I saw this linked as part of another discussion and figured it was worth its own thread; it's a three-part series by a former game localiser that provides some perspective on why people in Pranger's position might feel the need to publicly discuss their work, why his dismissal was so swift and how disinformation spread by games press and fans affects both sides.
The entire thing is worth reading, but here are a few excepts:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chris-pranger-appeared-podcast-nintendo-fired-him-both-agness-kaku
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chri...ired-him-both-agness-kaku-6067647428721401856
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chri...ired-him-both-agness-kaku-6068436383205175296
The entire thing is worth reading, but here are a few excepts:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chris-pranger-appeared-podcast-nintendo-fired-him-both-agness-kaku
The video game sector is the winningest of the entertainment industries, growing exponentially in profits and people. Yet, I dont think Ive met any halfway-experienced game loc professional who wasnt anxious about long-term career prospects. Theyre not worried that the profession will disappear; they're worried that they have, into the product and into the ether. This sense of erasure, or at least obscuration, is justified. Unlike most other aspects of game development, hardly anyone understands what localizers do. Game loc is a bit like postmodernism; most people who bring it up dont actually know what it means. Its often described as game translation, a label which barely applies to those who do the writing and entirely fails to cover loc editors (who dont necessarily speak more than one language) or loc professionals who are in other tracks, such as programming, vendor relations, project management, and QA. What all these roles do share is a lack of guaranteed place in the credits. This isnt TV or the movies, where unions make sure everyone on the crew gets listed along with their job title. Of the 11 AAA titles I was the sole localizer on, I received credit on two (and those not as the localization writer). Of the over 40 others I worked on, I'm credited on just one. This is the norm; in fact, I count myself lucky that these two clients were generous enough to credit me. But I cant pretend that the lack wasnt a serious professional disadvantage when I branched out to other industries in 2000
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chri...ired-him-both-agness-kaku-6067647428721401856
As things currently stand, video game journalism is a failed state comprising pay-to-play coverage, gossip mills, news regurgitators, passion project sites, and actual game criticism. Unlike other parts of the entertainment press, it can be next to impossible to tell some of these apart. Further muddying the waters is the fact that these content sites sometimes serve as casting couches for game companies. Chris Pranger himself came to NoA not from games or language-related background, but from several years as a casual contributor to game podcasts and sites. Its little wonder he forgot that fan journalists are not his friends; theirs was the community he came from, and he felt safe talking shop with them.
The headlines that resulted from Prangers earnest, unremarkable statements ranged from factual:
to WTF-he-never-says-that:
to regurgitation without fact-checking:
to downright inflammatory:
Very few of these clickbait manufacturers know that setting fires, then sitting back with popcorn, is an international pastime in game journalism. The fake controversy they generated stateside attracted a notorious member of Japanese honyaku-kei gheha blog, or blogs that compile and translate game & hardware news. Ostensibly, bloggers like Mirai Maniacs use their command of English to make American and British game news available to the Japanese audience; in reality, what little language facility they have is far exceeded by their pyromania, and anything involving Nintendo brings them running.
Mirai is routinely referenced by the apex predators of akushitsu matome blogs (malicious digest blogs)Jin 115, Hachima Kiko, and Yaraonall of them widely read by people in the game industry. Within just 9 hours, the hatchet job begun on the other side of the Pacific was complete.
These cringe-inducing Japanese quotes may well be how decisionmakers at Nintendo Corporate first learned of Prangers appearance on Part-Time Gamers. Did Pranger or his supervisor make a full report to Corporate on how he had been misquoted, then mistranslated? I dont know. I suspect there was little time to mount a defense anyway; Pranger was fired just 8 days after the first US headlines. Having done forensic translation analyses for clients in public and private sectors, I know that proving mistranslation is hard. Proving intent, that's even harder.
Malice is like that; you know it when you see it, but always in peripheral vision.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chri...ired-him-both-agness-kaku-6068436383205175296
I cant decide, the stranger muses on Twitter, if I like Agness Kaku or if shes a big dumb bitch. I click the star and move on. Twelve years age when I first put my portfolio online, I was ordered to take it down by a game studio whose titles Id helped turn into international hits. I refused, citing the lack of an NDA between myself and the vendor, and spent the next month in a state of anxiety. That was the first time I paid for my visibility, but it wouldnt be the last; the devil at the crossroads collects regularly, and demands its payment in blood and gold.
Agness Kaku is a c*nt, But I want to impregnate her, goes a forum thread someone flags me on. Everyone knows you are an evil sociopath k*nt a cancer, reads the first line of an email that lands in my inbox; my filter didnt catch it because of the Krispy Kreme spelling. A couple years back, one of the aforementioned Japanese game sites ran a piece titled About the MGS Series Screenplays Being Slammed Sh*tless by Metal Gear Solid 2s Overseas Translator; inexplicably, the quotes falsely attributed to me were in male Japanese glazed thick with scorn, a xenophobes dream of an arrogant foreigner.
For all their wealth and power, game companies are strangely afraid.
The things in your interview, it was great to see someone say it, an in-house localizer says to me. Because I sure cant. The true opposite of erasure is authority, the recognized right to speak on an area of expertise. That sort of recognition affords protectionfrom egregious mischaracterization, precarious job security, and the myriad dangers of having a job that is ill-understood but strangely coveted. I finally withdrew from game localization altogether last year after a fan journalist I briefly met harassed me so intently that it played havoc with my email and bank accounts, frightened away clients and colleagues, and nearly put me in the hospital when I developed viral pneumonia from the strain.
That is, perhaps, the last bit of obvious truth I have to share: For all their wealth and power, game companies are strangely afraid. The game press frets that it has too little power, the consumers seethe that they have none, but too often, the tail wags the dog. When fake controversies of this kind erupt around a games professional, game companies often react with the panicked alacrity of a political candidate. Instead of finding a way to stand by the worker, salvage the situation, and learn from the incident, the companies distance themselves.
In the wake of Chris Pranger's firing, the chatter in the echo chamber (and perhaps conference rooms) quickly coalesced into a chorus: Its common sense not to talk about x / Just common sense not to talk about y / Everyone knows, it's common sense." But common sense first requires common ground. And in the game industry, the distance between companies and workers just seems to keep growing.