We are available 24/7 on this email
Piranha Games
Case study
One of the industry’s oldest independent developers, Piranha Games Inc. was founded in 2000, making FPS action games for big-name franchises, including AAA licensed titles such as Need for Speed: Undercover and Duke Nukem Forever. Best known for the Free-to-Play game title MechWarrior Online, as well as MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Piranha Games Inc. is as committed as ever to creating world-class action-based games.
Challenge
- Piranha’s production team needed translation of all frontend/HUD User Interface text for their new ‘Mech simulation shooter, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, in time for their December 10th, 2019 release. Since their consumer marketing was dependent on the game launching on time, the localised text needed to be translated and tested on schedule.
- The game’s source language was English (USA) and was to be translated into the target languages French (France), German (Germany), and Russian.
- Piranha also needed Global Lingo to translate text from within a narrative video and create subtitles. The video was provided for reference alongside a Word script. The translation of the video was urgent and had to be prioritised over the main translation work.
- After re-integrating the translated text into their game build, Piranha required Global Lingo to perform localisation quality assurance testing on the game in time for their launch date.
Approach / Solution
- A dedicated project management team was assembled as a first point of contact for Piranha. The team was based around the world to allow for 24/7 support and quick turnarounds.
- Linguists were selected based on their game specialism and native language, with testers also being knowledgeable gamers.
- Frontend/HUD UI Text Localisation: Piranha exported text from the Unreal Engine 4 editor into .XLSX files. The team imported these into our Translation management software – XTM – before assigning them to linguists. The source files were sent to Global Lingo in multiple batches over several months. Global Lingo returned the translated text via updated .XLSX files which could be easily imported back into Unreal Engine 4.
- Narrative Video Text: Piranha provided the video for reference and the script in Word format. Our Voice-over/subtitling studio provided us with an SRT file in English. This was uploaded on our centralised platform, XTM, translated, and delivered back in the same SRT format. Piranha took care of integrating the subtitles on their side.
- Localisation Quality Assurance: After integrating translated text into the game, Piranha provided game builds for Global Lingo. We used Linguistics Quality Assurance partners (natives) to test the builds and provide regular bug reports to Piranha. In addition, Global Lingo performed bug fixes and sent these back to Piranha via .XLSX files for integration into the game.
Benefit
Piranha was able to integrate high quality translations into their game, which passed our Localisation Quality Assurance in time for their launch date which coincided with their marketing campaign.
What Piranha Games have to say about us
“Global Lingo has been a pleasure to work with. The team was friendly, communicative, and amenable to working with our processes and tools as well as our tight production schedule.
They quickly became familiar with our largest game project yet, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, and achieved fast turnaround times on each batch of text we sent them for translation. They also understood our game’s LQA requirements better than competing vendors and prepared several detailed options for us to choose from.
With Global Lingo’s assistance, our game was available in 4 languages at launch and reaped the full benefits of our marketing campaign, which helped expand the game’s reach to non-English speaking audiences.”
Avtar Longiye, Project Manager
Click to download a PDF copy of this case study in detail.
We design comprehensive accounts of all our clients.
Looking for translation services?
Our global translation services help companies distribute content to other audiences across the world. Whether this is information in documents, web content, product or marketing campaigns, or audio-visual media, our team of experienced, industry-qualified translators offers an exceptional level of service.
Did you know?
Global Lingo has one of the largest pool of linguists in the industry. Everyone is a native speaker in the language they are translating into, and we can translate into and from 150+ languages. So, whatever your project, whatever the language, Global Lingo can help.