Worldwide Release

A worldwide release has advantages and drawbacks. Schedule-wise it's easier, since the movie is dubbed for all territories at the same time. Chances are assets will be ready on time for you to use them. But if you have a lot of languages (more than four), you need to arrange for more integration, testing and debugging resources.

Movie / Game Schedule Conflicts

They are a bit unavoidable unless everything has been secured when the deal was signed. Help your licensor understand your constraints. List all assets you need and build a consolidated schedule (movie vs. game production) to spot hot zones and raise flags.

Beware of post Christmas or post summer break movie releases: good vendors are hard to get during holidays. If European territories release in the fall, your licensor will wait for the summer to be over before dubbing the movie.

Also, you can’t always escape bank holidays. Some countries (especially Catholic countries) shut down totally for a couple of days once or twice a year (same for Japan in May): should you need them to open office for you, let them know in advance.

Linguistic QA

If you have more than one platform and four languages, and if you work on a tight schedule, use one single QA vendor to run linguistic testing (preferably one that is in your time zone). Some agencies are quite serious, and can do excellent work if well prepared. You will save a lot of time on build sending (your security protocols will suffer a lot less) and will receive feedback on all languages in a consistent way (and at the same time).

Too Much Food on the Plate

Check what's on your licensor’s line up for the coming year. If they have a huge title on the slate while you work on a minor license, you will need to struggle even more to get attention and feedback on time.

A Healthy Relationship

The approval process has to be crystal clear before you put together your localization schedule. Approval (even if parallel) must be taken into consideration (you need to know how long each step will take and how much time you’ll have to resubmit). You need buffer time to work around refusals.

Hold regular meetings with a detailed agenda. Always detail what you need, when and in which format (and of course why). Create an agenda template with columns for dates, formats, comments and responsible key persons.

Be smart and don't give your licensor ideas that will slow down your work if they're not already detailed in the contract. Ask for legal counsel if needed.

Hold your ground: explain why this particular correction can't be implemented at a very late stage. Demonstrate how it may jeopardize the release of the game.

If applicable, make sure your licensor checks a build that's been already debugged. That way you will avoid duplicates.

Sometimes, voices need special effects that are implemented by your licensor. Lucasarts usually have their in-house studio apply their SFX. It's a process that takes time and you want to secure delivery dates.

Your licensor might not be able to provide you with already subtitled clips that once reformatted to meet your platforms' specs you can just drop in. You will often need to subtitle clips yourself to accommodate different screen layouts and font sizes, which takes time. (They might want to approve the fonts…)

Plan C consists of selecting scenes that have no actual dialogues but only music and / or onomatopoeias but, again, it's not ideal marketing-wise, and will look a bit cheap.

Be careful also with other types of bonus material that will require some translation and dubbing: making-of's, interviews, deleted scenes, etc. You can choose to have different bonus material depending on the territories, but that will need to be specified in your submission documentation (and this will create more work for your data management team).

And of course, have your licensor confirm that all assets they provide you with (movie line translations, bonus clip voices) have been legally cleared for all territories: you don't want an adaptor or a voice director or actors to sue you. Last but not the least, they need to be credited (all of them).

Risk-Taking

Do not hand over a AAA project to a new vendor until he's proven he works well.

Have a good localization! Should you have any question or comment please feel free to write me.