ZA/UM Studios’ breakout success Disco Elysium made a statement through its heavy emphasis on text with over a million words, and its sharp, creative vision. Its skill system is based on the inner dialogues of a fragmented psyche and its branching quest design touches on social, political, and metaphysical topics among many others, making it a localization challenge noticeably beyond the usual. In this session, we will elaborate on the titanic effort required to bring Disco Elysium into French, German, and Russian. We will look behind-the-scenes to provide further context, examples, key learnings, and tips for anyone dealing with projects of comparable complexity.
Takeaways:
Attendees will learn how to plan for high-complexity localization projects, managing quality, and efficiency; linguists will gain ideas on creative translation inspiration and research behind projects; and game developers and publishers will learn how to ensure the localization process support is strong if they are working on text-based, branching, or comparable games.