Cheryl Platz, author of The Game Development Strategy Guide, is honored to share that her microtalk from the popular Spreadsheets Microtalks series is now available on the GDC Vault. Search for “Spreadsheets Microtalks” or “Cheryl Platz” to find the full talk if you have a Vault subscription.
You can view the slides for free without a Vault subscription.
What is localization?
If you’re new to game development, localization is the process by which you take the original language in which an app or game is written and use it to get translations for other languages. If you don’t design and build from the start with localization in mind, it can be VERY painful to reverse-engineer localization into your app or game later. Trust us – DON’T hard code your strings. Loading strings from a string table from the start allows you to sub out other string tables later when you’re ready to localize. It ALSO allows you to do fun magic tricks like this one.
What did the talk cover?
Cheryl briefly covered her background in video game localization before making a strong case to indie devs in particular for global-first thinking, and used the benefits of driving strings through Figma as a reason to build from a localization table instead of hard coded str4ings.
Bonus content
Want to see the videos of Cheryl’s localization magic trick? Check out the source videos in these unlisted links from the Ideaplatz account, exclusively available here on the Game Development Strategy Guide site.
The context: Cheryl has used a Google Sheet to create a list of localization IDs and strings – then assigned those Loc IDs as layer names – then used Google Sheets Sync, a Figma plugin, to map the locIDs to content.
