At last week's Game Developer Conference, Nintendo graciously provided us some time to talk to Eric Peterson of Nintendo of America's Treehouse localization division about upcoming potential juggernaut Wii Fit. We asked him both about the Balance Board's debut title and attempted to pry other information out of him as well.
N-Sider: Can you let us know a little bit about what you do at Nintendo and, for anyone not familiar with your name, a few of the titles you've worked on?
Eric Peterson, Associate Localization Producer, Treehouse: No problem. I work in Nintendo's Treehouse; we do localization for what tends to be Nintendo's first party stuff, but sometimes some other games as well. Generally, what that means is taking a lot of our first party games that are made in Japanese—usually at NCL, Kyoto, and maybe EAD Tokyo—and our really talented team of translators then translate them into English and I work as a creative writer; actually, my title is "Associate Localization Producer".
The writers in our group then take that text and re-write everything into the polished English you get in the final version of the game. Our goal is—we don't just do translation; what we do is taking a product and culturally localize it, we make it feel right for our market. Because, a lot of times, a joke or a cultural reference is really awesome for the Japanese market; [it] may not transpose to the US market, so we want to maintain the spirit of what they're doing, so that our people here get the same idea out of it that the original story intended.
N-Sider: How did you get hired at Nintendo?
Eric: Originally, I worked as a contractor for Nintendo Power for about six months... or maybe a year; I don't really remember. I ended up getting hired into the localization group; and at that time it was a pretty small group, a couple writers and a couple translators. Nate, Bill, Rich Amtower was there, Tim O'Leary, Reiko... but it was just a really small group, and I was blown away; people were really talented there and I've been there now about four years.
I've gotten the chance to work on some really awesome games over the years. The first game I worked on was Pikmin 2; which was an awesome writing opportunity, so much fun to work with. There's been a lot ranging from the Advance Wars games, Drill Dozer, Super Paper Mario, and Super Mario Galaxy. I've gotten to work on a number of titles. Wii Fit is what I'm currently working on right now; Phantom Hourglass is another game I worked on, there's been a lot of cool games.
N-Sider: What are the localization challenges for something like Wii Fit? How many writers work on it, and how much time does it take for a fitness game?
Eric: Right, well, there's a lot more challenges than it would look. On its surface it seems to be pretty straightforward localization and translation, but actually Wii Fit features a huge amount of voice work in it; as you want a lot of people to not only understand what's going on, but people won't always be looking at the screen through all of it. So, the voice work is actually very important for a game like this, and you also want the voice actor to feel encouraging, and you don't want people to be annoyed with it.
That's what we've been working on for a while now, and trying to get that done. The version we're showing today is actually the UK version, because our version—we're still working on it right now. The game's coming out May 19th, it's a really cool product.
N-Sider: What are the differences between the US and UK versions of Wii Fit?
Eric: They do a completely different localization, so their localization has a totally different team, they did completely different voice work, they have their own units of measure, it's localized for the individual market.
N-Sider: Are there any new products you're working on that you can tell us about?
Eric: No, not really, this has been pretty much my life right now, and when we work on projects we want to see them through right to the very end, so nothing on my plate to speak of just yet.
N-Sider: Can you let us know a little bit about what you do at Nintendo and, for anyone not familiar with your name, a few of the titles you've worked on?
Eric Peterson, Associate Localization Producer, Treehouse: No problem. I work in Nintendo's Treehouse; we do localization for what tends to be Nintendo's first party stuff, but sometimes some other games as well. Generally, what that means is taking a lot of our first party games that are made in Japanese—usually at NCL, Kyoto, and maybe EAD Tokyo—and our really talented team of translators then translate them into English and I work as a creative writer; actually, my title is "Associate Localization Producer".
Eric Peterson, Associate Localization Producer
The writers in our group then take that text and re-write everything into the polished English you get in the final version of the game. Our goal is—we don't just do translation; what we do is taking a product and culturally localize it, we make it feel right for our market. Because, a lot of times, a joke or a cultural reference is really awesome for the Japanese market; [it] may not transpose to the US market, so we want to maintain the spirit of what they're doing, so that our people here get the same idea out of it that the original story intended.
N-Sider: How did you get hired at Nintendo?
Eric: Originally, I worked as a contractor for Nintendo Power for about six months... or maybe a year; I don't really remember. I ended up getting hired into the localization group; and at that time it was a pretty small group, a couple writers and a couple translators. Nate, Bill, Rich Amtower was there, Tim O'Leary, Reiko... but it was just a really small group, and I was blown away; people were really talented there and I've been there now about four years.
I've gotten the chance to work on some really awesome games over the years. The first game I worked on was Pikmin 2; which was an awesome writing opportunity, so much fun to work with. There's been a lot ranging from the Advance Wars games, Drill Dozer, Super Paper Mario, and Super Mario Galaxy. I've gotten to work on a number of titles. Wii Fit is what I'm currently working on right now; Phantom Hourglass is another game I worked on, there's been a lot of cool games.
N-Sider: What are the localization challenges for something like Wii Fit? How many writers work on it, and how much time does it take for a fitness game?
Eric: Right, well, there's a lot more challenges than it would look. On its surface it seems to be pretty straightforward localization and translation, but actually Wii Fit features a huge amount of voice work in it; as you want a lot of people to not only understand what's going on, but people won't always be looking at the screen through all of it. So, the voice work is actually very important for a game like this, and you also want the voice actor to feel encouraging, and you don't want people to be annoyed with it.
That's what we've been working on for a while now, and trying to get that done. The version we're showing today is actually the UK version, because our version—we're still working on it right now. The game's coming out May 19th, it's a really cool product.
N-Sider: What are the differences between the US and UK versions of Wii Fit?
Eric: They do a completely different localization, so their localization has a totally different team, they did completely different voice work, they have their own units of measure, it's localized for the individual market.
N-Sider: Are there any new products you're working on that you can tell us about?
Eric: No, not really, this has been pretty much my life right now, and when we work on projects we want to see them through right to the very end, so nothing on my plate to speak of just yet.