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The Pros and Cons of Licensing
It can be very frustrating dealing with opinions by committee, or with people who have never played a game before and don’t understand what is or is not feasible – to say nothing of what is or is not fun! Publishers will often bridge the gap with understanding but, as often as not, without budging: “It’s a silly idea… but they really have their hearts set on it, I think we should just go ahead…” This is something that any small developer should be wary of, lest they run their personnel and finances into the ground courtesy of a single glib remark. Get all abstract design ideas thrown at you as whittled down as possible before implementation, and be sure you have them all in writing. These things won’t make much difference if the powers that be have a change of heart two weeks before alpha, but at least you won’t look like you weren’t listening, or that you executed their idea poorly. Freedom to FailThere are few things more disappointing than working for nine months on a license that you’ve never heard of, only to have that property sink like a stone shortly after you publish - dragging your hard work down with it. This is a commonplace occurrence, but I’d happily argue the other side and suggest that there is reason to revel in obscurity, because if a title becomes wildly popular you will likely find yourself dreaming of the old days when you had the freedom to be daring. When AWE Games started working on the first SpongeBob SquarePants game, no one in the office had ever heard of the license. We were sent and watched every existing episode, and although we found them quite funny, I don’t think any of us thought the show would be successful. Because of the status of the license at the time, we were given free reign with it, and as a result, the development process went quite smoothly.
After the initial title was published we immediately started developing the second. That game was the most personally gratifying, because SpongeBob was just beginning to get popular, but the clamp from publishing had yet to come down on us. From the end of that title onward (we went on to make four more), an increasing amount of time was spent agonizing over model specifications and location approval and much less time on game design. So keep in mind there are worse things than obscurity. Namely, bureaucracy. The Publishing ConnectionThe link between a publisher and an independent developer has always been tenuous, but nowhere is that link more vulnerable than with a developer that deals in licensed titles. They are seen as pedestrian and easily replaceable, and while I wouldn’t exculpate the developers completely, much of this view stems from the nature of the projects themselves. Licensed titles are low-risk ventures that publishers use to offset high-risk original IP. For a publisher, these titles are money in the bank, and innovation is often seen as a liability. The budgets - and more importantly, the schedules - allow for little to no preproduction time, and this usually means the developer falls back on what they know best. This makes for a serviceable workhorse of an end product, but it is chiefly responsible for the middling reviews and general scorn heaped upon most licensed games, and it hardly makes a developer invaluable to anyone. It breeds the attitude that the publisher is doing you a favor by allowing you to work on such a well-known brand, and that you should be grateful for the opportunity. This is not conducive to morale and can easily become a vicious cycle. |
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