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

FLOR: Hi there! Welcome to another episode of Open World, and this is today’s LocFact. But before we get started, don’t forget to follow us on our socials.

ALEX: Today we’re gonna talk about the cultural aspects of one of the most anticipated games of 2021, Far Cry 6.

FLOR: Far Cry 6 is set in the present day and occurs on an island in the Caribbean named Yara. This place has taken many influences from Cuba, not only aesthetically, but also politically.

ALEX: The island is described as being “frozen in time.” Now, Khavari, who is the lead writer at Ubisoft, explained that he spent a month in Cuba talking to guerrilla fighters and other locals. We all know that Cuba has been cut off from the rest of the world due to economic and travel blockades for a very long time.

FLOR: Historically, the guerrilla movement was born in Cuba back in 1959. So it just makes sense that he went to Cuba to get inspiration for making this game. So, through this game, they not only wanted to bring the story of a modern guerrilla revolution, but they also wanted to tell the story about the island that is almost frozen in time.

ALEX: That’s why Yara, in Far Cry 6, has the dynamic of being this beautiful, idyllic sort of “living postcard,” with vintage cars, picturesque landscapes, mountains, water, the capital city, all in contrast with the overwhelming oppression that is led by the game’s antagonist, Antón Castillo. And that same feeling gets to you as the player when you walk into the capital city.

FLOR: Far Cry 6 is the first game of the series that has a capital city. This is the seat of Antón’s power, and is where most of his supporters are. And on the narrative side, you feel like you’re almost walking into a lion’s den.

ALEX: That’s right. In this game, you will play as Dani Rojas, who can be either male or female depending on what players choose. Dani is a native Yaran who is caught up in the uprising to overthrow Castillo, and free Yara from the Presidente’s control.

FLOR: Dani Rojas is part of the guerrilla movement. According to Khavari, they wanted to tell a story about revolution. And when you tell a story about revolution, you’re talking about guerrilla warfare. And when you are talking about guerrilla warfare, you go to Cuba.

ALEX: I personally can’t wait to play it and experience everything myself! Now, when Juan Cortez, one of the key characters that will help you overthrow Antón Castillo, was introduced in the game’s trailer, he names a set of the rules of the guerrillas: “Rule 16: a guerrillero revolution never ends.”

FLOR: This is one of the most anticipated games of 2021, and we know… you also want to play with the cutest of all the characters: Chorizo.

ALEX: Thanks for joining us, everyone, in this interesting LocFact. And now stay tuned for a cool interview of our episode 15 with Ubisoft’s Latin American Language Specialist Sebastian Erasmy.

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Today with us we have Sebastian Erasmy. Hi, Sebastian! How are you?

SEBASTIAN: Hi, I’m great. Thanks for having me. How are you?

FLOR: Good. I mean, it’s Friday, so I’m excited. I’m looking forward for the weekend.

SEBASTIAN: Me, too.

FLOR: We are very, very happy to have you in this episode, because we want to learn more about your career and how you came to work with one of the largest triple-A publishers nowadays, that is Ubisoft. But we want to start with the beginning. What motivated you to become a translator? And what led you to video games specifically?

SEBASTIAN: Well, when I was in school, I wasn’t exactly the best in all the science-y subjects, but I did pretty well with languages. I went to a German school, so I speak German in my family, my father is German. So in that school, when you had Spanish and German, from the beginning, since I was spoken to in that language at home, it wasn’t that hard to learn English. So I always did well with those. And like, since this was the only thing I could do well, I kind of focused on that and I thought, okay, this should be something I’ll use for my future. So when it came to studying, I tried to do that. So at first I tried to be an English teacher, but it didn’t go that well. I was great with English, but, you know, all the teaching was a bit too much. It wasn’t for me. So then I tried something else entirely. I tried to become a lawyer. And then I realized I don’t have any memory capabilities when it comes to law articles, although I can, you know, name Pokémon, many of them. But, you know, it has to be something I actually like in order to memorize it.

ALEX: Selective, selective memory.

FLOR: You need to be motivated to keep all that information in store, right?

SEBASTIAN: I know, like I have so much pop culture trivia that I can always remember, but that? Nope. So I quit. And then I said, okay, there’s one thing I always wanted to try and it’s translation. And I went into the program and it was amazing. It was everything I dreamed of. It was just focusing on the language and it was something I could really, really do great. And, well, I was an avid gamer since… always, and I really loved RPGs. That’s my favorite genre. So I, you know, was exposed to a lot of text, a lot of reading since I was a kid, so I kind of… like, it improved my English over time. And then when it was time to do my thesis, I decided to do a thesis on World of Warcraft, because no one had done something with that and I thought it would be interesting. And I played World of Warcraft for more than a decade and I loved it. It was really, really fun. So I thought, okay, I’ll do this. I’ll analyze the localization of the names of the weapons and armor in the game. And I used the… I compared the localization for Spanish in Spain and for Spanish in Latin America, because at some point, they switched. At first, Latin America used the same localization for Spain, but then they got their own localization when Legion dropped the expansion. So it was an interesting exercise to see how their localization paradigm had evolved. And at first, for Spain it was always word by word, very literal. But then, with Latin American localization, they started using transcreation and more, you know, updated paradigms. So it was really fun. I really loved it, it was great. And it came out pretty nice. So, you know, I did the nerdiest possible thesis I could ever think of, and I’m so proud of it.

FLOR: Hey, I mean, I’m so excited. And my next question was, has it been published? Because, hey, we’re all nerds about video games and localization and languages, and in particular, Latin American Spanish, so I need to read that.

SEBASTIAN: Well, you know, it’s on the university’s web page, so you can always have access to it. I’ll send you the link if you want. It’s there.

FLOR: Please.

SEBASTIAN: It was fun.

ALEX: Now this is a question that actually… For every guest that we have that says that they play World of Warcraft, we have to know if you play Horde or Alliance.

SEBASTIAN: I play the Hoard. I started Alliance because my friends were Alliance, but at some point I was just like, “Why am I doing this? I want to be Hoard.” I love red, so it was obvious.

ALEX: It was out of the question.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. And I want it to be pretty, so, you know, I just rolled the mage, the blood of mage, and that was it. Since then, I play mages. I just love casters. So, yeah.

ALEX: Nice. Sebas, we know that you work at Ubisoft, right, as a Latin American Language Specialist. But from a personal point of view, right? You talked about your thesis that you used your video game, your favorite video game, to work on it, but what’s the most exciting video game localization project that you have worked on, like on a professional level?

FLOR: [Cut-off audio]

SEBASTIAN: Good question. Umm, one that was… When I first started at Ubisoft, I started with the DLC for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, uh, the Legacy of The Hidden Blade. And that was interesting. It wasn’t for Latin America, since it didn’t have localization for Latin America, it was for Spain. But I can still do it, right? I mean, I might not know slang, but a game like that is not using slang, or not much of it, because it’s set in ancient Greece. So yeah, so it was really fun. It was really exciting. And also because of the relevance of the DLC since it spoke of the origins.

ALEX: It’s the best DLC of Odyssey in my opinion.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. The Origin of the Hidden Blade that’s so iconic for the franchise.

ALEX: With Darius…

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, exactly. It was really, really cool. So it was really fun to… That was basically my induction training, and it was lots of fun. Then I did The Division 2, and that was also great because I got into the project very early on, and it was great, it was a great project. It had like a lot of budget and the localization was really amazing, we had amazing voice actors. So for me it was awesome because they had voice actors we listened to in series and, you know, anime or whatever all the time. So I was just hoping that they would have made some mistakes so I could just write new lines for them, right? And then they would have to be recorded. So it happened and it was so cool. Like the guy that does, you know, James from Pokémon, el Guajolote Macías, is really great and he was a famous, like very important character in The Division. I wrote a line for him and I was like, “This guy is reading my lines. I’m so proud.” Then in Ghost Recon, we had the guy that does Vegeta in Dragon Ball.

ALEX: Oh, my God!

SEBASTIAN: So it’s really, really cool when you actually see your script being recorded. Even though the translators see this all the time, I just fixed what the translators didn’t get right. But still, I get to do that sometimes, and it’s so cool. So it was so exciting. And now we had Immortals Fenyx Rising and it was a huge game. It was a new franchise for Ubisoft. No one expected it, it came out of nowhere, and it was fun. It was really fun. It was a new type of game, a different tone to it. It was funnier and it was exciting. Again, it was for Spain, but I was part of it. We were basically a huge Spanish team. We are four testers for Spain and two for Latin America, but we combined to do a giant six-man team. And it was fun, it was really great. And it is so satisfying to see your name in the credits when it comes out. It’s just beautiful, you know? It makes your heart all warm and fuzzy.

FLOR: I guess that you answered my next question, was what you enjoy the most about being a video game translator, the passion behind it?

FLOR: Yeah, yeah.

FLOR: The pride of being behind those projects, right?

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, it’s great because unlike the translators who are never featured in the credits, we are actually in the credits since we are Ubisoft employees, we are part of it. But translators only get a mention basically saying Keyword Studios did the translation and that’s it. So that contributes to keeping translators invisible. And we always talk about that. No one knows about the translators. No one knows who translated your Windows or your smartphone, right? But someone did it. But we’re always invisible. But in this case, we get visibility all the time. So we are so privileged that we are actually in the credits, even though people think we don’t do much because the translators do all of it. We’re just fixing whatever mistakes they can get to because of context or whatever, since we actually see the game and they don’t. So they translate blindly, and we fix that. So they do most of the work, but we do fix some things which are pretty blatant. We are basically the last bastion of defense between the game and the player. So it’s a huge responsibility because there are countless errors that you can’t even imagine that we have to fix. And it’s not only translation, there is just a button that is too small for translation, that is too big or whatever. There’s so many things to think about. So, yeah.

ALEX: It’s amazing to see how the localization work gets done inside such a beautiful game. I mean, I’m a big Assassin’s Creed fan, and The Legacy of the Lost Blade in particular was amazing for me. I didn’t finish the Atlantis one because, man, that DLC is long.

SEBASTIAN: It is.

ALEX: But now that we’re talking video games, what would you say that is your favorite video game?

SEBASTIAN: Oh, I’d say a first place would be, I think, Xenogears from PlayStation 1. That’s an oldie from Squaresoft. It’s really, really dense. It has a very long and intricate story, and it had amazing characters. And you could ride mechas into battle and you could, you know, fight with them, like pressing like a kick or punch and doing techniques. And it was really, really fun. It was really, really good. And then it sprouted other RPGs like Xenosaga on the PS2, and Xenoblade Chronicles. So they were really good. I really liked Xenogears. I played it like three times and I loved it so much. Also on the PS2, I really loved Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. I love Atlus’ RPGs. I love them because they’re really dark, they’re different. They’re all…

ALEX: Have you played the Persona saga? I remember the first Persona I played was the number three for PlayStation 2.

SEBASTIAN: Me too. Me too. I actually played Persona 3 in PlayStation 2, and Persona 4. I haven’t played Persona 5 yet, and I really want to. So I really love Atlus games because of how they are and the whole thing with the monsters, like the whole… You get monsters from all different religions and myths and everything.

ALEX: Yeah, it’s very well made.

SEBASTIAN: It’s great. It’s great. And Nocturne was extremely dark. It actually scared me a bit when I was playing it, and how it evolves. Final Fantasy is always so hopeful and, you know, bright and, in the end, everything is great. Here, it isn’t. And I really, really liked that it was different. That was good. Oh, and honorable mention for Snake Eater on the PlayStation 2, obviously, because it’s just…

FLOR: The honorable mention. Love it.

ALEX: That soundtrack. The soundtrack, the bosses.

SEBASTIAN: Everything about that game. Kojima is just insane. And it was beautiful. It looked like a PS3 game. I don’t know how he did it, but it’s perfect. Oh, my God. I’m playing Death Stranding now, and even though it’s so weird…

ALEX: Did you finish it?

SEBASTIAN: I adore it. Not yet, because I’m just building roads. I’m addicted to building roads. I don’t know. That game is just…

ALEX: It starts slow, but…

FLOR: Yeah, yeah. You need to put like at least 20, 30 hours to fully enjoy it.

ALEX: I love Death Stranding.

SEBASTIAN: I’m at 120 hours, and I’m just not even close to anything because I’m just building roads. I just love the trip, I love delivering packages. I should be an Amazon worker. I don’t know. It’s great.

ALEX: You just keep on keeping on, right?

FLOR: Yeah, exactly.

SEBASTIAN: Exactly. It’s gonna be 200 hours for me, I’m sure. It’s just great. So, you know, I’m taking it slow, enjoying it.

ALEX: And besides gaming…

FLOR: Well, I…

ALEX: Yeah. Sorry, Flor.

FLOR: I was gonna say that I love that you find time to play. Like one common denominator among many of our guests is that they have busy lives, and that they don’t get enough time to play. And what’s your secret? I mean, is there any recommendation? Because we ourselves are trying to play more often, you know, and sometimes it’s hard.

ALEX: We need to put a calendar date to play.

SEBASTIAN: I know, I know. And it’s terrible. In my case, it’s not like that because of the nature of our work. We’re not translating, we’re fixing games. So if there’s no game to fix, we get time to just play. We might be at the office…

FLOR: You’re doing research, right? Via playing games.

SEBASTIAN: It’s exactly that. And that’s not even a joke. I mean…

FLOR: Yeah, I know!

ALEX: No, it’s literal.

FLOR: We take it really seriously here.

ALEX: We take games seriously.

SEBASTIAN: No and, honestly, like, when I was doing Ghost Recon… What’s it called? Oh, I forgot. Breakpoint. Breakpoint. Always when you do achievements, they always have references to pop culture or to other games, so you have to be very aware of pop culture in order to understand references, right? So when I was doing… when we were checking the achievements for that game, there was one that was called Simple Geometry, and no one understood where it was from. But since I play Overwatch a lot, I realized that that was a reference to Hanzo, one of the characters, because Hanzo used to have a shot called… He has a bow and an arrow, he’s an archer… called Scatter Arrow. And it would bounce, it would throw three arrows that bounced around, and then you could kill multiple people at the same time. So the achievement referenced that, it said if you get three kills with one shot of something specific. And it’s called Simple Geometry because Hanzo, when he did that and the arrows would bounce around the room, he would say “simple geometry,” as if he had basically calculated how they would bounce to kill them, right? So no one knew what that was. So what I did, because I knew immediately what it was because of the description, I booted up Overwatch, I changed the language to Latin American Spanish, I went into the game, I checked Hanzo’s voice line, and I checked how he said “simple geometry,” the translation they used for that, you know? For Latin America. And then I changed it. I changed the name of the achievement so it fit, because it said “geometría pura” or something, and it wasn’t that. So I fixed that. So it’s really important that you play a variety of games, that you watch a lot of movies and that you’re aware of the world, basically, because you’re gonna need this. So yeah, when I’m playing something else, I’m actually doing research. I mean, it did help me in this case. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it also happened with the Mjolnir achievement, when you get the hammer, it basically…

ALEX: The hammer and the whole Thor outfit, right?

SEBASTIAN: The achievement was called Worthy, and the translators, for some reason, did not… I mean, it’s referencing, obviously Marvel’s Thor, who was worthy to wield Mjolnir, right? But they didn’t get it, so they just translated it in a completely different way. So we changed it back so it would reference Marvel’s Thor, so people understood the reference. So it’s really important that you’re aware and that you consume as much media as you can so we can do this job right.

FLOR: We also wanted to know, what are the main challenges that you face as a video game translator, and how does a day in a Localization Specialist look like?

SEBASTIAN: Well, I think now the greatest challenge… Well, it’s always the case, but now, because of what’s happening in the world, there’s gender issues all the time because we inflect for gender, English doesn’t. So the devs and whoever writes the script has no idea about what’s gonna happen when you localize this. And then suddenly we have a line that’s only referencing males, and then you have female characters, and then you’re like, okay, what do we do here? We cannot duplicate lines because, you know, it would be complicated. You have to program that certain lines would trigger only with female characters, so that’s complicated. So usually what we have to do is to neutralize the line so it doesn’t have gender inflection. But that’s not always easy because, let’s say, it’s the class of a character and it’s called in Spanish… no, in English, doctor or medic, let’s say, like in WOW, medic. In Spanish, it would be “médico,” but that doesn’t work because we also have médicas. So what do you do? And how do you find a neutral term that works in this case? In English, you have many. You can say “postal worker” instead of “postman,” right? But in Spanish, we don’t have that many choices, so it’s a struggle. And now we’re trying to be more diverse in games and we’re including, you know, recently Ubisoft announced that Rainbow Six is gonna have a transgender character. And now we might see non-binary characters, for instance, and they might choose to refer to themselves with specific pronouns. So that’s also gonna be a challenge since we don’t have this neutral pronoun in Spanish. In English, they’re using “they” now and it works. Singular “they” has been a thing for a long time, it’s not that unusual. You can say someone came in, they left a package outside my house, and it’s fine. But in Spanish, it doesn’t work like that. So we’re gonna have to get like specific instructions on how to deal with this, to know if we have to be very inclusive or not, if we’re going to neutralize lines or not. Like, how far can we go? Can we use something that has been, you know, in the news lately, like inclusive language, using pronouns that don’t exist, like “elle” or inflecting with an E? So we don’t know. It’s gonna be a huge challenge.

ALEX: But it’s an interesting challenge nonetheless, right? To be more inclusive for gamers, that’s very, very cool.

SEBASTIAN: It is. It is great. We had one joke… Sorry.

FLOR: I’m sorry. Go ahead.

SEBASTIAN: I was gonna say that in Immortals Fenyx Rising, there was a joke regarding a non-binary character that was the son of Aphrodite and someone else I don’t remember. And… Adonis, I think. And yeah, and they said that the baby was gender neutral, and then the translators decided to use “le niñe,” instead of, you know, what would be accepted by normal grammatical rules. So we already have a history, it’s starting to happen, so we might do that again in the future. But then again, if you inflect the whole text with an E, it’s gonna be hard to read. So it’s not easy. If it’s a one liner like in that case, sure. So we don’t know. But yeah, it’s super interesting, it’s gonna be a huge challenge, and we’ll see how it goes.

FLOR: I believe it’s super important because language is constantly evolving and, yes, we’re still debating on what should we do in terms of gender neutrality in Spanish and in other languages as well. That’s at least what I think, that the first ones that set the example are going to be leading the change, you know, that we’re looking for. So it’s great that… Yeah, it’s scary, it’s a great challenge. And it’s like you said, if you make a change and you implement it through all the content, it may not work, but at least baby steps to start exploring how communities and how gamers receive it, right? Because, of course, you also will have feedback on those choices.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, exactly. So we’ll see how it goes. We always carry out surveys to know how players think about our translations and how it was for their language. So we’ll see what they say and what they think. And I think it’s great, it’s really important to be inclusive and to have representation. So, yeah, we will basically lead the change and this will help people justify using that kind of language in the future if they see it in popular media. So, you know, and that’s how language changes, by using it and by… you know. So I think it’s gonna happen, and we’ll see how we do it with the games. So, yeah, it’s fun to think about and really scary, but it’ll be cool. I think people will appreciate it in the end.

ALEX: Definitely. But now, how does a day as a Localization Specialist look like? I’m guessing that you never get bored, right?

SEBASTIAN: Oh, no, no. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dull day since I got here to Romania. I love going to work. Like many people say, “Going to work sucks! I want to sleep. Work is terrible.” No! I go to work and I play video games all day. And I play video games that aren’t even out before anyone else gets to do that. So it’s really great. And also, we have this very diverse office, we’re 32 employees from different countries, so we get to have this whole language and cultural exchange at the office. And also our teams in Latin American Spanish and Spain are all comprised of translators because, apparently, we just gravitate towards this in those countries. So… Which is not always the case in other teams. So we have this huge amazing brainstorming and debate going on every day, which is so enriching and so great. That’s always what I loved about class at uni. So when we have an issue or we have a translation challenge, we will all just, you know, huddle around one PC and start throwing ideas out and trying to get to the best translation. Who will find the rule on the internet? Who will find the source to justify whatever? So it’s awesome. It’s just lots of fun. And yeah, we basically just sit on our PC all day and play the games on PlayStation, on Xbox, on whatever platform they ask us to, on PC, Stadia, Switch. And now the newer generation consoles also. And, yeah, time flies. I don’t know. I’ve never been stressed at work either since getting here. I don’t know, it’s just… it’s great.

ALEX: You’re living the dream. You’re living the dream. You’re working at Ubisoft. Come on.

SEBASTIAN: I know! Every day I have to pinch myself when I think about it. I mean, it’s so great. Everything… The company is so great. We’re so well taken care of, too, so I don’t know, it’s just beautiful.

FLOR: Your inner child is very proud of you right now.

ALEX: Yes.

SEBASTIAN: And I still don’t know how I got this gig, but yeah.

ALEX: Well, but here’s something that I didn’t mention. I’m an English teacher, too. I mean, I don’t know if I told you this on our exchange first, but teaching wasn’t my thing either. So when you… when I read through your bio a little bit before you joined us here, and when you were saying this, I could see myself like some parallelism, right? Between you and me. How one loves languages, one loves video games, but at some point in our childhood/teenage years, it’s pretty hard to conceive to join these two things together and make it your career, right? So the fact that we are doing something with video games and with languages, especially in Ubisoft, is great.

SEBASTIAN: It’s really hard, especially since we’re from Latin America and there aren’t any video games studios in Latin America. And usually when you’re a translator, you will struggle. There are many translators. You will probably work a desk job just doing legal translation or something like that. It’s really dull and boring. So thinking about this is kind of impossible. And just by sheer chance, I got this opportunity and I got out, I left my country and I came here to Europe, and it’s been crazy. And I still don’t believe it, and I’m so grateful. And, yeah, I wish more people tried. And I think this is also, that you show this is really important because, for instance, we had one worker once who was from an external company from Pole to Win, just like Keywords. You know Keywords, right? They do translations, but they also have testers, and they send testers to companies when companies don’t have their own testers. So Pole to Win did that, and they sent us a tester for Latin America who was just a student who was in Scotland, and with his student visa, he was working in Pole to Win, and he got into this industry even though he didn’t wanna. He was an older man who was a teacher. He didn’t wanna do this for a living, but he got a chance to do that. So maybe students with a student visa, if they managed to go study in Europe, they might have a chance to get into the industry because here in Europe, Latin American Spanish is very exotic. It’s not something you will find everywhere, so you’re actually valuable. So if you get here somehow and you apply to these companies, you might get hired and they will need you. Latin American Spanish is really coveted. And we have EA in Romania, we have Ubisoft. And then in U.K., there’s Rockstar Games, Blizzard has their localization department. So if you go there, there might be a chance to work and, you know, to get a chance.

FLOR: That’s also something that we always like to ask to our guests. What advice would you give, other than, you know, looking for opportunities at these big companies? At least here in Argentina, for example, at uni, we don’t get enough information about the video game industry in particular.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. Yeah.

FLOR: And the same happened to me. Back then, video game localization wasn’t a field where I could develop myself as a professional. So is there any advice that you would give someone who’s just starting? And… Having the conditions that we have nowadays, that we have more resources and access to more information, right? Things luckily have changed.

SEBASTIAN: The first thing I would tell them is to get on Steam and to go to the forums for the user translations, you know, those amateur translations, because many indie games cannot afford translators, so they ask the community to translate for them. So that is amazing practice, because you will start translating games. Even if you’re not getting paid for it, it’s experience. And what companies are looking for is experience in the field. So if then you want to apply to Keywords or to Pole to Win or companies like that, they will look at your experience and they will see that you have worked on games, and you might get hired. Actually, I have two friends who did that, and one of them recently got hired by Keywords in Mexico. Yeah. And she’s working remotely, so you can do the job from wherever. So that’s really amazing. So I have two friends who work at Keywords and they got their experience like that. Just, of course, you’re not gonna be fed by doing translations for free, so you’re still gonna have to work in something else, right? But if you get the experience doing that, you might open a lot of doors. Try to also apply to a lot of things. Like one of these friends I’m talking about is an interpreter, and he started just applying to stuff everywhere and never giving up. And eventually they gave him a chance. He took it. He did really well. And, you know, now he’s working, like he’s really, really… He has been working for Keywords for a long time. He has an amazing position, he’s making great money, and he hasn’t left Chile. He doesn’t have to leave Chile, he can live wherever he wants now, and he will always be working for Keywords. So that’s amazing. So you can do that. Don’t give up, don’t think it’s an impossible dream. You just have to… try, keep trying and learn as much as you can. Try to translate as many games as you can so you can get used to it, because there are many things to consider, like variables and all of the things you will see in the game. When they test you at Keywords, you will be asked to deal with variables, for instance, and if you mess those up, they’ll be like, “Okay, nope.” So that experience is really important. And, yeah, it’s totally doable. You just have to believe in yourself and don’t think that just because you’re in South America, there aren’t any chances for you. There are.

FLOR: Love it. Thanks. That’s great advice. And I love that you mention indie games as well, because I believe that that’s also another chance to gain visibility.

SEBASTIAN: For sure.

FLOR: Because if you collaborate with an indie studio, they will also mention you in the titles because you will be part of the team as well.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, yeah. You’re part of the credits. It’s amazing. It’s really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So, for sure. And also helping indie games and making the industry grow is always amazing. Letting a game reach a wider audience is really cool. It’s basically what we started translation for, right? To build bridges from culture to culture. So yeah. I remember Hades that came out last year and it’s a beautiful, amazing game. The whole community…

ALEX: Amazing game.

FLOR: Yeah, we have a fan here. Alex is a big fan of Hades.

ALEX: I don’t have many… I don’t have much time to play, but I have like over 80 hours in that game. I find the time.

SEBASTIAN: It’s amazing. And the community did the translation for that since it didn’t have any budget for it. So, you know, it wasn’t the best translation at first, but it has been improving over time. But that’s how you make… That game is one of the best games I’ve ever played, probably. It’s so, so beautiful. So you can be part of that. You can be part of a game that’s part of history just by, you know, contributing. So, yeah.

ALEX: Lovely advice.

SEBASTIAN: Yay, memes!

FLOR: Yeah.

ALEX: “The way it’s properly received in different cultures varies.”

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. If it has wifus, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be making money, so, you know, follow the Japan example.

FLOR: Yeah.

SEBASTIAN: It’s so true, though. We adapt so many jokes all the time, so it’s really, really, really important so the target audience actually enjoys the game. In Immortals Fenyx Rising, we added a lot of like… It wasn’t me, it wasn’t my idea, but there were some references to songs in English and in Spanish that didn’t make any sense. So my colleagues from Spain just added reggaeton titles and songs that were really famous in Spain. And then we had Zeus actually reading those titles out. It was amazing and so funny. And then in the DLC, there was a reference to that quest, so that was basically canonized and included in the DLC. So it was amazing. So it’s really important to do that.

FLOR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I really appreciate when studios or publishers do that, because it shows that they actually care about their audience.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, yeah. Also, I think in one game recently, we had an achievement and we named it “Con permisito dijo Monchito,” referencing good old Chavo del 8.

ALEX: Chespirito.

SEBASTIAN: Of course. I mean, if we have a chance to add a reference that all Latin America will understand, it’s probably gonna be from Chespirito. So of course, of course. It’s so much fun. It always works.

FLOR: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

ALEX: “Do you have any experience with server hosting? What’s a server? Welcome to Ubisoft.“ Ouch!

SEBASTIAN: [Distorted audio]

FLOR: Yep. Welcome.

SEBASTIAN: That’s real.

FLOR: Yeah.

ALEX: This is a controversial one.

FLOR: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that you brought this one.

SEBASTIAN: I mean, it’s just banter. It’s fine. We can make fun of the company we work on. They have to work on the servers, so.

FLOR: Yeah, I mean, what’s the point otherwise, I mean.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. Yeah.

FLOR: You have to have fun.

SEBASTIAN: And it’s constructive criticism.

ALEX: There’s always room for improvement. Always.

SEBASTIAN: For sure.

ALEX: “Man tasked with making score for a Monkey riding a swordfish underwater creates transcendent piece of music.”

SEBASTIAN: Yes. Because if you’ve ever played Donkey Kong, you know it’s the most amazing OSD ever. I mean, it’s perfect. Everyone knows the songs. Everyone knows the underwater song, which is very chill and beautiful.

ALEX: Even today.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, and it’s been ages.

FLOR: We will have to add the music, this piece, to this section.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, add it.

ALEX: We’re gonna add it to the description.

FLOR: Yeah. I mean, people have to experience that.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah. Well, yeah, it’s an old reference. We’re old. Oh, boy.

FLOR: No.

ALEX: Seasoned. Seasoned.

FLOR: Exactly. “I love Mario, he looks so cute in that yosha.” Okay.

ALEX: I’ve seen these, like, Yoshi taking out his nose, too, and stuff like that.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah.

ALEX: These are what nightmares are made of.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, who designed this? I mean, just don’t let them take off the Yoshi hoodie.

FLOR: Are they okay? Like…

ALEX: Is Mario okay?

SEBASTIAN: I don’t think so. Oh, boy.

FLOR: And… Oh, there it is. You wanna read this one, Ale?

ALEX: “None of y’all know what propaganda actually is, do you?” And then someone else replies, “It’s when a British person takes a good look at something.” Now, I’m gonna need an explanation for this one, because my South American brain can’t comprehend this one. But I am like that. I am like that. I usually, I’m slow at memes.

SEBASTIAN: I love puns. I love pun memes. I thought I’d send more, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no. It cannot be all puns. So basically, “to take a gander” is to take a look.

ALEX: “Gander,” okay. The “propa,” I got it.

FLOR: Proper gander.

ALEX: Gander. Oh!

SEBASTIAN: Oh, my God. I can’t get enough of these. I’m addicted to puns. I’m sorry, they’re very cringe, but I love them so much.

FLOR: No, please, don’t ever be sorry.

SEBASTIAN: I’ve shared so many of them.

ALEX: That and Dad jokes. I’m a dad, I have a two-year-old, and it’s biology. I mean, I became a dad and suddenly I’m a fan of dad jokes.

SEBASTIAN: Me, too. I love them. I’m not a dad, but I love Dad jokes, they’re great. They’re great.

FLOR: The Captain America meme, it’s one of my favorite.

SEBASTIAN: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s great. It’s really great.

ALEX: “Hello, 911. I am dying.” 911, “Let me see.” The guy says, “What?” “What meme are you looking at?” “No, I’m literally dying, 911. Help me.” 911, “Lmao. Tag me.” Will it come to that?

FLOR: Yeah, conversations among millennials, right?

SEBASTIAN: Right? That’s beautiful.

FLOR: We’re always dying. I mean, it can mean we’re literally dying and dead inside, I have no energy, or I’m dying because this cracked me up or I’m, like, literally dying.

SEBASTIAN: I don’t know what happened, it’s very nihilistic humor, but I love it. It’s great.

ALEX: We need context again. Always.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah.

FLOR: And I believe that was the last one. Yeah.

ALEX: Those were great, Seba. Thank you very much.

SEBASTIAN: I mean, fresh memes, again, it’s not easy. It was just the crop of the day, so.

FLOR: I know. I know it’s a hard task, and we like to make our guests work for us a little. Just a little. I mean, we like to know what makes you laugh, right?

SEBASTIAN: Yeah.

FLOR: The memes you share say a lot about who you are. So thanks for sharing a bit of who you are with us.

ALEX: And also, if we invite you back some other time, you’re gonna have to give us a fresh crop.

SEBASTIAN: I will. I will. I will find something. I’ll send it, like five days earlier so they’re very fresh memes.

ALEX: Nice.

FLOR: Freshness assured. I had so much fun today. Thank you so much for…

SEBASTIAN: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

FLOR: …for making this interview happen. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. See you next time in our next episode.

ALEX: Bye, guys.

SEBASTIAN: Bye.

Episode Transcription

FLOR: Hi, welcome to another Open World LocFact!

ALEX: Hi, everyone. Well, I’m Alexis and today Flor and I will be discussing one of my personal favorite games: The Witcher 3, which was localized into a staggering 13 languages.

FLOR: For those unfamiliar with the game’s cultural background, most elements come from Slavic folklore. It’s a rarely seen world to most players, but for localizers, it becomes a hardcore level challenge. Monsters, characters, and locations often have expressive names, so localization plays a big role in portraying culturally accurate descriptions that are heavily influenced by that specific folklore.

ALEX: Now, let’s start with Geralt’s trusty steed: Roach. But don’t let that name bug you! It actually comes from the fish, not the insect. Plotka, the name in the original language, that I’m probably butchering now, it comes from Polish, for those who didn’t know, and is a female gendered word for the roach fish, which derives from the Polish “Płoć.”

FLOR: Funny thing about this horse is that in Czech, “Roach” was localized into “Klepna,” which actually means “gossip.” You may be asking why this happened, right? I mean, we sure did! We have a theory here for this. We think that what might have happened here is that the Czech translator probably used just “Plotka,” as you can see on the screen, without the special symbol right there. And that means “gossip” or “rumor” in Polish. Interestingly enough, regardless of the possible mistranslation here, the word “Klepna” in Czech also refers to the sounds of hooves.

ALEX: There’s a lot going on behind the horse’s name, but Roach clearly deserves it. Such a good steed. Now, something else worth sharing about this game are some of the enemies, and here we should mention the Leshens. These are tough, forest-dwelling creatures with the frightening features of several animals from our world all combined. These creatures’ name comes from the Slavic term for “forest,” which is “les,” and it’s totally fitting for the Leshen’s bark and moss-covered arms, root-like legs, and deer skull for a head. Certainly a forest creature and more than a little badass for a creature, too.

FLOR: They were pretty badass to me. And now, we want to talk about Bies. That’s the Polish word for “devil” or “fiend,” and they’re another creature we often encounter in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Bies are widely considered to be a synonym of “chort,” which is a demon from the Slavic mythology, who is often associated with the devil since the Christianization of the Slavic nations.

ALEX: Now, the Witcher’s localization and culturalization work is just uncanny, and we love to see so much time and energy being dedicated to doing justice to the original books. I mean, there’s so much more to unpack here, but for now we’re gonna wrap it up and thank you for joining us in today’s LocFact!

FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. How’s everyone doing today?

ULISES: Hi.

FLOR: Hey. So today we have a very interesting guest that we’ve been wanting to interview for quite a long time now. Today we have Ulises. Hi, Ulises, how are you?

ULISES: Hi, everyone.

FLOR: Ulises Uno is a content and localization manager at Etermax. Etermax is a very popular company here in Argentina where we are all based, and he’s leading a strategic area for the company’s gaming division, which is focused on developing and publishing worldwide social games that entertain, connect and foster knowledge in up to 34 languages. Can you believe that? And he has an educational background in social sciences and translation, and he joined the gaming industry as a translator and a copywriter. Ulises currently leads a team of language specialists, user experience writers and content producers, guiding them towards a product-centric mindset. Hi, Ulises, welcome to Open World! How are you today?

ULISES: Hi, I’m doing great. It’s an honor to be here. And thank you for inviting me.

FLOR: Oh, please.

ALEX: The honor is all ours, man.

FLOR: Yeah. So, well, we have a couple of questions for you because we’re super curious to know how you got into this industry, your background and your experience as a localization producer. Well, from what I see, you’ve been wearing a lot of hats, and that’s super interesting. And of course, we want to learn from your story. So first of all, what aspects do you take into account when trying to reach a specific market? Are there any specific strategies when it comes to mobile apps and games?

ULISES: Well, I would say in just a few words that we go for the low hanging fruit first and for the long shots later. So we try to see the return on investment and try to figure out whether the lifetime value of a user is bigger than the cost of acquiring a user. And then in terms of the cost of acquisition, localization plays a part. So sometimes, you know that localizing a game that was first devised or first developed in English, translating it into Chinese will be more costly than translate into Spanish, for example. And that’s just taking the cultural aspects into account. I’m not talking about possible dealing with censorship or dealing with local publishers, in the case of China. And… Yeah. It’s usually easier to localize for the markets that are culturally closer to what you already know or kind of know.

FLOR: So yeah, we wanted to know what are the main challenges, or better yet, the most fun aspects of your job in a company so well known for making worldwide social games.

ULISES: All right. So I joined the company when Trivia Crack was a sensation in Latin America. And I remember those first days as being really hectic and having camera crews all the time in the office because, you know, the media wanted to know what was it about, this little Argentine company that was playing in the same league as giants like Zynga or King.

ALEX: Making those first big waves.

ULISES: Yeah, exactly. And it was quite rewarding because one of my first tasks was to see how to expand that initial success in Latin America over to other markets. And so we started translating the user interface, localizing the content into, well, quite a few languages. And I remember when it hit number one in the US, that was… That felt so good.

FLOR: Wow, I bet!

ULISES: Yeah.

FLOR: How did you celebrate? Was there anything in particular that you did? I mean, that was a huge milestone.

ULISES: Yeah, we had a party, I remember, to celebrate it.

FLOR: Good times.

ULISES: Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. We would see people uploading videos on YouTube playing the game. BuzzFeed was making, like, quizzes on the game. And then more… Well, it was a bit unexpected. It was a huge success also in Turkey. So seeing people who don’t speak a language you understand talking about the game on TV was completely…

ALEX: Mind blowing.

ULISES: It was mind blowing. And I would say that the most fun and most fulfilling part of my job is knowing that I can do what I like doing and I can apply the knowledge that I enjoy, you know, harvesting and put it into this collaborative effort to make a game be a success.

FLOR: Yeah. And I bet, like, I mean, I wish I experienced that once in my life. Like, feeling your own product kind of doesn’t belong to you anymore, it’s part of the community. And it’s surreal to see other people like playing with your product, a product that you put so much time and effort, and you get to know every single person who intervened in that process. I bet it’s a really amazing feeling.

ULISES: Yeah. At some point we had two million people playing each day and…

FLOR: Wow! That’s crazy.

ULISES: Yeah. Thinking just that some people were… two million people were probably reading my translations was mind blowing. And at the same time, I saw how the company grew. So we were a startup at the time, and because of the success of the game, we started building like an international company. And at that time I knew everyone. We were only 60 people and now we’re like 500 people.

FLOR: Wow!

ULISES: It’s really… Yeah. It’s gratifying that some of that has to do with localization. Of course, I cannot take credit for all of that.

FLOR: It’s a team effort, right? It takes a village to raise a popular IP and such a successful brand like the one that you got there. And how does it feel like to work in such a large team? I mean, the culture… I know that you have a very strong culture, and I really appreciate that. And I’m really curious on how you build relationships once you’re in that stage, right?

ULISES: Yeah. At some point, we had to, you know, get together and figure out what our values are and how we want to work with each other. Before that, it was just anything goes or whatever makes everyone feel more comfortable. But now, when you’re so many people, you just have to have some rules and some expectations and there are certain rituals. It’s like a Chinese society.

ALEX: Yeah, you go from a household, right? To an entire community. But let’s jump back to the now, right? So now you guys at Etermax localized your products in up to 34 different languages?

ULISES: Yes, that’s correct.

ALEX: We know that it may not always have been like that. From which languages did you start at the beginning? And can you please elaborate a little bit more about this growth and the growing pains, if there were any, in the process?

ULISES: Yes, of course. So the very beginning for us was a game called Word Crack o Apalabrados, that was the first game we made. And it was like a Scrabble for mobile. And, of course, we didn’t invent the genre, but what we did see was that there wasn’t a Spanish version of that game available for iPhone users at that time. And when we released it in Spanish, it was a huge success in Spain, and soon enough people from different autonomous communities in Spain started asking for a Galician version, a Basque version, a Catalan version, and so on and so forth. So, well, soon enough we figured out that we could offer a localized version for users and that it would make sense. And then when Trivia Crack came along, and it fared so well in a variety of countries, I think we became more aggressive in a way, like we started adding languages and they would usually have at least a moderate success. And then I think we became a bit more cost-conscious, because having that many languages in a game can also harm your focus, right? So I would say, generally speaking, we start with the EFIGS and Portuguese, so English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and then we build it up from there. Usually we start with other European languages. Depending on the game and depending on the goals of the company at the time, you could be adding Dutch first or Catalan first. Other times it means trying to localize it for the East Asian market. Sometimes it’s Russian. Other times might be Southeast Asian countries. It all depends.

ALEX: It’s a bit of a people’s choice too, right? And market research, for that matter, right?

FLOR: Yeah, it’s a mix of listening to your community and getting your numbers right, and doing a lot of research.

ULISES: Exactly. And being mindful also of the genre of the game. Because for trivia games, it’s not difficult to provide an experience in Chinese, for example, or Korean. But Scrabble, which is, you play with tiles with different letters. No, it’s just impossible.

ALEX: Yeah, that can be quite a challenge.

FLOR: Yeah. And was there any particular language or languages that were more challenging than others?

ULISES: Well, I suppose the further away you go from the Indo-European languages, the harder it gets for different reasons. So in some cases, like in Turkish, you have two “i” letters. And that’s a problem because we don’t have them mapped out in our database. But then East Asian languages come along, you have so many languages. And then you go to Southeast Asia and you have probably Vietnamese that doesn’t look too hard because it’s Latin based, but you have so many diacritics. And then you have Russian, which is, well, they don’t have that many characters, different letters, but they do have more than two plurals. So… yeah.

ALEX: Different challenges.

ULISES: Yeah.

FLOR: Yeah, right? It’s so interesting that you learn so much because you start to find these similarities, even though some languages are so distant from one another, right?

ULISES: Yeah, exactly.

FLOR: So we also wanted to know what games you’re playing because, yeah, we’re all into localization, but what brings us here are games as well. So is there any game that you would like to recommend us?

ULISES: Huh. Well, I’m not the best of gamers.

FLOR: Oh, me neither!

ALEX: Yeah. We are not pros. We are not on E-Sports. We like to play games.

ULISES: All right, fair enough.

FLOR: We’re very busy people, and we don’t have enough time.

ULISES: Fair enough. I tend to play games that came out a couple of years ago. So right now I’m playing Final Fantasy VII, the Remake version. It’s really good. And I recently finished the entire Uncharted series. That was really good. But what happens to me is that I see video games as a social activity, and of course, I play your occasional FIFA or Fall Guys online. But I prefer getting together and playing Mario Kart or, you know, Smash Brothers and stuff. So, yeah, in this pandemic, it’s really hard, you know?

ALEX: It’s really hard.

ULISES: Yeah.

FLOR: Well, for the people that are not aware what was going on before we started this session, there was a box lying there because I just got my TV delivered this week. And one of the things that I’m looking forward to is to playing games with my friends in my couch like co-op. And those are one of my favorite games, actually. Last year I played a lot of Overcooked.

ULISES: Oh, yeah.

FLOR: It has this cool factor, you know? It helped me go through lockdown and stay in touch with my friends. And I mean, it became a social space, like you said.

ULISES: Yeah, totally.

ALEX: Yeah. I have this same spirit to play co-op, but with different games. I’m a big Souls fan and Bloodborne fan. But to play co-op on those difficult games, it’s like to have people that help you and that have fun with you, right? Or suffer with you!

FLOR: We’re in this together.

ALEX: We’re together, right?

ULISES: Yeah.

ALEX: So now moving forward to your experience, Ulises, what are the most challenging features that the localization process have in video games? Is there anything in particular that keeps you up at night? Or do you have a good night’s sleep every day?

FLOR: I do hope so, though.

ULISES: Yeah. I would say I do sleep well nowadays, but I didn’t before. So, well, first of all, I think localizing games is a complex endeavor. We mentioned a few things that get in the way of a perfect localization for internationalization. And after some time working in the industry, I think I’ve come to realize and accept that there’s no such thing as a perfect internationalization or localization in the real world. And yeah, I used to lose sleep over it, worrying about, what are we gonna do about the Arabic speaking users that won’t be able to see all the plurals that they have and whatnot? But I guess it’s just not reasonable to be a stickler of localization. And you have to try to come to terms with that. And yeah, and after that, you learn to compromise and prioritize. And I think the most challenging thing is to have a clear vision of where you want to go with a game or a product, and think in terms of incremental steps and finding ways to test your hypothesis and validate what you thought was right, and finding ways to collaborate with the myriad of different disciplines that work together in building a game.

ALEX: That’s amazing advice for everyone…

FLOR: Yeah, everyone should be taking notes right now.

ALEX: I know that I am at least taking mental notes.

FLOR: Yeah. And I wanted to go back to… Well, I know that you’re a super large company right now. You mentioned that you are almost 500 people, over 500 people, and I know that you have presence in a lot of parts of the globe. And I wanted to know, how is that experience? Was there any opportunity where you encountered any cultural barriers with your colleagues or even with your partners as well? Because I know that you collaborate with people from all over the world.

ULISES: Yes. It’s a funny question, really. And I think I’ve encountered what many may have encountered, too, when working with international colleagues. You get the, you know, the common share of stereotypes, I would say, like some nationalities tend to be more structured or others tend to be more laid back and whatnot. But the funny thing is, well, I’m from Argentina and I work in Uruguay, have been working here for three years now. And when I came to Uruguay and started leading the team here, I was soon… I soon encountered that we Argentinians don’t know much about Uruguayans, like we take for granted a lot of things. Of course, we’re really similar, you know? From the outside you probably cannot tell many differences. And Uruguayans know a lot more about Argentinians that we know about them. And also they tend to… they know that, and they try to make us feel at ease. So we always…

FLOR: Oh, that’s so sweet of them.

ULISES: Yes, but we underestimate the subtle differences. That was one problem moving. And I’m usually, you know, really calm. I have a calm demeanor, but I’m really direct and straightforward and like, yeah, upfront. And those qualities here are a bit frowned upon. Like, you can come off as blunt or even impolite. So things that have been working for me in Argentina didn’t work here. I had to relearn some social norms to make things work. And I’m talking about two really similar countries.

FLOR: For those that may not be familiar with how the map is looking over here, well, we’re pretty close to Uruguay, we’re pretty much neighbors.

ALEX: One hour away by boat.

FLOR: Yeah, well, and you can also go by car and it’s like a five hour ride or something like that. But yeah, it’s pretty close to Argentina, Buenos Aires in particular. And we even share the same language. And it’s so easy, as you said, to fall into those assumptions and to think that we’re so close that we’re the same, but we’re not.

ULISES: Exactly. And, well, what I did learn was that it’s not good to assume that what is normal to you is normal for everyone. But at the same time, you know, working in video games, you come to learn that cultural differences are not a barrier, but an asset or an opportunity. We need more diversity in video games now. And if you want to reach a global audience, then having different nationalities on your team could be really valuable.

FLOR: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It makes the final product so much diverse, and it helps you reach a broader audience and to connect in a more deep way to your audience, right?

ULISES: Yeah, exactly.

ALEX: Okay. So going back a little bit to Etermax now, given that you guys are working on very popular mobile franchises that include many cultural and sometimes even very specific local references, how often do you receive feedback from your players? And do you have a system nowadays in place to process and implement that feedback?

ULISES: All right. Yes, we receive a ton of feedback. So people are very vocal, and we appreciate that. We appreciate that a lot, actually. But most importantly for our Trivia Crack family of quiz games, we have something called the Question Factory, which is a feature that not only allows them to give feedback, but also participate in the localization, continuous localization and content generation for our games. So what we do is we created this space right from the beginning almost. Users send their questions, and then we process them a little bit and send them back to the users who then rate them. And then we do this language by language and country by country, so we make sure that your country of origin is one of the key factors that determines the questions that you’re gonna get and, henceforth, the experience that you’re gonna have with the game. And I think that has been a really popular feature, because right now I would say that almost 95% of the content that you see in the game was created by users. Especially Americans and Brazilians and then Argentinians, in that order, are the top contributors to the content.

FLOR: In order of passion, right?

ALEX: But that’s so cool, that the user experience, I mean, it’s generated by the users. I mean, that speaks highly of Etermax as well.

FLOR: Mm-hmm.

ULISES: Yes. I suppose… Well, it was one of the things that we saw at the very beginning. We didn’t invent trivia games, of course, but we did see that whenever you wanted to play a trivia game in Spanish, two things happened. On the one hand, there were a certain fixed amount of questions. So after a while, they would start repeating themselves. And the other thing was, you get questions that were only relevant for people in Spain. So you get questions like, which of the following towns is in Extremadura? And I don’t know the answer to that, and I really don’t care.

ALEX: Yeah, me either.

ULISES: Yeah. It’s not relevant.

ALEX: It’s not relevant, right?

ULISES: Exactly.

FLOR: Yeah. You’re doing a master’s in Spanish, [indistinct 31:00] your geography, and you’re based in Argentina, right?

ULISES: Exactly. So we gave the users the chance to create content and also rate it. And also, we started serving it based on their country of origin. And that has become a really scalable model too, because we couldn’t possibly make that many… well, a couple million… or more than a couple million, like 50 million questions nowadays. There’s no way.

FLOR: More than a couple million!

ALEX: More than a couple million. Just one million is a lot. “More than a couple of million.”

ULISES: Yeah, there’s just too many. There’s no content or localization team in the world that can make that many. So our focus is more on, well, how to process this, how to make the most out of it, and how to provide users with the most meaningful and pleasant gaming experience.

FLOR: That’s incredible. I love that you came up with that system and that it’s working so well. And I also want to know if there’s any specific tool that you used through this specific process or through the localization process in general. Because I know, like you said, you have millions of questions, and I bet it was also interesting to streamline this process through some sort of technology, right?

ULISES: Yes. Well, when it comes to the questions themselves, we used tools that we built ourselves in-house. It’s quite specific. There was no one that provided it. But when it comes to the localization of the interface, we started with our own tool as well and it quickly became, you know, not worthy. It was really costly to maintain it. It was really a hassle. And soon enough we started looking for a tool that could do that for us. And…

FLOR: Yeah, probably there was a need to reinvent the wheel, right?

ULISES: Exactly. Exactly. And well, in that respect, I don’t know if I can mention the tool itself that we…

FLOR: Oh, it’s okay. We don’t want to break any NDAs or put you in a spot, but there are many tools in the market that generally cover the main features. Some may cover some different aspects, but generally what they do is process tons of words simultaneously and have some sort of translation memory or a glossary that you can access to and keep consistency throughout the languages, right?

ULISES: Yes. Yes, exactly. But I can tell you about the requirements on our side.

FLOR: Oh, please.

ULISES: What we needed it was… Well, we have our team of freelancers, so we had we have something in place that would work for them. So we had to have a translation memory and the CAT tool as well. And from our side, we had to add a translation management system as well. And it had to be decentralized because we have many games and not all of the games have a translation manager. So we had to find something that could work for that workflow. And at the same time, we needed a continuous translation so translation task should flow like really fluently. And, yeah, I think those are the main requirements. And, of course, we appreciate our QA, as anyone does in the business.

FLOR: Oh, yeah, quality is everything right?

ULISES: Yeah.

FLOR: So we want to go to the meme section now, if that’s okay with you. I know that you have a pretty interesting story to share about memes, because I know that you’ve created some sort of museum around memes with some of your colleagues and friends.

ALEX: I want to hear about that, too.

FLOR: Yeah. Do you want to share more details on how that was born?

ULISES: Of course. Um, well, first of all, I love memes. I think everyone here loves memes.

FLOR: Yeah. You’re in the right space here.

ALEX: Yes, my friend.

ULISES: Yeah, I think it’s a really generational phenomenon as well. So we’re all millennials, and that has hit us harder than all other generations, maybe. And we take memes so seriously, they’re such a big part of our life, that we started thinking, isn’t it almost like an art form? Isn’t it the way that we’re communicating now with other adults, too? Isn’t it the way we socialize? And we also learned a lot more about the other person, like the memes that the other person likes probably just tells you a lot about them. And we thought that it would be funny to make this memes museum, so a place where we could discuss memes and to preserve the memes that are worth preserving. Like, you know, a good old painting. And, yeah, I think it’s also interesting because localization and memes, there’s a connection there.

FLOR: Yeah, well, we were just discussing this the other day. Yes. One of my question is, when are we going to start thinking about meme localization? Because I know there are many dev teams, even publishers, that are trying to reach their communities, and they found that memes generate this engagement that we’re looking for. So sometimes you need to translate them and even localize them and go like full culturalization with the meme, you know.

ALEX: Culturalizing memes.

FLOR: Yeah, for the other person to get it. I have a lot of English speaking friends that I sometimes share memes with, and some are very… super, super specific to the Argentinian culture, and I need to give them like a full explanation of when I was born, in what culture I was immersed, what programs or TV shows I used to watch to get to the conclusion. Of course, the fun aspect is lost in between because of that whole explanation. But they have such a huge cultural baggage sometimes that it’s hard to portray the message.

ULISES: Yeah, exactly. I think… well, probably you’ve heard the mantra that goes like “To go global, you need to think local,” or something along those lines, when it comes to localization. And I think memes are probably the epitome of that mantra, because it’s a global phenomenon, but at the same time, the ones that, you know, get to you really to the deepest part of your heart are the ones that are hyper localized, the ones that you understand them because you were born and you grew up in a certain place at a certain time. And that’s, well, that’s a challenge to translate and transculturalize them.

FLOR: Hell yeah. I mean, we take memes seriously here.

ALEX: We take memes seriously.

ULISES: Yeah. But I also think they’re… I’m sorry.

FLOR: No, it’s okay.

ULISES: I think… It’s like… I take it so seriously. But I think memes can…

FLOR: We do as well, trust me.

ULISES: Memes can bring humanity together, I think, much like localization, because we’re seeing that we can laugh at the same things. And, you know, being able to be in this generation and seeing how we are laughing at the same topics or the same entities. I don’t know. If that doesn’t bring us together, then I don’t know what will.

FLOR: Oh, yeah. I mean, yesterday, I was talking to one of my best friends and I was so tired that we were just talking through stickers and memes and gifs. That’s my language when my brain is dead.

ALEX: It’s a sociological subject on its own.

FLOR: Yeah. Yeah, and it can portray a whole mood or a whole vibe or a whole even political stance, you know, it can get as personal as you want them to.

ULISES: Yes.

FLOR: So we’re gonna get personal. I’m gonna go ahead…

ULISES: All right.

FLOR: I’m gonna share…

ALEX: This is too real. This hits too close to home.

ULISES: Yeah. I don’t know why, but it does happen.

FLOR: Yeah, especially… Well, sometimes lately, I’ve had some of those days when I’ve been like for hours in a call, jumping from one call to the next, and I start to, of course, I start to lose concentration, lose focus. And then whenever that happens, I just stand up, just go to… or maybe take a walk around or something because, yeah, I’ve been there so many times. The next one.

ALEX: The same thing can apply to Resident Evil 4, right? How many consoles do a single game need?

ULISES: Well, my sense on that is that, if the game is good enough, then it should survive and come to the next generation’s console.

FLOR: Yeah.

ALEX: And it certainly does. My concern is that not enough… not enough good games are going out or being released, right? That we continue to play that amazingly good game, but it’s ten years old.

FLOR: Well, but it takes years to build a game that is actually good and that can stand for decades and have communities of followers for decades. So maybe that’s why. There are many other reasons probably there, but yeah, for sure.

ULISES: I can totally relate to this.

ALEX: Yes. Yes, totally.

ULISES: So my favorite game of all time is Super Mario World, and I play it every year, and I play it through and through every year.

FLOR: And with whom do you play?

ULISES: I’m sorry?

FLOR: With whom do you play generally? Friends, family?

ULISES: Oh, no, that one I play alone.

FLOR: Really?

ULISES: Yeah. Super Mario World is, you know, I can beat it with my eyes closed at this time.

FLOR: Oh, you’re that good?

ULISES: No, I just like it that much. And I’ve play that many times.

ALEX: It’s an amazing game. I had it back in the mid-nineties, and when I bought my Super Nintendo Mini, I started it over again. And it was like, I felt like a little kid again.

ULISES: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s what makes me feel.

FLOR: Exactly. That’s what’s great about it, that it gets you back to that space, like a child again. Right?

ULISES: Yeah.

FLOR: There’s… Yeah, yeah. I could be talking for hours and debate about video games making people violent. Like, no. I mean, look at us. Right?

ULISES: Yeah, exactly. And the media portrayal of video games, I suppose it’s gonna change at some point. Like so many people are playing games now that we have smartphones and there’s casual games for literally everyone. I don’t know. It should change that perception. It’s so old.

FLOR: I mean, I like to believe that it’s already changing. Like we talked just a couple of minutes ago, it’s becoming a social space, and everyone is pretty aware of that already. So I think that this idea will get old soon. Hopefully.

ULISES: Hopefully.

ALEX: Now I have something that I want to ask. Who was that that just did a cameo on screen?

FLOR: Where?

ALEX: I need to know the name of that beauty.

ULISES: Oh, are you talking about my cat?

FLOR: What am I missing?

ALEX: You are missing something, Flor. We had a cat cameo. We love cat cameos here. I’m sorry to expose you, but… Oh!

FLOR: Oh! Yeah, we need proper introductions.

ULISES: She is Arabella, one of the… Yeah, the two cats that live here, but she’s the more extroverted one. And she likes to say hi.

FLOR: Hi, sweet girl! Oh, so cute.

ALEX: Sorry. I had to meet her. Sorry, Ulises.

FLOR: Yes. Thank you, that was absolutely necessary. Alexis, thank you.

ALEX: Oh, please. [I deserve it. 46:53]

FLOR: So going back to this. Every single time.

ALEX: Who hasn’t tried to drive normal on a GTA game or something? It’s impossible.

FLOR: I just can’t.

ULISES: It’s impossible.

ALEX: It’s impossible.

ULISES: Yeah, totally.

FLOR: It reminds me also, well, to every single car game. Whenever there is a car involved, I just can’t drive.

ULISES: I’m a really bad driver in the real world, so imagine in games when there are no consequences.

FLOR: Well, in the real world, I’ve been told that I’m fearless. So that can be a problem.

ALEX: That’s something I should take into consideration, Flor, when we meet.

FLOR: Yeah, you’ve never been in a car with me. I still have to get my driver’s license. Yeah, I’m 33 years old, I’m an adult, and I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t know how that happened.

ALEX: It can happen.

FLOR: Yeah, I mean, I’m here. So, yeah, this meme also reminds me whenever I try to play Rocket League. I’m flying in the air.

ALEX: I suck so bad at Rocket League.

ULISES: I’m all over the place when I play Rocket League.

FLOR: It’s like, “Hey, look at the ball!” and I’m like over there flying. Something like that.

ULISES: But then again, I’m bad at driving and I’m bad at playing football, so it’s only normal that I suck at Rocket League.

FLOR: Well, you probably have a lot of other skills. And we are… We’re convinced about that. Did you know that there’s…?

ALEX: This is very funny.

FLOR: Yeah. There’s a Twitter where you can see like different scenes in games where you can pet the animals that appear on the screen.

ULISES: Oh, really?

FLOR: Yeah. I have to share it with you because it’s super cute.

ULISES: Yeah. I can relate to this. I prefer animals to humans too, in real life, so.

FLOR: Yeah. That’s why my roommates are cats. That’s how she died, old and alone with a ton of cats.

ALEX: But you’re still young, Flor, you have time to get more cats.

FLOR: Yeah, always. Cats and plants. So that was the end of our meme round.

ALEX: Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy, busy schedule to meet with us, man. Thank you very much.

FLOR: Yeah, I had so much fun, and I really enjoyed getting to know more of you and your start in this industry, which is super interesting. Thank you for joining us today.

ULISES: Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure. It was really fun, and I look forward to seeing you guys in Buenos Aires when I can travel.

FLOR: Yeah, well, I look forward to traveling either to Uruguay or to wherever.

ALEX: I’d love to go see you in Uruguay, too. I mean, I miss that country so much.

FLOR: It would be great to get together for drinks or for a game session or something.

ULISES: Yeah, that sounds good.

FLOR: To get to see you in person. We’re definitely going to leave the meme museum link over there in YouTube because people should see this. I mean, I really appreciate it. And it’s a gem, a hidden gem that everyone should be aware of. Thank you so much, Ulises. Thank you so much, Alexis. So nice to be here with you today. Thanks, everyone, for joining, and see you on our next episode. Take care.

ULISES: Bye.

ALEX: Bye, guys.