Creating an immersive gaming experience through localisation
Using agile methodologies to support ‘Always On’ gaming
Capita Translation and interpreting (Capita TI) recently partnered with a global gaming giant to create an agile localisation model based on project automation and system integration.
The challenge
The gaming industry’s share of the entertainment market is growing, as new generations of gamers discover the medium. Being one of the leading players in this dynamic industry meant that this client’s geographical reach was constantly expanding, as was the scope of the content they needed to translate.
Gaming is an increasingly agile industry, with gamers not wanting to wait until the next big release for games to be updated and bugs to be fixed. So in addition to publishing at least one flagship title each year, the client also offered 24/7 live services and updates, all of which needed to be translated almost in real time. As they were providing an ‘Always on’ gaming solution, the client had to account for unexpected issues, such as server down-time, in-play bugs, or help centre closures.
Any issues within a game can lead to player dissatisfaction, so clear, helpful instructions and updates in the player’s own language are vital.
As a leading brand in the gaming industry, the client obviously couldn’t afford to compromise on quality, and their content cycle was unpredictable, with translations for gaming bugs and urgent fixes needed almost instantaneously. A slick, agile solution that could deliver excellent quality was a must.
How Capita TI helped
Capita’s round-the-clock global presence meant that requests from all the client’s offices could be actioned within minutes. It was also vital to implement an automated and integrated solution in order to cope with such an unpredictable content cycle, and Capita’s translation management system provided this, using workflows that could be specifically tailored to the client’s needs.
Capita were able to add further value by integrating with the client’s existing system. This enabled easier access to the linguistic assets available, and meant that minimal custom API development was needed for this level of integration.
In order to deliver translations more quickly, Capita used a custom-developed SmartMATE Sourcing model whereby linguists were automatically assigned to jobs based on their specialisms and language pairs. To translate the 36 languages required by the client, Capita needed to allocate a pool of 186 separate linguists. SmartMATE Sourcing allowed this to be completed quickly and efficiently.
To maintain consistency and translation quality across these 186 linguists, reference material and linguistic assets were updated on a daily basis using a crawling tool. Capita made it a key requirement to assign only game-loving translators to the project, in order to heighten quality and enhance the player experience. This gaming expertise, not to mention a genuine affection for their subject, gave the linguists a thorough understanding of the tension, humour and dialogue at the heart of any good video game.
The result
Once the 24/7 team had been brought to bear, the client had a fully automated option for out-of-hours work, where no Project Management input was required. They could still retain full control of the content cycle, but urgent texts had the option of going through this automated process to reduce time to market.
‘Always On’ gaming is a key trend in the industry, and its inherent unpredictability was a major challenge for both Capita and their client – resolving any issues in a timely manner was paramount.
Capita was able to complete most translation jobs for the client in as little as 5 hours, carrying out on average 62 jobs per month.
Not only did Capita’s systems allow for the agile delivery needed, their automated MI facility provided the client with overview reports on data such as turn-around time, number of jobs completed, and QA results, at any time of day.