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  "path": "/gamescom-latam-was-pretty-cool/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-05T15:46:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://whateverthewindbrings.com",
  "textContent": "When I was living in Portugal, the housing bubble never let me save enough money to go to Gamescom in Cologne, but now in Brazil, I'm living right in the city where the Latam version happens so, of course I had to take this chance and go. And man, what a cool event.\n\nI mean, I didn't play any games or anything like that, I was just walking around and chatting with people, mostly other translators I know from online chat groups, but I saw a lot of cool stuff and plenty of interesting indie titles. There was even a book publisher in a corner selling stuff I didn't even know existed in Brazil, and I ended up buying a 2-volume book about video game history and another one with a _very_ detailed walkthrough of Chrono Cross, all 3 in Portuguese.\n\nOn one of the days of the event, I met with a friend who knew someone who knew someone and suddenly I was inside the Phantom Blade exposition, which was awesome and, to be honest, one of the best exhibits there. I don't have any pictures, but everyone who saw it talked about it, and the line to play the game was always too long. The guy in charge told us about the game, the director's vision, and gave us a hardcover (!) booklet and a poster, which was pretty nice of him because these were the prizes that only people playing the game got.\n\nI also met a game translator/book publisher who gave me a copy of a book he published about a regulatory body of rules for video games in Brazil1. Super nice dude too, and the book will be very informative because I wasn't in Brazil when all of this was happening, so I don't have the complete picture of what was going on.\n\nThere was also a Sega exhibit with Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, a game I had a minor role during translation — and the person who managed the Brazilian Portuguese version is a personal friend and was with our group walking around! Very cool to see something you worked on being presented like that.\n\nOn the last day, I met a friend watching a talk on a stage about Dispatch, and at some point they mentioned the localization industry and Baldur's Gate 3, another game I had a minor role in translating. It feels somewhat surreal, to be honest, because a lot of the time, the work of a translator goes by unnoticed, but in Latin America, where only a small percentage of the population speaks English, it's so very important for accessibility and sales-boosting.\n\nAnyway, it was an awesome experience, and I really want to go to the one in Cologne someday. Not sure if I'll be able to this year, but maybe in the next one.\n\n* * *\n\n  1. Brazil has a troubled history with the legality of video games because they usually fell into categories like toys, electronics or software. With gambling being unbanned in the country some time ago, companies tried to market \"betting\" as a \"igaming\" (yeah, it doesn't make any sense) and some very smart and brave people went up to congress to fight that and create the regulations that deal exclusively with video games.↩\n\n\n",
  "title": "Gamescom Latam was pretty cool",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-05T15:50:12.187Z"
}