Localizing Brands and Licenses

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Regardless of our industry’s wealth of creativity and resourcefulness, a large part of the market is firmly held by strong IPs (Intellectual Proprieties) and/or franchises. We follow our favorite characters evolving from one episode to the next, very much like we do in movies.

This trend might get even stronger with increasing development costs: big studios and publishers are likely to continue banking on solid brands and licenses, thus minimizing risks. Moreover, they’ve been exploring movie by-products for quite a while, and this tendency also seems to be gaining momentum.

Localization follows naturally as it broadens markets and revenues. This article explores the different aspects of localizing video games based on licences and franchises, and aims at giving perspectives and tips to organize localization preparation and production.

The main parameter is IP ownership, as theoretically the owner has the final word on nearly everything. Game localizing is handled in different ways, whether dealing with you own the IP or not. There are quite a few factors and pitfalls that will strongly impact your work, whether your game is based on a license that is yours, the IP is new or well-established, or your game is tied to a movie release (a “movie tie-in” in localization lingo). If you don't own the IP, you might need to seek your licensor’s approval on different items, which obviously bears heavy consequences on your schedule.

1. Organization: They All Lie, Size Matters

If you're a small or medium-sized developer, your publisher might want to handle localization on its own, as it usually has the need and means to do so. In this case, your publisher will have a localization producer or coordinator work directly with you.

You should organize a kick-off meeting with the person who will be your main contact. You want to come up with a plan and a suitable workflow and timetable. In an ideal world, everyone leaves this meeting with a clear task breakdown, a list of all key people details, and a thorough calendar for deliverables (that specifies formats). Status meetings should be held regularly so as to anticipate and / or address issues in a timely fashion. Make sure to send minutes to all attendees to recap decisions.

Finally, you will need to appoint someone to coordinate with your publisher and make sure demands are met. On top of being a fairly good diplomat, this person must have a solid understanding of the whole production pipeline, be able to assess risks, raise red flags, and suggest workarounds. Associate producers or coordinators are usually the people assigned to deal with localization.

Your publisher might let you handle the localization process directly, but insist on contracting localization agencies or freelancers that have a good IP expertise, and with whom your publisher has a successful business relationship (not to mention service contracts). In this case, things need to be made clear early enough so that all parties know what their tasks and calendar are. Also, work cultures tend to be different from one country to another, so the more prepared you are for a little extra diplomacy the better.

Localization agencies usually offer translation, casting, recording and sometimes linguistic QA. Some offer one or two languages, others much more. Beware, though, that if you (or your publisher for that matter) hire one single agency to take care of all languages, it will be more expensive (unless you sign a yearly service contract), as subcontractors will be hired on their end (in particular, local recording studios and actors).

If you're a big developer (or publisher) with an in-house localization department, the logic is the same: have the right people at the right place with a clear breakdown of everyone's duties and unambiguous dependencies. If you're a publisher and you work with a small development company, make sure they understand exactly what they need to do (not everyone is a localization aficionado) and are staffed with enough experienced people; you don't want an intern to integrate and debug on-screen-text, unless you're on a suicide mission.

They must have proper tools and version-making documentation to create localized builds. Proximity also helps. If you've contracted a small developer to port one of your games on the other side of the world, send a few seniors from the original dev team for a short period of training. This will ultimately save a lot of time and headaches.

In either model, the developer is mainly responsible for extracting, formatting and delivering assets to translate and record, reintegrating localized assets once available, and debugging. While at the other end, publisher teams and / or subcontractor(s) handle translations (and any required updates) as well as audio production and linguistic testing (unless done in-house). It goes without saying that you must read your publishing contract carefully before anything happens; not just to clear responsibilities, but also to know who’s paying for what. If necessary, seek legal counsel so that things prone to misinterpretation are cleared for all parties.

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