LocJAM 6 will be our tenth event in ten years, and we built a little bit of history along the way. For example, did you know that it all started with indie game legend Lucas Pope?
Well, unwittingly, at least at the start I (Alain Dellepiane) was creating a video tutorial and -to be free from NDAs- I used a flash game that was popular at the time: "Republia Times". It was a lot of fun to translate and many asked how to do it themselves, which gave me an idea
I had just become one of the chairs of the IGDA Localization SIG and the group was reeling from losing its main asset: a full day of talks at GDC called "Localization Summit". I felt a translation jam could revitalize things and, after getting approval from Lucas, took the plunge
It was an unexpected success, with 511 participants and workshops worldwide. Four editions followed, including one from Japanese. The highest honor was probably when the European Commission (!) invited us to discuss the project at one of their conferences!
Still, I called it quits in 2017. Having a localization jam is unusual today, but was almost incomprehensible a decade ago. So -despite the name- LocJAM was set up as a contest, with rules, jurors and prizes. In turn, this spurred on competition, which was exhausting to manage
In 2021, I rebooted the event around sharing and co-operation: -Fully independent: no IGDA o agencies -Pure jamming: no prizes or ranks -Minimal: based on Itch·io And built momentum through two smaller, adorable events http://itch.io/jam/locjam-rpg https://itch.io/jam/locjam-wmhd
Following that, we returned to videogames with LocJAM 5. Thanks to the maturity of HTML 5, we were able to have a full Lucas-Arts level point-and-click adventure playable online, including localized audio.
That created a good momentum, leading us to alternating smaller experimental events like LocJAM Made in Italy and larger ones like LocJAM 6.
And that brings us to today: sharing the joy of video-game translation, one event at a time. Open, free, independent and collaborative. For the tenth year in a row.
Have fun!