suitable for that market, please do your research. Have a diverse team. I think everything could be so beautiful like that, it could flow so well. And, yeah, it could avoid disasters, to be honest with you. It could avoid you losing money, too.

ALEXIS: And it can make you earn far more fans.

MELISA: Exactly. I think people will definitely appreciate you going the extra mile, it will have a positive impact, we can assure you. Thank you so much for watching or hearing this episode. And if you wanna know more about culturalization or you have any questions, please let us know. We’re happy to hear… we’re gonna be reading all the comments. And yes, that’s it. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.

LARA: Bye-bye! Thank you!

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Open World. Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Emily Scahill, head of Client Success and key member of the Skillsearch games team. With a background in HR wizardry and people charm, she’s not just a pro at ensuring client happiness, she’s also a founding member of the Skillsearch Dungeons & Dragons Society, and more recently, a brainiac on the Skillsearch quiz team. Emily is the go-to guru for client satisfaction, keeping their game studio partners grinning from ear to ear throughout their relationship. Emily, thank you so much for joining us, and thanks to my two co-hosts as well.

EMILY: No problem at all, it’s lovely to be here.

MELISA: Hey everybody!

EMILY: Thanks for having me.

ALEXIS: Awesome.

MELISA: Thank you, Emily.

ALEXIS: Let’s jump right into the questions. So I’d first like to know if you could describe your role in the recruitment process within the video game industry and if it differs somehow from other industries. You take it from wherever you want, the question. The floor is all yours.

EMILY: Sure, thanks. Myself and the wider team at Skillsearch partnered with video game studios and also interactive studios to help them find the best candidates for their positions who will ultimately be happy there long term with the culture and everything else that comes with being in a job, whether that’s experience, skills, etc. We really partner with studios so we provide lots of training and advice on processes and EDI, and on how to create an amazing candidate experience as well as just sort of bringing the expertise to any given role, so, what they’re likely to be able to find in the market in terms of candidate talent and skills and the salaries that go with that. So, yeah, that’s kind of what we do, and in terms of how it differs from other industries, I think it’s the creativity, really, within video games that’s kind of the major thing. People have their kind of “passion” projects and sometimes, not always, but sometimes they will take a lower salary because they just love the project or they might be offered the best salary they could ever get but still not really be interested in it because they’re not… the project doesn’t spark…

ALEXIS: The passion is not there.

EMILY: Yeah, exactly. So, that’s kind of one of the main things. And then I think as well studio culture is a big thing for this industry. It has a higher percentage of people with neurodivergent diagnoses than other industries, so, more autism, more ADHD, as an example. Having an environment that’s inclusive and welcoming of that, it can be a big factor. And I’d say remote working is a big one because it’s an industry where you can. The opinion varies wildly on this topic, and I’m sure a lot of people would be happy to get into a debate about this. But a lot of studios, or some studios, think that, certainly a lot of candidates think that these jobs can be done remotely. So, that’s a big factor. That’s often high on the list of desirables for candidates in this industry. So, I think those are the kinds of areas where it can differ, on the whole, a lot from other industries.

LARA: I love to have you in this interview, honestly, because 2023 was a year of a lot of layoffs. It was something that impacted the industry in general. So, it was hard to see, when you entered LinkedIn, all these heartbreaking posts and everything. Having you here to give this fresh perspective on how we can help, on how we can make things easier for applicants. So, I wanted to ask, for individuals aspiring to join the video game industry, what advice or tips would you give them to stand out in their applications and interviews? And what are the key qualities or skills you look for when recruiting for positions in the video game industry?

EMILY: Yes, I mean, this is where it can be very similar to other industries. Any well-designed job should have a job description with the requirements for that role. So, that’s where we always look at the job description, we talk with the studio, we find out what is required for any given role. I think some of the skills that maybe people don’t always realize, or might not necessarily be highlighted on the job description, but ultimately will be the difference between success and failure, are things like communication skills, the soft skills. You can know everything there is to know about game design or programming, but if you annoy everyone around you, or you’re rude to everyone around you, you’ll get nowhere very fast. So, making sure you can work with people, and be a team player, and communicate well, and set boundaries, and manage expectations. All those kinds of things are areas where people need to keep an eye on or develop.

MELISA: So interesting what you just said, because in previous interviews we asked managers from studios, they said the same things, how much they value those soft skills. So, now hearing it from you as well, from the recruitment process. How do you usually say those things? How can people present themselves with these soft skills? Or how is it part of the recruitment process that you can evaluate a person in those regards?

EMILY: Well, it varies a lot. Different studios will take different approaches to how they assess these things. Hopefully every studio will go through each point on their person specification and their job description and make sure that’s covered at some point during the selection process. But it’s about kind of being friendly and personable at interviews, listening, basic things, like not interrupting people. I’m sure we’re all guilty of it now and then by accident but apologizing if you do, that sort of thing. Just basics like that and then it may be that you’ll have sort of… an interview where you meet different members of the teams and thinking about how you tailor your approach to different team members and really that again comes back often a lot to listening to what it is they’re looking for and responding to that.

ALEXIS: Yeah, that’s very interesting. So, any advice that you could give to professionals to prepare for potential job uncertainties. Lara was talking about the layoffs or the deflation that 2023 had with the working, with the jobs in the video game industry. So, how can people prepare themselves for potential job uncertainties? Do you have any recommendations or any methods that people can prepare?

EMILY: I think it really varies, and, yeah, obviously, as you’ve pointed out, it has been, sadly, a really unfortunate time. Let’s hope this year is a bit different and not at all like last year.

ALEXIS: I’m hopeful.

EMILY: Yeah, I’m hopeful, we’ll see. So yeah, I think it depends on your goals. Obviously, if you are someone who’s just kind of recently got into the industry and you desperately want to stay in the industry and continue building out your experience there, make sure you make a good impression on those you’re working with now. It’s your existing network who can be a huge asset if you are put in a position where you’re no longer employed. Yeah, just being good to those around you, making a good impression and kind of making sure you keep your CV and your LinkedIn profile up to date. You might want to make notes as you go throughout the year just now and then, on things you’ve achieved, if you can write down any metrics or even if it’s not numbers, things that happened as a result of the work that you’ve done, that will make it much easier if you then have to suddenly write a CV or update your LinkedIn profile. So, kind of keeping a rolling record of that. It doesn’t have to be a very great detail but all of that stuff you might thank yourself for. If you find yourself in that position, you’d be a bit less daunted. I would say, if you’re someone, however, who maybe is at a later stage in their career or has a family and so can’t really afford to hold fast to the video games industry, no matter what happens, it’s worth considering where else you might want to spread your wings. The interactive industry is also an option as well as many others. So, you might want to move into that space where VR is being used for things like training in more corporate environments, those sorts of things, those industries might not be struggling quite so much. So, yeah, you could kind of spread out. And just because you leave the industry, it doesn’t mean that you can never come back. You’re never going to lose that experience that you’ve already got. It’s not going anywhere.

ALEXIS: That’s true.

EMILY: You’ll always be able to point back to it. So, don’t be afraid to have a bit of a change. You might even find it’s a nice, welcomed change and you learn a lot of new things.

MELISA: Good advice. And, I mean, I was curious. Do you think, in your experience, have you seen, that’s an important thing, networking and building industry connections for these types of challenges, like shop changes? How important do you think that is? And do you have any advice on effective networking strategies for the people listening?

EMILY: Yeah 100% networking is a huge factor, whether you do that online, via connecting with people on LinkedIn or joining Discord communities or finding local groups, there’s sites like Eventbrite and Meetup where they have game dev communities, potentially, in your local area of people who are meeting up to discuss different topics. That and your existing network can be a huge factor in getting a job. I’d say, and this applies also to people who are looking to break into the industry. There are hundreds of applicants for some of these jobs, particularly the entry level ones, and even some of the more senior ones. So, it’s thinking about how you would stand out from the crowd if a hiring manager has five minutes, if that, to spend on your CV, how are they going to remember you? What’s going to make you stand out? If you’ve met them at an event or online, just sent a little message just to say, “Hi, I really like your studio, I love what you’re doing.” Those things can be a huge factor. And not only that, but talking about LinkedIn in particular, what you see in your newsfeed and who sees your newsfeed, your posts in their feed is affected by how close of a connection you are. You’ve got first degree and second and third-degree connections and then people who are out of your network and you’re not going to see posts from people who aren’t within your network or your first-degree connections. So, interacting with people on there, in that space, will make your name popping up, will make your name stick in their head a bit more. So, when they see your CV they’ll go, “Oh, I recognize that name.” But also it’s affecting their feed and making sure their news, their job posts, and their updates are in your feed so you can be one of the first people to reach out. They’re kind of huge things. And going back to your earlier question about how you can prepare for layoffs and redundancies, there are a couple of other things you can do, like looking at job descriptions for your current role or roles you might be looking to move into, if you find yourself in that situation. And seeing if there are any common skills gaps that are coming up again and again. Is there a particular language or a particular bit of experience you don’t have that’s coming up time and time again that you could potentially either do a little bit of training in online now or speak with your manager to see if they can help give you experience in that area. Those are also extra things you can do. So, if you, hopefully you don’t, but if you do find yourself in that situation, you feel a bit more confident.

LARA: Thank you so much, that’s really interesting, honestly. I know we’ve been talking about this, people getting these uncertainties in their everyday lives. So, I was asking, can you recall a specific instance where an application stood up for you? And what strategies or recommendations can you offer to those that are looking to upgrade or get advancements within the industry?

EMILY: Yeah, so it really varies depending on the role. That’s, I think, why recruitment agencies are often set up, or at least our agency is set up with each consultant specializing in their own area, whether that’s design and production, engineering, art and animation, etcetera, because you kind of need that expertise for what’s required for each different role. So yeah, tailoring your CV, I recommend reaching out to a recruiter to kind of get that bespoken specific advice but I think there are kind of basic, clear principles. I generally make sure it’s nice and clear and well laid out and well-spaced. Some people have incredible experience or are even quite senior and you look at their CV and you think, “How have you…?” “How is your CV like this? It looks terrible.” “I’m sure there’s lots of great experience that you’ve got but this hurts my eyes.”

ALEXIS: It’s something that you have to actively get done. That’s why, to come back to another one of your replies, LinkedIn upkeep and CV upkeep are things that you need to save some time on your calendar to get it done, right? Otherwise you can be the most senior, most expert person in your role but your CV is gonna look the same as it was 10 years ago.

EMILY: Yeah, absolutely, 100%. So, yeah, it’s things like making sure it’s nice and cleanly spaced, it’s got coherent formatting, it doesn’t have fluorescent colors and things like that. Color is fine, as long as it’s nice and readable. It’s probably no more than two pages. Again, it comes back to that point of a hiring manager getting hundreds of applications a day, and they’ve got a very small amount of time you can spend on reading your CV. So, you don’t want to bury the lead right at the end, four pages deep, try and keep it concise right down to the highlights, your achievements and things like that, those are really key. And if you’re in a creative role, such as an art role, make sure you link to your portfolio or your website, those things are really key. Link to your LinkedIn so you can add more detail there if there really are things that you think, “Oh, I just I really want to include this but I can’t fit it in the two pages.” Think of your LinkedIn as an appendix to your CV or your resume. You can add stuff there and embellish and make sure there are clear things, like your location. It doesn’t need to include your full address and stuff like that, or your date of birth or your picture, even. It’s not about trying to get your identity stolen, it’s about making sure you’ve got the basic information that we need to know. Okay, where is this person located? Can they commute? Are they interested in commuting? Or are they only looking for remote work? And all those kinds of basic details are really, really key. And don’t forget that kind of paragraph at the top, as well as your experience, a little paragraph that’s just about you, what makes you tick, what are you interested in, and a couple of sentences summarizing your experience overall. Again, brevity is key, but it can be a nice, easy way to get a summary of your experience and you as a person.

ALEXIS: I love that. I love it. It’s to take notes, for everyone watching or listening or reading.

LARA: I was about to start taking notes, honestly. I was like, “Oh my god, this is so interesting.” This is really good advice. Thank you.

ALEXIS: Thank you so much, Emily. I wanted to change the topic for a little bit because we’re talking about video game industry, video game industry, video game industry. So, I have a two-part question that is directly about video games. So, I want to know what you’ve been playing recently that you just can’t get enough of or that you would like to play, and if you have any game that you’re really looking forward to in 2024.

EMILY: Far too many things. Take your time. Too many uncompleted at the moment.

ALEXIS: Oh, god, don’t get me started on uncompleted games.

LARA: We don’t talk about those, they are still hunting me, honestly. They are looking at me right now like, “What are you doing?” I just want to uninstall it. I know.

MELISA: You get new games and these uncompleted games are looking at you like…

LARA: Yes, they are like… “Yeah, yeah, hi.”

ALEXIS: Every new game that pops in is like, “Oh yeah, welcome.”

LARA: Yeah, yeah. No, yeah.

EMILY: I’m actually like, “Stop, stop releasing games. It’s too much, it’s too many, I want to play.”

MELISA: Oh, yeah, yeah.

EMILY: It’s funny, I did a little post today, I’m not affiliated with IGN in any way I should say, but I over the Christmas break discovered that if you go to the IGN website and register, you can log the games that you’re playing at the moment under like playing or taking a break, or on your backlog of games, or once you’ve quit, and I was like, “Oh my god, I can actually remember what it is I’m halfway through.”

ALEXIS: You can have that information uploaded at the IGN website?

EMILY: Yes, you just go on. You write it down, yeah. And then you just search for the game. So, like I’m playing Pikmin 4 at the moment and then you just click on the game and you go to “Add to library,” or something and then you can put it under “Playing” or on “Taking a break” or “Quit.” It’s really, really good. I was like oh I can finally now not have all this information in my brain I could just put it in this thing.

ALEXIS: But that’s an interesting way to also have interaction on the website, right? That’s smart, really. Go, IGN.

EMILY: Yeah, it’s very smart, very clever. I wonder if they’re using the data behind that for anything. That’s interesting.

LARA: I’m sure they are, yeah.

ALEXIS: Being the type of website that they are, I’m seeing it the best way possible, right? They are doing a great job at it.

LARA: Yeah.

EMILY: Yeah, but yeah, I’m playing Pikmin 4, Dredge, I’m still trying to finish God of War Ragnarök. Too many things, Diablo 4, I think.

ALEXIS: That’s never ending, right? Diablo 4, with every season. It keeps getting better, that’s the good news.

EMILY: I know there’s a main campaign I still haven’t finished, and beyond that, I’ve heard some things.

ALEXIS: No, but the main campaign alone is worth it, so take it.

EMILY: Yeah.

ALEXIS: And is there a game that you’re looking for in 2024 that is just like a first day of pre-purchase?

EMILY: Not that I can think of off the top of my head, but there are still games from 2023 that I haven’t even started, like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. And I want to play The Expanse: A Telltale game. So yeah, I’m sure there will be more coming up that I’m just like: “No!”

LARA: I hope you enjoy it, that’s the only thing I’m going to say because Tears of the Kingdom for me was… I mean, I got this huge statue of the dragon so it was…

EMILY: Amazing.

LARA: Yeah.

EMILY: It must have made an impact.

LARA: Yeah, 100%!

ALEXIS: Well, no one asked, but for me, I want to say it anyways. For me personally, I’m waiting for the next Final Fantasy VII Remake game, that’s coming out in February, and the Silent Hill 2 Remake. I want to get scared again. I mean, thank you Konami. Thank you for hearing my years and years of asking for another Silent Hill game. So, everyone, Emily, thank you so much for being a part of Open World. Thank you so much for every input, every advice. Thank you, Lara, Meli, for being a part of this show all throughout the year and this date of 2024. And to you on the other side of the screen, of your headpiece, or if you’re reading on the other side of the screen, thank you so much. We’ll be seeing you next time in another episode of Open World. Bye, everyone, thank you.

LARA: Bye-bye, thank you.

MELISA: Thank you.

Episode Transcription

ALEXIS: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Alexis and I’m here, as always, with Melisa, with Lali. Hi, guys. How are you? So, in this episode, we’re gonna be talking about accessibility in video games.

LARA: And what a topic.

ALEXIS: What a topic. So let’s start small, okay? So what do you guys think that accessibility is and what does that mean in video games?

LARA: Um, accessibility is making the game available and playable for everyone, regardless of anything, you know? Just like, to me, it’s opening the opportunity for someone that might have never played a video game before being able to play a videogame. For me, that’s huge. And nowadays you’ve seen like a lot of games adding these accessibility features and stuff, and something that flutters me a little bit is just like… I’ve seen video game companies talking about accessibility as if it was an issue. And I think it’s a solution. It’s far away from an issue.

MELISA: It’s an opportunity to reach more people.

ALEXIS: It’s all the contrary.

LARA: It’s all the contrary. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, that’s basically for me. Accessibility is making your game playable for everyone.

MELISA: Definitely. And for me, it’s also like, make it part of your process. Like, you know, for a lot of people, they have to find a way around it of how to play it. But when you have it, you know, as part of what you offer for your game, it’s great. And we’ve come such a long way and like technological advances and everything. So it’s something I believe it’s very, you know, like people just know the importance of it a lot more now.

LARA: Yeah. And sometimes we have these misconstruction or misjudgments that accessibility is, I don’t know…

ALEXIS: A ramp for a wheelchair. Right?

LARA: Oh, my God. It’s just like, it’s so much more than that. It is that, but it’s so much more than that.

MELISA: Exactly. There are a lot of different disabilities, you know. Mobility disability, of course, but there’s this whole other, you know, speech…

LARA: Speech, hearing. Yeah.

ALEXIS: You have vision. I have cheats. Sitting here gives us that privilege. Vision, hearing, speech, mobility and cognitive impairments. So on that note, in video games, what are some of the accessibility features that nowadays are being used or that should be used, as you said, Lali?

MELISA: One of the main ones I know is like the remappable keys, so like when you have the option to configure like different keys to have, you know, different options in the game. Or, I mean, not only keys, but like different controllers, different buttons. So like, an example, if you’re playing a shooting game and to fire a gun, you have to press Enter, and you can change it to, you know, the spacebar, if you’re playing with a keyboard. But, you know if you can add a different controller, like the Xbox controller.

ALEXIS: The adaptive controller of Xbox, yeah.

MELISA: That’s like a huge advantage, you can even add different, you know, comfortable controller for different mobility disabilities.

LARA: Yeah, I know a bunch of streamers that have built their own console or keyboard by themselves just to adapt their necessities to gaming. And I think that’s so amazing. And being able to have these feature of remappable keys, it gives this option to these people that are doing their own controllers or their own way to play a video game more accessible. So it’s just like, if you do that, you know that everyone can play that game. It’s so important.

ALEXIS: Nothing should stop someone from playing video games.

LARA: Absolutely.

ALEXIS: So, Lali, what about you? Any other?

LARA: Yeah. For me, it’s colorblind options. I’m a little bit color blind, I have troubles with blues and greens, and I’ve seen it in some video games like League of Legends or Overwatch. What they have is just like, ‘cause they are PvP video games, so it’s player versus player, you can actually change the colors of the teams so you don’t mix them, which for me is great. And I know… the problems I have with color blindness is they are so small compared with other ones, but this accessibility feature, to me, makes it easier. It is easier for my brain to process which one is the enemy and which one is my teammate, you know? So for me it has to be that.

ALEXIS: But, I mean, it’s quite common. It’s a quite common problem to some extent, to have colorblindness, especially in men. I have one or two friends that are actually quite colorblind with different colors, I don’t remember right now which one. But it’s also, I mean, not only the color of things, right? But also like subtitles or even closed captioning, you know? And other elements that…

MELISA: Another feature that is really important.

ALEXIS: Right? Not only adding colors to the subtitling or the size or even like a background to make them more visible…

LARA: Or change the fonts.

ALEXIS: The fonts.

LARA: The amount of times… The size of the fonts. Yeah. Sometimes I find myself… The other day I was playing actually a video game. I don’t remember the name, I don’t think it’s important at the moment. But I was playing on my PS5, and I had the controller and I was playing in bed, chilling. And when the game started with the… In the game, actually, you have to customize your character. And then when the game starts, I encounter myself with subtitles like this. Like this. And the size of the letters was so small.

ALEXIS: Many lines?

LARA: It had like four lines. It was like screen-wide long.

ALEXIS: Wow.

LARA: So I actually had to pause the game to be able to read the subtitles. Because that is not subtitling, dude. That’s just putting text on your screen.

ALEXIS: A paragraph.

LARA: An entire paragraph. You are writing the story of your game in the screen.

MELISA: And nowadays, I mean, you have so many of like, you know… everything is like measured in how long it takes you to read.

ALEXIS: You have best practices for everything.

MELISA: For everything, which is great.

LARA: Right. Yeah. I have played video games when you can actually slow down the speed of the subtitles. That’s so good.

ALEXIS: And, I mean, even in closed captioning, it also gives, like, for example, this is very, very used nowadays, but The Last of Us too did an amazing, and one of the most visible examples that I can remember, in their closed captioning, you could even see, from the intensity of the letters, how near were, I don’t know, your enemies or the soldiers, and where the sound was coming from.

LARA: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had that, too. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, when you start playing it, you can see the arrows or you can see where the sound is coming from. So it makes it much easier for you to set yourself and immerse yourself into that world if you have hearing aids or something.

MELISA: And for night, too. Also.

ALEXIS: And what about difficulty or tutorials or things like that? Because those things can be restrictive for players.

MELISA: And for cognitive disabilities. That’s why tutorials are key.

LARA: Yeah. To me, having AI assistance is so important because you don’t know the person that is playing your video game. And if you want that person to play your video game and you have, I don’t know, only one type of setting of difficulty to be like super hard, that person is not going to be able to play your game. And I sometimes I feel it myself, because I might be a try-hard with some games, but with some other games I just really enjoy…

ALEXIS: It’s good to have the option.

LARA: Make the game easier. You’re not going to judge me if I play a game on easy mode. I don’t care if you do, but you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t at all, because I’m doing it because I wanna chill, my brain is tired and everything, but there is people that are doing it because it’s their only option.

MELISA: Yes, of course. And tutorials are key to learn how to play it in the first place. So absolutely, they’re a key part. And now that we’re talking about, like, all the different features, I also have… I’m sorry, Ale, I’m also going to use it. There was the Video Games Accessibility Awards in 2021. We’re going to link this in the description because this is great. I mean, just the games that are doing a really good job because are getting recognized and, you know, it just brings more visibility to everything that we’re talking. And I thought about just naming a few of them because there were many, like, different things that they gave awards for. But some of them are Clear Text with Halo Infinite, was someone who won. AI Assistance, it went to Forza Horizon 5. Improved Precision, Far Cry 6. And Peer Assistance, It Takes Two.

LARA: Amazing. What a great game.

MELISA: And Remapping, that we were talking, it’s Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker.

ALEXIS: You have so many, you need like 12 or 15 fingers sometimes, who played that kind of game. So, the fact that they can have the remapping.

MELISA: Yeah, the configuration to adapt it.

LARA: Yeah. And having like an award for this is so important. I remember the Game Awards in 2020 when they first introduced the Accessibility Award, because I think it’s like an encouragement for the video game industry and companies.

MELISA: And to keep innovating because it’s a field that there’s so much improvement that you can, you know, and like technology is advancing. It’s amazing the work that is being done.

LARA: Yeah. I remember the first one being The Last of Us, and the latest one, that was last year, God of War: Ragnarök got it. And when the person that went up to the stage to receive the award gave an amazing speech, I actually got in tears because it was, like, so good. It’s like a side of the video game industry that is not competitive. They are all there just to get to one same result.

ALEXIS: To get video games for everyone.

LARA: That everyone is able to play video games. And it was so good.

MELISA: There’s a lot of advances from different companies that they share everything so that other companies can learn from them too.

ALEXIS: Yeah, that’s a big thing. Most companies should share what they’ve been doing, you know, in order to make their games more accessible. Because that’s not happening that much.

LARA: It’s tricky because they all have these secretive kind of stuff.

ALEXIS: I wonder why.

LARA: They wanna be the only one, they wanna be the best one, they wanna be… It’s just like, but in this case, I don’t think it should be like that.

ALEXIS: Or maybe it’s not even… they don’t even realize…

LARA: No, but just make that for your story, for your quest, for your type of video game. But with your accessibility features, please make them available for everyone so other game developers, indie developers can study what you did with your previous video games.

ALEXIS: And how to install them on the engines that they are using, whether it’s Unreal, Unity.

LARA: And make it, like, available for everyone so everyone can learn how to improve their games for everyone. So it’s just like…

MELISA: It’s the whole point of accessibility, right? So it’s great that… I mean, some companies are sharing it, which is great. And of course, you know, some aren’t. But I think it’s, you know, maybe it will help. Like the more we talk about it, it will help bring awareness to this and that companies, like, sharing.

ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about this, but I think that the question is due. Why is accessibility important and in what levels? Because we’re talking about making the game more accessible for everyone, of course. But if you had, I don’t know, an indie developer that wants to know why make their games more accessible, or even a publisher that wants to further… enhance, sorry, the experience for the gamers, why is it important?

LARA: I’m going to be like straightforward with this. If you have your game accessible for everyone, more people is going to play it, more revenue for you.

MELISA: Yeah, that’s a great point from the business side.

LARA: The straightforward side.

MELISA: And for the more sociological side…

ALEXIS: But please, be straightforward too.

MELISA: No, of course, of course. I think, I mean, we want to be a better society, like a better world, we wanna be better as an industry and we want to, you know, portray video games like everyone can play it, everyone can connect with it and have a great experience and don’t feel that, because you have a disability, you’re going to be discriminated in the video games or in the, like, you know, your possibility to play it. So I think we’re going in the right direction here. We want to see more of it.

ALEXIS: I agree. I agree. I mean, you both make a great point. There are no downsides of implementing accessibility features in your game. You might not know them all as a developer or as a publisher, but it’s a constant in every episode, if you don’t know how to do it…

LARA: Research.

ALEXIS: Research.

ALEXIS: Find a way to do it.

MELISA: We can leave some links below as well, more information of where you can, you know…

ALEXIS: I mean, just from the top of my head, AbleGamers is a company that even assisted I think Xbox in making the adaptive controller, so kudos there. I mean, but I don’t want to leave this aside because we’ve been talking about many different accessibility features that exist, but localization, I mean, is an accessibility feature as well. If you don’t know a language…

LARA: It is. You make your game more accessible.

ALEXIS: I mean, I don’t know English, I don’t know any other language except my own, and I want to play, I don’t know, The Witcher. Or, I don’t know, any game. You name it, it doesn’t matter. And I grab my joystick, I sit down to play and I don’t know how to play it because I don’t understand anything that’s on screen from the story, from what I have to do. And, if you don’t have contact with games that you don’t really know, localization is an accessibility feature as well.

MELISA: For sure.

ALEXIS: Yeah. So, guys, no one likes to feel an outsider. Thank you everyone that is making accessibility features for everyone, no matter what they are. Keep improving. Let’s work towards making a better industry and a more inclusive experience for everyone.

LARA: Yeah. If you have more examples of games that are more accessible for everyone, please let us know down below in the comments.

ALEXIS: We’d love to know more.

MELISA: Or our Discord server.

ALEXIS: Yeah, and share them on our Discord server. I mean, I’m sure that everyone has someone that needs accessible games, so please share. Thank you for your time, for visiting us on this episode, and we’ll see you next time.

LARA: Bye-bye!

ALEXIS: Bye.

Episode Transcription

MELISA: Welcome, everyone, to a new episode of Open World. I’m here with Ale and Lari, and today we have the pleasure to interview Hi-Rez’s Localization Director, Estelle Bailly. We are extremely excited to have you with us today, Estelle. Thank you so much for joining us.

ESTELLE: Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m very excited too.

LARA: Yeah, this is extremely exciting. And I have the honor to ask you the first question. So here it goes. What inspired you to pursue a career in linguistics?

ESTELLE: Oh, I’ve always been interested in having an international career. I wanted to be a diplomat, actually, so… I thought that, you know, languages would open new horizons to me, so I studied German and then English. And after college, I thought about maybe studying international business, but I wasn’t too sure, so… and I was a good student. So I went to what is called in France Hypokhâgne. It’s a preparatory school. And basically, once you’ve done that, you can apply to very elite schools to have international careers or do politics, you know, fancy jobs. Well… it depends on what you want. So the program is in two years and I did… one month. So, yeah, it was my first fail. There were so many things to learn, to be honest. So many books to read, essays to write, lots of things. It was like being back to college, but… worse. And you’re 18 and you want to have your student life you’ve been hearing about, right? You want to go out with your friends and do stuff, still, do some studies but, you know… have a good balance. So, after a month, I decided to quit and I signed up at uni to study English and German because that was the only two courses that I really enjoyed during this preparatory school. So that’s how it all began, I think.

MELISA: Great that it was just one month. Your decision was pretty quick. I mean, a lot of people start a career and then you’re like after a year or two… “Actually, this is not for me.” But you, immediately… “No.”

ESTELLE: “Diplomats? That’s really cool!” And after one month you’re like… “These people are not for me.”

LARA: That’s so cool. Yeah, I wasted like a year doing a career I didn’t like, and it took me a year to figure it out. So, if you figured it out in a month, that’s incredible. Yeah.

MELISA: And sometimes you force yourself, like you want to like it. Okay, I already made the decision, like, I have to do this now. But, you know, you don’t, so… It’s always good to, you know…

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. Or maybe I was just too lazy to, you know, to stay more than a month. I really enjoyed it.

MELISA: There was something telling you you had to go a different way, so…

ESTELLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uni was better for me, I think.

ALEXIS: So, could you describe how was your journey in the world of video game localization from where it all began to where you are now?

ESTELLE: Oh, sure. So I was at uni, and I had to work to finance my student life.

ALEXIS: That’s always a good drive away. You know, I need money.

ESTELLE: Yes, I needed money. I did various jobs and then one day I saw this offer at uni, actually. It was to translate video games and it was in an agency not too far from where I studied, so I thought “Oh, that’s perfect.” And at that time I played video games quite a lot. And I have never thought… It was in 1999. Oh, the last century! Oh my God, I feel so old.

ALEXIS: Okay, wait. But do you remember what were you playing?

ESTELLE: Um… yes, it was more… more a girly game, but more like adventurous game. The 7th Guest, Grim Fandango. Remember Grim Fandango? Yeah, it’s the best one. Yeah, these kinds of games. I really liked it. The 7^th Guest, and I think the second one was The 11th Hour. It was not that good. The 7^th Guest was good, I remember that one. And then console games like The Mario thing and, you know…

ALEXIS: Sorry, I wanted to ask, but I love that you remember all the games that you were playing.

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah, yeah. Grim Fandango is still one of the best I’ve ever played. And that was… Yeah, last century, right? So anyway. Yeah. I didn’t know there was a job who could really need both my passions at that time, translation and video games. So, you didn’t know it existed, right? It was very… a while ago, I mean, a long time ago. Anyway… long story short, I applied, I got the job. A minimum wage, maximum working hours. You know, it was a true… How do we call that? Startup, you know.

ALEXIS: Putting your foot in the door.

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah. And you do everything yourself, right? But the team was lovely, very small. We would not outsource anything. And we were working almost nights and days, you know, seven days a week, for sure. On Friday nights you could go out, but then Saturday would be in the office. But I liked it. So it was a team of passionate people. And we all got along very well, so… When I think about it today, I think “Oh, that was a bit crazy.” But, um… actually I really enjoyed it at that time. And because we were doing everything ourselves, I learned so much. I really worked on all aspects of the localization pipeline. Well, obviously translation, but proofreading, project management, account management, I even did some assistance for our direction in the recording studio. Also recruitment, training of the new hires, going to conventions, and meeting with clients and team management throughout the end. So it was really hard work. I learned so much. I also discovered that I wasn’t that good after uni. You know, at the end of uni, you think that you know everything but actually, you know nothing. But it’s okay. You learn. And I had a mentor and good people who were passionate enough to teach me stuff, so I learned how to do it. And working at a localization agency, you adapt. You have to adapt so many… I mean, so much, because during the day you will work on six, eight different projects for as many different clients, jumping from one translation guide to another, one tool to another. And one day my boss told me: “Once you know how to handle the pressure and the work in a loc agency you can do anything… publisher, developer in localization because it will sound easy to you.” And I was like “Oh really? I want to try that. I want to go on the other side.”

ALEXIS: I want to see if you were right.

ESTELLE: Yeah, I want to work less. And so I tried to go to the other side to developer or publisher several times. I was looking for a job in France and there was not that many opportunities. And each time I got the same thing, you know, I ended up in the last two candidates and people said: “Oh yeah, you have some experience, but you don’t have experience as a publisher or developer. So we are going to pick the other candidate.” And you’re like… “Yeah, that’s why I applied to get this experience.”

ALEXIS: That’s what I’m trying to get.

MELISA: It’s a typical cycle. “You need the experience.” But I need to get in to get the experience.

ESTELLE: It’s like when you’re looking for an internship and you’re like… “Yeah, but you’re too new to know.” “Yes. That’s why I’m going to be an intern.” “Yeah, but, you know, you have no experience.” Yeah, it’s always the same thing, right? So, anyway, in parallel I became a mum and Paris is a lovely city, a very busy city. And it’s great. Just if you want to have a family life, especially with young kids, it’s not probably the best city you could live in. So, with my husband, we decided that maybe I could apply somewhere else. He’s self-employed, he just needs an internet connection. A good one, but, still… that’s convenient. So I started to apply to jobs in other cities and other countries, and that’s how I joined Hi-Rez in 2016. I didn’t know this company, actually, before applying to it, but the Free-to-play monetization model really interested me as well. So, anyway, I got the job once again and we all moved to Brighton in the UK with the kids who couldn’t speak a word of English at that time and that was quite an adventure, I have to say.

MELISA: How old were the kids then?

ESTELLE: They were six and eight. Yeah. In France, we start learning foreign languages very late. That’s why we are bad at foreign languages. But yeah. So, when we arrived here, a teacher said: “Well, you know, after three months, they’re going to pick a few words here and there. After six months, they’re going to start to understand. And after a year they’re talking.” And that’s exactly what happened. And now, you know, when I talk to their teacher and tell them that their native language is French, they say: “Oh, really?” They don’t know. While, when the teacher hears me, after 5 seconds: “You’re French, right?” I wonder how you guessed.

MELISA: It’s such a big change for everyone in the family, right?

ESTELLE: Yeah, but, I thought…

MELISA: It turned out good.

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. It was a great change.

MELISA: I love hearing your whole journey and through how you got to your current role. And now my next question is: What do you find most rewarding about your current role and why?

ESTELLE: Team management, definitely. I like being a team leader. I started in France. I had a great team in France as well, brilliant project managers. I was very lucky to have them. When I arrived at Hi-Rez, we developed the team, the localization team, and we had great people joining and learning with all of them. It was a multi… it was a multicultural team obviously, and that’s so interesting and I love being a team leader, taking care of people. I think… I’ve always known I like caring for people. But I think the older I grow, the more interested I am in human beings, you know, rather than projects. Sorry, no offense to Hi-Rez projects. I still like our projects. But I do love our people at Hi-Rez. And I think this really reflects my way of managing people. You know, if you ask me or if you talk to me about OKRs. Do you work with OKRs? Do you know what OKRs are? Well, if you don’t, you can Google it or just don’t Google it. It’s just like setting objectives and to each of your team members, you know, in a specific period of time and you need to achieve these and that and, and if you ask me to do this, I probably would run away because I’m more like on the human side… “Okay, tell me, what are you interested in? What kind of games do you want to work on? What kind of skills do you want to develop, to focus on?” You know, I try to keep that in mind when I sign a new project. It’s not always possible. I’m not saying: “Oh, I’m perfect.” I’m not perfect. So, definitely it’s not always possible to please everyone. But to me, if I can give a project manager a game they want to work on as a project, then I’m quite certain that they will do their very, very best to deliver an excellent job just because they would be motivated. You know, some people say “pressure makes diamonds.” I really don’t like that. I really prefer “motivation makes diamonds.” You know, that’s my motto, actually. And let’s say that when you’re motivated, I think half of the job is already done. Kind of.

MELISA: I love it. Motivation makes diamonds. I love it.

LARA: Yeah, it speaks wonders of you, honestly. You’re putting people first. I mean, nowadays, in this industry in particular, it speaks wonders, so.

ESTELLE: I try to do it. I’m not saying. Yeah.

LARA: But you are trying it at least. That’s something. Yeah.

ESTELLE: I think it is quite well, so, yeah.

LARA: Yeah. I have the next question. And how has your career evolved over the years and what lessons have you learned along the way?

ESTELLE: Oh, um… Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think I did all the roles I could possibly do, I believe, in the video game loc industry, not that I can’t learn anything anymore. But you know, from translation, proofreading, project management, recruitment, I even did some LQA at some point on casual games, and it was in my early years. But yeah, Team Leader and now Loc Director… Yeah, that’s pretty quick. I did a lot of things. There must be other things I can do. But the lessons I would say, a few lessons. Well, motivation. Motivation is key. Try to motivate your team. You know, that’s how they will want to stay in your company. Not necessarily stay in your team, but at least, you know, make them feel part of the they belong to a group, a team. I think that’s important. To focus on their motivation and on your own motivation as well. And obviously, communication, communication is key. Work-life, private life… communication is always key. I keep saying that to my kids. And communication is key. Not always when it’s bad, you know, to talk about the thing that went bad. If things go well, say it as well, you know, because, like, when you work with a vendor, you know, don’t be too shy, you know, and send them an email when you’re happy with them delivering the job with good reactivity, because they respected all instructions or because it went well. It’s not because you don’t have a bad comment to say that you shouldn’t communicate with them. So, yes, communicate. When you’re not happy, but also when you’re happy. It’s important. Communication is key.

MELISA: I think this is such a good point because I feel like feedback, a lot of times it’s like you just give feedback when something wrong is happening and so the other person might feel like… “Well, I’m doing everything wrong” But that just little positive feedback might give them that motivation. “Okay, I did a good job.”

ESTELLE: Yeah. And when you’re French, you know, French tends to focus on the negative. “Oh, you should have done better this, that.” And all this is not really good. “This is not really good.” It’s not really the positive education, even at school. So I think it’s really important that once in a while to send an email just to say thank you for your commitment, thank you for being there because, you know… you’re really part of our success as well. So it’s good to say that. And also send feedback when they didn’t think exactly what you were expecting as well, because otherwise they can’t know what they have to improve, obviously.

ALEXIS: And that’s something that you need to know how to do as well, right? To give that feedback the best way possible.

ESTELLE: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And also to accept the feedback. But yeah, definitely it’s super important. Communication. Be humble as well. Always. Don’t be afraid to be too vulnerable. I think, especially, when you are in the leadership team and Yeah. You can’t know everything. You can’t have the answer to every single question or you can’t solve every problem. You’re not perfect, so, yes, accept it. And try to just be humble and be open. You can learn from everyone any time. Well, overconfident people tend to make me feel very uncomfortable. That’s my impostor syndrome. So, yeah, humility is key. I prefer humility in human beings. Also don’t be an asshole. That’s one of our motto at Hi-Rez. Don’t be an asshole.

MELISA: I really like this message. Because usually it’s confidence that gets praised. Like you have to show yourself really confident, like you know everything. and, you know, being humble… is also really, really important. It shows really good things. For me, at least, you know, when I see a leader that is humble and it’s open to learn new things like you were saying, you’re like… “Oh, wow, okay.” You know, we connect a bit more, I think.

ESTELLE: Yes, exactly. Don’t be an asshole. Be nice with others. Assholes, they never win, in the end. Except in politics, but that’s another discussion. Yeah. And the last thing I would say it’s maybe this is just work. It’s important as well to remember that because especially when… If you are like me and tend to feel like an impostor and then you tend to push yourself to work as hard or as much as possible because you want to show to people that “Yes, I belong here, I deserve my promotion.” Or, you know, you want to prove something to others, then the burnout is never really too far from you. So learn to stop before it’s too late. I went through burnout as well in my early years in France, and that’s really not something you want to go through. It’s not nice. And it takes time to recover. So we’re not saving lives. We’re just doing video games, right? So it’s cool. It’s really cool, but just don’t forget it. It won’t change anything if you answer this email in half an hour. Just go for a walk. A short walk. Get a break. Yes. I mean, it’s just that you would be so much more productive. And yes, I don’t need to answer you email constantly. Because I was like… I would stay in front of my desk. Not going to the toilet or to go and get food. And, you know, just because I thought… “Oh, if I go back to my desk, there would be so many emails to answer. And you know, I need to answer right away because the clients need to know I’m on it. I’m on it.” You know, that was always my… “I’m on it,” you know? Yeah, actually yes, I’m on it, but I can be on it, like in half an hour and take care of yourself as well. It’s really important. And I think after COVID years, oh, I got to realize a bit more that it’s important, but it’s definitely the most important thing. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You know? And yeah, yes. Because I’ve been working on my impostor syndrome recently, I try to be more gentle with myself and to accept that I’m not perfect. And some people have been in my team no more than I do, and actually it’s fine. Probably it’s because I was good enough to hire them. So I hired the right people probably. And I shouldn’t be afraid if they are better than me. Um. Yeah, I try to be more comfortable with my weaknesses as well. It takes time. I’m not going to lie, but, I’ve been there.

MELISA: That is such a good point. Being gentle with yourself. And you know how people say all the time there’s things like how we… we are so used to lifting other people up, and how a lot of things when something happens around a situation, we talk to ourselves like we would never talk to a friend, like we talk to ourselves and say… “Well, how is that possible?” We’re not being that compassionate with our own selves.

ESTELLE: Or we don’t have a lot of friends, right?

LARA: I mean, it’s so important because also I believe after COVID and remote working and everything, it was just harder to separate your personal life from work, you know? And for me personally, I have to constantly remind myself it’s just work. Like tomorrow is going to be okay If you send these like two hours later, no one’s going to die.

ESTELLE: Yes, my manager in Paris used to say that all the time. And I keep saying it because it’s true. No one will die. It’s just work. It’s just games. Even games are important.

LARA: Yeah, a hundred percent.

ESTELLE: But, yeah, no one will die, and that’s the most important thing.

ALEXIS: So, Estelle, with so many people experiencing impostor syndrome at some point, beginning or even when they get a high position. But you have presented some excellent talks about this subject, right? So, I don’t know how to phrase this question, but maybe it would be what strategies or techniques have you found effective that you’d like to share with us in fighting these feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt? I don’t know. You take it from whatever you want.

ESTELLE: Okay. First, allow me to… because of the terminology, because of my translation background. So it’s going to be a terminology minute.

ALEXIS: Yes.

ESTELLE: I know we all say “impostor syndrome.” I do say it all the time. In fact, the official historical term is “impostor phenomenon” or “impostor experience,” because it is an experience rather than… When we say “impostor syndrome,” it makes people feel that it’s a clinical diagnosis, which is not. So the right term should actually be “impostor phenomenon.” But, that’s the end of the parenthesis. “Impostor syndrome” is the term that is widespread. Indeed, just to confirm what you were just saying, it does affect 70 to 80% of the global population at one point in their lives. So if you do feel this way, you’re not alone. And I’m here.

ALEXIS: I have to say that I love that it’s a phenomenon, right? It sounds more interesting than something clinical that something is actually wrong with you.

ESTELLE: Yeah.

ALEXIS: We should spread around that it’s “impostor phenomenon,” not “impostor syndrome.”

ESTELLE: Yeah. I’ll try to use phenomenon in the rest of the interview. Yeah, talking about some tips or strategies or things I’ve learned with my research and my training so far, the best one, or what I find is the best one, at least to me, is to consider myself as a work in progress person. Someone who is constantly learning things. And then it allows you to make mistakes. It allows you to accept that you’re not perfect because no one is. You are not perfect, sorry, team. I’m not perfect. And it allows you as well to accept that good enough is actually quite excellent. Sometimes, as an impostor, you just… “I’m not good enough.” But actually you are. And good enough is good because you can’t be perfect. So, considering myself as a work in progress person is actually one of the best advice I received. And I keep repeating it to myself very often when I don’t have the answer. And that it’s fine. I’m learning. I’m open to learn, you know. Yes, I keep learning every day from everyone, so that’s fine. Don’t be afraid, we mentioned that earlier as well, you know, to ask for feedback or to ask for help, wise people actually ask for help. There’s nothing to be ashamed of and to be vulnerable as well, you know, especially as a leader, but not only as a leader. Yeah, asking for feedback is actually a good way to know where you are or where you think you are. And there might be a big difference, especially if you feel like an impostor. And be gentle with yourself because yes, believe it or not, you are entitled to make a mistake once in a while. So don’t be too hard with yourself. Self-compassion, I mentioned that in my talk. You know, if you’re good at being an impostor, you probably suck at self-compassion and you should consider self-compassion as a new friend, actually, because it can really help you to silence the negative self-talk or message that pops up in your mind each time the impostor syndrome, impostor phenomenon, is triggered. You know, well… “I’m not good enough.” “I don’t deserve my role.” “What am I doing here? I feel so stupid.” “They know better than me.” “They are better than me.” All these negative thoughts, they don’t define you. And, you know, self-compassion. Try to be more gentle with yourselves. And of course, talk about it. Normalize it. Break the silence. It sounds easy to say it like this, but in fact, when you’ve spent most of your life trying to hide that you feel like an impostor, trying to hide one of your biggest weaknesses, it’s not that easy to talk about it, but it’s really worth it. And also, consider the source, right? Try to contextualize the impostor phenomenon. Are you the only woman in this board meeting or the only person of color? Are you a student whose skills are constantly assessed? Exams, tests. Are you the first graduate in your family? Do you work in a creative field? In a highly competitive field, or in a field where everything changes so rapidly? You know, we talk about AI a lot at the moment, and I think you can quickly feel overwhelmed if you work in this field. So there are lots of societal and situational factors to take into consideration if you want to get a bigger picture of the impostor phenomenon.

MELISA: That’s such a great point that you just made. Like Ale said before, you know, the thing about “oh is there something wrong with me?” And a lot of times you can explain it, like you were saying, with the context as well. There’s a lot of things, you know, inequalities in the society and in the private sector, in companies and leadership roles, so a lot of times it makes sense that people feel that way because they’re not actually being represented. There’s no other people like them in the room. So it’s really hard not to feel that way.

ESTELLE: Yeah, exactly. It has a lot to do as well with diversity, inclusion, equity and yeah…

MELISA: And like you were saying, talking about it, you know, the phrase “fake it till you make it” and then people just feel like they’re faking all the time because they can’t really feel like they deserve what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing. And I was very shocked, also for everyone that’s listening, how we met Estelle. It was one of her talks at a conference, and I’d like to say it was one of the most popular talks in the conference. The room was full. Everyone was so interested in participating. And then, when you were asking people to raise their hands, everyone, in different parts of the talk, they were feeling represented. Everyone in the room. So you can tell how many people actually feel this way.

ESTELLE: And, you know, I’ve done these talks several times and each time I can’t help but being surprised, but in a positive way to see how actually people in the audience feel comfortable to open up about their own impostor experiences. You know, at the end I tried… Well, we didn’t have enough time in the talk when we met because it was limited, but I did another one with more questions at the end and I tried to do… I’m not a medical expert. So the Q&A at the end is more like an open discussion for people to share their experience if they want. And you know, rather than really… “Oh, what should I do when I feel like this?” And each time people really open up and talk about their experience in front of people they’ve never seen before, you know. And sometimes in front of their own colleagues as well, you know, who discover that “Oh, that’s how you feel,” you know. So that gives lot of discussion as well. It’s super interesting. It’s a topic I’m really passionate about and talk about it for…

MELISA: You’re very passionate as well.

ESTELLE: I’ve just completed a new training. It’s actually an impostor syndrome informed coach, so I can coach now. And it was delivered by the Impostor Syndrome Institute, who is actually co-founded by Dr. Valerie Young, and the conclusion of this training was actually the only way to stop feeling like an impostor is to stop thinking like an impostor. People who don’t experience impostor phenomenon, they just think differently when facing a challenge. They are not more intelligent or more capable or more competent than people with the impostor phenomenon are. It’s just that they think differently. I think it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

LARA: Yeah. I mean…

LARA: Yeah, I started, early in my life, doing some sort of switch. I still suffer impostor syndrome. I still have that monster in my bedroom. It’s still there.

ESTELLE: Oh, a monster? I call it my friend.

LARA: Yeah, it’s a monster. No, mine is a monster because it haunts me all the time. It could be a ghost, too. You just throw the Halloween theme there. They’re like…

MELISA: You have to turn it into a friendly monster.

LARA: Perfect Halloween costume: The impostor syndrome. Yeah. I mean, I started doing something about it. I am really hard with myself, you know? So every time I make a mistake, usually I will go like, extremely, super hard on me. But then I realize that if I don’t make that mistake, I’m not allowing myself to learn from that mistake. How else am I going to learn? So that’s something that like, I don’t know, interrupt in my mind one day and I was like… “Oh, well, it’s not that bad then,” but it’s so hard. So hard. I always try to remind myself it’s extremely hard.

ESTELLE: It is extremely hard, that’s for sure, but it’s worth trying to remember that because you’ve done this mistake that you are who you are today. Sorry, that sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true. And you learn so much from your mistakes. It’s just… you have to do mistakes. Otherwise, you would never really improve or change. It’s part of the experience, the whole life experience, I think. During the training, I forgot the name of the guy, but we talked about this TED talk about a guy who thought about… We were talking about the importance of failure and the way you could see how failure actually helps you grow up and help you grow. And this guy actually presents himself only with his failures. You know, rather than… I’m going to try that in my next talk. I think I noted that down. But I want to try. You know, when you do this talk or presentation, an introduction, and there you would say… “Oh, I’ve done this and I’ve worked there and I’ve worked on that many projects.” And so it’s a good…

MELISA: All your achievements.

ESTELLE: Yes. And then, when you see these TED talks is just like focusing on “No, I’m not the best.” “I failed this, I tried this and it didn’t work” or “I had this company. Well, you know, I had to close it down.” And that’s what I learned. And that’s another way of presenting yourself. But I think that’s so much better. That’s my opinion. But yeah, I really liked it. I was just like… “Yeah, actually, you know, people know about your achievement.” They could just go to your LinkedIn profile and they have your achievements. Because you sell yourself, right? If you send your CV to a recruiter, you might not just list your failures, obviously. But I really like the way of introducing yourself or presenting who you are to an audience and see how they react as well. So. Yeah, in doing other talks I would try to do it.

LARA: I love that. It’s so cool. So I have the final question for you, Estelle. Are you ready for it?

ESTELLE: Oh, yeah, sure.

LARA: What advice do you have for those aspiring to follow a similar path in the video game localization industry?

ESTELLE: Uh, that’s a tough one. You get the tough one at the end. So. Um, my background is translation. Right. So first I was a translator. So, if someone wants to be a translator right now or aspires to follow these kinds of paths, my gut feeling would be to pick another career path, maybe if you still can, or at least be prepared to evolve in your job as quickly as the technology or AI does. You need to work with the machine, not against it, right? Talking about it. Actually, last week I had a realization. Yes. It happens sometimes. Do you know Asterix? The comic books, Asterix and Obelix.

ALEXIS: Yeah.

ESTELLE: Yeah, you know.

ALEXIS: The little guy and the big guy.

ESTELLE: Yes, I was in France, and so the new Asterix was out. I think in English it’s The White Iris. I bought it. I read it in French. And now I’m actually desperate to buy the English version. I need to order it. There are so, so many references, like cultural references, to the French culture. Songs, proverbs, obviously all the names of the characters are puns or references to French persons or culture. So honestly, it’s full of it. So reading it, I was like… “Oh, I hope translators had notes and contextual reference.” I’m sure that they had it for such an important release. But when reading it, obviously I thought with my translation mind. So I want to read it in English now because I want to see which miracles the translators have accomplished, to be honest. I think even for the English version, you would need a British English version, an American English version, an Australian English version to adapt this Asterix properly. I checked. I think there’s only one English version, which is sad, but I really want to see what they’ve done. My point is… my realization was actually Translators: yes, they have a future. Yeah, it’s good? I’m sure you’re relieved.

ALEXIS: That’s a great take away.

ESTELLE: But I mean, yes, because one of the most important aspects of translation is all the cultural and linguistic context of the texts, right? So, yes, AI has made amazing progress in natural language processing. I won’t deny that. I can’t deny it. But AI is still unable to get all the nuances of a culture or language, you know, like idioms, proverbs, puns, jokes. I mean, while AI can be useful in certain fields for language professionals, it cannot replace, I think, the expertise and the cultural awareness of a human translator, at least for now, right? So what I’m trying to say is that most probably my job… because it was a question. My job as it’s been over the past decades or as it’s still today, will keep changing, evolving as new technologies, AI progress are used. So probably for students today, it might be more useful to study linguistic engineering, maybe, if such a thing exists. Or if you’re not really into IT, to focus your studies on the cultural aspects of languages to become a cultural expert because we will keep needing that. And our chance in the video game industry, I think, is that the texts we translate are mainly creative and our human expertise adds a massive value to the final localized products. And, as I said earlier, you need to work with the machine, not against it. So you also need to know where your added value is. And as a video game translator, your added value is most definitely in the knowledge of all the linguistic nuances and the cultural references of your native language.

MELISA: Yeah. I think that’s a great advice, that you can adapt. And there’s a lot of changes happening in the industry, so… we’ll see what the future holds for us.

ESTELLE: I think there are a lot of uncertainties that we are trying to navigate, but it’s still uncertain at the moment.

MELISA: Absolutely, yes. Well, Estelle, thank you so much for joining us. This was a great episode. I’m sure everyone listening will agree. And all your advice is very valuable. So thank you so much.

ESTELLE: Thank you for inviting me. I had a great time. So, hopefully everyone had too.

LARA: I had a great time too, so I bet they have.

ALEXIS: Thank you so much.

LARA: Thank you so much, Estelle. It was amazing.

ESTELLE: Thank you.

ALEXIS: See you, everyone.

ESTELLE: Bye.

Episode Transcription

MELISA: Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Open World. My name is Melisa, I’m here with Lara and Ale.

LARA: Hi!

ALEXIS: Hi!

MELISA: And today we’re going to talk about different Spanish variants. So we told you guys that our first language is Spanish. But the challenging thing about Spanish is that it’s the official language of 21 countries. So it definitely, like… it raises some questions about which Spanish should you translate your video game, in particular, of course, if it’s, like, European Spanish or… There’s something that we know of like Latin American Spanish, which is not, you know… How would you guys describe the Latin American Spanish?

ALEXIS: One size fits many?

LARA: Yeah, one size that tries to fit all of them.

MELISA: Exactly.

LARA: But, yeah, it sounds weird, it doesn’t sound natural, but it’s something that we are exposed on a very young age. From TV shows, from series, from movies and everything that you’re consuming that is media, you hear this neutral Latin American Spanish that doesn’t actually represent any dialect or any country in particular.

MELISA: Exactly. So it’s like it’s not spoken in any country, but it’s more like it was designed so that everyone can understand it. So you take out all of the like, regionalisms, idioms and…

ALEXIS: Yeah, you’re not gonna hear how you speak, but you’re gonna understand the same thing that a person from Colombia, Uruguay, or Venezuela understands.

LARA: Exactly, yeah. And sometimes it is… they call it the Mexican Spanish and it is not even Mexican Spanish, because not even Mexicans speak like that. It’s just like they try to make it the most… understandable for all the countries in Latin America, and it still sometimes sounds weird for us.

MELISA: Yeah, especially as, like, adults, I think now we can understand it. But when we were kids, I mean, like you said, all our cartoons are dubbed in like this neutral kind of Spanish. I don’t know about you guys, like, if you used this when you were kids, like, playing using neutral Spanish or if you heard like kids speaking this way.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, every time you find yourself with a little kid, you probably might hear them speak in this neutral Spanish, and it’s just like, oh, my God, why are you talking like that?

ALEXIS: Why are you talking like that? It’s neutral.

LARA: It’s so neutral and it sounds so weird. Maybe when it’s coming from like a movie or a video game or something, it doesn’t sound that weird. But when it comes from another human’s mouth, it’s like, “Why are you talking like that?”

ALEXIS: Right, because it’s not your own.

LARA: No, it’s not your own. Yeah.

ALEXIS: In Spain, movies, video games, they sound like they do. So that’s the main difference. I mean, it’s one for everyone, but that’s for them. It happened to me that I was talking to a colleague from Spain, from Madrid, and she told me that it’s very, very important for them.

LARA: I think it is something, it’s even stated by law, they have to have all the media voiceover and subtitled and everything. So it’s just like, it is something that’s very important for them, and we have been consuming their content because of the lack of this Latin American neutral Spanish, right? And both of them sound weird for us, but one of them gets closer to what we understand now.

MELISA: Definitely. I think that the difference between like European and Latin American is really big. They should definitely be considered like two different languages when you’re translating.

LARA: I mean, you can understand each other. Like sometimes maybe, when you, as a Spanish speaker, you might understand something from Portuguese or Italian too, because we share some similarities with the languages, but yeah, it’s just completely different languages.

MELISA: Yeah, and in the case of video games, I mean, we always talk about that immersive experience that you get, especially when you’re playing a game and it’s spoken in your language. Have you guys played any games that were translated into Latin American Spanish?

LARA: Luckily, yes.

MELISA: Or European Spanish?

LARA: Yes. But the thing is, sometimes you don’t get the voiceovers in Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: Yeah, just the text.

LARA: Just the text. Which I don’t like, to be honest with you, because the voiceovers sometimes are weird.

ALEXIS: I prefer the voiceovers in English if it’s not done properly, myself.

LARA: Otherwise, it’s just some weird… because if they try to do like a voiceover using neutral Spanish, and sometimes you may have different nationalities in the game or something like that, they might sound a little bit… racist?

MELISA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: They go to stereotypes.

LARA: Yeah, they go to stereotypes. I don’t… I don’t like that.

MELISA: Yeah. I mean, I know, it happens sometimes in English as well, like when they’re making up accents according to that character’s background or something. But yeah, in Spanish it’s used as well, and it can sound a bit strange.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but, like, the first thing that comes to my mind is actually, when you have something to grab, to pick up, and you have the Spanish…

ALEXIS: That’s the easiest… Yeah. It shows.

LARA: Yeah, it’s just like, when you’re going to grab something, in Spanish it says “coger,” but in Latin American Spanish, that means “to have sex.” So it’s just like, how can a word be so different and have these kinds of… ugh!

ALEXIS: Two different meanings altogether.

LARA: Yeah, and I’m not saying to be like, yeah, you should totally make this game in Argentinian Spanish, so every time I have to put on a T-shirt, it will say “remera.” No, it’s okay, I get it. Because not every country from Latin America will understand that this is a “remera” because in Chile, this is called a “polera.” So it’s just like, it changes.

ALEXIS: Or “money” in Mexico is “lana.” We in Argentina don’t call it “lana.” But it’s used.

MELISA: Yeah. I mean, one of the most challenging things when you have to translate into Latin American Spanish is exactly like, you know, it’s just to not have any offensive words that can, you know, be interpreted in very different ways, like that word from Spain. But even in, like, Mexico. I mean, we have very different words that can mean something offensive in other countries. So what do you guys think is the best approach when you have to have like that kind of neutral kind of Latin American Spanish and try not to be offensive?

LARA: Yeah, for me, it’s like to find a common ground, to do your research. So maybe have people from those specific countries working in your team so you have a diverse team that can put their input and their knowledge or their words that maybe you don’t know the meaning behind that specific word. Yeah, for me, it’s a little bit of that, to find a common ground, but also having a diverse team that can put a good input into what you’re trying to translate.

ALEXIS: It needs to be mindful. I mean, Latin American Spanish works, of course, but if you have the resources to do further research and truly, truly tune, you know, everything, it’s gonna make the experience much more enjoyable for everyone.

MELISA: Absolutely. I mean, if it is… I mean, and some people are doing this, like, instead of having this Latin American neutral Spanish, having it localized to, like, Spanish from Mexico or Colombia or Argentina, for example, depending on your audience. And when you do that, you’re definitely going to make a difference on those countries that you’re targeting, because we’re not used to having content localized to our… So, you know, you can connect a lot better, especially, I mean, a lot of video games are full of, I don’t know, like, jokes and, you know, word plays…

ALEXIS: Colloquialisms.

MELISA: Yeah. And all of that is basically missed when you’re having it in Latin American Spanish because it sounds very like washed-up, like a bland version of Spanish without any regionalisms, without… And one example I always think of is Deadpool. I don’t know if you guys have watched this movie.

ALEXIS: Yeah, both.

MELISA: Of course, both. And, I mean, for everyone who has watched it, you know, in English it’s just full of…

LARA: So fun.

MELISA: Yeah, exactly. It’s full of swear words, everything, and, like, actually, when they translated it to Spanish from Spain, they won an important award because the adaptation was so creative and they used so many jokes and so many things from Spanish from Spain. But everyone from Latin America had to sit through, like, a very just generic movie that wasn’t, you know, a lot of references, a lot of jokes were kind of missed.

LARA: Yeah, some of the jokes were not properly targeted. I remember, like, maybe… If I’m mistaken, please correct me, but I believe Luis Miguel was one of the characters of one of the jokes, instead of another famous person. And we were like… Eh…

MELISA: Who can everyone from Latin America know? Let’s just…

LARA: Let’s go with Luis Miguel.

MELISA: Yeah.

LARA: Yeah. It was a little bit painful to watch in Latin America, in the Latin American Spanish. I appreciate the effort, though.

MELISA: Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, we understand, sometimes it’s like the easiest way to target all of Latin America’s audience. I don’t know if you guys have watched the… There’s a version online that was a fan-dubbed version of Deadpool 2, from Argentina.

ALEXIS: From Argentinian Spanish, right?

LARA: So good.

MELISA: And it’s just so funny. It’s full of Argentinian swear words and references. It went viral, and it still nowadays is like shared, so it kind of shows the impact that can have when you…

LARA: Yeah, the importance and how can you make the movie actually resonate with an entire audience. And you can actually, like, really, really have good amounts of people watching your content and having a good laugh, instead of this Latin American Spanish that the jokes were like… Meh…

ALEXIS: It’s an extra step in your market research. I mean, you’ve done your market research, you know where your movie or game or audiovisual content is gonna work, why don’t you use that research and…

MELISA: Absolutely. Yeah. And to connect a bit more with the audience. And that’s basically what you want when you want to translate or localize your content. And going back to video games, can you guys think of any examples of, like, video games that you played and how that translation worked?

LARA: Um, yeah. I mean, I have… Do you wanna go? Ah, you have your shirt with the game you’re going to talk about. That’s…

ALEXIS: You go.

LARA: Okay. Okay, I’ll go.

MELISA: You’re a patient person, Ale.

LARA: I remember… I don’t know if this is still going, but I remember playing a video game that was called Move or Die. It was such a funny game because, if you stop moving, you die. You have to keep moving.

ALEXIS: Literally, move or die.

LARA: Exactly. And it is actually localized to Argentinian Spanish, and it’s so fun, the voiceover is so good, and everything. I don’t know if they kept going with that because, you know, with the updates and everything, sometimes it’s…

MELISA: Yeah, challenging. Of course.

LARA: Yeah. It’s super challenging. But that’s so good. And another example that is not that good.

MELISA: It’s a bit controversial.

LARA: A bit controversial. It is Grim Fandango, because when you play Grim Fandango, it’s not localized, at least, in Latin American Spanish, it’s just in European Spanish. And they have this bad guy that he’s supposed to be from Argentina, and they hired…

ALEXIS: That accent is horrible.

MELISA: That is such a stereotype like for every… If any of you guys from Latin America are hearing this, you know that Argentinians are sometimes targeted as the bad guy.

LARA: Yeah. And the voice actor, he was from Spain, obviously, because he didn’t speak like an Argentinian person.

MELISA: He was like making up an accent.

LARA: Yeah, he was making up an accent. It was a little bit of a miss. To be honest with you, I didn’t like it, I felt offended. It was like…

ALEXIS: Could we say in their defense that the game was done like in 98 or something?

LARA: Of course.

MELISA: Yes.

ALEXIS: Because it’s a good game. It’s an oldie but goodie, you know? Old but gold.

LARA: Yeah, but that thing, it caught my attention. How can you detach yourself when you find something like that, that it actually kind of hurts your feelings. You’re like, ouch.

ALEXIS: I wonder if it landed the same way in different parts of the world.

LARA: Or maybe you’re gonna hear another Argentinian person talking wonderful stuff about this, but that is something that really bothered me. I mean, maybe there are other people that is bothered too by this same exact thing, so it’s just like, um, yeah.

MELISA: Yeah, and I think it’s just, I mean, what we’re talking about, if you want to connect, that was probably, you know, not their intention. They just wanted to maybe like make it sound a bit more like, you know, people from different Spanish speaking countries in this game, but, you know, if you don’t follow like certain, and, you know, just try to avoid… you wanna avoid like offending your audience. I mean, that’s basically… How about you, Ale?

ALEXIS: I gotta say Batman: Arkham Knight. To me, it was like watching a movie. And if you play the games in English, you have Kevin Conroy playing Batman. Rest in peace. He died just last year. You have Mark Hamill doing The Joker. I mean, so…

MELISA: Insane, yeah.

ALEXIS: It’s a high standard, so it delivers. It delivers what you expect from a game of that quality with those voice actors. But, at the same time, it’s like what we’ve been discussing, it just doesn’t hit right, you know? Because, again, it’s neutral.

MELISA: In Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: You have the “bastards,” “bastardos,” and we don’t say “bastardos,” you know? Things like that. And it’s like…

MELISA: It’s like it puts you off a little bit, right? When you see like a really bad guy using a word that you would never hear from a bad guy.

ALEXIS: That’s the thing. I mean…

MELISA: It’s even a little funny sometimes, like…

ALEXIS: It was good. It was incredibly done, but it still doesn’t cut it. I prefer to play it in English because those expressions sound more natural in that language, you know?

LARA: But I’m thinking, we have the opportunity to play in English because we all speak English and Spanish, we’re bilingual, right? But I really, really appreciate when they try to go with Latin American Spanish because I have little sisters and I have little brothers, and they don’t speak English. So being able to localize your game into this neutral Latin American Spanish, it’s like an accessibility door, you know? Because you’re making your game accessible not only for me, and maybe I don’t appreciate that much the Latin American Spanish, at least the dubbing, but the text part of the Latin American Spanish is great, I love it. But the dubbing sometimes sounds weird, but I love it for kids. I love it for kids, and I think that’s a super way to go when you have a video game and you have it localized into Spanish European and you want that same game to have like a really good, successful industry or audience in Latin America, it is not going to work, because we don’t feel connected with that Spanish, we don’t feel the same feeling, you know? When you’re playing. You don’t feel the immersion…

MELISA: You can feel confused sometimes. I mean, some things just sound very strange for us.

LARA: You have a quest, you have a mission and you can’t actually… you don’t understand what you’re trying to do.

ALEXIS: There’s a lot of cases where you don’t really know, ok, what’s this item? I need to check what the item is.

LARA: Yeah. Well, the other day I was playing a video game, I cannot actually remember the name, but it had this specific like paragraph for a quest or something, and I couldn’t understand. I was like, I have to change the language of the game to English to be able to do this quest, because I was stuck, you know?

MELISA: Yeah. And your first language is Spanish, which is kind of insane.

LARA: And my first language is Spanish! You know, I was reading in it European Spanish, and I had to change it to English to understand what this quest wanted me to do. I thought, like, no. You have to make your game into neutral Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: I had something happening to me, the same thing. I don’t remember what game in PlayStation 1 days, with a tutorial. I was stuck in a tutorial for like an hour or two, before Google was a thing. I mean, PlayStation 1 days, like 97, 98, I was a kid. And I was like, I don’t know what I have to do. And I had to call my dad, and what he did was, he switched off the game, he reset the console, he put it in English and tried to… he read it in English and told me, “You have to do this.”

MELISA: Wow.

ALEXIS: I don’t remember what it was, like going side by side with a car or something, but he had to turn the game in English to understand, because he didn’t understand either in Spanish.

LARA: Yeah, and I’m actually, like, imagine nowadays with everything being so fast and so instant, having to do that to a game, to go back, change the language, maybe reset the game because you have to start over…

ALEXIS: No, it’s unacceptable.

LARA: It’s just… It’s painful. It’s so painful because… Maybe if I was so, like, tired, had a long day and I just wanted to sit and play and chill, maybe I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I would just turn off my PC and say goodbye for tonight. That’s not my jam.

ALEXIS: Yeah, but that’s not the case when you’re growing up.

LARA: Yeah. But in that specific game, I really wanted to do this quest because I was so immersed and… Well, immersed, let’s just say I was playing, I was having fun.

MELISA: Yeah, you were connected.

LARA: I was having fun and I wanted to do this quest because I thought, “This is going to be so much fun.” And I couldn’t start because I didn’t understand.

ALEXIS: Yeah, nowadays, it’s unacceptable.

LARA: Yeah, nowadays, I think it’s like, no. I wouldn’t do that.

MELISA: Yeah, it’s not like what you want for a game, definitely. So, I mean, I think the point from everything that we’ve been talking is, like, you should really know your audience and know what impact you wanna create on those people, you know? If you want to reach Latin America, you can choose, you know, there’s…

LARA: You have the option.

MELISA: Yeah, you have that option. If you wanna go like the extra mile, you can even, you know, localize it to different variants of Spanish in Latin American countries, which would be great to see more. We would all love to see a bit more.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I think that’s asking for a lot, because, yeah, nowadays, they only think of Spanish, “Ah, European Spanish.” I just want to bring up to the table that European Spanish is not the same as Latin American Spanish. So please, if you have a video game and you want to make it successful here, go with Latin American Spanish.

ALEXIS: Yeah, know your audience. And if you don’t know how to do it, find a company that can help you and do your research. There are many places where you can just research for free. Just go to Newzoo. I mean, that’s gonna be a game changer for sure. At least in you knowing more where to look.

LARA: Yeah, and it’s a common practice that most Latin Americans will understand, we will understand this Latin American neutral Spanish.

MELISA: And the important thing is, like you said, you’re reaching, you know, if you have a game for kids, you’re reaching that audience, they can play it. Even if it’s not the same, if they don’t connect the same as if it were localized to your country, you can still enjoy it. And I think that’s a great thing.

ALEXIS: And adults that don’t speak English.

MELISA: Yeah, for sure.

ALEXIS: We’re privileged we speak two languages, but there are many, many adults that don’t understand anything.

MELISA: So this is it for today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you have any games that you played in Spanish or if you’re curious about Spanish variants, anything, let us know in your comments.

LARA: In the comments down below. Also, find our Discord channel there, too, so you can reach out to us. Thank you so much for watching.

ALEXIS: Thank you, everyone!

MELISA: Bye, everyone!

ALEXIS: Bye-bye!

Episode Transcription

MELISA:Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Open World. I’m Melisa. Your other hosts, Ale and Lari. And today we have a very special guest, María Eugenia Larreina, who’s joining us to talk about a very important topic that is accessibility in video games. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and her research focuses on the needs and preferences of persons with visual disabilities and the potential applications of audio description. Thank you so much for joining us today, Eugenia.

EUGENIA:Thank you so much for having me.

LARA: Yeah, thank you. It’s amazing. So we met each other… We’re going to be, like, giving a bit of context here. We met each other back in Berlin last year. And I was completely amazed by your talk. I was like, “Oh, my God, we have to have her in Open World because, oh my God, this is amazing.” But can you tell your professional journey walkthrough for those who don’t know you yet?

EUGENIA: Yes, of course. So I started studying translation and interpreting. I did Spanish, English and French. And when I was done, I was very interested in media, film, translation technologies, so I decided to do a master’s on audiovisual translation, and that’s when I had my first contact with accessibility. So we studied subtitling for the deaf and the hard of hearing, audio description, and respeaking. And when I finished the master’s, I had the opportunity to work on a project about audio description called the Rad project, and how to apply it to video games. So this was my Ph.D. topic, that right now I’m finishing the thesis. And I just fell in love with audio description and accessibility in general, and how to apply it to certain medium like video games.

ALEXIS: That’s amazing. And what was that inspired you to pursue a career in accessibility? And maybe, as a follow up question to that, what are some of the key challenges that you have faced in this industry so far?

EUGENIA: So I was very inspired by the fact that accessibility can be applied to anything in real life. So when you use a ramp to enter a building or when you use subtitles to watch a movie, or when you use an audio guide to guide yourself around a museum, all of this is accessibility and we are all users of accessibility all the time. And just the fact that what we do in university can be applied to real life and potentially improve real people’s lives and our lives was very exciting.

ALEXIS: I like that because that’s true. That’s true, right? Everyone is a user of accessibility to some extent at some point, right? Even with translated text.

LARA: Yeah. Don’t you get mad when you see something that is not accessible for some people and you’re like, oh my God, like, this has to be accessible? Like, it happens. Even in the simplest things, it happens.

ALEXIS: Yeah. And when it comes to video games, even some triple-A studios sometimes don’t even… I’m an old guy by now, so I notice that I sometimes need bigger fonts. I do, because I can’t see. And I came across some futuristic first-person shooters that don’t really allow me to make the font bigger and I couldn’t play it. I couldn’t play it.

EUGENIA: Yeah, and it’s really easy to make. If there is awareness about this, it’s not really hard to code or hard to integrate into the planning and the budgets. So it’s really about being aware of it.

MELISA: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, María Eugenia, how would you say the accessibility landscape has changed in the recent years? And also, like what emerging technologies or trends do you see happening? I bet in audio description, in particular, for your research, I imagine there’s been a lot of changes in the recent years.

EUGENIA: Yeah, no, it has changed and I would like to say that for the better. So I hope that it continues improving the whole situation. So I started the project in 2020, and back then there was no audio description at all anywhere in video games. We had audio games, which are games that only have sound. So you have a narration explaining what’s going on, but no audio description really. And now, in only three years, we have game trailers with audio description, we have audio description in some cut scenes in major games, and we also have some gameplay audio description. So it has really evolved very, very quickly and it’s very exciting. And this is also a big challenge as well because you need to be aware of all the new games that are being launched all the time. And there’s a lot of diversity, lots of new things every day, but it makes it very exciting as well. As for new things that I’m excited about, I’m very interested in virtual reality lately. I think that this will have like many cool applications for accessibility if it’s done from the start. So right now we are just like starting with the technology, starting to become more popular for gaming. And if we are thinking about accessibility now, we will make it better for the players of the future.

LARA: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. And also I think about the recognition that accessibility is getting into the video game industry because there are some awards also that are like awarding video games that are accessible for everyone, right? Do you have like some example where you were like, oh my God, this game has mastered accessibility?

ALEXIS: That’s a good question.

EUGENIA: I have to say The Last of Us part 2.

LARA: Yes! I was hoping for this.

EUGENIA: It was a before and after. Yeah. Yeah, really, a before and after, that such a major triple-A game had so many accessibility options. It’s been like a major break for the industry, I would say. And now other companies are looking at it and saying, “Can we replicate this? Can we make this better?”

ALEXIS: That was something that I was gonna ask. You said that it’s not hard to code, to keep in mind, to implement. So a game like The Last of Us has set the bar too high or is it really just a matter of, okay, let’s include it in the pipeline from the very beginning and let’s go with it and it wouldn’t be too complicated? Or does it really set the bar too high?

EUGENIA: Well, I want to think that not really, that everyone can reach this level of accessibility. But of course, you need to have the resources to do so, and this might not be easy. But it really depends on the type of game, right? So depending on what game it is, you will need some different accessibility options, and maybe the ones that we have in The Last of Us cannot be applied to your game. So if you’re really creative from the start and design it with users, like real users, involving them in the creation and the testing, and then you work with the developers, the artists, the project managers, everyone together, you can really make it accessible, yeah. I believe so.

LARA: Absolutely. Yeah. So this is like the best question I have after this talk. What are some of the best practices for ensuring that websites and all digital content in general are accessible to users with disabilities?

EUGENIA: Well, again, it depends a lot on the app or on the website or things like this, but we already have some guidelines that can give developers some ideas. So, for example, we have the Web Accessibility Guidelines, or the Game Accessibility Guidelines as well, and you can start from there. But then, of course, the best would be to have users… Sorry.

LARA: Yeah, I mean, are the guidelines free to use, open to use for everyone? Like, you can find them online or something?

EUGENIA: Yeah, some of them are, others are not. For example, the information for The Last of Us is not available. We only know the accessibility options we have, but we don’t know how they were developed. We need to look into interviews of, like, people working on the game and things like that. But still, we have very public documents that we can look for. So the Game Accessibility Guidelines, for example, just like this name, is open on the Internet.

ALEXIS: We could share that link.

MELISA: Yeah.

ALEXIS: I don’t know where links live in videos, below…

MELISA: And do you think there should be more, like, communication between gaming studios and companies to share technological advancement or guidelines and things like that? What’s your opinion about that?

EUGENIA: It would be nice if all of this information was accessible as well, so that maybe smaller studios can take inspiration from them. And it would be also very nice if the same company would make all of their games accessible and not only some of them. So this is something that happens as well. I mean, if you have already the protocols developed, you can just apply them to all your games, right? But of course, the workflow in the industry is very opaque, right? You don’t really know much about how the studios work. So maybe they have some constraints that we don’t know about, but it would be nice to have this information for everyone to use.

MELISA: Yeah, absolutely. And with the things that are available now, what advice would you give to organizations and companies that are just starting to prioritize accessibility to digital content and products, games?

EUGENIA: I think that the most important thing is to talk to real users, because sometimes we have companies creating accessibility that then is not usable by the real people. Maybe they think that it will be useful, but then when you get real people using it, it’s not meeting their needs. So if you really involve them from the start, you will cut costs and make it more profitable at the end as well, more usable. And then another important thing that I would say is to make the information about accessibility accessible itself. So if you create an accessible video game or you have some accessibility options on your website, you need to make them very clear and easy to use and not hidden in an endless menu or hidden in the tags, difficult to find. If you have created them, you want the people to use them.

LARA: Yeah. Sometimes it happens to me when I’m like playing a video game, I open the menu, I see the options, and I find, like, some really good things regarding accessibility that I’m like, “Oh my God, this is so useful.” And I’m like, why was this so hard to find in the menu, in the options, in the accessibility section? Oh, my God, why? It’s just like, yeah, it makes total sense. Total sense.

MELISA: Yeah. And also incorporating like the users. I think that’s a great advice because, at the end of the day, you’re assigning resources to make it more accessible. And of course you want to like, you know, make it right. So that’s a really, really, really good point, I think. If you, you know, assign all those resources and at the end of the day, the users are not, you know… it’s not helping them, then…

EUGENIA: Yeah, exactly.

ALEXIS: So looking ahead, right, looking in the future, what are your hopes in particular for the future of accessibility? And… I have a follow up, but I’ll leave you with that first question. What are your hopes, what do you think that accessibility’s gonna come to?

EUGENIA: Ideally, very optimistically, I hope that one day you can play a game and it’s accessible from the beginning. You don’t have to wonder if you can play it or not. You just press Play, you adjust whatever settings you need and then you go. But maybe more realistically or more in a short-term scenario, I would like to see some standardization regarding game accessibility, so maybe some minimum requirements that games should have. So we already have seen this with subtitles, for example. There are many games that now have subtitles by default, so that’s very nice for everyone.

ALEXIS: That’s a given now. We think that… Yeah. I mean, it… Let me jump on that wagon of thinking of things that should be ideal. Maybe you could even have some pre-settings on your console or computer or whatever, and the game can pick that up from the start, right? So you only need to tweak everything once.

LARA: That would be cool. Yeah.

ALEXIS: Right? Like big fonts.

LARA: Like, I don’t know, for example, in your Steam profile, you have like an option to say, “I always want big fonts because I cannot see absolutely anything.” Like me, for example. Or some other, like, accessibility feature on your, I don’t know, profile or your Steam page, PlayStation, Xbox. That would be great.

ALEXIS: Your user, you know? Your user, that games can pick it up from your profile.

LARA: Yeah, so I don’t have all the time to go into the game, into the menu first, setting the options and then…

ALEXIS: I mean, to, again, hop on what you said, María Eugenia, I have an Xbox, it’s my preferred console right now. The games already pick up if I have my console in Spanish or in English. The games already go in Spanish or in English, depending on how the console is configured.

LARA: It wouldn’t be that hard now.

ALEXIS: It wouldn’t be that hard. I don’t know. Maybe someone is watching this.

EUGENIA: No, it would be very nice. Yeah. But at the same time, I think that it’s also important that you can manually set things. For example, for my thesis, I was talking to this woman who was helping me figure out the audio description in games, how to create them, like a player who is blind. And she was telling me, “I was playing The Last of Us 2 with all the presets for visual accessibility, and then, once I had mastered the whole game, I had played through it, then I started checking off some of the accessibility options, and I started making it more difficult for myself, more challenging,” because part of the game, you know, it’s like to complete these challenges. So if you have the option to customize it completely, then you can have a new experience every time you play. So that would be nice too.

ALEXIS: I like this brainstorming. I like the idea. So again, thinking in the future, how do you see your role in shaping it, in shaping this future that we are thinking about? How do you see yourself?

EUGENIA: I would really love to stay researching game accessibility in the future, once I finish my thesis for sure. And I would like to see how all of this develops. So maybe continue doing user research, which I really like. It’s been very nice to follow up with all of these participants who have helped me with my study during these three years. And it’s really nice to have this back and forth with them, like they tell me about their experiences with new games, I tell them about some news that I read about this upcoming game. It’s really nice to have this feedback and to be in touch with them and then to take this information to society. So I really like the whole dissemination part and talking to the industry, talking to the general public, and just raising a bit of awareness about it.

ALEXIS: So in this future, do you have any interest in joining a video game publisher or a company that creates video games? Or do you think of something more altruistic from the outside as a researcher?

EUGENIA: Both would be nice, for sure.

ALEXIS: “Both. I want both.”

EUGENIA: Yeah. Yes. There is this new kind of profile, which is an accessibility consultant profile that some people with disabilities are taking now, which is very, very good. So someone who is there working with the developers hand in hand to make the game accessible. So yeah, it would be nice to do something like that, but as an accessibility researcher. Maybe continuing user research, but from a company. And then I also like university a lot. Maybe I can do everything.

ALEXIS: You can do everything, yeah.

MELISA: I love it. At the same time, you know, it’s always a thing about, you know, when academic work is a bit like, you know, further away from the company work or whatever. So I think it’s great that you’re trying to put them closer and how, you know, they can help each other. And I was wondering, going back to the brainstorming, because I have heard, I mean, some gamers, which is, you know… This is why we like having this episode, you know, so kind of giving a bit more information and insight on accessibility and to other people also because they may not know, but they think that, you know, changing the difficulty level or the story mode is just making games easier, or they complain about that and they don’t know like the real reason behind it.

EUGENIA: Yeah, no, this is a very big criticism that I have heard during these years as well. Because sometimes, when you’re talking about game accessibility, you are met with very enthusiastic people who want to jump on it and be like, “Yes, this is a great creative opportunity. Let’s do it.” And then you have the other side, which would be, “No, this is too hard. This makes no sense. People don’t need accessibility options. We don’t want the games to be easy.” What I try to tell them is that, if the game is completely unplayable for you because it’s not accessible, then it’s not hard, it’s just impossible to play. So we are not making it easier, we are just making it playable.

LARA: Oh, my God, I love that. We are not making it easier, we are making it playable. I want to tattoo that on my skin. Oh, my God! I love that! I’m very passionate… Every time I hear you speak about accessibility, it’s… I don’t know, something lights up inside me. I love it. Can you give us some advice for someone that is interested in working in this accessibility industry in video games?

EUGENIA: Interesting question. Well, something that I have learned in this time is that you should be very open to talk to very different people with very different views from you. So we really need to involve everyone in the process of making a video game into making it accessible. So you need to talk to the developers, to the artists, to the project managers, to the people in marketing who are selling the game and to the players. And all of these people have very different vocabularies, very different priorities, and they will see accessibility in different ways. So if you can really communicate with everyone, then you are winning the game, really. So just to be very open and very flexible to understand all of these roles and then being able to communicate what you want to say. Then it’s also very exciting when you are explaining something to a developer, like what is audio description? So the first time that I did this, it was very hard to explain. It was like, “Yeah, like a narration, like a voice line, like…” And at the end, I ended up explaining it as an additional voice line that you put in the soundtrack. And then they were like, “Oh yeah, I know how to code that.” It’s not that hard.

LARA: Yeah, it’s all about education.

ALEXIS: And you see them… “Oh! Yeah, yeah, I can do that.”

LARA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

MELISA: Great advice. The whole episode. Thank you so much, María Eugenia. This was great. I think all of us can keep talking about accessibility all day. Of course, we’ll leave links in the description. And, yeah, if anyone wants to contact María Eugenia or investigate a bit more about accessibility, we always encourage you to do so.

LARA: Yeah.

MELISA: Yeah. Thank you so much.

EUGENIA: Sure, you can contact me anywhere. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was really great.

ALEXIS: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. See you next time.

MELISA: Bye!

LARA: Bye-bye!

Episode Transcription

LARA: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Open World season 2. Today I’m going to be the host, I’m going to be the one making the questions. How is everyone doing today?

ALEX: Very good, very good! Excited about the topic today.

LARA: Today’s topic is diversity and inclusion. And as a woman playing video games, I strive to see more diversity and inclusion both in video games and in the video game industry too, right? So my first question for you guys today is, what is diversity and inclusion for you?

MELISA: Well, for me, I mean, this is a very, very important topic, and I think what I like the most about video games is that it just means different things to everyone, and I would like to see a place where everyone feels represented, they feel comfortable playing, they feel welcome. And, you know, we’ve seen that it’s not always the case, so we definitely need to do better at this.

LARA: I agree with you 100%. Ale, what about you?

ALEX: I agree, of course. I think that diversity and inclusion need to sum up places both in the companies and in what is represented in video games for everyone…

LARA: Absolutely.

ALEX: No matter who you are.

LARA: Absolutely, yeah. I think, um… In terms of diversity and inclusion, it should be easy by now, you know? It should be easier, it should be smoother right now.

ALEX: It shouldn’t be a topic.

LARA: It shouldn’t be a topic! But yeah, we have some cases where some companies or some video games try to be inclusive and diverse and it seems sometimes a little bit too off or too forced, and that’s not good either, you know? Just like, yeah, we’re working together, I think we’re striving together. So we understand that there’s like a B2B side of diversity and inclusion, and a B2C side of diversity and inclusion. What do I mean by this? I mean we have the business side, the companies encouraging their employees and their politics to be more diverse and inclusive, and we also have the video games that strive to be more inclusive too, right? I think the demographics show that more than 46% of people that play video games are women. Do you believe this is showing in the video games that you’re currently playing right now?

MELISA: Yeah, this is… I mean, it just seems that a lot of companies still think their target is, like, a 14-year-old guy, which is, you know, it’s no longer the case. There’s like grandmas playing video games, and they’re gamers too. You know, just to have more… And it’s kind of a cycle for me, that’s how I see it. We have not a very diverse industry, I mean, you know, developers and in general, especially in leadership roles. And we’re gonna talk about the numbers later. But, you know, that feeds into that also, games that are showing societies which are not diverse.

LARA: What about you, Ale? Do you see this reflected in any video games that you have played?

ALEX: Well, yeah, I mean… It’s getting there.

LARA: It’s getting there, right?

ALEX: It’s getting there. I mean, I think that the tricky part is when it doesn’t matter what type of character you’re playing, for instance, in a video game, right? What we experience on the other side of the joystick, as I like to say. If it doesn’t matter what type of character, what type of representation your character is because it’s unrelated.

MELISA: Yeah, it’s about the story, about the backgrounds, the character, how much you can do as a character.

ALEX: Like, it doesn’t matter. It could be an Asian teenager or, I don’t know, a black male of 57, whatever. Whatever the spectrum is, when that doesn’t matter, most companies usually just go for the…

LARA: Basic white dude. Yeah.

MELISA: Straight.

LARA: Straight. Yeah.

ALEX: I think that it’s getting there. There are games that have done it properly with the customization of the characters or…

LARA: Yeah, I think… Yeah, they’re missing out, I believe, in a huge part of the story, in a huge part of maybe making the game more relatable to the one that is playing it. So it’s just like, why don’t you make the jump? Why don’t you make your game more relatable to the community, right?

MELISA: Absolutely. Yes.

LARA: I personally love Overwatch because I believe Overwatch has this same amount of female and male players, and we also have non-binary characters too. So it’s just like, we have this diversity and inclusion in the game and it runs smoothly, and it’s like, nobody cares.

MELISA: Yeah.

ALEX: It’s not forced.

LARA: It’s not forced. Absolutely.

ALEX: You have representation of how life is. You go around your life and you get to know different people. Apex is another game that does it beautifully.

LARA: Absolutely.

ALEX: You have a wide spectrum of characters, they’re all different, they all have their own stories. And even though it doesn’t matter the stories of the characters for the game it feels natural.

LARA: It feels natural. I know that Harvestella is one of Square Enix’s new games that you can actually make your own character and you can actually choose to be non-binary, so I think that’s amazing. Another game that I’m currently playing is Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, where we’re introduced to a non-binary character and they’re addressed with their pronouns as “they,” and it’s just amazing, it runs smoothly, it’s great. I mean, I enjoy that kind of content because you get different perspectives, and nowadays, I think, that’s the most beautiful thing to see in a video game.

MELISA: Exactly. Like it doesn’t matter, you know… It’s not that you necessarily want to see someone that looks exactly like you, but it’s just that that magic of video games that you get to see, like, the world, whatever the world is, in someone else’s eyes, and then, you know, when that character has a very interesting and a very different background than your own, then you get a whole different perspective. And that’s just like… That just makes you grow.

LARA: I think it makes… Yeah, it makes you grow as a person. And, I don’t know, when you see and you can relate maybe to this non-binary character, for example, and then you see in real life, I don’t know, imagine I’m a 12-year-old boy that doesn’t know what a non-binary person is.

MELISA: Yeah, and then you play The Last of Us 2 or games like these.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah! And then you find a non-binary person in real life, I think it gets easier. It’s just a matter of making things easier for everyone. Meli, I know you have the numbers about all of these diversity and inclusion topics.

MELISA: Yeah, we did some research about it just so, you know…

LARA: You did your homework.

MELISA: You think like, “I think there’s like more girls playing,” but then you see the numbers, like, almost half of the people who are playing video games are women. And then, you know, then you have it. One of the studies we saw was Newzoo, this is the one that published that 46% are women. And another number that we were very shocked was they showed that 1 in 3 gamers have not felt welcome in gaming communities. And that really, like, just made us sad because… You know, we’re gonna talk more about this later, but we, of course, strive to, you know, just not toxic communities where everyone can feel appreciated and, you know, comfortable and can connect with other people who, you know, think alike and…

ALEX: It’s a reality, it happens.

LARA: Yeah, I mean, and the fact that 1 of 3 gamers have not felt welcome into the gaming community… I have experienced this. Have you experienced this? It’s just like…

ALEX: Yeah. I mean, we all have our own whys, you know? Different reasons why we felt, at some point, I don’t know, off or not welcome. I’ve had… I don’t know. I don’t want to dwell too into this, but for being Latino, for being from South America, “No, you have poor internet, I don’t wanna play with you because we’re gonna lag.” – Yeah. I mean… “Okay, sure, whatever.” I’ve also had situations where…

LARA: Yeah, with the being Latino thing, I think that’s huge, because sometimes they don’t know what gender I am, that I’m playing. And the other day I was playing, and this dude just realized that I was from Latin America somehow… I think it was for the ping because I was having too much lag, and he realized that I was from Latin America. And on the chat he started saying, “Arepa, arepa, taco, arepa.” I was like, I don’t even… We don’t even have that in Argentina. But you were just being rude for, like, no reason at all.

MELISA: And also when you, sometimes, of course, you see, you know, someone else, like, people are being hard on someone else, and, you know, you feel uncomfortable for the other person, you feel like, “Hey, guys, this is not okay.” Like, just stop playing. You know?

ALEX: One of the other things… Sorry, guys, but I just remembered, I’ve had people bashing on me because I was a dad. Like I’m playing something, usually, I don’t know, PVP on Bloodborne or whatever, and my kid was crying or something, he was quite… He was an infant, like 1 and a half year old, something like that, and they were like, “Why don’t you go be a dad? What are you doing playing video games?” It’s like, “Dude, come on.”

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: What’s your problem? What’s the deal? I mean…

LARA: There’s nothing wrong with that, yeah.

ALEX: Right?

MELISA: I think it’s all part of just realizing that, like, everyone please, be nice. And it’s just like, you know, open up a bit more, in the exchange, you know, so everyone can feel…

LARA: Yeah. Meli, have you experienced this?

MELISA: I mean, yeah, I’ve been… Like I said on our first episode, I haven’t been playing for a while, so not as many experiences as you had, Lari, but, you know, but even in the amount of time I’ve been playing online, especially, like in teams, I’ve met some wonderful people, I met some really nice gamer friends, and now I play with them always, but of course I also met some other people who aren’t as nice, and they just like, you know, either make comments or just… One person just assumed I was bi just because I’m a woman. He was like, you know, he just made a comment, and I was like, “You haven’t even… I mean, I am bi, but you haven’t even played with me.”

ALEX: “It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m a woman.”

MELISA: Exactly. So I got so pissed that I just left the party. I just have no time for that. I have no time for you. You know, I play to entertain myself, to have fun, and that’s the whole point. Like, what’s the point if you’re gonna just not have a great experience?

LARA: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, sometimes I have PTSD from some video games. I cannot go into certain video games again because they have said so many awful things to me that I cannot go back in. It’s just like, every time I wanna go back, I get this anxiety attack, and it’s just like… I can’t. They ruined the game for me. It’s so low, you know? It doesn’t feel right… Why? I mean, just because I’m a woman. Just because sometimes I kill you, sometimes I’m better than you. Just, like, it doesn’t make any sense. Please.

MELISA: Deal with it.

LARA: I’m better than you, and yeah, I’m a girl. What you gonna do about it?

ALEX: I’m not a hacker.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: I’m not hacking.

MELISA: Cheating.

ALEX: I’m not cheating. You suck.

LARA: And listen, Ale, I know that you’ve been researching a little bit about this, but I know that Riot and Ubisoft are getting somewhere with this.

ALEX: Yeah. Two of the biggest companies, I mean… Unrelated to this episode, guys, but I’m an Ubisoft guy.

LARA: Yeah, we can tell.

ALEX: I love their games. Yeah, I mean, they’re working on something that they are calling Zero Harm in Comms, that they are using new technology to track the communications among players to avoid things like we’ve been talking about happen to people. Now the interesting part about the technology that they’re using is that, up until now, most if not all technologies were dictionary-based technologies, you know? Where they, like, I don’t know, pre-install some concepts or whatever, and that’s how they flagged it. But now they are trying to come up with something that takes into account the context and the actual things they are saying. But the interesting part of it is that, once they figure it out completely, they’re gonna share what they’ve learned with others so that more companies can implement it.

LARA: That’s great.

ALEX: So, we’re getting there. Thank you, Riot and Ubisoft.

MELISA: Yeah, it makes us hopeful for, you know, just that in the future, we don’t have to experience these types of things.

LARA: Yeah. We know that representation is important, right? Do you think it is important also to see, not only in video games, but in the video game industry too?

MELISA: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think like… I mentioned something related to this before, but it’s kind of a circle in that way. And we also have some numbers about that. The International Game Developers Association shows that 22% of game developers are women. And it’s even, I mean, worse in the leadership roles, there’s only, like, 4% of game directors who are women. And, you know, when you see the demographics of, you know, the gamers and then, you know, who are the people who are developing those games, and… Like Ale said before, you know, it doesn’t mean… You know, it just brings different perspectives when you have a more diverse work environment. It brings a different perspective and you just make a better story in general, though it doesn’t mean, like, it has to be a story about, you know… Even if it’s, you know, set in ancient Japan, whatever, it’s gonna still bring a new perspective to your game.

ALEX: Yeah, I mean, diverse work teams… are crucial to bring different perspectives and different points of view into a video game story like you said, regardless of the games that you’re making.

LARA: And regardless of the character, because I could be a woman programming and not necessarily be working on a female character, you know? But it’s just the perspective, and not only the programmers, the writers, I think we should be getting more diverse experiences, we should be getting like more consultancy agencies, maybe, to get these types of…

MELISA: Yeah, exactly, that’s…

ALEX: Yeah.

MELISA: That’s something that’s been shown in those games that you said, you know, when they seem forced. They just don’t approach it in the right way, and you can get like backlash from, you know, your game community being like, “This is not…”

ALEX: There are companies that do consultancy for video game companies that maybe want to do it right but they don’t know how.

LARA: And it’s okay not knowing how.

ALEX: It’s okay not knowing how.

LARA: But yeah, open the book, I mean, let’s go for it, look for it, learn from it. I think that’s what makes the difference. And yeah, having a diverse team will teach you that, too, so it’s just like, you can make it like easier. You don’t even have to go to a consultancy thing if you have a diverse work team working with you in this specific video game, right? So it’s just like, no… Not only you can go get the help that you need, but you can also incorporate that…

MELISA: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we can also see, like, the type of stories… I mean, we’ve seen some amazing games coming. In the last years, the video games are, you know, they just look insane and the types of stories, they’re amazing. But, you know, they’re still missing that, and this is… I’m gonna keep talking numbers… You know, it’s just a fact. It’s not only how I feel about it, it’s just a fact. This study done by DiamondLobby where they took the main games, like the games that were played more in the last five years, and then they, you know, eliminated the ones that had customizable characters, so it’s only the games that have…

ALEX: The characters by default?

MELISA: Exactly. And there’s a list of 100 games, and those, like, 100 games, the biggest 100 games of the last five years. And they showed that 80% of the protagonists are male, 20% are female, and 8% of the main characters in games are females of non-white ethnicities, and 61% of all the characters in games are white. So, you know, not only main characters, but also like… yeah.

ALEX: It’s very square. It’s a box.

LARA: I think that’s why representation is so important, because, as I told you guys on one of the first episodes, I started playing video games with Lara Croft. Why? Because she was a girl. You know? And that was the only thing that took me into the video game world. Just because she was a girl. We need more of that.

MELISA: Yeah, absolutely.

LARA: And not only with a girl, with non-binary persons. Just, like, we need more.

ALEX: I mean, from my point of view, I love to play in a video game with a character that’s different than me.

LARA: Absolutely.

ALEX: I like that. I like the fact that I can go into someone else’s shoes, you know, and experience different things. I mean, take it… And not just like games that are based in current dates, you know? Even historical games like, again, Ubisoft, sorry, Assassin’s Creed, with Valhalla or Odyssey, that regardless of the gender that you pick for your character, the situations remain the same.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: Historically wise, romantically as well.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: I mean, that’s awesome. That’s an awesome thing to experience.

MELISA: Yeah. And I think it’s important to, like, acknowledge the social impact that games can have in general. You know, when you’re showing a society, it can be a completely, just like a fantasy world, where it’s just diverse and everyone feels welcome, and there’s like all these different characters with like really deep stories, and you connect with them and, you know, it just has a positive impact on everyone who’s playing the game. And just, you know, when you have a game and you’re missing that opportunity to, you know, make that social impact that just makes society better. Because when you’re portraying, you know, all the stereotypes we already have in our society and all the things that are wrong…

ALEX: You perpetuate that in video games.

LARA: I wanna bring something to the table because we’re linguists and we know the importance of language. What role do you think that language has in inclusivity and diversity? Because, for example, my mother tongue is Spanish, and Spanish is a gendered language. So every time that I sit to play a video game, the game just assumes that I’m a man, and I’m not. It’s just like, what do you think about this? How can we talk about this?

ALEX: It’s… It’s a different… Not different. It’s a difficult topic because, as you said, Spanish is gendered, but there are many other languages that are not.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEX: So what I think… Some developers are doing it, they’re considering this from the get-go, from the start. I think that, if companies think of this as a part of the localization process as well, from the get-go, it’s gonna make every localization, every translation easier for all translators, you know? And for all gamers too. To receive something diverse, inclusive, properly done, in their own native language. Because, I mean, growing up, I remember… It doesn’t have anything to do with diversity and inclusion, but I remember playing video games in English or in Spanish from Spain.

LARA: Oh, my God, yeah.

ALEX: And it’s not my Spanish, you know?

LARA: It doesn’t help you feel related to the character, you know?

ALEX: Or even the immersive experience was broken. I mean, I remember playing God of War, and Kratos speaking like someone from Madrid. And it was like… this is off. It… It throws you off.

MELISA: Absolutely. And I think we’re seeing a bit more now that companies, you know, just find out how important localization is and, you know, how successful your game will be internationally. And we’re gonna talk a bit more about the history of localization of video games in another episode.

LARA: Yeah.

MELISA: Spoiler alert. But I think just, you know, having that… your game available in your own language, of course, it just helps you connect with the game. And then there’s also the fact about how language can go, you know, language is like a living, kind of like a living thing and it’s… You know, French or Spanish or Arabic, or other languages that are gendered, just finding maybe gender-neutral alternatives, that’s something that is happening now, and then you can choose, you know, from your game, do you wanna try to find gender-neutral alternatives? Or, you know, how you can use language to your advantage to promote diversity and inclusion.

LARA: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEX: To add to that… Sorry, Lali. I mean, language is super important when you play video games, when you watch a movie or whatever, I mean, it’s how you see, or how you express what you experience in life, you know? And if you’re playing a game that you can relate to on that level as well, it goes to your heart. I mean, how could it not?

LARA: Yeah, absolutely. What do you think can be done to improve this? What do you think video game companies can do to make games more diverse, more inclusive? Just… I want to hear your opinions, how things can get better, because I wanna end up in a high note. Please… let me dream.

MELISA: I think it is, I mean, we’re seeing a trend, it is getting better. We’re seeing some amazing games, you know. We don’t wanna be, like, here assuming that all the games are… There’s some amazing games that are doing a great job, like we mentioned in this episode. So I think we are getting better. There’s still a lot to be done, of course, but, you know, having more diverse… like, on the business side, you know, the companies, of course that would help, and then just talking a bit more about it, sharing more how the gamers feel and, you know, giving that the importance it needs, because that’s your demographic now, you just have to realize that. If you want your game to be successful, you need to, you know, just keep getting better at it.

ALEX: Keep on keeping on. Yeah. Yes, I agree totally. And what I think is that companies need to continue to listen to their gamers, they need to continue building diverse teams. And if companies have success studies… have success cases, sorry, to share it, to open up how they were successful in making their games and their companies more diverse. Because, I mean, I don’t know if we talked about this, but if your company is not diverse, it’s gonna be quite difficult to make a diverse game.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: So, for me it’s keep on keeping on, trying to learn more every day. I know that I learn every day. It’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s also… it’s even better to acknowledge them.

LARA: And learn.

ALEX: Learn and move forward and be better.

LARA: Absolutely. Absolutely. As for me, where to start? I think Women in Games is amazing. I’m a Women in Games ambassador, I’m part of, also, Women in Localization. And there are a lot of organizations that do this, there’s a lot of people that want to get into the video game industry, you just have to go knocking on doors. There are, like, a lot of organizations… LatinXInGaming.

ALEX: LatinXInGaming. You can go to the IGDA. The IGDA has amazing resources for everyone. You have associations like GamerX.

LARA: Yeah.

ALEX: We’re gonna list some of the companies we love so that you can access and get in touch with them.

LARA: Absolutely.

MELISA: And the studies where we took all the numbers from, also, if you wanna take a look.

LARA: Yeah, we’re talking facts here. It’s just, like, there are no longer only men playing video games. We are here too.

ALEX: And it’s been like that for a while now.

LARA: And it’s been like that for a while, so I hope things get better. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us in this episode. And drop your comments down below because we’re going to be reading them. And join our Discord. You can find the link down below, too. Thank you so much.

ALEX: Thank you, everyone! See you next time!

Episode Transcription

LORE: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another Open World LocFact. Today’s LocFact is about one of the best-selling PlayStation 3 and 4 games: The Last of Us.

FLOR: The Last of Us is considered among the greatest video games of all time. Set in post-apocalyptic United States, it tells the story of survivors Joel and Ellie, as they journey westward together through what remains of the country in search of a cure for the plague that has nearly decimated the human race.

LORE: We all know that The Last of Us has unique storytelling, captivating characters, and outstanding art design, but let’s get into its localization.

FLOR: The Last of Us was released simultaneously all over the world, achieving what is called a simultaneous shipment, or “sim-ship,” so it makes sense that the name of the game was not translated, remaining “The Last of Us” in every market.

LORE: Yep. The game was fully localized in different stages. It was localized upfront from English into these languages on screen. Then they included this other set of languages. And eventually they decided to explore markets such as… these other languages on screen.

FLOR: Yes, and one of the factions of The Last of Us II is the W.L.F. This acronym for “Washington Liberation Front” makes an easy phonetic leap to “WOLF,” in English, of course, but it was very difficult to maintain this same connection in other languages, though. In Spanish, for example, it was decided to call the group “Lobos,” or “Wolves,” but translate the acronym as “Frente de Liberación de Washington,” since it appears on-screen and the characters themselves discuss its meaning in the game. On the other hand, it was decided not to use the feminine of “wolf” in Spanish, “loba,” for the female characters since it has a pejorative meaning.

LORE: Probably a good call.

FLOR: Yeah.

LORE: Now, let’s talk about the resistance group researching a vaccine for this infection, The Fireflies. The organization’s symbol, a stylized representation of a firefly, is often shown in the game, and the player can collect Firefly pendants with the same logo.

FLOR: The Italian translators, though, chose not to translate the expression literally, as “lucciole.” The problem here was that “lucciola” refers not only to that beloved nocturnal beetle, but it’s also a euphemism for a prostitute.

LORE: Yes. And since the leader of this group is a female character, Marlene, and is even referred to as “Queen Firefly,” the translator thought it best to translate “The Fireflies” instead as “Le Luci,” or “The Lights,” thus preserving the reference to light while avoiding a possible association with prostitution.

FLOR: So we’ve come to the end of this LocFact. Thanks for joining. Is there any other game you would like us to include in this section? Do you know any other interesting facts about any video game in your language? Please hit us in the comment section, and thanks for joining. See you next time!

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Today, we have a very special guest. His name is Hugo Miranda. Hugo began working in the video game industry as a translator back in 2006. Can you believe that? Hugo has been part of the Blizzard Entertainment family since 2011 and he’s their Language Specialist for Latin American Spanish. Hi, Hugo. Welcome. How are you today?

HUGO: I’m good. How about you guys? Thank you for inviting me here. Very excited to join you.

FLOR: Yes, I mean, I know that it’s been a while since we’ve been trying to make this happen. And like I said, we’re very excited to get a chance to talk to you and for you to share your knowledge and wisdom in the localization field.

HUGO: Awesome. Great. Thank you.

ALEX: I’m very excited, Hugo. Thank you very much for accepting our invite. So I’m going to kick off with the first question. Now, we know that your first language is Spanish, right? So I want you to let us know, what was your first experience with another language, and why did you study English to begin with? And I also know that you are quite proficient in Mandarin. So if you can give us a walk through your first steps into the languages?

HUGO: Sure. How much time do you have? So anyway…

ALEX: Uhmm, I have about…

HUGO: I first had this intuition to follow languages when I was pretty young. There was a show called Telematch on TV, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, and it was a German show. It was a competition show where they had games and they were wearing these big bobble-heads…

ALEX: Big bobble-heads, yes. It was called Supermatch in Argentina. But yes, I know this show. Yes.

HUGO: And the special thing about that show is that they had a countdown in German. And I just picked up on that. I was like… Well, I just naturally picked up on repeating the numbers. I just loved making those funny sounds. But anyway, nobody really noticed anything, you know, like I had the ability to learn languages back in the day, until later in high school. I just got interested in following the lyrics of songs in English. And, of course, we had English classes, which were really easy. And I took French at the time too, which I was not too attuned to at that time. And later, in English… Well, my father, migrated to the U.S. back in the eighties, and later I followed. Well, maybe ten years later, I followed. And that’s when I continued high school here in Los Angeles. Actually, a high school that is very close to Hollywood. And something very interesting happened because at the time, in my native Costa Rican high school, I was a very, very bad student, very poor. I mean, failing a grade… failing a few classes meant that you failed the grade and you had to repeat the whole thing. Well, that happened to me. But then when I got to the U.S., it was all brand new. All of a sudden, I was an A student. And I would tell back to my other friends in Costa Rica, “Hey, guess what? I’m like an A student here.” “Yeah, right.” Nobody believed me. And then I would tell my friends here, “I used to be a pretty bad student.” Nobody believed me. So that was my encounter with English. I picked up my first book from my teacher’s desk. And, you know, it had some skeletons on the cover, and then I just opened it. I picked it up, I opened it, I flipped through the pages and I saw Punta Arenas. And then at the time I thought, well, there’s two Punta Arenas in the world that I know of. I think one is in Chile or Argentina. It’s all the way…

FLORES: Yes, it’s in Chile, if I’m not mistaken.

HUGO: It’s in Chile, right? And so I saw that and I was, “I have to make sure that this… which Punta Arenas it is.” And it was Costa Rica, so I picked up the book and I read it because it said Costa Rica. The title of the book was “Jurassic Park” at the time

FLOR: Look at that.

HUGO: Yes. That got me excited into reading and I did a lot of reading in English. And so of course I excelled in that. I graduated high school and then I did some college until I went back to Costa Rica to become an English teacher. And I did that for about four years until I was pretty tired. Costa Rica is a very small country and there’s very limited opportunities to what you’re exposed to. And I always dreamed of being a sort of Indiana Jones, you know? Remember that scene where he breaks into a foreign language when he’s in India? And I was like, “Whoa! How can he do that? I want to do that.“

FLOR: You keep repeating all of my favorite stories, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones. Which one’s next?

HUGO: So I wanted to be that, I wanted to speak strange languages and be in foreign lands. And as I was teaching English, during my breaks, I would flip through the newspaper looking for opportunities. And one time I saw this scholarship offer by the Taiwanese government. And I thought that was for me. I applied for it. Out of 70, there were 12 selected. I had a number of reasons to, you know, follow that pursuit. And one might not be that obvious, but I am 1/8 Chinese. I don’t look like it too much anymore.

ALEX: You look like more of a 1/16.

HUGO: Oh, okay. You’re close. During high school, I read a lot of Confucianism and Confucius. I was really curious on the culture. So that took me to Taiwan, where I stayed for about five years. I did three years of language training, and two years of geography in Mandarin. After I finished that chapter, I came back to the U.S. and started in the gaming industry.

FLOR: Which leads us to the next question, because I definitely want to know how you got into the gaming industry. Why games? What do video games represent you?

HUGO: You know, career wise, I started in 2006, but I think it goes way back when my father bought the first console for me, an Atari 5200. It was an upgrade from the 2600, so I was kind of popular in the neighborhood because we had that.

FLOR: Everyone wanted to play with you, right? After school.

HUGO: Yes, I was one of the few…

ALEX: That was in Costa Rica, right?

HUGO: That was in Costa Rica, correct.

ALEX: Okay.

HUGO: And there was a problem, though, not many people to exchange game cartridges with, you know? So I would say, after that, I got to the Nintendos and all the games that came with Nintendo as well. I skipped the Sega, but the Nintendos and the Ataris have a very special place in my heart. And I would say that’s when it all started, understanding, you know, analyzing a game, how to break through different levels and whatnot. So going back to after I came to the U.S., I found this small company that was looking for a Spanish translator. And we don’t have that industry anymore, but they were called Betting Games. And the way they worked, there were games like Tetris or Zuma, if you remember Zuma, or Bejeweled.

FLOR: Yes.

HUGO: And they had, you know, they have kind of hacked the games that were online and you could play for money. If you were good, you could earn money. It was like an online casino for gamers, something like that. So I did that and the company did not last too long. And at the time, I remember my boss telling me, “Hey, you know, there’s this job opportunity for this company out in Orange County.” And said, “Oh, forget it. I don’t even have a car. That’s too far for me, so I think I’m going to skip.” That company was, you know, sold out. And I did a couple of odd jobs in the meantime, like, I worked for a bank and I managed their Chinese site, their Spanish site. And, you know, fate had me where I moved, I had to move to Orange County. So during the 2008 downturn, you know, the economic downturn in the U.S.

ALEX: Yeah, I remember.

FLOR: Yes.

HUGO: I decided to go back to school and finish my degree. And linguistics was by far the easiest thing I could find because I had the languages there already. And so it was actually the minimum number of classes I would take. At the beginning, I didn’t really know much what it was all about, but I fell in love with it right after I did my first class and was like, “Oh, my God, where has this been all my life?” Nobody’s ever told me that linguistics, I mean, with such an unsexy name or sexy name, I don’t know, that was the thing for me. So that was a breeze. I did that for about two years, and before graduation, I started looking for jobs. And a neighbor company was Blizzard Entertainment, and they were looking for a Language QA. And then I remember recalling my old boss saying, oh, my God, this was the company he had told me back in 2006. I couldn’t believe it. I could have been working there since 2006.

FLOR: You belonged there. I mean, it was meant for you.

HUGO: And of course, the rest is history. I went through the ranks, I did QA for about a year, and it taught me a lot about maneuvering inside the games, which is not an easy thing. For example, for World of Warcraft and then StarCraft, that was very different. And Diablo III that, at the time [indistinct 15:10] and it was not out, we were doing QA for D3.

FLOR: Wow. And you were one of the first people to ever play it. Right?

HUGO: Yes. Yes, you’re right.

FLOR: Incredible.

ALEX: You know what? I’ve told you this in some of our previous talks, but I love Diablo III. I love it. And it is till this day that every time that I find any locked doors, I go like the Witch Doctor in Spanish, “Está cerrado (It’s locked).” It’s like in my brain, that’s the sound for a locked door. “Está cerrado.” And for my wife, too, because I say it out loud.

HUGO: That’s so nice to hear. That’s so nice to hear. I don’t hear those stories enough because we make a great effort or I make a great effort to put in the diversity in dialects and accents into the game, because I know that they’re being ingrained in the players, in the gamers’ memory for a lifetime. So it’s so heartwarming to hear stories like that. Thank you, Alexis.

FLOR: Well, it would be great if someone watching this show and as a big fan of any of Blizzard’s franchises, please leave a comment below. If you’ve experienced these games in Spanish for Latin America, in particular, this is the person you want to thank for that. So please leave your love for Hugo in the comment section.

ALEX: Yeah. No, thank you, Hugo, for making such a great job because it leaves a mark. It leaves a mark. I don’t want to stay too much in this because I’m gonna cry, but… I’d like to know, how do you manage nowadays…? Because we’re all busy, but I can imagine that what you do, your position, must book your time pretty, pretty heavily. So how do you manage your time and balance work with your everyday life? Do you still have time to play video games? Do you play video games still? And I’m going to leave another small question for that, because it’s a long one.

HUGO: Okay. So the short answer is yes, I still find time to play games. They are very significant for me. It’s a way to relax. And some people, you know, they read the news. Some people watch movies. Some people play with their pets. Or some people play video games. And it’s a way to find refuge from the day-to-day life to recharge your batteries. So it is very important for me. And of course, it benefits my job and it pays off when you show that knowledge. And it benefits others, too, in your job. Going back to what I do for Blizzard, so I left you at QA, I did that for about a year. I later moved on to Content Editor, which was basically synchronizing with the translators that we have as outsource partners, right? And then because of needs in that department, I moved to Project Management. That was more of a language agnostic position, but still keeping, you know, final decisions language-wise. And now the latest of the evolution is Language Specialist. In my view, I’ve always been doing the same thing. But I just provide people with different services, if you know what I mean. And in terms of how do I manage my time? So there are some things that I have to do for work in video games. I am doing one right now, but I cannot share any details. Haw-haw! And I am…

ALEX: You’re so mean!

HUGO: I am collecting information. I am researching this product for the benefit of the translators that are going to get this product later on to localize. So some of that can be done, you know, as part of my job. And others I do here and there. I would say I play more mobile lately.

FLOR: Interesting.

HUGO: Because it takes a little more time to turn on the console, sit in front of the TV, you know, find the time and the space.

ALEX: Yes, I can relate to that. I have a two-year-old in a small apartment that we live. So mobile gaming is very, very, very comfortable.

HUGO: Yeah.

FLOR: Maybe you should turn to mobile as Hugo.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: That’s a very interesting stage and it has its advantages. I remember when we had newborns, it was kind of fun because you had to stay up through the night sometimes or wake up at odd times, or sometimes you don’t fall asleep again. So guess what? Come on, console.

ALEX: I’m gonna play. Yep.

HUGO: So you just find your time and you adjust to it.

FLOR: Yeah, absolutely.

ALEX: That’s how it works.

FLOR: And you mentioned some of the things where some of the people you interact with as a Language Specialist, but I wanted to know, how does a day in the life of a Language Specialist look like? What are the challenges that you’re facing or that you faced through the years? Because probably they have changed.

HUGO: Yes. There has been an evolution for sure. But when I started, I was not so mature in the position and the team was not either. And so I remember… it’s actually a very endearing memory for me when we would have the… I call them the tomato-tomato discussions. Because for Latin American Spanish, it’s something that is very dear to us in every country, we all have our own nuances, because we grew up in a linguistic bubble, you know? We had marketing, we had TV, we had friends, we had school, we had the university. And someone that comes around from a place that is not from where I am and tells me that I’m not speaking the correct Spanish, it’s definitely an insult because, “Hey, my grandmother spoke like that, my grandfather, my parents, my classmates. They all spoke like that. Who are you to tell me I’m wrong? I think I’m right.”

FLOR: Kind of your identity. It’s what makes you you, right?

HUGO: Right, right. So when you bring on different Spanish speakers from different countries, and they’re just finding out about what others sound like, what others experience is like, you know, it’s a little bit challenging, and it was at the time, to explore our differences. Luckily, I am a descriptivist linguist. I think… Descriptivist? What is the other opposite of descriptivist?

FLOR: Hmm…

HUGO: Prescriptive. So a prescriptive linguist is the one that kind of follows the rules, kind of like the grammar, the language police, and a descriptive linguist is the one that’s just like a scientist, observes the behavior of a certain language, understands why they speak like that, where they come from, and then kind of tries to marry the differences. And that is kind of what I did at the very beginning in our department.

ALEX: More artistic, sort of speak, right?

HUGO: Right. Right.

ALEX: You mentioned scientific, but I imagine like someone that works their art with languages.

HUGO: Mm-hmm. Well, linguistics is a science, a social science. So that’s why I slipped that in there. So it happened when, say, we would decide a name for a unit or an important name for an expansion, and then people would have all these feelings about a certain word. So then I had to explore, you know, where they were coming from, what sounded natural to them, and then do the same thing for the other part and then try to explain, “Yeah, this sounds natural to him or her because of this and that.” And the best thing to do for the game would be based on the trends that we see in all of Latin America, kind of like that. So those are kind of like… I’m kind of deviating from the question, am I?

FLOR: No, but it’s fascinating. I mean, you can keep going for hours. It’s all right. Like I would listen for what you have to say for hours. I mean, it’s super interesting how it can be as simple as, yeah, there’s not one single variant, and that’s it. So you may choose, for example, Latin American neutral Spanish or Mexican Spanish and put it under an umbrella. Or if you dig and you go deeper and you realize that there’s more than just a variant, it’s just the culture behind those variants and the people behind them that speak that specific variant. Right?

HUGO: Right. So the different tasks I get for work, when they are linguistically related, we just geek out so much on them and we could talk on forever about those. I remember one. I’ll give you an example of where we had a bug in an audio in a game and… I don’t want to say that word right now. It’s a Spanish word. And there’s these little creatures in the game World of Warcraft, they’re kind of short, but they’re not the goblins. What are they?

FLOR: We might need Lara’s help here.

HUGO: So, in English, they’re called “gnomes,” okay? They’re called “gnomes.”

FLOR: Oh. It’s “gnomos” in Spanish.

HUGO: Oh, there you go. You said it. I did not say it. Just the way you pronounced it. In a game. And then we got it in Blizzard at HQ, and we all looked at each other and were like, “What are they saying?” Because nobody knew it by “gnomos.” We all said it as “nomos.” So that took me back into a historical [cut-off audio]. And you wonder why some people would say “gnomo” and other people would say “nomo.” And maybe we could talk about this offline.

FLOR: Yeah. For the people that are tuning in, “gnomo,” as I pronounce it in my Argentinian Spanish, is written as g-n-o-m-o, right?

ALEX: Right. Gnomo.

FLOR: So I pronounce it “ñomo” and Hugo, you pronounce it “nomo.” Correct?

HUGO: Nomo.Yes. Yes.

FLOR: And we speak the same language. It’s fascinating.

ALEX: Yeah, but that’s the beauty of it. Hugo, by now, I mean, we know, but our audience must see that you have a beautiful way of seeing life and to see language and to talk about it as well. Right? And I know that you see life as a video game, right? Where you can be either Indiana Jones or someone with special abilities. And you’re an advocate for bilingualism for future generations. What are your thoughts on what’s the potential of future generations for people in the industry, in language and gaming? Take it wherever you think.

HUGO: So, that… My endeavor of talking to elementary school age kids about what I do at work came about because I was once invited at my son’s elementary school to read to the kids. And I was like, “No, but to go there and read a book in English? That not me. Why don’t we go like, you know…” I used to watch in the movies where parents would go and talk about their professions. And why don’t I prepare a presentation, and talk to the kids about what I do at work? And at the same time, I bring the exposure of the idea that speaking languages is okay, it’s natural, because that’s something that here in the U.S. is not so common as you would see it in other areas of the world where multilingualism is more common. Here, there is bilingualism and multilingualism, but it’s kind of like in the shadows still. You know, you keep it at home in a corner or with your friends, and if you’re in public, you whisper it. Or if you go order McDonald’s, and I turn around to my son in Spanish to ask him what he wants, you get all this, you know, it’s kind of like in a movie, all the bright eyes in the darkness staring at you. So I saw that as an opportunity to also show my son that it was okay to talk about that. And of course, I put in comparisons. You know, I pulled one of those Hearthstone cinematics that you could see on YouTube. I couldn’t pull out an Overwatch one, although I really wanted to, but it might have been a little bit too violent for eight-year-olds.

FLOR: Yeah, probably.

HUGO: But I’m sure they see it at home. So I saw that opportunity to talk with them on those topics. And then it just evolved from there. The teacher had a son in a bilingual program at a different school, and he said, “Well, would you do the same thing at this other school for my son’s class?” And then he moved from there to a local library. “Hey, why don’t you do that for that community?” And then somebody else called me, you know, someone that I had met ages before that worked at an elementary school. And then I did it again. So I’m like, you know, happy to offer that. And I sell it as a way to, you know, discover your abilities, like in a video game, like a language is another ability that you could use for a job to, like, work at Blizzard or anywhere you want. Right? And also to give them the idea that playing video games is a way of getting to know yourself, getting to know what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, what you like, what you don’t like. And those are skills that you should know by the time you get out of high school, you should not go into university, you know, listening to others tell you what you should study. You should know by then. So games are a way to let you find out what you like and what you don’t. So I think it’s all connected. I think it’s all beneficial. But of course, you know, some people abuse screen time, right?

ALEX: Yeah. No, but what a wonderful story, Hugo. To think that you thought it just for your kids’ class, right? And it evolved. No, it’s amazing. I’m kind of speechless right now, but just because I enjoyed it so much.

FLOR: Yeah, it’s so nice that you get the chance to give back to the community, right? Through language, which is your passion. So it’s a beautiful story. And talking about passions, and I know you pretty much have the dream job, because Blizzard Entertainment is an amazing company, has incredible games. And we wanted to know if you have any recommendations to translators or linguists that are trying to get out there in the industry and are dreaming of maybe someday working at Blizzard or a company similar to Blizzard, though I’m not sure if there’s any. I mean, what would you recommend to them?

HUGO: Hmm. That’s a really good question. It depends. It varies depending on where you are and what you like to do, right? I think it’s your passion that kind of drives you to a destination, right? And then how do you break into it? Like breaking into the industry at first. There’s so much competition, but then there’s also so much opportunities. We live in a day and age where video games is taking over Hollywood in terms of entertainment. So it’s huge. It’s huge. And guess what? Languages as an industry is also exploding. Is there a lot of content right now, do you think? Well, there’s gonna be a lot more, and a lot more content to translate.

FLOR: Yes. This is not stopping.

HUGO: Right. So if you are a translator, say, and you’re interested in video games, well, if you were to solve it like in a video game, you would try to find the easiest way in, right? If it’s a big wall that you have in front of you, try to find the easiest way in. Find the door, the broken door that no one is looking for. Find the easy way in. For me, the easiest way in was using my languages, using my interest in video games, and that I lived nearby. So if you kinda summarize, putting it on a list, making a list of what would be easy for you. What skills do you have? Some people might have marketing in there. And guess what? We also need marketing people. Lawyers. We also have lawyers, right? Right. They are necessary in our society. So it just depends. And, say, if it’s a specific company that you’re looking into, it might be… it might look like a fortress at first, so find the easiest way into the industry first. Work on a smaller project first. That will build up on your experience. When you go on to the next opportunity, you can say, “Well, I did this and this and this at this other company, and I thought there were better ways of doing it. What are you guys doing?” And that gives you power, right? Just like when you analyze one video game, and I could just drop one here like Mario, right? And when you compare it to Donkey Kong, and you play Mario, we can have a conversation, we can compare it. How is it different? Who made the game? What years they were published? What consoles? And that is all knowledge that you would gain from having that experience, right? So I would say anywhere that you can find, put your foot in the industry would already give you more power to go into the next level, and the next level and the next level. Kind of like World of Warcraft.

FLOR: I love that you’re bringing the fact that you don’t need to have like a specific skill or area of expertise because as you said, we need lawyers, marketing managers, localization specialist and account managers, producers, game developers. You don’t even need to be just a developer to be in the gaming industry, right?

HUGO: We have librarians, we have historians, we have business intelligence people that analyze huge batches of data.

FLOR: Geologists. We had… One of our guests, one of our special guests was Kate Edwards as well, and she has so much background in geography and history, and still she’s collaborating and adding so much value with her background. So everyone has something that can add value to the story, right?

HUGO: Definitely so, definitely so. One example that I always like to bring up is when we worked on Overwatch. And, you know, one thing that I always wanted to do was to use my Chinese expertise in the games where I work, and the opportunity never really came about, you know? I would see it on everyday tasks where I would try to understand the English, to understand the source, and I would look at different languages. And because of Chinese and the way they look at things, the way they describe things in their language, I would understand right away what they’re talking about, okay, this is what it is in Spanish, or this is what it should be for other languages. But never really as impactful as when the Overwatch project came about. And when we were deciding who was gonna be the talent for it, and we definitely wanted someone who spoke the language, and we were just very lucky to find the talent that we found for Mei, who has studied Chinese in Mexico. And she was not a voice actress as a profession, she’s more of a drama professional and a writer.

FLOR: Interesting. And how long did it take you to find her?

HUGO: Well, we had to do it very efficiently, maybe two or three weeks.

FLOR: Well, that’s very efficient for such a special profile, right?

HUGO: We had to we had to move very fast because we didn’t have time. So we found her. And since she had never recorded in Mandarin Chinese before, she looked at the script and she said, “Well, yeah, I can do it, But there’s some words here that I don’t understand.” And when I heard that, I was like, “Wait, wait, I can help!”

FLOR: Your opportunity to shine, right?

HUGO: Yes. So what happened was that I joined the recording sessions remotely, and then I helped her with the pronunciation of certain words, the pronunciation of sentences, and also just, of course, because she is very good at it, just to give her that emotional support.

FLOR: Well, I think it’s about time to go to our meme round. What do you think, guys? Should we do it?

ALEX: I’m down for some memes.

FLOR: All right. Well, this is the first meme. And here I think we’re gonna need a little help from you.

HUGO: Here it is. Yes. This is a… this is not by far a popular meme that you see out there that people share about, because this was an internal discussion and happened about by the time Heroes of the Storm was coming out, because this is the character in Heroes of the Storm.

ALEX: Yes.

HUGO: At the time, we had this discussion of what we would name our demon hunter. And in English we had the name Valla, right? And then there was an issue with that, because if we published it as the way it is in English, people would read “valla,” and that means like “fence” or something. And so something like very uncool. I mean, people are gonna be saying, “Valla, Valla, Valla,” and it’s gonna sound like, “Go, go, go,” or like a fence.

FLOR: Yeah, [it sounds 40:58] forced, right?

HUGO: So, yeah. So what do we do? What do we do? And there was this heated discussion about, what do we name them? And then we reached out to the dev team and they said, “Well, there’s also this other demon hunter in the lore,” and this is public, actually, “and her name is Tyla. Tyla is another demon hunter that is mentioned in the lore. Well, would you guys be okay with that?” So then that was brought on the table and then we started discussing. Anyway, it went on for hours. It was so long, it was so heated and people were fighting over this, that our current director in localization made this meme. They mirrored the image and put Tyla and put Valla and then, go, fight, who’s gonna win?

ALEX: The PvP.

FLOR: Now it makes sense. Yeah, who would win in that story?

HUGO: We were like literally bringing out the popcorn and, “Yeah, you guys keep discussing, keep discussing. I wanna see how this ends.”

ALEX: I love Valla, but I wasn’t aware of the Tyla one.

HUGO: Yes, yes. You know, just to tie the knot at the end… Oh, and there was another issue with Valla because, in Argentinian Spanish, you will pronounce “bala,” not “Vala,” and “bala” sounds like “bullet” in Spanish, but in Argentinian Spanish, “bala” is something of a bad word that we did not want in the game. So yeah, we didn’t want that. We didn’t want “bala.“

FLOR: Yeah. We can also pronounce it as “vaya” as well. I mean, it can mean like a barrier or something and you don’t want that either.

HUGO: Right. Right. Yeah. In the end, we took out one of the “l’s” and it stayed as “Vala,” and there were no issues with the other meaning of the word. It was my guess that, you know, taken out of context, if it’s in the context of the game, you’re not gonna think about it in any other context. Why would you? Why would you, right? And we haven’t heard anything so far, so please don’t go bug it now, I think it’s fine.

FLOR: Thanks for sharing this inside meme, and I love that story. Thank you. This is for all Spanish speakers out there.

ALEX: It depends on who you call, right?

HUGO: Yeah. You’ve got A, B, C, and D, and, you know, the first time I saw this meme, I was like, you know, I’m a Spanish speaker, I should be able to answer this. You know, some monolingual person sent me this and, “Okay, so what is it? What is the answer? I wanna know.” You know, “I probably have the answer.” And then I looked at them, and it was like, “I don’t know.”

ALEX: All of the above.

HUGO: I don’t know what “ahorita” means. I don’t know because it depends on how you use it in your context, in your country, in your atmosphere, in your family.

FLOR: Oh, I love this one. Yeah. And we can probably find even more if we Google, because there’s so many different ways to say “popcorn” in Spanish. You have no idea.

HUGO: Yes. This is one of my favorite ones. I use it at work often, and particularly when I do presentations to my teammates, you know? I do presentations on the Chinese language to explain the difference between traditional and simplified, and why if it’s, you know, if one is simplified, why is not the other one complex? You know, I don’t understand that dichotomy. So I use this one to explain why Latin-American Spanish is so difficult. Why? Because when they, you know, when developers or production sends a query and they ask, “Okay, we want to know what this would be, what the translation would be for your language, because the developers want to implement this in the game.” Okay? And then you see all the languages answering and there’s like German, boom, Spanish, boom, I mean, European Spanish, boom, French, boom, Russian boom, Chinese, done, Brazilian Portuguese, done. And they’re like, “Where’s Latin American Spanish?”

FLOR: All over the place.

ALEX: Working on it.

HUGO: “I’m still discussing with the people, I’m doing my best. I’m still discussing to, you know, marry all the opinions and getting the best answer to you.” And that is because you have to go through all the countries that you have, you know, you can reach out to. Well, this meme is kind of old, at least the picture, right? At the time, I don’t know, I must have made it like six, seven years ago when we started discussing this topic. And for Spanish speakers, it’s a very sensitive topic because it talks about the core of who you are and how you speak. And so, when you hear the first comments of neutral Spanish and, you know, nobody likes it because they all defend who they are. And yes, I see that, I respect who they are. I mean, I am the number one person that, when I visited Buenos Aires, I started speaking like the locals like right away because I wanted to pick it up. And, you know, and then I came… you come back and then you start finding a love for the way things are pronounced a little bit differently. And then it just sounds like music, so beautiful. So I am the first one to appreciate the diversity in accents. And the issue of neutrality comes when you have to publish one product to a huge market. Right? So what do you choose?

ALEX: That’s what I was saying, right? Like teach your kids the ways of video games, then they’ll never have money to buy drugs or something like that.

FLOR: Yeah, it’s a healthy hobby.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: I think so. Yeah, I agree. And World of Warcraft is not an easy game. I mean, I’ve played it and I don’t do… I don’t do like 10% of what you can do inside World of Warcraft.

FLOR: Really?

HUGO: I mean, I’m like questing and sometimes I fish, like, the most boring things. And I don’t do raiding or even battles. Oh, my God.

ALEX: I’ve felt like John Wick every once in a while in this picture, especially because of all the bruises and all the low health.

HUGO: Yes, it happened to me on World of Warcraft, because you have to go pick up your body, right? And sometimes he’s right there. There’s not enough time for you to leave.

ALEX: Yeah.

HUGO: So, yeah, it’s kind of funny.

FLOR: I had so much fun. Thank you, Hugo, for sharing your memes. We like to think of it as a way of getting more personal with our guests, because we like to know what makes them laugh. Thank you for sharing what makes you laugh. It was an absolute pleasure to have you here with us today, Hugo, and to learn more about your incredible journey in Blizzard and in the localization industry. Thank you, Alexis, also. It was lovely having you, everyone. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you in another Open World. Take care.

HUGO: Bye, guys.

Episode Transcription

JETT: [In Korean] Aww, sorry!

WRAITH: Tell Death I said hello.

ALE: Hi, guys! Today we will be talking about culturalization in some of the most successful first-person shooters out there.

FLOR: Yes, that’s right! Specifically, we’re going to talk about Valorant and Apex. Each of these games has a very distinct lineup of characters from different nationalities.

ALE: Now, let’s start with Apex Legends. For this LocFact, we have some interesting insight from one of our previous guests, Yuhei Nasu. This game celebrates cultural diversity and even in some cases, characters have a catchphrase in their native language that is intentionally left as is in the Japanese version as well.

FLOR: Yeah. For example, Octane will say “No hay problema,” Wattson will say “Merci,” and Crypto will say “Josimhae.” Also, characters will sometimes mention foods or even items that are specific to their cultures.

ALE: Exactly! It is beautifully done. Like when Horizon says…

HORIZON: Air strike! Keep moving or we’re haggis.

ALE: Most users will not know what “haggis” is, and it would have been easy to just say “Air strike! Move if you don’t want to turn into minced meat,” but this would have taken away from the character’s heritage. Leaving the word “haggis” leads to users asking, “What is haggis?”, right? So this creates a curiosity for a culture that they may not have even known if it were not for Apex.

FLOR: Yeah, I definitely had to Google that one, and now I want to try haggis.

ALE: Yep. Same.

FLOR: So yeah, thank you, Yuhei, for that insight. So now we want to talk about Valorant. Do you want to share more details about that, Ale?

ALE: Yeah. Let’s take a look at the character Skye to start. This character is all about Australia. Her animal skill Guiding Light is designed after a brown goshawk, a bird native from Australia, and several other Pacific Islands. For hunting down her enemies, she can also summon a Tasmanian tiger, which is an animal that inhabited the same region and is now believed to be extinct.

FLOR: Her accent does not go unnoticed, that’s for sure. She’s as lively and expressive as any other Valorant character. And also, another character worth mentioning here is the robotics genius Killjoy.

ALE: Yeah. This character certainly brought a lot of debate among German players in terms of cultural representation, since Killjoy does not drink beer, nor does she go around the maps eating Bockwurst or Weißwurst. After all, it is clear that she was not designed after your typical German stereotype.

FLOR: And… Yeah, absolutely. Here we all agree that cultural representation is not something that is easy to achieve. But we would definitely love to hear your comments on this and learn from your favorite characters in Apex and Valorant, and maybe share more details on some cultural aspects that you may have considered that were spot on.

ALE: Thank you very much, guys! See you on the next LocFact.

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Today, here we have with us Ivan Lopes. Ivan has been working as a professional translator since 2009 in several fields such as literature, video games and audiovisual translation. He graduated in Japanese language and literature from the University of São Paulo, where he’s based. And he has also studied the Japanese language in Japan, where his appreciation for the ancient culture grew even more, of course. In his free time he enjoys riding his motorcycle across Brazil. That sounds really exciting. Hi, Ivan. How are you?

IVAN: Hello. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It’s an honor to be here with you all.

LORE: Good to have you.

FLOR: We’re super excited to have you here. So we want to start with your background, because we know that you studied translation and interpreting, but people from outside the industry might not see a big difference between translation and interpreting. But we know that there are actually very different skill sets for each task, right? So do you think that having experience in both translation and interpreting helps you in game localization in any way? Because you know that you’re often translating written text with the end goal of it being spoken aloud, right? So from your experience, did any of those fields ever connect or make you improve your work somehow?

IVAN: Absolutely. Completely connected to each other. They are distinct and very different, but also very similar, right? When you are translating something, you have time to go on a dictionary to search for a certain word, and to read and read again and read a third time and read a fourth time the same sentence.

ALEX: A more paced kind of work.

IVAN: Yeah, like, you read it until you have it by heart, you know? But you can improve. Whatever you are saying, you can improve. This improvement will, in my opinion, in my experience, will be mostly guided by readability, you know? If it’s easy to understand, if it’s not that easy to understand… if it’s natural, you know? People, in my case, the people from Brazil will read that sentence and relate to that, and they will feel like someone is actually talking to them, because that’s pretty much what video games are, right? You have either a machine talking to you, teaching you how to play the game, or characters behaving like in a movie. So it must sound natural in any circumstance. Well, interpreting is the same as translation, but you don’t have the time to do anything, you know? You’re gonna hear and you’re gonna speak.

FLOR: It’s like, go, go, go, go, every single time, right?

ALEX: Your first try has to be the best one, the very first time. And you don’t have a second one.

IVAN: Well, sometimes, because there are mainly two types of interpreting, right? You can be a consecutive interpreter or a simultaneous interpreter. When you are a simultaneous one, like the people on the Oscars, you know? They are talking and you are talking at the same time. This is harder, way harder. But when you are working consecutively, you still can talk to the person who is talking, who is speaking, and ask something or add something. I remember this time I forgot… It was a course, right? It was a technical school and I was interpreting a discourse. I completely forgot how to say “sandpaper.” And…

FLOR: What did you do?

IVAN: That’s the thing. He spoke in Japanese. I understood what he was saying, what he wanted, but it didn’t come to my mind, and I was like, “Oh, come on, I know what this is.” And then, you know, you become human. You may mimic, speak to people like, “Hey, that thing you use to do this. You know. You use it like this.” Yeah. My interpreting teacher told us… He was a great, great interpreter, and he said, “Well, there’s this… There was this time I was in a conference, and the person who was speaking made a joke, like Americans usually do, right? At the beginning of the speaking, they make a joke. And it was a very American joke. And he told us, “Well, you have two choices. Either you always have one joke ready to tell them, or more than one, because the joke can be longer or shorter. So you have a set of jokes. Or you do what he did, which was, at the end of the joke, you just tell the audience, “Well, he just made a joke. It’s very hard to translate. Please laugh here.”

LORE: I love that option.

IVAN: Yes. I think at the heart, that’s what I do. That’s all it is. When translating…

FLOR: I think that’s a great way to build rapport with the audience and for them to be empathetic of the work of an interpreter, because it’s really hard, especially when it comes to jokes, right?

IVAN: Yeah. Exactly. Well, it turned out very nicely in this course, because there was a lot of very specific materials for that. And after that first one, “sandpaper,” I felt free to start doing that whenever I didn’t know what something was. And after that, I was called by the same company, the same people, to work for them several times, so they enjoyed it. It worked, somehow.

LORE: It worked out.

ALEX: It worked out.

LORE: And as an American, I will say, if any of you are interpreting for me, I give you blanket permission to just go ahead and use that option B. As long as I come across as funny, I don’t really care about how it happens.

IVAN: Excellent.

LORE: I have another one for you here. We were a big fan of some of the text that we were reading on the BrazLoct website, so much so that we thought it was important to quote this one word for word. “People shouldn’t be deprived of culture because of their status, social position, or educational level. And as humans, we fight where we can to help people the best we can.” Could you tell us a little bit more about fighting the good fight?

IVAN: Well, I wouldn’t call that the good fight. I actually call that the human fight, you know? And that’s because when we came up, when we were writing this, we were thinking about ourselves. In Brazil, less than 5% of the population, of the total population, can speak English. And less than 1% can actually speak English. Because there’s a difference there. You can understand, you can say something, and you can actually read a book or read something that is heavy, that is very big. There’s a difference there. There’s a very low amount of population that can actually [direct access for their cultures 11:49]. And we are speaking of English, right? It’s not even Japanese or Spanish. Surprisingly enough, there’s even less people talking Spanish in Brazil, although we are very close and the languages are very similar. And, well, not being able to speak or understand another culture makes you separated from that culture. Even though you have access to a lot of series, a lot of movies and games, but if you can actually understand what’s happening, if you can actually get a grasp of what they are saying and what’s behind that, you know? Because the language is… there’s several layers for a language, right? So, when we are speaking, we are expressing our culture there as well. And it’s very sad that people can’t reach that. And us at BrazLoct, we all came from… All of us came from a very humble social layer back there from the beginning. And we either struggled through or had contact with a lot of struggles to learn to be better, to learn new skills, to learn about the world, to understand that the world is bigger than it seems. And, well, personally speaking, I first became a translator because of one book I read. It was a Japanese book translated to Portuguese. And it was so beautifully translated. And in the preface of it, there was a very nice description of the translation work done in that book.

ALEX: Nice.

IVAN: And that was the moment I looked at that and said, “Okay, this is what I want to do in my life.” And, you know, but I am where I am right now because of that moment, and that moment would not happen if that book wasn’t translated. We never know what will touch people. Sometimes we say, even with friends, we can say something that is very natural, very normal for us, but for that person, it’s life changing. I bet everyone here has a moment like that, when someone come to you and say, “Hey, what you told me this day was life-changing.” And it’s amazing. So what we are trying to achieve at BrazLoct is to bring this experience, the best way we can, to people in Brazil. Of course, we are a very small studio and we are starting right now. But this is our main goal, to bring a great story to people so people can enjoy them, learn with them, and maybe, who knows? Be saved by that.

ALEX: Nice, nice. Well, for those of you who don’t know, Ivan here and his studio has worked on the localization of Disco Elysium, that we have the director’s cut now on Steam, I saw earlier this week. But I love what you just said about saving someone or getting to them, right? But what can you tell us about your experience translating this game that has won so many awards? And also, how did it feel from your side, right, from your perspective of localizing it when the game started to gain all the recognition that it has today?

IVAN: Well, Disco Elysium is a very unique game, and I think everyone will agree with that. It’s so deep in so many senses. Well, when I started working with it, I had already played the game as a gamer, you know? I love RPGs, and Disco Elysium promised to be like the experience, the tabletop experience. So yes, I was very, very curious because something that was very frustrating for me from the beginning, from the first time I played Chrono Trigger, I was like, “Well, okay, this is nice, but this isn’t RPG.” Because I was used to D&D and to Vampire in order to go together with my friends and throw the dice, you know? And be free to do anything. Then I remember, it was by chance I saw an ad, it was a rather long video talking about Disco Elysium when it went into its first launch, because it was translated after, you know? It was launched in 2019 and it was translated in 2020.

ALEX: Right.

IVAN: So I got the game and that was… like my mind was blown, you know? Because that was a tabletop experience, a genuine tabletop experience right there. So I was very happy with the game, I played it. And then, at the middle of 2020, I was called to translate it, to help translate it. It became very quickly one of those, “Oh, this is a dream gig.” And it became very, very, very quickly a dream gig. But I didn’t think it would happen, actually, because it’s too big, you know? Disco Elysium is like “The Lord of the Rings,” all three books of “Lord of the Rings,” plus “The Hobbit” times two.

LORE: Wow!

FLOR: That’s a lot of content. A lot of stories.

ALEX: That’s a lot of words.

FLOR: A lot of worlds also.

ALEX: Worlds. Yeah.

LORE: Words and worlds.

IVAN: I like saying it like this, because when you say, “Well, it’s more than one million words,” you say, “Wow, that’s a lot.” But still, no, it’s a number. But when you say it’s “Lord of the Rings” plus “The Hobbit” times two, you get the idea, you know? You get, “Oh, wow.”

ALEX: You get the whole spectrum of it.

IVAN: Exactly. And so it was a huge task. Talking about the operative side of the thing, it was a huge task. Because I don’t know if you’ve played the game, but when you’re playing, the thing is, it’s a tabletop RPG, right? Whatever NPC you meet, you have like four to six different options of answering them. And it can go anywhere. Like, you he says to a lady on a wheelchair if he can ride with her to fight crime, you know? Like Batman and Robin. So yeah, it’s like this, you have a lot of a lot of different options. And whatever you choose will affect not only your relations with the NPC, but also the relations between the NPC and other NPCs.

ALEX: Right.

IVAN: So when you are working with something like that, consistency is a huge concern. It’s very hard.

ALEX: The importance of those processes to be consistent all throughout the game. Such a big game.

IVAN: Yes.

FLOR: And how do you handle that? I mean… I probably don’t want to break any NDAs, but probably there’s a style guide. Is there a huge term base that you connect to? Yeah. How do you keep consistency in such a huge project?

IVAN: Well, the studio ZA/UM was very helpful. They gave us tons of reference materials, and that from the beginning was very helpful because the world in Disco Elysium is a world very similar to ours, but still slightly different, different and not to make you think, “Wait a second. There’s something strange going on here.” You know? But it’s still very similar. Yeah, but still very similar so you don’t think you are in another world. So it feels like you are here. It’s not Earth, there are no continents, it’s another world. But it’s very similar and it’s very political. It discusses feminists, it discusses politics in a huge specter. It discusses alcoholism, it discusses drug addiction, it discusses a lot of very deep, very serious… Depression. It discusses a lot of very deep, very serious things. And having reference material for that was crucial for work. And then as a team, BrazLoct was born during this collision process because we created a bond… Because, you see, if any of you go… There was no term base because the game wasn’t translated, right? So we created the whole glossary, we created pretty much everything. We had to create new words because they did that in the original one. And we had to understand the game like three, four layers below the surface so we can come with the translation. And in some parts of the game, we were given a lot of freedom to create as well, as long as the team was not changing the game, right? So when coming up with terms like names, character names, we got a lot of freedom. But we wanted to make… As I said, you know, since our purpose, our goal is to deliver the cultural material, the culture to the people here in Brazil, we must be very loyal to the source. We are completely against putting a lot of slang in the game when not necessary, or cursing words were not necessary. Of course, there’s a lot of them, of both of them, but we were not like forcing that. Sometimes we see in some games that people force this to make people laugh or to gain, you know, a younger audience, like, “Well, let’s put a meme right here. Let’s insert this something, you know, because it’s so cool, it’s so nice.” And we had some arguments in our team. “Hey, what do you think if we put this one right here?” and then the answer was always, “Okay, let’s check the game.” “But the game doesn’t bring this funny stuff right here, so I won’t use it.” “Oh, but it’s funny.” “No, we won’t use it.” And then. So it was very discussed. And everything that we took a leap forward in order to translate… “Okay, let’s make this… Let’s adapt this so people will understand it better, so people will get the meaning, the real meaning of that,” we were always in close contact with the studio and asking them, “Hey, can we do this? Is it okay if we do this? It’s what the game wanted to say.” And then we would only proceed if they said, “Yes, go ahead.” If not, then we would go back to the project table, you know, and think again. Think something else and go with that. So there was a lot of talk. Answering your question about how we did it, it was a lot of talking between ourselves and with the studio so we could get things done. And afterwards it was only, you know, the usual process of having a glossary and of being their glossary. For me personally, it was, well, it was a dream come true. My name is in there, so to have my name in a game that was so… that became so famous is an honor. I feel really proud, and I feel very good in this place of my career right now. And everyone in our team, everyone in BrazLoct team shares the same feeling. We feel proud because, you know, there was a lot of compliments in Twitter about the translation of Disco Elysium. And when it was launched, we were like… everyone had diarrhea, you know? Everyone was…

FLOR: I bet! I mean, did you sleep? No. How did you…?

ALEX: How did you manage the nerves?

IVAN: I did translate some big franchise before, but under NDA. No one knows I did. I can’t tell anyone I did. So it’s, again, I still go and check, you know, what people are saying about the translation, but I’m not expecting anyone to come to my door with stones on their hands and say…

ALEX: “It’s your fault that the game is so crappy translated!”

IVAN: “[indistinct 26:24] it’s ruined because of you!” But in Disco Elysium, everyone knew who we were, and there’s already this huge fanbase and they are very passionate about it. And now that it went to PS5 and PS4, people are actually fighting on Twitter, you know, because some people didn’t like the game because, “Oh, too many words, I don’t want to read. If I want to read, I go read a book.” And the people that like the game are like, “Oh, you’re stupid. You don’t like to read. You don’t know how to read.” You know, they’re actually fighting over it.

FLOR: Big debate.

IVAN: Big debate. It was a huge thing. And then we spent the next week after the launching both for the base game and for the final cuts, we spent the whole week watching Twitter.

LORE: Not overthinking it at all.

ALEX: Chilling.

IVAN: Not at all. Chilling. Relaxed, thank you.

FLOR: The stakes are really high. Your name is in there. Your friends know that you did that, right? Like it’s not…

LORE: You care about the game personally.

FLOR: Because if you sign an NDA, all you can tell is your mom, like, “Hey, I translated this amazing thing that you don’t care about, but hey, here it is!”

IVAN: Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, we were actually, especially on the first game or the first base game… Because it was a year-long project. A lot happened during that one year, right? So there was a lot of problems. And we were waiting for people to notice those problems in the translation and, you know, come back to us because of that. But no, but no one came. And we also, in our Twitter, we put a form for people to fill out whenever they saw a bug or a problem in the translation, so we would know about it and correct it.

ALEX: That’s smart.

IVAN: Well, people were, well, are still being very, very helpful. I keep receiving, you know, feedback from people. There’s this person who keeps… He told me, “Okay, I’m not playing this game as a gamer. I’m playing like a reviewer,” because he works…

FLOR: That’s the best thing that can ever happen, right? Like…

IVAN: And pretty much every day he comes, “Hey, this part right here does this thing you may want to look upon.” And of course, sometimes he’s right. Most of the time he’s right. Sometimes it was [indistinct 29:18] because the word of this [indistinct 29:19] is a little bit weird. There are things that people look at and, “Oh, this is wrong.” But no, it’s right. This is actually…

LORE: Promise.

ALEX: No, no, no, he’s right.

FLOR: I checked.

ALEX: Trust me, he’s right.

IVAN: No, no, no. There’s one line. We received a lot of feedback on this one line because this character says something completely strange. As you told me I can curse, I’m gonna curse here, but I’m quoting the character. He says something like, “Can I have a fuck with you?”

ALEX: Okay.

FLOR: Okay.

IVAN: It’s very strange, right?

LORE: Interesting.

ALEX: That’s an interesting proposal. Interesting question. Can I?

IVAN: He actually comes to a lady [indistinct 30:05] and then… No, you can have… She says something, and then you have to answer, right? And depending on your answer, you can go straight and forget that’s ever happened and just go on with your life. But there’s one option when she will actually laugh at you because she asks you to say that again. Yes, she asks you to say that again. And then you can just say “No” and go ahead or change the subject, or goes something like, “Say what?” And then she tells him, well, “Say again what you just said.” And then he says the same phrase, but in the correct way. And then she goes like, “No, you didn’t say that. You said this one.” Right? “This thing right here?”

FLOR: Oh!

IVAN: “That’s not how people talk,” you know?

LORE: That’s interesting.

IVAN: If you watch only the strangeline over there,you think it was a mistake, you know?

ALEX: Yes. Context is everything.

IVAN: Exactly. And in the game, you only know that was really meant to be that way if you choose this one option.

LORE: Have faith in your translators.

ALEX: They know what they’re doing.

FLOR: But that fanbase? Yeah, but also like having passionate fans that know the story as much as you do and can help you improve it, that’s amazing. That’s priceless.

IVAN: It has also been great to be in close contact with people that are actually consuming our translation, right? So we can know what they want, what they think, what they feel like, you know? One of the best things I ever heard was, “Thanks to you, guys, I could play this game.”

LORE: Aww!

IVAN: That’s really heartwarming.

ALEX: Yeah. That’s why you do it.

IVAN: Yeah, exactly.

FLOR: Ivan, now that we’re getting more and more into gaming things, and I know that you gave us a couple of hints here and there of what your favorite genre is, but I wanted to know what you’re playing. Are you playing any games, or are you just focused on work? Because I know that can happen also.

ALEX: That can happen.

IVAN: Now it’s funny because I can be with a controller in my hands and tell my brother, “Hey, I’m working.”

FLOR: Yeah, right?

IVAN: But yeah, I’m playing something. Don’t judge me here because I never learned how to say this game’s name correctly. But I’m playing NieR:Automata. “Near Automata,” “Naier Automata.”

ALEX: I think it’s “nier,” like N-I-E-R, right? Automata. Yeah.

IVAN: Yeah. N-I-E-R Automata.

ALEX: A Square Enix game.

IVAN: Yeah. Great game, but very difficult. It’s very hard.

FLOR: Oh, is it?

IVAN: Yeah, well, it’s an RPG. But the thing about Nier which got me really surprised was that the very first section, let’s say the introduction of the game, the prolog of the game, you have to play it whole. You don’t have any save points. The game doesn’t save automatically. You have to play like one hour without dying… A very difficult game. Fighting one boss, and then you can save. No, you must fight one boss and then you can save. And it’s not an easy boss as well. So this came as a surprise. I don’t know why Square Enix did that, you know? Anyway, so… Yeah, I’m having fun with that. Great graphics. Extremely nice story. And in a more relaxed vibe, I’m playing also Hollow Knight, which is…

ALEX: Is it really relaxing to play Hollow Knight?

IVAN: It is for me, yeah.

ALEX: It’s a very hard game too, man.

LORE: Listening to my husband play it, I’m gonna say it’s not super relaxing.

FLOR: Oh, no, it’s not. It can be very frustrating at times.

IVAN: Yeah, well, comparing with Nier, I think it’s a little… it’s considered more relaxed than Nier.

LORE: So relatively. Okay.

IVAN: Also, I was playing Cuphead.

ALEX: Again, not very relaxing. Again, not very relaxing.

IVAN: Not at all. No, Cuphead is not relaxing at all. But if you compare Hollow Knight with Cuphead and Nier, then yeah, you have like… It’s pretty much, you know, one of those animal crossing or something like that.

ALEX: Yeah, well compared to that.

IVAN: Yes. So I’m playing those. And I’m also watching the gameplay… I don’t have a PlayStation right now, so I’m watching the gameplay of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

FLOR: Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.

IVAN: Yeah. I kind of have mixed feelings about the remake at the moment because I’m a big, huge fan, hardcore fan of the original one. But we’ve got to understand that the time has passed, right?

ALEX: Yeah.

FLOR: So we want to go now to our meme section, because we always like to end our show with a meme round. And we asked you, of course, to share with us your favorite memes. I’m going to share my screen now.

LORE: That gives me anxiety.

ALEX: That can look like any MMORPG ever, right?

IVAN: Yes. You know, I felt like… I actually translated, I started my career translating an MMORPG. And when I went on to look at the translation, the implemented translation, this is what I saw. This is pretty much what I saw. I was the one translating it and I couldn’t find myself in there. And then I would, you know, I would think, “Well, I’m getting old indeed.”

FLOR: Oh, yeah. Same happening here. Like, where do I start? What do I have to pay attention to?

IVAN: A lot of things happening. And, you know, sometimes if you have like three or four things on the screen, it’s already difficult. And then you look at those games that got a lot of menus. And then there’s this small chat. If it was not enough all the menus, all the messages and all the buttons, there’s this small chat window over there.

ALEX: Another chat.

LORE: Oh, boy.

IVAN: Come on.

FLOR: Oh, my. That’s a lot for my short span attention.

ALEX: Yeah.

FLOR: Short attention span. Oh, this one.

LORE: Painfully accurate.

IVAN: Yeah.

ALEX: This happens quite often. So this is pretty accurate.

IVAN: Yeah, I couldn’t resist this one. I couldn’t resist it, as well, because it’s pretty much the same. Any game you play. Any game. Well, I play RPGs, there’s always a desert.

ALEX: Always a desert.

IVAN: There’s always a desert. And there’s always this kind of song playing on the desert, you know?

LORE: Sepia filter to let you know that you’re in Latin America in any TV show or movie.

IVAN: Exactly. Sepia filter. Exactly.

ALEX: It’s painfully accurate.

FLOR: Yeah.

ALL: Oh!

ALEX: I believe we all have this type of moment.

LORE: Yeah. That one hurt a little.

IVAN: This was me,this was my face playing The Witcher 3. This was me playing The Witcher 3.

ALEX: Don’t spoil it for me because I’m currently playing it right now. I’m currently playing it right now.

IVAN: Oh, I would never. But play as much side quests as you can.

ALEX: They are so fulfilling. They are so fulfilling the side quests.

IVAN: Exactly. For me, they are better than the main quest, you know? For me. But you know what? This is a polemic opinion. I think that the side quests from The Witcher 2 are actually better than The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3’s side quests are more complex, I’d say. You have to go to several places and talk to a lot of people. There are longer and more complex. But nothing beats the troll side quest in the beginning of The Witcher 2. Nothing beats that. Nothing.

FLOR: Hmm, interesting topic. We would love to hear what everyone thinks about that also.

ALEX: Yeah.

FLOR: So this one.

ALEX: I played Dark Souls on Bloodborne, and this is real.

FLOR: Oh, yeah?

IVAN: Come on, man, you hear it in Latin. Come on. It’s the end of the world, you know? Like…

ALEX: You’re gonna die.

IVAN: The angels are coming announcing the apocalypse and that’s what happens. That’s it.

FLOR: All the drama.

LORE: Immediate spookiness.

IVAN: Come on. Music starts playing, and the music has lyrics. It’s already frightening enough. If it’s in Latin…

LORE: It’s going down.

ALEX: It’s going down. Yeah.

FLOR: I know. Yeah. Armageddon.

LORE: Save button. Save button.

IVAN: You see the save icon showing up there and it starts playing in Latin. It’s over. Oh, this one! I saw a very nice tweet about this one recently. They are saying that it’s very important to have a Busy Adult Mode for every game.

ALEX: I saw that one.

LORE: Yes, please.

FLOR: Great advice!

IVAN: Because you go back to the game months after, weeks after, you don’t remember anything anymore, and you need a mode that will tell you where to go, what you did, because you forgot about the whole history. And if the game doesn’t have some kind of journal, you are lost. And what you must do and anything else.

LORE: Game devs, listen up. Busy Adult Mode suggestion.

ALEX: BusyAdult Mode log, please. “You were in this quest. You need to go here. Remember.”

LORE: Help us out.

IVAN: “This is what happened.” A very short story of what happened.

FLOR: Exactly.Like when you go back to a new episode of a show that you were binge watching and then you suddenly stopped for some reason. And you go back to where you were, and you have a preview or something.

ALEX: We need that in games.

IVAN: It’s like waiting for… It’s like, you know, Game of Thrones. If there wasn’t the series, if you were waiting for the next book… Come on, that’s already ten years.

FLOR: I know.

LORE: I already can’t tell what happened in the books and what happened in the show. I’m gonna need somebody to go through my brain and, like, separate what happened and what didn’t happen in the books.

IVAN: Exactly.I was thinking, well, when it’s close to be launched, I may read everything again. And now it’s like, man, I don’t have time to read things. I have to read.

FLOR: I know.

LORE: It’s a lot of reading!

FLOR: You can always blame the Mandela effect, right? Just your imagination inventing memories of Game of Thrones.

LORE: And blocking out memories of Game of Thrones.

FLOR: Yeah.

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. Especially from the TV series.

LORE: Little bit of both there.

ALEX: It’s on selective mode. Selective memory.

IVAN: That happened. That didn’t happen. So if I don’t remember, it didn’t happen.

FLOR: Exactly.

IVAN: This one…Have you ever played The Messenger? It’s a platformer, just like Ninja Gaiden.

FLOR: Oh, no, I haven’t.

IVAN: The Messenger is a very cool game. If you like Ninja Gaiden, The Messenger is the right choice. And whenever you die, comes this demon-like figure and start insulting you. Things like, “Are you playing with your feet? Or…

ALEX: That’s not very nice.

IVAN: You can always say you are testing something, you know? I used to do that with my brother when he comes insulting me. That’s how I felt. This meme is how I felt whenever I died in The Messenger.

FLOR: Oh, the feels.

IVAN: Yeah. I never switched [indistinct 43:57].

FLOR: I can tell that you like challenges. Well, that was the end. Ivan, it was a pleasure having you. I cannot believe our time is up already.

IVAN: That felt really fast.

LORE: It really did.

IVAN: I talk a lot, I’m sorry. I told Alex I talk a lot.

FLOR: Oh, but we love to hear you talk.

LORE: That’s why we want you here. We want to hear all your thoughts.

IVAN: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It was really a pleasure talking to you.

FLOR: Oh, please. Thank you for your time and for sharing your wisdom on video game localization. I hope to see you soon. Everyone, stay safe, and see you in our next episode. Bye!

ALEX: Bye, everyone!

LORE: Bye!