Babel Media has rounded off an eventful year by sealing the biggest deal in its history.
The Hove-based company, one of the world's leading localisation and testing specialists for the games and interactive entertainment industries, has been chosen as the exclusive test-house for games publisher Infogrames Europe and will localise the entire range of the French company's original and re-published titles.
Earlier this year, Babel secured £1 million of venture capital funding for its expansion in Europe and the United States after bucking the trend in the slumping games industry.
Babel's first-ever contract was with Hasbro Interactive, which was acquired by Infogrames in 2000, and it has been working with Infogrames in the past six months on projects including the design and localisation of product web sites for Monopoly Tycoon and Grand Prix 3, viral campaigns for MX Rider and Splashdown and localisation of titles such as Sonic GBA and Test Drive Off Road. Infogrames had also been working with other testing companies in the UK and France after deciding to rationalise its testing facilities, which were previously in-house.
Babel managing director Algy Williams said: "This exclusive deal is very important because it enables us to plan for the long-term and gives more certainty to our recruitment plans.
"Although games publishing schedules are a moveable feast with games rarely on time and some games very late we will be working on every single title Infogrames Europe launches and that represents a lot of business."
Localisation is an important aspect of games development as publishers can make 75 per cent or more of their revenues from non-English language sales.
Mr Williams said: "Localising games is about far more than translation.
"We ensure games are properly designed for specific target markets, like making sure we remove the red blood from titles bound for Germany.
"We also go down to the level of making sure there are no sponsorship conflicts in things like football games.
"The whole process requires a knowledge of the games industry, the legal regulations in each market and a cultural awareness of the target markets."
He said Babel was benefiting from the changing composition of the games industry, which had increasingly turned to outsourcing as it grows bigger.
He said: "Outsourcing is a very big buzzword right now. If you consider what has happened in the games industry, you can see there has been a massive consolidation and a shift from a cottage industry to a major media player.
"The games industry is looking towards the film industry, which it has eclipsed in size, for ideas about how to run a business.
"Acquisition rampages can massively increase companies' fixed costs as existing departments overlap. Although support services like localisation are an integral part of the whole games development process, they can easily be outsourced and this makes business sense, especially because the games industry is so seasonal.
"Who wants to pay to have an army of linguists sitting around doing nothing when we can take of things for them?"
Mr Williams said the games industry was beginning to turn the corner after recent difficulties: "The games industry has gone through a prolonged slump over the past two years but the PlayStation 2 has an installed base of more than one million now and the recent launches of the Xbox and GameCube consoles are boosting business.
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