Session: Mastering IP Partnerships – A Guide To IP Brand Management -Elin Jonsson & Wally Nguyen.

[Music] next up we have another session mastering IP Partnerships a guide to IP and brand management and for that we have Ellen Johnson and W and go from East Side game so please make your way to the stage cool okay welcome everyone I'm elen Johnson and this is Wally and we are here talking about mastering IP Partnerships so I hope this will be a little bit of a guide to IP and brand management I also have there we go yeah so between the two of us we have about 30 years of experience in mobile games uh and East

Side games be primarily focus on IP and Brand mobile games itself um so we'll yeah share some Secrets not too many Secrets we'll share some guides and tips uh if for anyone interested in in delving into the world of combining great mobile games with world renowned and recognized IPS so I'm W nin I'm the chief Revenue officer of Eastside games um been in games for a while but if I had any two claims of Fame before East Side games um if you've ever seen a playable ad um I have the dubious honor of uh being part of that creation uh of the ads that you can play before you uh download a game when I was CE of mnor and then right across the street was where skills was with a z and I was the very first head of sales and content there and then we eventually took the company public and I'm elen Johnson I'm the chief business officer at Eide games and I worked at Eide games for the last eight years making mobile games for over 15 years and um my background is more on the creative side and then I moved over

to managing all our 13 IP Partners at Eide games so that is all about us and next slide is about Eide games as a company so we are located our head office is in Vancouver Canada and we are a market leader um integrating big IPS into mobile games and we are specializing in narrative Idol and um puzzle games so match three games we are a publisher and we are also a developer we have big Brands and IPS like the American the office Doctor Who Star Trek rles drag race a Canadian favorite which is trailer park boys that slowly makes it into to USA um Power Rangers so many different IPS uh that we are working with and that we have been working in for many years years one example I've been managing the

relationship with trailer park boys for over 8 years MBC for over 5 years these are long relationships yeah so we have the honor of working with uh some of the world's biggest brands as we've been going over uh so BBC for Doctor Who uh squish mow uh probably the one of the biggest toy companies in the world right now aw uh Paramount with Star Trek uh world of wonderful group Paul um yeah so a great list uh and and probably be partnered with them so for anyone that wants to start thinking about how to work with an IP one of the first key things to think about is the the motivation and you know Revenue maybe that would be the first thing you you think of like we need to make money that that definitely is one of the aspects of why an IP or a brand is interested in making games but it's not the first reason um usually the first reason is engaging their current audience so if you have a show like the office or if you have something like let's stick with shows like the office or Doctor Who traditionally that's the

only way you can engage with that content right is watch the show um so how do we engage with them a little bit differently maybe in interactive way and that way is games and then there's expanding that current audience so I think a really good example is Doctor Who Doctor Who is very very popular in the UK maybe not quite as popular in North America so when we engaged with them on a mobile game it was really about broadening Their audience broading their reach into North America and the rest of the world uh inadvertently when we released Doctor Who and it was doing well um Doctor Who got added to Disney plus so that was a really nice addition and again expanding that audience so number one and number two is audience and audience and then third make money right um businesses need to make money to thrive and grow and so number three is revenue and then fourth is tied to audience which is marketing um again with a lot of shows you can only kind of stream the show you can distribute the show and people going watch it um but there's really no way to engage by that audience beyond that reach uh as we know with mobile games you can interact you can push uh notifications you people can

sign for newsletters um you can let them know that live events are coming um you have a much more engaged audience when it comes to a game um and that's why marketing is is another key aspect of it and uh yeah this this slide is probably my personal favorite it's very very close to my heart and it's to how to can we express the Brand's Essence in our mobile game how can we truly understand the brand deeply so it's not a brand slap it's a it's an extension and celebration of the IP in the mobile format um and one of the first thing we are um we are doing of course is the brand guidelines so as early as possible get the brand guidelines understand them read them but the guidelines is just uh it's just the top layer go deeper watch the shows watch all the shows try to really understand understand what makes

this um what is the essence and if you are not a fan of the IP that you want to integrate into your mobile game find someone on your team hired someone you need at least one person that loves the lore that loves this this IP that you're integrating super important and it's something that we see that the IP partner really like they want to know that their brand their IP is in safe Caring Hands it's their baby that you're taking care of and super important the brand slapping that's something that we don't do it just don't do it it's not going to go well with the fans that they are going to feel that you're not authentic and in the end of the day it's just not a good long-term business strategy and also understand and remind

yourself that every IP partner that you're working with will have unique needs just because you've worked with Hasbro doesn't mean that you can apply exactly the same learnings at MVC or Paramount or whoever you're working with and that can be a good exercise to REM remind the team as well because they might be like oh but this other IP partner they were completely fine that we launched this half-made I or logo in Tech launch but this this current partner you're working with no nothing can be launched everything needs to be approved you can't do anything without everything Tien up so understand your IP partner truly understand what's important to them have early conversations to understand do they care about the narrative do they care about the mobile we have worked with partners that have never done a mobile game before they're looking at us for

guidance but they care super much about the looks and feel that's like that's that's what they care about and then they leave the game mechanics to us and then we have other partners that really care about the game mechanics as well so learn what your partner want to do so one size fits all approach will not work also assess the IP's game knowledge as I said is this a partner they have done many mobile games before good then they know that or maybe you work with a partner that you are like this is how we launch a mobile game we have a tech launch this is a tech launch or you need to guide them through hand hold them through experience because they don't really know the kpis you can just like tell them about ARP out they don't know they might not know what that means establish a clear point of contact for yourself who on the IP partner side is your point of contact and who on the game Studio side is your point of contact shouldn't be the whole team one person that every information is

channeled through and yeah just some some general tips um set up an in initial meeting so you get as much information as early as possible and we have every second week we have a touch point with our IP partner um yeah I think that's enough yeah so one one thing to mention we we have a game with aw it's it's a wrestling game um and one of our writers was an ex wrestler she was a professional wrestler she really passionate about it and helped us understand how to approach it so uh I can't second uh El's Point enough of you need to love this show you need to love this movie like the office I've watched that thing from beginning to finish 12 times you know the hyi of Dwight uh and Jim I I I know almost every single line so be passionate don't fake it they'll they can tell um and that happens with when you initiate the deal right when you talk to them about it

what's your core knowledge and it's not just knowledge but what's your passion do you have a love of it you're representing the future of this potential game right if you're highly passionate you have high credibility um they'll believe you that you'll take it from beginning to finish in the way that they want to you have to treat like your baby because it's their baby um but in terms of initial deal guidelines um one thing to understand that's really important that many people skip over um before it ever hits contract is what do you get right so do you get if there's real actors real actresses do you get their likeness do you get to use those actors or do you have to do something else um if it's animation or or like the office we had to stylize right that's a real uh action real people in that show we had to animate that into a game so what are you allow to do with that how can you express it um is there music that's not an obvious one and the music world is actually much more complex than let's say entertainment right who owns the music rights can it could be pretty

pretty complex um is it a closed world can you create new stories um with the office there's so many episodes you can you that that you have an entire universe in of itself but sometimes you want to add additional stories um especially with the office not you know being a live show anymore um so if you want to expand that Universe you want to create these things it's really good to explain early on that that's what you want and kind of get a feel for what's going to be allowed um know the organiz organizational structure are you working with the talent themselves like the actor or the actress are you working with an agency are you working with a larger company um what's important to each of these people um what's important to the talent and the actor is going to be very very different usually I I almost guarantee very different than the business needs um from their from their agent um and then projections um how much money will the game make um many people may be tempted like it's going to be a billion dollar game maybe maybe not we know how hard that is right so when I uh deliver projections I do low medium high high and my high isn't that high I

usually can get complaints about that like why can't we be bigger it's like well in reality if we're a blockbuster and we're making a billion dollars none of this forecast matters uh also if the game fails and we make zero again the forecast doesn't really matter um what we're really trying to optimize for is what's the Middle Road right like if it's an average game what's the best we can get and that's a realistic approach uh for me it's about credibility of saying hey uh there's zero then there's 100 but what's what's the most likely average in between um and then it's all about sing those expectations right it all it all wraps up to that yeah then approval process this is normally what scares people working with IP partners because this can be a little tricky so my advice here is just early early on talk about it when you start in concept just set it up as early as possible we I try most most of our partners that are flexible and they allow us to do this we use Trello to set

up um a system that is very very deadly simple you move a card and they give feedback and they throw the card back it's visual it's simple highly recommend that many IP Partners though have their own internal system like media box or other system they use those are normally quite complicated and it's almost like the last step the last thing you have done can go into media box to facilitate the IP needs but I highly recommend something more simple first like Trello even email even slack just to Vibe check or or check if you're on the wrong right direction earlier the better as soon as you have something rather show instead of like I hope this is okay and then you need to go back and fix especially when you work with like animations or something you want it as early as possible um

yeah dates and T and deadlines this is super important when you do your planning just remember that most contract have 10 days approval process and they don't take revisions in consideration so let's say that you have 10 days they review your asset they throw it back to you then they really have another 10 days which makes it quite hard I recommend producers to to at least plan for one revision so you have 20 days when an asset needs to be done this can add 3 to six months um timeline it's important to remember when you work with a partner the more you work with them you will find a system that works and it will get easier for every month that goes because you start to learn what they care about and you build up a relationship when you are for example you get a feature from Apple you need um your assets approved quicker the partner most like 99% will understand that such escalation will happen and they will be facilitating that

um yeah so the planning planning is super important yeah so to wrap up a little bit uh understand their motivations what matters to them uh and make sure that they understand what matters to them matters to you um what are the brand guidelines what are you allowed to do what are you not allowed to do also gray areas uh you know cover those gray areas especially if they've never made a game before there's going to be a lot of those um tailor your approach um but to tailor your approach again start from the beginning which is do you love the show do you love the movie do you love the property if you do that that tailoring is going to become pretty natural um deal guidelines just make sure you have a checklist of what you want to get out of that in terms of Rights um and explain those very clearly and have setting realistic projections and realistic expectations um approvals as El just mentioned you got to plan for time add three six months maybe a little bit longer to your entire development timeline and you'll probably be a little bit safer um and that all goes to and timelines like how do you explain those

early on um and make your process about as smooth as possible and that's uh that's our presentation and we have three minutes or so so any questions we we're happy to take testing is this hello thanks for that that was great um I'm not expecting to answering specifics because I know you're probably under confidental poity but from a kind of licens perspective um in terms of the royalty that they would take does that is there a kind of wide degree of variance between the percentage depending on the IP if you know just you don't have to say specifically you folks but like as an industry standard you know where should it sort of fall when you're sort of negotiating with a partner yeah that's a good question so some of the terms the common terms are going to be uh a minimum guarantee but it's all licensing fees right basically how does an IP or brand make money

through this partnership and you just wrap it up as one umbrella term which is fees uh the first term is typically a minimum guarantee it's how much they you will pay them no matter what right if you never ship the game if the game fails um even if the game like is a tremendous success what is the minimum that they will get you'll owe that no matter what that's typically a deal term and the second is one the one you just asked about which is what is the royalty percentage um you're right I can't tell you the specifically what we do um but I can tell you that the range is somewhere between 10 to 20% that's usually a safe range um now obviously the bigger the IP I I'll mention that we we don't work with is Star Wars they'll probably ask for a whole lot more uh Pokemon if you have a child throw them into the terms um so the bigger they are the more they'll ask but it's reasonable in some cases right but if it's uh if it's a normal um IP then 10 to 20