Industry group campaigns for new QA standards

A group of QA and localisation experts are pushing for new industry standards in the sector, with a whitepaper that will list their recommendations due in December. 

The document will detail recommendations for video localisation and quality control, "a part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements and covers setting localisation quality requirements, selecting localisation quality inspectors, monitoring and assessing localisation quality, and performing corrective and preventative actions".

The idea first emerged at a recent conference, but industry experts took the discussion further by suggesting inclusions for such a whitepaper and preparing a first draft online. A Skype meeting is planned between the group later this month to finalise the points raised by the document.

Members behind the movement include representatives of Nintendo of America, Sony Network Entertainment, Ubisoft, Zynga, BioWare, Leapfrog, Nexon, Spil Games, All Correct Language Solutions, QLOC and more.

"It’s our responsibility as game industry professionals and also as localisation specialists that we provide the best game play experience to our players," said Nexon America’s localisation manager Katy Kim. "In this globalised world, everybody has the right to enjoy any form of entertainment in their own language, in their own country, and real time. As many of us would agree, ‘localisation’ is more than just translating words into different languages.

"We need to raise the bar for game localisation and to have some kind of industry standards in place. I’m glad to be part of such an important initiative like this and hope the whitepaper can serve as a guideline to many game localisation professionals in terms of creating high quality localisation."