Högskolan i Skövde

This paper presents field studies conducted at two indie game development companies – one in Sweden and one in China. The study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the complex nature of indie game development and how indie game developers using a self-publishing business model work with game localization as a part of the development process. The research is guided by the research question “ How do indie game developers prioritize and work with game localization as a development process?” explored from three perspectives: the strategic perspective, where the decisions behind the localization are in focus; the development perspective, exploring the development processes; and the product perspective, using a participatory observation method. The results indicate that game localization is a task among several important tasks, and by omitting to plan for localization can impact the game developed severely. An organizational model of indie game development companies is presented, highlighting the many different development tasks needed to be handled either by using internal or external competences.

During recent years a rise of small, independent game developers have become a large part of the global game industry. These indie developers are often distributing their games using digital distribution with a self-publishing business model. While the possibilities to reach a large global audience are expanding with digital distribution, there are also challenges for the developers, where the work tasks previously handled by a publisher now has to be handled by the developers themselves. One such work task directly related to the globalness of the game industry is localization, which is the process of altering a product in such ways it can be used by consumers in a specific target market. 

The main objective of the thesis project is to understand how indie game developers are working with game localization as a part of the development process. In this case, "indie" refers to developers with limited resources in terms of financing and manpower, using a self-publishing business model. The research has partly been carried out through participatory field studies in close connection to indie game developers and development clusters in Sweden, China, and India. In addition to this, the technical aspects of game localization have been scrutinized through studies of localization support in commonly used game engines and game development tools.

The results of the thesis show that game localization is an important development task due to the global nature of the game industry, but that its complexity often is underestimated by the developers. To reach a large player base, localization is a must and should be planned for early in the process. Further, the results show that game localization is less resource demanding ifusing a localization friendly production pipeline, and that the tools to set up such production pipelines are available in all major game engines

Under de senaste åren har en ökning av små, oberoende spelutvecklare blivit en stor del av den globala spelindustrin. Dessa indieutvecklare distribuerar ofta sina spel med hjälp av digitala distributionskanaler och agerar ofta även utgivare för sina egna spel. Samtidigt som möjligheterna att nå en stor global publik ökat med digital distribution finns det även utmaningar. Ett exempel är de arbetsuppgifter som tidigare sköttes av en förläggare eller utgivare och som nu måste skötas av utvecklarna själva. En sådan arbetsuppgift är lokalisering, en arbetsuppgift som dessutom är av stor vikt för att kunna nå en global spelarbas. 

Huvudsyftet med denna avhandling är att förstå hur små, oberoende spelutvecklare, ofta kallade indiespelsutvecklare, arbetar med lokalisering som en del av spelutvecklingsprocessen. I det här fallet syftar "indie" på utvecklare med begränsade resurser vad gäller finansiering och arbetskraft och som använder en självpublicerande affärsmodell. Avhandlingsarbetet har delvis utförts genom deltagande fältstudier i nära anslutning till indiespelsutvecklare och spelutvecklingskluster i Sverige, Kina och Indien. Utöver detta har de tekniska aspekterna av spellokalisering granskats genom studier av lokaliseringsstöd i vanligt förekommande spelmotorer och spelutvecklingsverktyg.

Resultaten från avhandlingen visar att spellokalisering är en viktig arbetsuppgift i spelutvecklingssammanhang. Detta på grund av att spelindustrin är global och att ett spel direkt har möjligheten att nå en stor internationell målgrupp. Däremot underskattas komplexiteten gällande lokaliseringsarbete vilket medför att lokaliseringsrelaterade frågor prioriteras ner i tidigt utvecklingsprocessen. Detta kan få stora konsekvenser i ett senare stadie, och resultaten från avhandlingen visar att lokalisering bör planeras tidigt i processen för att spara tid och resurser. Vidare pekar resultaten på att spellokalisering är mindre resurskrävande om man använder en lokaliseringsvänlig produktionspipelineoch att verktyg för att sätta upp sådana produktionspipelines finns tillgängliga i alla vanligt förekommande spelmotorer.

This paper addresses localization from a game development perspective by studying the state of tool support for a localization work in general purpose game engines. Using a systematic mapping study, the most commonly used game engines and their official tool libraries are studied. The results indicate that even though localization tools exists for the game engines included in the study, the visibility, availability, and functionality differ. Localization tools that are user facing, i.e., used to create localization, are scarce while many are tool facing, i.e., used to import localization kits made outside the production pipeline.

This paper focus on how localization is addressed in research on game development processes. The research aim is to get an understanding of how localization, game localization and its subsets of content and cultural issues, linguistic issues and technical issues are addressed and discussed in game development research. This has been done through a literature study, where 488 papers regarding game development processes have been scrutinized in order to identify game localization related research. The results shows that localization is rarely addressed in game development research, but regional aspects and relevant concepts related to game localization can be found.

The learning goals of project-based courses are typically specific for each involved discipline. Game development is deeply interdisciplinary and some of its core principles are shared across disciplines, from art to programming. This article presents a project-based approach where students majoring in arts and students majoring in technology share learning objectives. The course has been developed in a Sino- Scandinavian collaboration. Experiences from well-established Scandinavian game development programmes have been transferred to a Chinese university context.

This article presents an explorative mixed method evaluation of this course. The research design had two phases with an initial qualitative analysis resulting in a set of observations that were tested in the second, quantitative phase. A total of 34 students from a range of disciplines participated in a two week course. The quantitative analysis shows that art (n=13) and technology (n=14) students' reported very similar experiences and similar insights into core learning objectives. This study shows that deeply interdisciplinary project-based courses, with shared learning objectives can successfully be conducted even in a context with no prior experience of such approaches.

Game engines are a vital part of a game production pipeline, but there is a vagueness of definitions regarding the boundaries of components in a game engine and the rest of the production tools used in a game development pipeline. The aim of this paper is to nuance the use of the term game engine and to put it into the context of a game development pipeline. Based on data from the current state of game production, a proposed taxonomy for tools in game development is presented. A distinction is made between user facing tools and product facing tools. A defining characteristic of the production pipeline and game engines is their plasticity. One of the conclusions is that a “game engine” as a single entity containing the whole game production pipeline is not desirable due to the large number of competences and needs involved in a game development project.

This article presents the methodology and initial analysis of a systematic literature review that aims to explore how the craft and processes of game development have been studied in previous research. In particular, the review focuses on how previous research treats the inherent duality of video game development, since it both involves computer software development and creative production. Researchers are often in a position where they need to emphasize game development’s relation to one of these disciplines, and it is not unusual for game development to be treated as a direct offspring of one field with some mild influences from another. Employing a more all-encompassing review approach, that includes research conducted from the perspectives of both com- puter science and the arts and humanities equally, makes the presented study different from previous literature reviews. The results show that there is a tendency that the management of software development has a negative correlation with the management of creativity in the studied material. The heterogenity of the fields and the limited amount of studies that focus on the duality of game development suggest that there is a need for a deeper analysis of the individual components and to synthesize results from disparate fields. 

This paper investigates the process of game localization from an indie development perspective. The global nature of the digitally distributed game industry gives opportunities for game studios of all sizes to develop and distribute games on a global market. This poses a challenge for small independent developers with limited resources in funding and personnel, seeking to get as wide spread of their game as possible. To reach the players in other regions of the world localization needs to be done, taking language and other regional differences in mind. In an AAA or big-budget game production, these questions are handled by separate entities focusing solely on the localization process – but how do small independent game developers handle this? Indie game developers in Sweden, China and India have been interviewed to investigate the research question of how do indie game developers handle localization in the development process. The results points to a widespread use of community- and fan translation, and that only basic localization is done i.e. culturalization aspects are not considered. The results also show that the reason for localizing can be both business decisions but also to spread a specific message using games.