Employee Spotlight: Casper Kao, Localization Specialist

wargaming.com:

To be honest, I didn’t set out to be a localization specialist, let alone pursue a career in gaming localization. Everything began by accident, albeit, a bittersweet one. I started out as a journalist/translator.  At that time, I had a fancy job title, “blogger”, more than a decade ago, and spent roughly 5 years writing all kinds of articles on consumer electronics.

My team back then was one day dissolved out of the blue, and I was suddenly jobless. Panic aside, I began to work as a freelance translator, mostly on casual mobile games and even worked part-time for a newspaper focusing on military development worldwide. These seemingly unrelated experiences connected themselves, just like role-playing games, you pick up a certain skill every step of the way and BOOM! You have everything you need as a localization specialist, especially for the military-related genre.

I was lucky enough to join a project for a renowned publisher on a series of AAA games in Ireland, and after about a year, I found an opportunity in Wargaming.  I applied for the position and here I am. It’s quite amazing for me to look back on the whole process, from skill-building in writing and translation, to actually localizing a game before it even got released. Now I get to help keep a decade-old online game see a new life in this highly competitive genre. For me, the passage of growth is the most interesting aspect, regardless of where I end up professionally. That said, working by playing [games] is nonetheless the most interesting job one can ever take up as a career.

The pandemic hit everyone hard and fast. Many people were faced with retrenchment and struggled to keep their own jobs. I was more than lucky to find a new and exciting opportunity in