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The Future of Game Licensing
Gamasutra has a writeup of an E3 event where representatives of some of the big publishers discussed the future of game licensing. Representatives from THQ, Viacom, and Marvel were there, among several others. From the article: "The perception of quality has also hit the publishers. Gioia noted that at THQ, the company has shifted to where one SKU can cost as much as 15 million dollars. 'Why would I do that unless you're dealing with a substantial license or an original IP?' She argues that you have to be narrowly focused on what will work for your target demographic; properties like The Godfather with mass-market capability are really quite rare. With that in mind, there are plenty of other game size opportunities out there for content producers looking at games; it doesn't have to be the AAA game that so many licensed games seem to be skewing towards."
makes me sick. The Godfather is a piece of art (whether a good or a bad one is another discussion) and culturally belongs to everybody; the fact that it "belongs" to someone in some narrow copyright sense is incidental.
Fortunately, over the next decades, technology will make the creation of movies and computer games no more difficult than typing out a story on a typewriter, and computer networks make publishing them essentially free. Lots of good content will be free, and the content that won't be free will cut out the kind of windbags that talk about "properties", "franchises", and "mass-market capabilities".
I personally welcome these big companies to licence and rehash the hell out of everything...Then the real gamers will support indie games. Just like the music and film industry, it's the unknowns who really come up with something new when all you get is crap from the mainstream.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I never understood this reasoning. If a game is good then it is good, it does not matter if the game developer made up the content or paid for it. The problem comes when the game sucks and is sold based just on the license or franchise. However, there are just as many bad games with original content then their are with licensed content.
The perception of quality has also hit the publishers. Gioia noted that at THQ, the company has shifted to where one SKU can cost as much as 15 million dollars. 'Why would I do that unless you're dealing with a substantial license or an original IP?'
Has anyone noticed the games industry has got slightly over obsessed with how big business it thinks it is?
It's like the claim they're bigger than the movie industry when, in fact, they only just beat box office sales and don't come close when comparing DVDs, Video, Rental, Cable and other distribution channels of the exact same product.
A single SKU can cost "as much as $15m"?! Woo. So what you're saying is that games are now comparable to small movies where the very cheap ones still go for a couple of million to around $20 million, the mid size ones around the $60m mark and the massive ones around the $100m mark.
Hollywood is somewhat discerning about licenses but only somewhat. For every Batman or Spiderman movie, there's going to be a Darkman, Phantom or Dick Tracey. If their budgets are even bigger still, how come they keep doing it?
Because they've got over themselves and stopped being impressed with how big they've got. Instead, they ask the simple question: Will what I invest in an IP allow me to recoup more at the end? If yes, they buy it, if no, they don't.
Just as in the movie industry, the games industry is going to discover:
The Spiderman IP is probably worth quite a few million. You can no doubt recoup that investment and more if you make a decent game.
The Darkman IP isn't ever going to add several million to what you recoup on the strength of the name alone. Thus it's not worth several million to buy in the IP. But the point is you don't buy in the IP for several million. You buy it in for several tens of thousands or whatever and it adds more than that amount to your otherwise anonymouse masked hero game.
Yes, games cost a lot and make a lot these days. But get over yourselves. You're still relative babies by the movie industry's standards. They still buy in the occasional small IP for a smaller title because it's still profitable. That's the only thing that counts. If you're so hyped up yet nervous about making a mistake that you've lost track of return - cost = profit, you really shouldn't be in the position to be making those decisions.
Someone give these pussies a hanky. I play video games because I like games. Not because I want to be part of some piece of shit movie. The whole reason I started playing games in the first place was to get away from this silver screen diarrhea. I think it's all summed up in one line:
developers should be focused on franchises, not games.
Yeah, I'm always like "man, I wish the developers focused a little less on this game, and a little more on 'the franchise'". These douchebags better keep working on polishing up their turds so that unsuspecting parents can continue to disappoint their children with licensed games.
Could you perhaps point out a few good indie games? Most of the 'indie games' that I've seen have been MUDs.
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