Our History
XLOC was founded in 2000 by Stephanie O’Malley Deming and Mason Deming, two gaming gurus with a long history in game localization. Stephanie and Mason had too often come into contact with the near-impossible task of shipping international SKUs simultaneously with the main SKU.
Both Stephanie and Mason recognized that when titles do not ship in all languages concurrently, there is an enormous loss of money in the global market. In their minds, the idea of finding a faster and cheaper way to produce timely, high-quality localizations was a priority. So it became their mission to develop a suite of software tools that would automate the time-consuming, error-prone mechanical processes of localization – saving significant time and money.
After years of experience in the gaming business, both Stephanie and Mason knew exactly what they were up against:
- An industry that puts localization efforts on the bottom of the priority list
- Developers who dislike being told how to work
- The demands of a fast-paced, ever-changing development environment
As technologists, they knew precisely what localization entailed: a way to let translations occur at the same time as main SKU development – a seemingly nightmarish scenario because translated assets would require re-integration on every delivery in order to test (for each and every language).
But what if it didn’t have to be a nightmare? What if there was a way to set up a standardized localization process that would bypass the error-laden, painstaking practice of cutting and pasting translations from a spreadsheet into the game assets over and over again? And what if it could be a process that could blend seamlessly with the way developers like to work?
Over the past nine years, Stephanie and Mason have poured their combined 45 years of localization expertise into XLOC, a set of software tools that, according to Mason: “Really does kick as much butt as we say it does. We have an infectious quality. Once you have done a managed localization, there is no going back.”
Changing the Way the Industry Thinks about Localization
XLOC makes it very easy to integrate localization into the development process alongside the project development team – as opposed to thinking of it as a mere (yet often frantic) after-thought. This is an important step forward for the international gaming industry. Not only does an integrated localization save game publishers an enormous amount of time and money (and headaches), it allows publishers to ship their international SKUs simultaneously with their main SKU and immediately cash in on the full potential of the global marketplace.
XLOC tools can either stand on their own, or be combined with XLOC’s consulting services to help clients simultaneously release games across multiple platforms and languages.
XLOC’s product facilitates the worldwide simultaneous release of titles on multiple platforms in multiple languages. This distribution scenario reduces the ever–growing grey market that emerges as titles have staggered geographical releases. The real–time nature of updates to the master files also reduce costs in development and translation, as well as possibility of human error – bringing the title to market on a faster timeline and allowing for the full benefit of release.
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