The third Game Global Summit was held this year in Lisbon, Portugal, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel on June 18-19, 2019. The conference hosted game localizers and testers from some of the biggest names in gaming.

The conference incorporated traditional sessions along with round tables and some hybrid discussions. It began by asking the attendees (developers, publishers, service providers and others) a couple of questions about where they work and what kind of games they like. When it comes to favorite games, Tetris came out first, with Mario Kart as a close second.

The first major session began with a panel of experts including Bjorn Holste from Square Enix, Robert Masella from Rare (Microsoft) and Matt Wilson from Sony Interactive Entertainment. The panel discussed the different ways that each of their teams implement automation in testing. One of the major topics in this panel was whether or not automation can entirely take over the task of testing.

Following the expert panel, there were a series of game-specific sessions and round tables where the speakers and attendees discussed many different topics together. Dinner was held at TodoMundo, a unique venue centered on art, food and music from Portuguese-speaking places around the world. After this, there was an after-party in the club portion of TodoMundo.

The second day had a heavier focus on strategy, including a panel on strategy as well as a session on global content strategy. Additionally, there were round tables discussing game localization followed by open sessions.

Conference speakers and attendees came from all different kinds of development companies ranging from big AAA creators to smaller web-based developers. The topics discussed varied from machine translation to content strategy and culturalization. Whether it was comparing development for touch screens vs. TV screens and how it affects workflows, or discussing the role of automation in the future of game testing, the attendees and speakers were able to leave the conference having discussed new insights.

Game Global Summit 4 will be held this fall in Silicon Valley.