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NEWS: Sega of America Lays Off 61 Employees in QA, Localization Departments

The Twitter account of the Allied Employees Guild Improving SEGA (AEGIS) revealed on Wednesday that Sega of America is outsourcing its quality assurance department and part of its localization departments, terminating several jobs as a result. The company will lay off 61 employees on March 8.

I take it that it is no coincidence, that this happened right after the release of a game with lots of dialogue and text was released.

Acurate translations, thoughtful localization, a dedicated QA team with the resources they need, and high quality voice acting - most of which feel like essential and universal "ingredients" for a great experience - tend to suffer if a big name company wants to save money. It's painfully obvious when these things have been neglected, outsourced, or entirely removed, but if people will buy the game regardless, companies have little incentive to spend their money. For a period of time, I naively thought that things were starting to get better. In reality, I'd been spoiled by playing several great games in a row, exceptions to the norm. Unfortunately, I don't expect things to change for the better... not unless it's a big name game with high expectations, or if big name companies can find a way to cheaply to do those things with AI technology (which leads to another conversation).

MarshalBanana wrote:

I take it that it is no coincidence, that this happened right after the release of a game with lots of dialogue and text was released.

Which game are you referring to?

MyMasterMatthew wrote:

Acurate translations, thoughtful localization, a dedicated QA team with the resources they need, and high quality voice acting - most of which feel like essential and universal "ingredients" for a great experience - tend to suffer if a big name company wants to save money. It's painfully obvious when these things have been neglected, outsourced, or entirely removed, but if people will buy the game regardless, companies have little incentive to spend their money. For a period of time, I naively thought that things were starting to get better. In reality, I'd been spoiled by playing several great games in a row, exceptions to the norm. Unfortunately, I don't expect things to change for the better... not unless it's a big name game with high expectations, or if big name companies can find a way to cheaply to do those things with AI technology (which leads to another conversation).

I feel SEGA's localizations tend to be hit or miss when when it comes to accuracy. I remember watching Korone play Sonic Frontiers and a lot of the Japanese script is much different than the American one, mainly the overall tone and also the lack of references to obscure American comic book Sonic characters. I assume that was because Ian Flynn wrote the English script. Yakuza has had a sordid history with localization. Lots of censorship and changes in the localization, and when that isn't happening, completely strange and random nonstarters popping up. No real idea how the Like a Dragon games are since I wasn't really a fan of them. Persona is probably the closest to being the most Japanese, but does get the occasional hit of censorship. Have not played Persona 3 Reload yet though so I can't judge that game's localization although they did replace the entire English voice cast with sound-a-likes so that's probably wasn't a popular choice with dub fans I imagine.

I take it that it is no coincidence, that this happened right after the release of a game with lots of dialogue and text was released.

As for the localization, outside of the hardcore "it must be a word for word translation!" types, there haven't been any negative reactions in years. The only games I even know of with poor localization were the original Yakuza 1 (which is a big reason the series never took off in popularity until streamers& youtubers started playing 4, 5, and 0), and probably the original release of 4 (though nowhere as bad as 1), both of which were fixed with Kiwami 1 and 4 Remaster.

CelticMutt wrote:

As for the localization, outside of the hardcore "it must be a word for word translation!" types, there haven't been any negative reactions in years. The only games I even know of with poor localization were the original Yakuza 1 (which is a big reason the series never took off in popularity until streamers& youtubers started playing 4, 5, and 0), and probably the original release of 4 (though nowhere as bad as 1), both of which were fixed with Kiwami 1 and 4 Remaster.

I thought it was the opposite. It was the original western release of 4 that had the better localization while it was the Remaster that removed a number of things like the dialog about rape and other sensitive topics that were in the Japanese audio but the English subtitles were changed to avoid mentioning it.

In general I thought the series never appealed to many western gamers because it was heavily rooted in Japanese culture. It had a Japanese sub only audio, and focused on things a lot of westerners probably wouldn't know. In general I recall the series being panned by critics often who called it sexist, racist, homophobic, and other things because of the content of the game. I also recall a lot of scorn about the inclusion of gravue idols which reviewers did not like and felt were objectifying as well as the depiction of women in the series in general, along with other minorities who were played as a joke like the overweight character Ulala or the various crossdressers you beat up which might be seen as offensive in America.

I'm not sure why the series became popular overseas in recent years. Perhaps people opened up more to Japanese culture and humor. Or perhaps the recent games were made with more western appeal in mind in other areas..

One line in a series does not make the entire localization of the series rampant with censorship.