Agenda

The Blizzard Localization team discusses how it utilizes AI to provide more people with a genuine "it feels like Blizzard" experience in their own language and where it intentionally keeps humans involved. The session is built around the human gate principle, connecting 3 production efforts with the measured upside of industry-benchmark, AI-assisted translation workflow with human post-editing to keep voice and terminology consistent while expanding language coverage; a "LLM-as-a-judge" agentic quality layer that catches cultural and terminology issues before human review; and an exploration of localized audio description that helps visually impaired players get a compelling experience in their language. The key to the success of each of the experiments is the careful control of the team to optimize validation as well as generation. The presenter discusses how the human-in-the-loop turns into a human gate that shapes the tools, grounded in industry standards such as ISO 18587, using real stories from the localization of World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. Attendees leave with a proven approach for deciding what to automate, what to review, and where humans matter most, that makes the experience reach players always feel authentically theirs.