IP Licensing for Games with Jay Powell | GduX.me

[Music] [Applause] talk about IP licensing and I'm like fast-forwarding through slides already trying to get to full screen the the reality of the industry now is that you just absolutely need to have whatever step up on the other company that you can get to get your game notice we've got like thousands of games getting launched every single year you know even more so on mobile but even just seeing console stuff your ability to stand out and draw users is just it's harder and harder every single year and so we talk to a lot of developers you know and I've been doing this for 20 years and what we always hear is discoverability you know what what's the biggest issue you have aside from funding what's everybody gets funding the next step is discoverability how do

we even get noticed so just real quick about me I came into the industry in the late 90s I have you know for better or worse than doing this for 20 years now I spent the first part of that as an agent you know I worked as a publisher I worked as a development and for the developer for the last 10 years run my own consulting firm and so we do everything from biz dev to high level mark being to licensing for a very wide variety of Studios you know not in studios but companies around the world developers publishers conferences service providers a lot of different companies over the years I've worked with Star Trek Garfield Disney you can you can read this stuff I've done a lot of licensing deals the will suffice it back so there is a lot and want to go through and I'm gonna East Coast and it's like near dinnertime here so I'm gonna make sure we do this this probably we're gonna go through preparation and

positioning identifying qualifying these partners you know preparing their materials you know what do you need to have ready when you start going out the deal structure in terms which is the you know the meeting for potatoes of all of this where everybody needs to know exactly what you know these are put in these contracts and what they don't I mean how you maintain that relationship because that's where we see more licensing deals go sideways between developers and IPS or publishers and IPS or you know all three together however it's in there is you have to realize a lot of times we as a game industry don't speak the same language as the licensing industry and so being able to maintain that relationship is super super important so when you're getting the preparation side the first thing that you're always going to need is a CRM a CRM stands for what is it customer resource management

basically it's a gigantic database the one you've always heard of is Salesforce but there are dozens of these things that are far more applicable to small studios so they're Sugar CRM there is nutshell that's what we use HubSpot has their own CRM now just go online and Google CRM for small business and you'll have a list of maybe I would pull me on the pop up just find the one that is most applicable to you you want to have a minimum space for a thousand contacts and that sounds really really big but you'll quickly fill it up our database has got 30,000 contexts in it I believe now you want to have a minimum of five users you want the ability to schedule tasks and events and that's mainly to help remind all of us to follow up with people the ability to enter notes on

accounts in context that's your basic requirements that you want you know before anything and everything else so when you're going and picking that CRM one keep in mind everyone in your company doesn't need to use it you know as long as the people who are out there talking to the licensing companies and doing the biz dev side of everything as long as they have access to it you're good you know it's not something that your lead artist your reprogram I'm nothing you don't give them access to it but I want to pay from bad access to your you've got to figure out once you've got that you're gonna start dumping contacts in it basically but before you do that as part of that preparation you need to understand what your goals are are you looking to create a game based around IP from the start you just

absolutely have to have it or have to have something like it and you want to go from there or is it something that you've got a game to alpha or beta stage and you realize it's missing a little something and so you want to add an IP to it you know to try to boost that visibility or the third scenario which we see a lot of is you've actually had a successful game on the market but now you want to go and create a new version we used to call them Rhys cans and I hate that phrase because a true reskin is just going in there and basically restating the characters in the background the story and all that stuff those games don't work don't try to do that you know you have to understand that even if you are adapting an existing game to a new IP to release a new version you have to go back in and do work on the design and well get a level slicer or wherever you have got to get back into the the bulk of that game to make it authentic to

that license otherwise everyone's just gonna see what it see it for what it is and you're just slapping an IP on it you're not really doing anything new so understand what your goals are when you're going out and talking to the licenses and the IP folks you want to understand what their goals are as well you know are they looking for something to be involved with from the early stages and really you know boost the engagement level of their users and their fans or are they looking for something that they can just smell you know their name on and make a bunch of money or are they looking at it as a marketing drop you know some raise not only engagement from their fans but awareness of the brand in general because there's different variations of all that each have their pros and their cons but you need to be aware of what their goals are as well so you know then you want to go and start you know assessing value here and that's

where you know it pays to be very critical of yourself to understand you know what your strengths are you know if you're coming in with no track record as a team and you may be you've got some leads that done you know new projects in the past ship but this is something completely new you need to understand that there's not a lot of value that you're intrinsically offering that IP the value that you're gonna offer that license or is money that's just the reality of if you're in a situation that I'll use you know Brock Utley for example you know they had a very successful game completely unbranded you know their own original IP and then when it got successful they started bringing things in like Batman and back to the future and a lot of these other licensing plays that you see in there their value to a license or was

completely different you know they had a lot of market share and eyeballs that they could bring to something and you know that's what they were that's what they were focused on and so you need to understand and be on again you've got to be honest for yourself where do you fall into that category and then you know factored that into everything so the next stage is determining risk and there's not ever going to be that perfect title that perfect deal you're always going to have red flags but what I tell folks is when those red flags start to look like a golf course and they're everywhere that's when you need to start being very very careful you know you have to understand the risks not only from the IP side but also from your side you know weed craft from

devolver earlier this year is a good example great game but simply because it dealt with marijuana you know the growing and the selling they lost out on a lot of let's say they lost out they missed some traditional media but actually distinct that it raised helped them in the end but you know if you're making a gory fighting game for example there's a lot of kid-friendly brands that aren't gonna be interested in working with you there is a very good reason all the Avengers all the Avenger movies and the Marvel movies except for Deadpool are rated pg-13 you know they want these exciting action pieces but they have to keep it okay for for kids to come see as well and so understanding where your game falls in potential risk for an IP holder is very important on

the flipside understanding the risks that come with that IP holder you need to be very well aware of so for example right now Kickstarter Kickstarter is having all this you know negative press around they're anti-union stance and did they or did they not fire people who were trying to build a union whether you can about that at all or you're on one side of that argument or the other makes no difference what you need to realize as a developer is Kickstarter is going to lose some of its install base and some of the people that are going to be contributing to it simply because of this situation not necessarily because they're in favor or against but just because of its not gonna have anything to do with you but you're gonna lose opportunities in there the same goes true for any IP out there SeaWorld is a big example you know I'm old I'm in my forties when I was growing

up everybody want to go to SeaWorld you went to Disney World you were to SeaWorld while you were down there or the greatest thing ever now after the whole blackfish thing and a lot of you know consumer awareness and you know stance on how they treated the animals or you know what have you in there not exactly a good brand to be associated with they're slowly closing down much slowly going out of business and so back in the late 90s opposed th you had a big old you know tycoon game SeaWorld tycoon you couldn't do that now you could do it but you're not going to get nearly the exposure and the benefit that you would get out of doing something more traditional or a completely different kind of of theme park attraction you have to understand and be ready for because sometimes stuff's going to come out of the blue but you need to be ready for and be aware of any problems that that IP may reflect back on your game

so beyond that we've got marketing versus licensing and that is key because that's two separate ways that you can come into the company you can either start by calling their marketing team or you can start by calling their licensing team licensing is gonna want you to give them money in some way shape or form it may not be money upfront but it may be money on the back end they're not interested in paying you to do anything they want you to pay them to use that IP marketing is the other side of that coin but you can go to the marketing side if they have a marketing budget that includes interactive you know content or partnerships and we just had Halloween and there's a bag of Sour Patch Kids upstairs that has crash bandicoot racing on it food is a great mood I'll say new but relatively new market for games because it's so easy to do things like

QR codes or you know cards you can drop in the side of a cereal box that have an access code that you can go download something the marketing team at a company is going to be interested in paying you to do something the licensing team is gonna be interested in you paying them to do something nine times out of ten if you're building a long term relationship with one of these companies you're gonna start out on a licensing time and this learn to move over to the marketing side they're gonna be occasions when that it's completely flipped on its head but generally that's gonna start out the more value that you show as a studio with your game and your track record and that people involved the more you're gonna be able to target the marketing side otherwise it's the licensing set and they you know underpin if you want to have your own IP or there's a lot of in factories involved like everything else in this industry well people ask me a question it's like well it depends that should be like the tagline of our company it depends so

you've got an idea of what you need you know you've got your CRM setup you've got you know you understand the risks involved jous you're ready to start looking and identifying who to work with which IPS are gonna be good for you and you need to do this don't ever ever get late laser focus on something and I've had clients do this they have a certain celebrity or brand in mind and they just absolutely get tunnel vision on it they don't look at anything else it's just like I have to have that particular IP and that's dangerous you simply because there's a lot of options out there some are going to be better for you than even the one that you're thinking some are going to be worse but you have to go out and do your research to find out you can't just say I'm making a basketball

game I have to have Stefan curry you know it's one of those you look at the bigger picture so the first thing I would recommend is join Lima Lima is the licensing International Marketing Association I may have just absolutely made that up but it is the licensing group that oversees and it's the big network of licensing agents and IPS on stuff globally the beauty about joining Lima and there's a cost to it but I don't know the number they don't have it on the website anymore you have to like send them an email to figure it out if you're going into doing licensing it's absolutely worth it because the minute you join you get access to their database and that's a digital database of everybody who is in the organization so you know y'all talking about Garfield before if you want to go in and you're like I've got this game it'll be

great for Garfield you can just type Garfield in their website and it'll pop you up the company's actually called Paul's PMP AWS but Paul's a pop-up with their contact information who's their licensing agent here's their email address sometimes even got their cell phone numbers in it you know it's absolutely key to being able to keep your options open when you're you know looking for an IP so once you've joined Lima and you have this big access you need to start doing you know your research into which one is going to be the best so we're something as a baseline called you know the social footprint and it's literally you add up their Twitter followers their Facebook followers Instagram if applicable if they can tell you how many people they have on an email newsletter if that helps too it's basically how many people they have access to if we said we're gonna release this news on social media how many was it going to hit so that

social footprint is key you need to make sure that the IP is appropriate for your audience this is stuff we got back to on the preparation side make sure it's appropriate for what you want to do once you start having conversations with them you know and it starts out you know a simple email introduction or maybe you can call call someone now I'll give you a lot a 50/50 chance of starting a good relationship like that because some people don't like it anymore I'm old school and it's still weird for me not to like just cold call somebody but I'd do it very rarely myself understand what their goals are have that conversation with them you know are there new things that they're going to release that they want to promote you know you know the main thing you want to figure out is do they really want to be a partner with you in this game or do they just want your money and both of

those types of companies exist we got a phone call last year from a company and they represented several Shh eighties and nineties action with the eyepiece big eyepiece I mean it's one of those that you instantly know the movies and you know you know who's involved with them but you know we said what are you looking for and they said you know quarter-million dollars I'm like okay so are you going to be doing anything to help promote the game social media you know outreach to your fans and then oh no no we're not gonna do anything the IP speaks for itself and this is what it's worth and it was a very short conversation because I was done talking at that point um you [Music] that's not the type of partner do you want to get involved with because they literally don't care about your game and all they want is that payment up front and then they're happy now I guarantee you if you do that deal and you make a

crappy game they're gonna be all over you and you know absolutely can't believe you did this to their IP but they're not interested in helping you promote it and that's what you need is an indie day of nine times out of ten it's almost less about the IP the more about how you can you know use that fan network and the engagement they have you know with that people passionate about that IP to help the discoverability of your game and if they're not going to do anything they're not going to be a good partner for you and you know librarian said if you'll have questions at any point just toss them into Trish I'm just gonna chair through this thing sorry all right so preparing your materials for outreach you know and this may happen before you

start doing a lot of that research it may start you know afterwards it just depends in you know how you go by doing the research if you just look up everything online but not recent coming after you were calling them I wanna be before it but anyway so we're gonna go through and these are all on separate slides so what they as licensed ORS are looking for you know what to put in your deck don't call never mind call them and then you create your system so what do they want you know and we sat down and before we did this lecture I went and called several friends of mine in the industry and I'm not gonna be naming them outright because I can't do that but I can't tell you that all the stats are gonna see in this next few slides are very recent and very real so licensed orders are going to want to see a quality studio or team and you know if you're insomniac and you know you're not owned by somebody will pretend that they're not it's a no-brainer they can

immediately see the work that you did oh you did the new spiderman game you know they can go back and say yes you're a team we want to work with based on your track record but a lot of times we don't have that ability so what you want to to show even if it's a brand-new team is that you've got the leads in place your lead producer your lead engineer your lead artist your lead designer you know the folks that are you know overseeing everything in the game they are a good fit they have a good track record in the industry they are somebody that this IP holder will trust you know with their license then they're going to look for a past track record of unit the games that are done either by your team or you know by the company in general if you've done a lot of strategy simulation games you're not going to get as warm of a response from somebody who's basically

looking to do a mobile endless-runner make sure that the work that you can show as your past efforts is something that is applicable to that IP and so if you want to make that very clear in your documentation you know it's like blue we can make an excellent racing game because here are the other racing games that we've done so you know that needs to be in there you want to show that you have the ability to take that game to market and what we mean is you know basically don't go in there and pitch them that you're gonna do a free-to-play unless runner if you don't have you know the money set aside to do user acquisitions or you haven't done user acquisitions before you know when you can go in and say you know we're going to bring this game to PC a console and here are the other PC and console games that we've done in the past or you know if you are pitching for a free-to-play game and you can say here are the other free-to-play games that we've actually

completed in the past and we brought these to market and you know here are the KPIs that go around with them then you know that's your better case scenario so you know one of the things one of my friends pointed out you don't have to show that vertical slice if you have a track record ten years ago that wasn't the case you know they wanted to see you know what the game looked like before they did anything now because games have become so you know embedded in society basically and virtually everyone is a game or even though they don't want to admit it you have executives of these companies that have a little more experience in the industry and they can say okay you know I understand what you're saying you're gonna take a Mario Kart game and you're gonna put our IPA characters in it and they get it this will still always depend on how forward-thinking that IP

holder is as a general rule the older the industry and I'm thinking books and movies in particular the harder time you'll have with this there are you know folks in those industries who are forward-thinking I've worked for them I have good friends in both of them but at the same time you will still run into those executives that have been you know doing movies at this movie studio for 50 years and they didn't need games 30 years ago they don't need a mouth that mentality still very much exists if you go to the licensing show in Vegas or they do one in London you will then not everyone but you will go to meetings and walk up the stands and introduce what you do and get this like glazed look in their face because they're not exactly sure how that fits into what they're doing that's changed a lot in the last five or ten years but it's still not

completely pervasive and I mean we don't even see this at all publishers sometimes I mean you get publisher executives you get licensing executives who are gamers and so you have to absolutely boil it down to the lowest common denominator but your opportunity is much better you know nowadays that you can show something to someone and it doesn't necessarily have to be already brie skinned to what their IP is they're gonna get it you can explain it without having to show them a whole bunch of of gameplay so when you're building that deck what do you put in it you need to have you know typically I don't like to send out decks that are more than 10 to 15 pages 10 to 15 slots wouldn't you get past that you start getting a whole lot of you know glazed-over effect from executives they're like oh god there's like 15 more slides of this thing I

don't want to keep clicking but you know you want to keep everything as short as possible so you know a game description you know outline genre just like this game but this difference you know the back story how it's gonna apply to you know what their IP is but keep it brief the shortname prescription is where you break it down into one sentence my my example was always you know Rainbow six for so many years because that was like the first one that I saw that really got it but now that IP is like so evolved I'm not real sure how that's new anymore but back in the day you know when we first sat down on the cell Rainbow six coming out of wrist alarm we're like okay it's a shooter so what little like it's a shooter but and then they tab over they show you that you know strategy side or where you figure out where you're gonna break into windows and doors and everything just like oh my god there's a whole tactical element to it it's that you know you want to be able to say my name is doom but with

tactics or my game is Mario Kart but with ships instead of you know cars take whatever is known put a twist on it and that's where you end up outlined your key game features and I'm gonna say the unique selling points as well even though you won't that are two different slots because it's absolutely essential to know what's a key game feature and what's a unique selling point so look at fortnight shame feature it's a battle royale you know you can pick your skins you can pick your weapons you jumped on an island you fight to the center the last person alive wins those are the features the unique selling point is oh yeah and you can build your own structures know and understand the difference between a feature and a unique selling point having multiplayer

is not a unique selling point being able to change and customize your character is not a unique selling point now if you have complete 3d morphing technology and can you know grow horns out of somebody's head that are completely different than the you know more than just like clicking the next tab and saying oh I like horns too on this character that could be a unique selling point but unique selling points are just that they're unique and I know in this industry it's extremely hard to say we have something less completely unique but if you think about it and if your game is set up well it's been thought out from the get-go you're gonna have one or you're gonna have one that this is a feature that very few games bring in your best-case scenario is this is a feature that you're familiar with from another genre but we've applied it to this genre so you know think about that you want your features in there you want your unique selling points break down

the platforms you a PC console mobile this is where you put in your your pricing model as well because you know free-to-play versus premium is a big deal for licenses because a free-to-play game is gonna get their IP in front of more people a premium game is going to get it engaged with more you know so you want to make sure that you've got not only the platforms that you're targeting but your financial model on that slot as well when's your release date that had to be specific you know you can even say like later half of 2020 nobody at this level is looking for you know the fact that you're gonna release it on September 12 the overview of the studio you know and if the studio's new say you're new we are a brand new studio comprised of veterans from boom the next slot team buyers but you know outline on the studio slide how big your team is how

many projects that burn to produced if the studio has a track record and the location of the company and the location location can still be big you do have companies especially out in LA or up in New York that want to work you know very closely with somebody but it's not nearly as important as it used to be and at the same time not having a set office not having everybody in one general location used to be like the Deathstroke for you know licensing deals and a lot of publishing deals to honestly but these days everyone is very accustomed to okay look we have this first team you know not everybody's in the same place and they're fine with that but just outline the general location or at least the location of their primary point of conduct so then your team buyers and again you don't necessarily have to have everybody in there I would recommend not having

everybody in there to be honest because then it's just gonna add slides on slides on slides if you don't want us to click through what people care about are the executive team and your team leach that's all you gotta worry about everybody else is wonderful we want you to be part of the team but in the initial deck don't put them in there because it's just more stuff for that person to click third a list of past titles from the studio obviously focus on the ones that were very successful but I also focus on the ones even if they weren't as successful but we're more applicable to what you're doing for this particular project so if your studio has been around for five or ten years and lately you've been doing a lot of you know first-person shooters hardcore titles but you have a track record two or three years ago I'm doing kids platformer games put that in there mention it even though you haven't been doing it recently it at least shows you still understand how and what's

important screenshots concept render sketches you know it depends on what stage everything's at but you want to have some of them in there you know showing different settings don't put you know five different slides that all show different concept art for different characters you want a variety of things in their backgrounds characters different colors you know what's the user interface looked like the more variety you can put in there it's possible but don't again don't stack 20 of these things in there finally your company logo and the list of awards or other industry recognition and if you don't have it that's founds like end of the day like I said the whole point of this is licensing has changed a lot you don't have to be ten years fifteen years into a studio to be able to go out and get these things

so right now we're going to get into the fun stuff you know here's what deal structures look like terms that sort of stuff these are the major terms that you're gonna see you know in an agreement what's the minimum guarantee advance versus flat fee so a couple of things to keep in mind a minimum guaranteed doesn't necessarily mean it's all do before the game ships it means you're guaranteeing them over the course of one year or two years this is how much money they're gonna see but you don't necessarily have to give that up day one in advance is going to be just that we're gonna give you an advance on the royalties that we intend to generate for you through our games and that in advance is generally due obviously before the game starts mg's and advances are usually associated with some sort of back-end loyalty a flat fee deal isn't and a flat fee deal

can be very good for you or it can it can be bad and I'm not like an election hall so I can't ask you to raise your hands but the issue with The Witcher if you followed that earlier when CD Projekt first license those books from the author he didn't think anything of it it games weren't that big a deal and they worked on a flat fee deal and of course CD Projekt wasn't nearly as big as they are now and they didn't have that success yet that they were about to show but then you know eight years later the dude tries to turn around and Sue them because they've made billions off of those books and he's not seeing any evidence when he's not seeing any of it because he agreed to a flat fee deal I mean that's just that's the reality sometimes you know it's gonna work out for you sometimes it won't if you're going and you're doing something and a

social casino game is the primary example here you know one game where you've got a whole lot of IPs in it your best to start doing flat fee deals because it makes royalty reporting a nightmare and if you've got something that's going to be you truly anticipate is going to be a long term you know revenue provider for you a flood feed deal is better it's gonna save any money the downside of it is you absolutely have to know what your revenue projections are before you can do that where you may grossly over pay for something and never see that money back again so anyway these are gonna range from you know literally nothing up to maybe a quarter million a year you know anything beyond a quarter million a year you best be doing Star Wars or something along those lines because that's a lot of money to get you know tapped in their loyalties so

loyalties can vary dramatically or an IP though you shouldn't be paying more than 20% it's gonna go up or down depending on the IP itself how savvy the agent is with the industry you know the particular situation that you're in you know minimum guarantees that advances always affect little T's because the reality is the more money you give them a front the less-than won't on the back end but you can get very you know good IPS for as low as 7% but go ahead and factor in your head it could go up 20% just you know to be safe if it goes beyond 20% you either have an extenuating circumstance where you have absolutely no leverage at all on you know the negotiation or it's not a good deal bottom line your term two years plus or

minus going beyond two years you need to make sure that it's something that you want to be involved with for that long because you especially look at the point TV or you know nowadays a lot of sharing networks you don't know how long that show's gonna be around maybe we see shows cancelled midseason so and we'll talk more about TV shows a little bit but most of these IP deals are gonna be for one year and then they'll have continuation clauses in the contract two years is about as far as I would push it unless you've worked with the studio or this IP a lot in the past and you're super comfortable with them so there's a section of the contract it's called grant of licensing will grant of license and it basically boils down to don't pay what you don't need all of these numbers that we're talking about with the royalties and the minimum guarantees get drastically affected by this clause likeness rights are anything that

includes a celebrity's face or their voice music rights are obviously you know the music so you can literally go out and do a a kiss game and never use the music from you know the band and you'll actually save a little bit of money in there because you don't have to go and you know get those rights separately again with a lot of these social casino games you see a lot of the licensing is done without the license rights because let's say if you're doing a Top Gun you know any kind of game you can show what Top Gun is was just their logo a picture of an f-14 you know a lot of these things in there the iconography basically that lets you know it's a Top Gun game or if it's a simulator you can

still get away with doing it without having Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer's faces the all over because the minute you do that you're rates go up your advance goes up your royalties go up the amount of time let's go take get things approved goes up if you don't need that celebrities face or voice don't pay for about one territory again only what you need if you if there's no difference in giving you no cost difference you're getting the whole world versus you know North America and Europe for example then yeah go ahead get the whole world but you will have cases where you know celebrities are extremely popular in other countries so the classic example for all of us old people is David Hasselhoff here in the US David Hasselhoff is known as the guy

behind Knight Rider and the gal Baywatch I'm really showing my age when I say he was the guy on Knight Rider but the that Saint David Hasselhoff is a completely different thing in Germany he's a huge music star and so if you're doing a game on Baywatch you need to be careful unless you pay for the German rights because the German grant of licenses on David Hasselhoff's likeness is going to go through the roof in Germany versus what it is over here so you know be wary of that you know don't go and pay extra for territories that you may not need I mean your game may not even be a fit for some territories so don't go you know spending money and paying for for what you don't need at the end of the day approvals and this is just beyond important because this can absolutely destroy your game truthfully as a developer you should always have a clause in the contract that sets strict timelines for approvals with the

publisher you know we're going to send you this bill and you're gonna have a week to review it and then you need to send us detailed feedback and we're gonna have a week to fix it all right even in that case scenario you're talking a minimum two possibly three weeks before your milestone is submitted and when it's approved and then if you have another 30-day approval payment from the publisher you base please submit a milestone day warn you Pedro de 60 the same is true for IP approvals I mean they're not paying you like the publishers paying your milestone but you need to have very very strict timelines in there for their approvals because you're gonna have to go through far more hoops and and you know get green-lighted from more people with an IP then you necessarily are with a publisher you know if the studio you're doing a movie game and the studio has to like go through and look at it on

their side and then they have to send it to Tom Cruise's agent for him to something to look at you're talking about fluctuating your production or schedule by months not weeks so you need to be very very clear on how long it's gonna take to get an approval what their response is gonna be how we submissions go all of that sort of stuff and your producer needs to be keenly aware of that as well so they can you know focus that in figure that into their or you know production schedule payments and reporting quarterly if possible it just makes life easier you know if you only have to send for royalty reports a year not twelve more and more because of digital distribution we're seeing monthly you know payment reporting we're all see reporting that's just the reality of it if you can get it done quarterly do it but just beware you may

need to do it monthly trademarks and branding yeah make sure you know what you can and can't use we've done a lot of work with National Geographic I know the folks over at the Smithsonian will talk about how I managed to piss off this month's about yeah the Smithsonian one day I paid me with a lot of these brands you know that logo is extremely important you know that yellow border from National Geographic is sacred the Sunburst from the Smithsonian is sacred you need to understand exactly what you can use and what you use and understand the terminology under which you can use them but also you need to make sure that they're using your logo as well so if they're promoting this game somewhere they need to say you know this is a game based on national Geographics whatever it may be and it

was developed by your company yeah here we're talking about what I didn't listen to siding so you had to be very careful about announcements even in the Bay of social especially in the world of social media now make sure that whatever you say has approval use their PR team strategically as well and that you want to make sure and this is like one of the very easy gives from a lot of these you know IP they're gonna be more than happy to mention the game on social media because that's a very low impact you know job for them wearing it's expensive as if you want them to start doing commercials and you know where they have to get a whole lot of people involved you know the reality is a lot of our discoverability in games comes from social media so it's a huge bonus to go in and get their social media team engaged and you want to make sure you do

it on your side be careful so what I did to piss off the Smithsonian I sent a newsletter out because the studio that I was working with was going to sorry about that was going to be working with them to create a game potentially and but I used the word partnered which was the big mistake it's one thing to say hey look we're going to you know start working on finding some teams to do some games with the Smithsonian it's another thing completely to say we are partnered with the Smithsonian to do new games and that's what resulted in a very angry phone call to me from the head of licensing Penn Smithsonian and we worked it out and I explained what I did why I did it you know she explained why that was really bad that I apologized a lot but if you aren't very careful with what you say when you say and how you say it you

can do serious damage to your relationship with that company so just be able to say son get everything approved say hey look we're gonna do the social media post is that cool and then do it after they say it's cool don't go for it so their commitments and this needs to be very comprehensive because like I said there are a lot of times in the industry where we as the game side of the world don't speak the same language as you know license holders and IP companies so you want to be absolutely very comprehensive you don't want a lot on them that says you know IP hole promises to do social media way too vague you want I P Holder is going to do for Facebook posts a week to Instagram post six tweets that just made those numbers up I'll thump my head don't use them as any kind of factual anything but that's what you want to say this is

exactly how much you're going to do weekly monthly whatever you want to cover that you know through all the stages of cooperation that you're gonna be doing it you know this is where you say you're gonna put our logo in there wherever your logo is present all of the stuff but the key is be very very very specific on what you expect because otherwise you can't go back to the masae well you didn't help us promote the game over there like when we tweet about it at four times so I don't know what you wanted you just need to be clear from the hiccups water break I insurance and this is something that a lot of companies don't realize they don't expect you'll see it referred to from the license holders as you know insurance it stands for errors and omissions it basically means if you draw Mickey's ears red and somebody Sue's you for it

that's the issuer's that covers it when I work with Nickelodeon years ago we got a big document of all the things that we could not make Dora do which just wanted us to make Dorit do them because it was hilarious but anyway you can't do that if we had done stuff like that we would have been sued and that would have been bad but it's being sued from the this doesn't protect you from being sued by the partner it protects you from them being sued by somebody else so you're always going to be you know Insurance heirs of emissions for at least a million dollars there are companies that are starting to look at to 510 million dollars but generally if you get that contract back and they say you know insurace you go oh what have all ready gotten for a million dollars nine times out of ten they won't make you go and read up it you know increase it they'll go okay because at least you thought about it at least you have it oh and

then I change the font so termination make sure your deal can't be canceled for any reason because that's a very good way to just get left out to dry you know there needs to be causes in here that say it can only be canceled for calls which means you screwed something up or they screwed something up and then you get a sell-off period sell-off periods were more applicable back in the days of Bosch profit because you would literally have product out there in the market that you couldn't you couldn't edit it change it you know it had to be you know sold basically but now it gives you a chance to you know if you have a month or two of sell-off in there it lets you continue to get revenue from that for a month or two so you can get whatever his next line up but the main thing is make sure they can't cancel that deal you know quote-unquote for any reasons

so tips roadmap of the deal and then we're gonna get into maintaining the relationship and Brandon if I'm getting along here tell me because I don't even know what time we started and I'm just rambling on so just on the general level new and unmov'd unproven movies or IP can be acquired cheaper this is called gambling you don't know that that's gonna be a huge success the reality is neither does the movie studio television studio Tony student toy company whoever no one knows it's gonna be a huge success so you can generally get it cheaper because everybody's just kind of hoping for the best an advance on a movie is going to like we said earlier it depends on how forward-thinking bush you know studios are on what school companies are gonna want more money up front more forward-thinking studios you know

they're more interested in the back end because they understand more about how games work nowadays another thing to keep in mind is you know older titles that still have a lot of popularity that cult classic type thing or even games me movies that are just still popular you look at Lego dimensions and great and they were targeting it much of a parent you know us as parents or buy stuff and their kids but you know good licenses from Back to the Future do nice and the original Ghostbusters you know things that kids today may not necessarily recognize but as the people who are paying for these things you know do realize so always look at back catalogue as well as current stuff the bag hem log can be a little cheaper have a little easier to predict but that movie studio is always going to be interested in giving you to you know do stuff for the latest movie if you're approached or

you're talking to a studio that you know is two or three months from releasing a movie they don't have a game setup for it that's a giant red flag bring these Studios know now that they need to get games in one way shape or another set up for their major launches if they don't try to find out why because that's generally not a good idea you can get lower rates for emerging tech you know voice assistant games you can go out and get absolute triple a top property we top-tier IP now for very little on voice assistant games because no one really knows how it's going to work no one knows how much money they're gonna make on it and especially the more forward-thinking studios are gonna be more likely to go yeah you know what you don't need an advance on this give them a thermal LLC because they want to see how it works to you know if it's that simple so um if you're looking at TV series make sure it has at least

multiple seasons and you want to make sure that they've got a commitment for another one or two and I've had this happen a lot you know IP and licensing companies come to us that like hey we really want you to do a game based on this series I'm like did they get cancelled last year like well yeah but it still has a lot of fans yeah but there's no new content you know and so in today's world of lie mops and you know ongoing content post launch all the stuff you need to make sure that there's a good you know long tail of content you can pull from if you're talking about something like supernatural that yeah it's been cancelled but it also had like 15 seasons of content you got a little more you know leeway there but you know shows that didn't make it more than 2 years and got canceled would be very very very very careful yeah and then finally get creative we're a creative industry there are people that think of way course to do with games than I do I'm not gonna say this

is what you need to do use your head think outside of the box use QR codes on you know food products and tall ways to unlock things they are is finally actually being recognized by the greater community thanks Pokemon it's been around for 10 years but you know now it's popular but you know use use those creative assets you've gotten your studio to really think outside the box the more you can do that and the more you can show that IP holder that you're thinking ahead you've got this idea that this is really gonna pay off the better off it's gonna be you know in terms of you getting a deal I'm getting a deal that is good basically so the research phase so this is the typical road maps give you an idea of how long these things take and and I've had this entire road map take two weeks I've had it take six

months so there's no real rhyme or reason to it generally a safe assumption is three months from the point in which you start reaching out to the IP holder in terms of getting everything negotiated get everything side get your research done get a deal on the table and start moving forward Figg your three months it can't be less it can't be more so a research phase this is where you're using that CRM or spreadsheet if you just do it that way to track and qualify folks then you've got your outreach phase where you're going and you know you're talking to different studios and different IPS and do this do not get like I said don't get tunnel vision you know you start talking to folks and you know getting to understand what they want and what they need and a good feel for the IP basically then you're gonna be outlining your deal terms that you're gonna be creating an LOI don't make it lol oh as

a letter of intent it's basically the deal you do before you do the contract it outlines the major points in the agreement and it's typically going to be the ones we just covered one page is usually enough two pages at most if you have an LOI that is more than two pages you basically doing a contract and the contract stage you know that can take two weeks to literally six months you know it's not necessarily because people are going back and forth on deal terms the more likely reason is attorneys and you know approvals internally you ooh there's so many the bigger the IP the bigger the company the more people life sign off on it and it takes time and so you know like I said I've got these things done in a matter of weeks before but yeah we had one that a deal that took six months and it wasn't somebody like Marvel that we were trying

to do it with you know it was a mid tier entertainment company and it six months so you know then you got your live phase you know what it's starting to wash when it launches you've got to if you've got multiple IPS you need to be constantly looking for new people you gotta you know manage the one that you've got if you're KP on start coming in and your user base is enjoying something far more than you thought they were gonna do you need to be able to pivot but you know this is the point where the communication is key between your team their team PR you know marketing on both sides to make sure everybody is on the same path and you know everybody's lined up you know with the same objectives here I've been reporting you know and that's that's basically the gist of it you know when you're sending royalty reports and all that sort of stuff this is the best I can give you all maintaining relationship plan ahead hope

for the best prepare for the worst and be honest you know that's the you know the biggest thing if you're seeing a hurdle come up let them know don't spring surprises on you know IP owners they don't understand all the time what it means when you know the game didn't launch in q3 because Nintendo didn't approve it that's not something they're used to you know you have to have a very honest very open line of communication you know you know with these things and be ready to explain things you know so we had a client at one time and we were doing a city builder type title and we said the concept are over and they just exploded you this is a complete trash you have to do it all over again I mean just absolutely we were like what is going on here and

so when we had the conversation we're like what don't you like about this well the colors are completely not our clients colors it's like well this is concept art this is not final product if we need to change the colors that's fairly simple if you're talking about you know you have issues with the architecture or the you know somatic elements in the art that's something different we need to change the codes we can change colors but you need to be able to have that conversation and set those expectations of you know we're going to send you concept art this is what you should be expecting it is not final art it is not a playable demo it is not anything oh then concept are you really have to keep in mind that the person that you're dealing with on the other side of this deal may not be as well-versed in our industry and how we do things as you are so don't assume knowledge you know don't talk down to them either but you know have that

conversation get a good feeling of how much experience they have on games and then make sure you're managing expectations that you're being honest you know throughout the whole thing so yes we can go into lessons learn Brandon if you're still there we can do questions that's the deck along you know the next one is just resources we have for developers so I'll leave that up there in the meantime but questions yes and thank you for that man that is a department that I feel most game developers need to learn about as we are kind of I think a passion project and it's something that I actually share a lot with developers out there where when we do have the financing or the time and the guts to go out there and kind of venture on your own the one thing that developers I feel like they fall in to a lot is that now

that they have the budget that go out there and do the dream project and just pretty much pray until it comes out right but like this subject in particular are the types of avenues I feel like developers should look into to kind of learn business and be able to find sustainability and earned the right and and everything to kind of venture off on their own so this is very eye-opening I'm gonna review this myself slide by slide because I think a lot of people got a lot of it through watching your presentation there is a question here I would like to ask this is on behalf of HDI Andrew from our twitch community and anybody that is watching we are pulling questions primarily from twitch but I will be looking at Facebook Twitter wherever you are feel free to ask those questions

directly to Jay here while we have them this question is would also love to hear your thoughts on approval clauses we always try to have that if approval is not withheld in a certain amount of time the build is considered approved yes if you can get that that is amazing chances are nine times out of again especially when you're dealing with licenses they're not going to agree to that because it just opens them up to all kinds of issues on their side but typically you're gonna want to have the stuff in there that basically says we're gonna send it to you it so it's truthfully a lot like a publisher approval clause we're gonna send it to you you have seven days or five business days to either approve it or other prove it if you are not approving it then you have to give us detailed you know instructions in writing on why it is not approved and in writing means email not

necessarily a letter that they fed actually that's registered or whatever but and then you have X amount of time to fix it and you know resubmit the time to fix it and resubmit is it necessarily as pertinent because you're not dealing with a publisher well month I'll say that cuz actually it could be very pertinent if it's like a movie launch or a tentpole event like that anyway yes I love that the approval is you know if it's not withheld it's automatically you know cleared as approved unfortunately you're gonna have a harder time getting back clause with an IP holder than you are with the puncture did I lose you we still learn yes I keep forgetting myself sometimes another question this is from blank slate 0 2 to 7 is about

what about making part merchandise base on the game say 3d printed collectibles similar to Funko's you still made a licensing agreement there especially a lot of t-shirt company to do this online philosophy is basically if we sell it for one day they don't have time to sit a cease-and-desist and so that's why you'll see a lot of and I own several these t-shirts because they are really really cool but if you're doing any sort of merchandise based on a game that is the level of Licensing that most licensing agents and you know most less executives of these IP holders are gonna be familiar with but that's absolutely a scenario where you have to go and get permission and you know if you're doing it make sure of the we did touch on this and the lecture but there are classes of

toys and things you have to make sure that you get if you want an exclusive or either on those because it's exactly what classes of toys that you're talking about and so you mentioned Funko and that's a good example because hold on I'm looking over here and all my phone cups I'm not the person that leaves them in the boss I take them out and put them on the show so if you notice in your Funko selection all of your Marvel characters Star Wars characters and possibly Disney general but I know those too because I'm looking at them right now those are bobbleheads they're the only route bobbleheads that Funko puts out the reason is a Funko pop is technically classified as an action figure and Hasbro or whoever is owns the exclusive rights to do Star Wars you know action figures so all of the Star

Wars Funko pops have to be bubble it's random licensing factoid knowledge of the day that's a good random one uh so I have a personal what not a personal question a question for myself so we have so how many I saw there's a there's a part of the department that is dedicated to looking for developers for I pay you licensing right and I imagine being a reputable it's a lot easier you use the example like insomniac it's an easier approach how many of these deals from these developers are kind of you know how many are out there for developers who are constantly looking for IP lights listening to as a stable source of income for them it sounds like a great

idea it sounds it's totally reasonable especially we're trying to get your own project off the ground to get a lot of the practice through something you'll it more safe like using an existing IP that everyone already loves but it isn't in your world it sounds very traditional but me coming from its Nolan games I mean not in games okay in mom yeah in my world it is because I've been doing it for 20 years you're right but the reality is and this is part of the reason that you know we did this lecture there's a there's a stigma a lot of people especially developers especially smaller developers assume that if they want to go out and get an IP to help with their game it's going to cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars and yes that was true in the 90s in the early 2000s it's not true anymore you know you can get you know very good IP that's going to significantly boost you know the visibility of your game and your studio and it's very very affordable so

you know there's not as much as you would think you know because a lot of companies this is like the slide earlier the where I said don't call them wait no wait call them that's why you know you you don't want to just randomly call people because in this day and age people don't take random phone calls but the reality is I'm secured a lot of IP over the years because I've picked up the phone or send an email however you do it and ask you don't know until you ask and and the worst that somebody can say is know so years and years ago when I was the company that I started before I did the Pell Gert we were a production studio there wasn't a term for it back then but you know we worked with National Geographic and Nickelodeon a Disney and Cartoon Network to create games based on their IPs they

would come to us but we would actually have an outside studio doing the development we did the design and the production you know on the BD and the business side of it in-house but we had a partner studio that was actually doing the development and we trained slowly transition that into you know doing some of our own IP and one of the first games that we did yet remember this is back in the heyday of the hit not G game the premium in najuk game it's not the free-to-play ones and so I sat down and I'm like okay look if we do an original hidden-object game it's not going to get any traction even big-fish was literally releasing a different hidden object game every day of the week and I said we got to have an IP and so you know we look at who plays hidden object games it's women 35 and older primarily so it's like okay so what else do women 35 and older doing what they read okay so who are they reading and I literally got a list of a lot of the you know most

popular authors for you know middle-aged older women and then I started calling them and saying you know and here's the thing I didn't call the publishing company you want to start when you're going talking to these companies you want to start as low a totem pole as you can and so we started if you can't start with the actual author which is the best place to start then you want to go to their agent and you can find their agent just by doing a google search but you know we ended up doing our first game based on a New York Times bestselling author and we actually had a publisher look to be much hey and they've been doing this for a while but no in the hell did you get just a three person studio get a New York Times best selling author and I went we called them you know it was just hey do you want to do a game and we had probably 10 or 15 agents go no whatever we don't do that but we found one where you know the agent was like I love when he had nudging games yes I think she'll love

this and there with you we did it you if you want to bring an IP in on your game you can't be intimidated by you know the fact that it may cost a lot or they may not like you or they may not like your game I mean Kentucky Fried Chicken just put on a dating simulator for Colonel Sanders and it received ridiculous media coverage because it wasn't just we're doing something the same as everything else they really went off the you know side of the boat in terms of creativity on that you know you've got to be able to just give him a call chop him an email and say hey look we're making this game we think your IP you could fit for it what do you think and then go from there the worst thing can say is No then you go to the next on the list so I have another question from blank slate 0 2 to 7 what about using homage is from movies

or other games homogeneous I always mess up on the work a wash oh my I think that H is style so the way your french words ribbon you know like d no I never took French you could be run on that the UM you've got to be really really careful there you're gonna get more litigious studios and less litigious studios you start get the closer you get to it the more you're playing with fire you know there are laws this is where you need to talk to an IP attorney not not the guy who does the business deals there are laws that protect public use satirical use especially of public figures like you can make a game about politicians and use we have very close if not you know

their faces and they can't do anything now our current president will sue you because he's used everybody for everything but that's not the point you know there's no case against it because politicians and public figures like that are fair game basically but a Hollywood celebrity is not a public figure so it's okay to do attribute or dommage as long as you keep it within bounds and it's a very very gray area there's no specific guidelines I would just simply talk to an IP attorney and the IP attorney is going to always caution you on the side of you know getting sued but you know learn to the best of your abilities what those guidelines are but you know the more you start the minute you take like

any kind of official looking likeness or logo or anything like that that at that point you've gone before but you know just get a good understanding of how far you can realistically go with a lawyer before you do it your that is dangerous territory well thank you Jay this is a very interesting topics and I've certainly learned a lot from it and we have like a active twitch audience that have been loving your particular presentation and I want to thank you for kind of closing day one on a huge momentum into day two so this is I'm gonna flash your resource page again for people who want to find Jay and get in contact with you and wanna that's all that we have for developers basically and there's our website obviously got a disk or server we do the podcast where

we do talks like this once or twice a week just as always India and I are in town that publisher list not necessarily anything to do with licensing but if you are a developer and you want our list of 500 plus publishers you go right there and put in your email address and it'll lead no to you and you know yeah I put it in there but then and then of course our networking event that we're doing with you all on Thursday and Friday but the easiest way I mean my email address is down there at the bottom if you're on our discord just hit me up if you've got questions that's probably the easiest way to get an answer for me because I'll see it much more often than I do email but yeah happy to help I'm love that you all do this so glad we can be involved you

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