Another example is the movie title and the consequent movie tag line, i.e. Monsters Inc. - We Scare Because We Care (Disney / Pixar 2001). You need it for your game splash screen and on your box and docs.

You can't have approximate translations, you need the official ones; luckily enough, these are decided very early in production. In French it ended up being “Monstres et cie. Nous faisons peur et nous le faisons bien” (which is by the way a lot less funny).

A good way to keep track of needed assets is to provide your vendors with accurate information and help your licensor is to create (and regularly update) a compounded glossary. Your licensor will be grateful that you have compiled a list of assets for which they can then prioritize translation.

Figure 2: accent table for character families

Create a similar table for characters and location names, common lines, etc. (use one single Excel document with different tabs for categories). Keep the master version on a revision control system (Perforce works well) and update it regularly if necessary.

Of course, to put this glossary together, you need to cross-check the movie and the game scripts for similarities. This means you need an electronic copy of the movie script (you don't want to work on a hard copy), which is by and large very hard to get due to confidentiality reasons.

Figure 2

Use your charm and explain why you need it. People are a lot less suspicious when things are explained: promise the script won't be sent via email or posted on an FTP. A hard copy is usually available (mainly because your creative director and script writer need it for the game) but you won't be able to use your word processing search functions.

Voices:

You will either hire "soundalike" actors - also called a B cast (same voice range and if possible same type of acting) - or the actors that will be contracted to dub the movie in each country (again, that might be requested by your licensor and, as always, check who is actually paying for this).

To hire a B cast you obviously need to have solid information on the A cast, and most of the time the final choice is made far too late for game development. Negotiations with agents and actors are usually lengthy, whereas the actual dubbing can be wrapped up in ten days. By postponing the dubbing, your licensor post production department has more time to carefully cast, adapt the script and wait for the movie final cut and mix. Of course they need to have marketing material ready in advance (teasers and trailers) but voices are often temporary (in the same way music is).

To sum up: if movie post production has room for maneuver (it can start a few weeks before the movie releases), game recording has none. To combine marketing plans, a movie tie-in game must be on shelves two weeks prior to the movie release. For this to happen all game recordings (U.S. and localizations) must be done several months before the same date so that you can go through submission process, manufacturing and distribution (See Figure 3, next page).