EA Locks Up Lord of the Rings IP

Gamasutra has the word that EA has the Lord of the Rings IP locked up through the end of next year. With the additional license for the books under their wing and no competition from Vivendi, they have big plans set for their next game inside the franchise world. "The announcement follows EA's previously announced The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, an open world RPG for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. However, with EA making plans for a new The Lord Of The Rings title, the fate of this project, once referred to as the cryptic Project Gray Company, remains uncertain. EA confirmed in early February that the game, while not canceled, had been put on hold." Relatedly, Game|Life notes that one million players will soon be traveling through Middle Earth as the open beta for Lord of the Rings Online gets underway. If you signed up to get in, you probably will. Update: 03/30 04:00 GMT by Z : The text referring to the White Council game was edited on the Gamasutra story, and here as well to reflect that.

Comments

Hobbit Crossing?

[tepples]

If it is before will destroying the ring be the ultimate quest? The game is based on the AI engine of The Sims 2. What we could be getting is the equivalent of a Sims expansion with hobbits.

Re:Hobbit Crossing?

[EchoD]

Using the Sims 2 AI, I'm wondering how they're going to make a game out of a bunch of Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits who piss on your floor because you decided to remove the bathroom door. Will they become retarded when they hear a smoke alarm-like noise? Awe, crap. Frodo starved to death because I forgot to tell him he should eat when he gets hungry.

...and

[Stanistani]

In a related story, the use of 'relatedly' in the summary caused English teachers worldwide to bleed from the eyes and randomly kill kittens.

Re:...and

[Friedrich Psitalon]

In point of fact, as an English teacher who owns two cats, I may have to purchase a machete on the way home this evening. /me wanders off muttering about "relatedly."

That's one million *invited*...

[SkeptAck]

Strictly speaking, "open beta" usually means all 6+ billion of us are "invited".

'Course, it is LotR, so that expectation might not be out of line.

I liked this, too: "the most complete and authentic massively multiplayer online (MMO) world based upon the famous Books of J.R.R. Tolkien."

Uhm... ok!

Clarification

[SkeptAck]

Gamasutra has the word that EA has the Lord of the Rings IP locked up through the end of next year.

That is, of course, with the exception of the LotR MMORPG mentioned in the article, which is being developed by Turbine, published in the US by Midway, and published in the UK by Codemasters.

Re:But did EA get dibs on

[the dark hero]

That would be one loooooooooooooooooong game. Its funny how the movies and the games never really give you a good sense on how long LotR actually is. They make it look like a walk in the park, but those hobbits went faaar from home.

Madden LOTR 2008

[faloi]

Now with swing by swing teleprompter markup!

Re:Madden LOTR 2008

[sharkey]

Eh, eh, eh, what you got to do is, you got to climb Mt. Doom and BOOM! you get the Sammath Naur! Now, if Frodo were Brett Favre, he would know you got to throw the One Ring into the Fire, cause that's how you melt it down!

Re:Isn't this news like 5 years old?

[Rob T Firefly]

The news is EA securing the exclusive rights to the films and books through 2008. Before, EA had the exclusive rights to the films, but couldn't use things from the books that were not in the films. Sierra was able to grab game rights to the books, without being allowed to use the material from the films, but still able to cash in on the renewed interest in all things LOTR.

Radagast

[Speare]

I think it makes perfect sense for them to use the Sims AI for a Middle Earth environment, especially around the behaviors of the Istari (wizards). For example, Gandalf can change his raiment whenever he wants to, in remote wilderness and underground situations, without a closet or seamstress in sight. Saruman can gab on and on and on about the same megolomanic topic, blindly ignoring how his friends are all getting annoyed with little red -- signs over their heads. Also, it takes several months for Radagast to walk *anywhere*, even when there's significant time pressure to deliver important news.

Re:But did EA get dibs on

[voice_of_all_reason]

Bilbo's Birthday Party to the start of the Quest was 17 years and it took the Hobbits about a year and a half to travelto mordor and back. (April 3018, when Gandalf arrived at Hobbiton until November 3rd, 3019, the Battle of Bywater).

Silmarilion takes place over about 5500 years. The first 4500 were before the awakening of the elves, 500 or so before the sundering of the Noldor, and then another 500 between days after the creation of the Sun and the Moon until Melkor was cast down.

Long time, so sayeth wikipedia.

Since people aren't going to RTFA...

[cspariah]

...it should probably be clarified here:

The license for the movies and the license for the books are two separate licenses.

In addition, the license for MMOs and the license for non-MMOs are two separate licenses.

So that's four licenses total. Vivendi had the licenses for the books, EA had the non-MMO license for the movies.

Additional detail, based on articles I've read on the topic:

EA has been churning out tons of games based on the movies since Fellowship hit theaters, and in 2005 they got the non-MMO license for the books as well. I'm not sure whether or not EA ever had the MMO license for the movies, but that license is not particularly valuable without the MMO license for the books as well. (You'd only be able to show things depicted in the films, NOTHING else.)

Turbine started developing the LOTRO MMO for Vivendi, this was when it was called Middle-Earth Online. Turbine eventually bought the license from Vivendi and re-branded the game as Lord of the Rings Online, they're self-publishing but Midway and Codemasters are handling distribution.

I imagine that Turbine must have investigated getting the MMO license for the movies as well, but I do not know if that ever happened. My understanding of these things is that if they went with that, they might have to rework all of their art assets to match the films, which would likely be a nightmarish PITA.

So now we've got EA with the non-MMO license for both the movies and the books. Turbine has the MMO license for the books. I have no clue who has the MMO license for the movies, not that it'd be valuable to anyone other than Turbine at this point.

Also please note that this is JUST the Lord of the Rings trilogy I'm talking about here. Silmarillion and The Hobbit are their own messy subjects.

submission quote is incorrect

[Edgewize]

This submission is omitting the fact that The White Council is no longer in production. I'm also not sure where it takes the Sims 2 AI line from, because that is not mentioned in the article at all.

The announcement follows EA's previously announced The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, an open world RPG for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. However, with EA making plans for a new The Lord Of The Rings title, the fate of this project, once referred to as the cryptic Project Gray Company, remains uncertain. EA confirmed in early February that the game, while not canceled, had been put on hold.