Issue #12: THE PROCESS

[sotanaht1]

It was mentioned, but Demon's Souls really is as import-friendly as it could possibly be.

While there are a couple of bugs, there are none associated with localization, only ones we are waiting on the original devs to fix (neutral tendancy glitch, biorr-dragon glitch, etc). QA should be practically non-existent here, just check what you change. From will be doing any actual changes anyway, so that is not a problem at all.

Almost all of the text and spoken dialogue is already completely translated, so familiarization should take a couple of days, not weeks. All Atlus needs to fix are a grammatical errors, in non-spoken text, and the manual. Localization itself should take almost no time for the same reason, its already been done, just fix it and go.

Programming may take the full length, you're outsourcing after all, but there should not be anything BUT text. All dialogue is finished and not worth modifying at all, all the voice is finished, and if someone changes non-text graphics I will personally hunt them down. The other thing that's being changed at this step is the one that makes me more angry then everything else combined and multiplied by a factor of ten. You plan to change the server affinity, so the versions cannot inter-operate.

Manufacturer approval is a mostly pointless timesink, they already approved it once, or perhaps 3 times, but I would have to yell at Sony for that, not Atlus.

All in all, the process should come to 2-3 months (one each for the Devs and Sony to do their thing, average, and the 2-4 weeks remaining for Atlus to do its negligible part). But there is another thing to consider. There was already an announced American release, back in February, within weeks of the games overseas release, it was scheduled to be released in America. That was scrapped, obviously, and almost certainly for reasons related to sales, not localization. There is no reason this game should not have been done THEN.

EDIT: I forgot to include manufacturing. There isn't much I can say about this step, given that one single little thing is changed, it will be the same deal, same amount of time. Then there is the (in my opinion, worthless*) swag that Atlus includes, which also takes time to get into production. That, however, can be ready before the game's production line is.

*In a game, I only find content that can be visible at some point to other players or that can change the way I play to be worthwhile, figurines and art books are just things that end up lost around my house, I don't like soundtracks and I get my game guide needs filled online.

Edit2: I should also like to mention that while the entire process might even take most of the scheduled time, even based on the figures here the majority of atlus employees only work for at most 3 months on a project like this, the largest figures are done outside the company or by factory-style workers. For demon's souls, that time should be less then half.

[Rednusander]

^ You've made some fairly large assumptions in your post about how our internal processes work and the time frames involved on this particular game.

Unfortunatley, all I can tell you is that most of them are incorrect.

[mumu]

Originally Posted by sotanaht1

It was mentioned, but Demon's Souls really is as import-friendly as it could possibly be.

While there are a couple of bugs, there are none associated with localization, only ones we are waiting on the original devs to fix (neutral tendancy glitch, biorr-dragon glitch, etc). QA should be practically non-existent here, just check what you change. From will be doing any actual changes anyway, so that is not a problem at all.

Almost all of the text and spoken dialogue is already completely translated, so familiarization should take a couple of days, not weeks. All Atlus needs to fix are a grammatical errors, in non-spoken text, and the manual. Localization itself should take almost no time for the same reason, its already been done, just fix it and go.

Programming may take the full length, you're outsourcing after all, but there should not be anything BUT text. All dialogue is finished and not worth modifying at all, all the voice is finished, and if someone changes non-text graphics I will personally hunt them down. The other thing that's being changed at this step is the one that makes me more angry then everything else combined and multiplied by a factor of ten. You plan to change the server affinity, so the versions cannot inter-operate.

Manufacturer approval is a mostly pointless timesink, they already approved it once, or perhaps 3 times, but I would have to yell at Sony for that, not Atlus.

All in all, the process should come to 2-3 months (one each for the Devs and Sony to do their thing, average, and the 2-4 weeks remaining for Atlus to do its negligible part). But there is another thing to consider. There was already an announced American release, back in February, within weeks of the games overseas release, it was scheduled to be released in America. That was scrapped, obviously, and almost certainly for reasons related to sales, not localization. There is no reason this game should not have been done THEN.

EDIT: I forgot to include manufacturing. There isn't much I can say about this step, given that one single little thing is changed, it will be the same deal, same amount of time. Then there is the (in my opinion, worthless*) swag that Atlus includes, which also takes time to get into production. That, however, can be ready before the game's production line is.

*In a game, I only find content that can be visible at some point to other players or that can change the way I play to be worthwhile, figurines and art books are just things that end up lost around my house, I don't like soundtracks and I get my game guide needs filled online.

Edit2: I should also like to mention that while the entire process might even take most of the scheduled time, even based on the figures here the majority of atlus employees only work for at most 3 months on a project like this, the largest figures are done outside the company or by factory-style workers. For demon's souls, that time should be less then half.

HAAAHHAA

[SimplyMonk]

Originally Posted by AtlusAram

We do not discuss numbers. That said, success is relative, and comparing Atlus titles (which are generally niche products) to mass appeal games is really comparing apples and oranges.

Good question, though.

Understandable. I hope it is though, since whenever I see a DS or Xbox 360 title that really catches my interest, there is a good chance it turns out to be published by Atlus. Keep doing what you guys are doing.

[Apuleius]

Originally Posted by AtlusAram

Suffice to say that a game’s text is not always divided up start-to-finish like chapters in a book, and disjointed files can add a lot of time to the localization step.

Another poster that registered after reading The Process, but I wanted to emphasize the quote above. I’ve been involved in localizing over 30 titles – mostly Windows PC, but some handheld and web-based stuff (MMOs) – and I cannot stress enough just how long disorganized text adds to a project. A recent project involved 15 Excel files with 5-7 tabs in each file, quest text spread throughout. It can be extremely difficult keeping track of who is going where or doing what when it’s started in tab 3 file 1 and finished in tab 7 file 9.

I also want to point out the importance of the rigorous playthroughs that Atlus has their employees go through. It is very rare for us to be provided with anything for a game – forget a beta, I’m talking about basic character bios or rough outlines for the plot. I think it would surprise people just how lackadaisical most companies are about the localization process – they want complete polish with minimal effort. I don’t blame companies wanting their money’s worth, but it’s hard to peg down the context when the material is two weeks late and you have absolutely no idea what the story is even about.

Gamasutra recently ran an article that discusses writing for games, and just how difficult it can be. Writers often face similar problems as translators and editors, with assets constantly changing and no clear direction. It can get pretty messy, which is why having companies like Atlus and NIS is so nice, with us getting all of the fun and none of the headaches.


Aside: Demon’s Souls pre-orderededed.

[Pixel]

Nice thread. At what stage in the localization process would a project be ready for public announcement?

[Rednusander]

Originally Posted by Pixel

Nice thread. At what stage in the localization process would a project be ready for public announcement?

That varies from project to project as our marketing team is in charge of deciding what would be the most strategic time to announce a title. It can before localization has even begun, all the way to after the title is ready to ship.

[Crow T. Robot]

Originally Posted by sotanaht1

It was mentioned, but Demon's Souls really is as import-friendly as it could possibly be.

While there are a couple of bugs, there are none associated with localization, only ones we are waiting on the original devs to fix (neutral tendancy glitch, biorr-dragon glitch, etc). QA should be practically non-existent here, just check what you change. From will be doing any actual changes anyway, so that is not a problem at all.

Almost all of the text and spoken dialogue is already completely translated, so familiarization should take a couple of days, not weeks. All Atlus needs to fix are a grammatical errors, in non-spoken text, and the manual. Localization itself should take almost no time for the same reason, its already been done, just fix it and go.

Programming may take the full length, you're outsourcing after all, but there should not be anything BUT text. All dialogue is finished and not worth modifying at all, all the voice is finished, and if someone changes non-text graphics I will personally hunt them down. The other thing that's being changed at this step is the one that makes me more angry then everything else combined and multiplied by a factor of ten. You plan to change the server affinity, so the versions cannot inter-operate.

Manufacturer approval is a mostly pointless timesink, they already approved it once, or perhaps 3 times, but I would have to yell at Sony for that, not Atlus.

All in all, the process should come to 2-3 months (one each for the Devs and Sony to do their thing, average, and the 2-4 weeks remaining for Atlus to do its negligible part). But there is another thing to consider. There was already an announced American release, back in February, within weeks of the games overseas release, it was scheduled to be released in America. That was scrapped, obviously, and almost certainly for reasons related to sales, not localization. There is no reason this game should not have been done THEN.

EDIT: I forgot to include manufacturing. There isn't much I can say about this step, given that one single little thing is changed, it will be the same deal, same amount of time. Then there is the (in my opinion, worthless*) swag that Atlus includes, which also takes time to get into production. That, however, can be ready before the game's production line is.

*In a game, I only find content that can be visible at some point to other players or that can change the way I play to be worthwhile, figurines and art books are just things that end up lost around my house, I don't like soundtracks and I get my game guide needs filled online.

Edit2: I should also like to mention that while the entire process might even take most of the scheduled time, even based on the figures here the majority of atlus employees only work for at most 3 months on a project like this, the largest figures are done outside the company or by factory-style workers. For demon's souls, that time should be less then half.

I had no idea you worked for ATLUS.....

|:

[PainKilleR-[CE]]

I'd just like to add something that seems to be overlooked by a lot of people (or unknown in some cases):

Depending on the programming language in which the game is written, and how the system itself handles certain things, adding a single letter to a line of text can cause a memory overflow, which results in the game crashing (at best), or weird errors somewhere down the line that seem unrelated. Replacing Japanese text with English text? Well, then you've also got encoding issues to deal with and so forth, all of which is why it's preferable to have the original developers work on inserting the English text into the game rather than having 3rd party developers hack it back in. Plus the text has to be looked at in-game to make sure there aren't formatting issues with the new text and so forth.

This is why even Demon's Souls, which is already in English, still requires all of the same steps with mostly the same amount of time allotted to them. You can't just 'fix' the English text that's in the game and plug it back in without testing it.

[Castle Pokemetroid]

Whatever Atlus is doing, it seems to be going quite well.

Some projects like this can become quite tedious, but the staff are still faithful to the fans, as the fans are faithful to Altus.

[hilaryaustin]

Almost all of the text and spoken dialogue is already completely translated, so familiarization should take a couple of days, not weeks. All Atlus needs to fix are a grammatical errors, in non-spoken text, and the manual. Localization itself should take almost no time for the same reason, its already been done, just fix it and go.

at least there are some visible progress even if its slow it's still gaining changes that all will benefit from it.