Scott Miller (of Duke Nuke’m fame) recently re-iterated the value of creating and owning your IP (it’s one of his mantras). His reasons were all from the point of view of the developer, and were sound, although he’s a bit optimistic in how much negotiating power developers who aren’t 3D Realms have in the matter. Highlights:

Owning an IP…

  • Gives a studio clout and leverage.
  • The ability to better control their future.
  • Much better company value.
  • And a way to cash in on that value without having to sell the company.

This is in curious juxtaposition with Stuart Roch’s point of view. Stuart had recently read a snippet from David Jaffe’s blog. David was the Design Director for the recently released, bosom-heaving yet very excellent God of War. David let it slip in a throwaway comment that God of War has only sold 500K units so far, according to NPD. David’s quote:

-GOD OF WAR SALES: Can’t give out official numbers but the NPD (which gets posted on the net so it’s not official Sony numbers) is putting us close to half a million sold at full price. We’ll do better than that before we go to Greatest Hits. Not the amazing powerhouse I wanted it to be (I was hoping for a million before a price drop) BUT still really damn good. 500,000+ people playing a game I worked on…Man, that’s a good, good feeling….especiall y given how most games struggle to sell 200k these days.

This prompted Stuart’s response:

Maybe it’s just me, and I hate to rain of David’s parade, but I’m really bummed for him. I just can’t get on board with the excitement over sell through of 500,000 units of a game that has a stellar average Game Rankings score of 93%. The God of War team really deserved better. I know God of War was a PS2 exclusive, but this just goes to prove the point that original IP doesn’t sell anymore.

I’ll be the first to admit that GoW was a great game, and deserved better than 500K sales. But I still think that Stuart is being too pessimistic. IPs in our industry gain more value over iterations of the title, provided you continue to ship quality product. In contrast to movies, which tend to perform more poorly through increasingly shoddier sequels, games in a series tend to get more polished and perform better over iterations. Which is, incidentally, why every year is pronounced Year of the Sequel by PCGamer.

One reason sequels sell better is lower percieved risk for the consumer. I have, for example, loaned my copy of God of War to 3 other people so far, and my brother is waiting in line to be the fourth. All agree it’s a great game. When God of War 2 comes out, all of them are likely to pick up copies of their own, now that they feel confident that the game won’t be flushing cash down the toilet.

The great challenge for building IP is figuring out how to get the first one into people’s Playstations. The Sims, Halo, Warcraft and Age of Empires are not based off of any TV show or book franchise – they all started as ideas in some designers minds, and then grew into the monster properties they are today through careful nurturing and continued high attention to quality by studios who understood the damage that releasing a bad iteration could do. But such doesn’t happen right out of the gate.

Or as Scott Miller said in response to the question of why developers should want to own the IP:

If [the publishers] ask that dumbass question again, turn it right back at them: “Why do you want to own the IP?” Watch ‘em squirm.