Sequels are everywhere these days. Some franchises are becoming bigger than ever before, growing exponentially with each new installment. Still, as we approach a new generation, publishers are investing more than ever in launching new series alongside their existing franchises, pushing original brands that they hope can thrive on new systems.
In separate interviews at E3, IGN spoke with Ubisoft, EA and Bethesda about the risks and rewards of launching new intellectual property and why it remains an important part of their businesses.
“More than any other first party or publisher that I’ve seen, we’re bringing more new IP to the market,” Ubisoft senior VP of sales and marketing Tony Key told IGN. “[CEO] Yves Guillemot has always believed that new IP was how we were going to make it – continuing to build more brands and cultivating the ones we have. We can only go as fast as the resources provide. We found the resources for The Division. We found the resources for The Crew. We found the resources for Watch Dogs. That’s not easy. It’s one of the reasons why so little new IP comes along. You have to have really good people to build a new IP. The risks are so high. The games cost a lot to make. They cost a lot to market.”
You have to have really good people to build a new IP. The risks are so high. The games cost a lot to make. They cost a lot to market.
“In this blockbuster world of ours, to feel confident in a team that's building this thing, that they can provide that. There are only so many talented people lying around,” Key continued. “We’re constantly trying to find more and more talented people who want to come to Ubisoft to work on our established brands, but also to build new IP. For us, we consider it the lifeblood of our company, to continue to be able to build new IP and bring new brands to the market. That’s clear.”
“That’s one of the huge pulls to launch new IP. You get a whole refresh,” EA Labels president Frank Gibeau explained. “You get new technology that allows you to do new things. It’s really hard to launch new IP in the last three years of a platform. As I looked at the marketplace and as we thought about our strategy, we held a lot of our new IP development for the transition because we knew it was coming. We knew what it was roughly capable of. Things like Mirror’s Edge, going out and doing the Battlefront deal, doing the UFC deal, Titanfall. Frankly, there’s probably anywhere between four and six additional IPs that we’re working on that are unannounced, that are completely original. The best time to launch those is in the first few years of a platform cycle, so that you can come out with multiple versions of it over the life cycle of PS4 and Xbox One.”
“We’ve always done that as a company,” Gibeau continued. “New IP is the lifeblood of any studio. The moment you stop developing new IP, a lot of your best people are on to other things. Having said that, we do see incredible innovation inside of our franchises, around Battlefield and FIFA. Every year we try new things there. EA has a blended strategy, where we have proven franchises that we innovate and continue to expand with. Then we bring in new IP to help get into new genres that we’re potentially not represented well in, or try new things like Garden Warfare. That was just something we experimented with. It was really fun as a prototype. We decided to make it into a full product.”
Part of taking a risk on new brands often means starting with entirely new studios. Bethesda vice president of PR and marketing Pete Hines explained to us that the passion behind a new studio is part of what can let new franchises thrive. This year, Bethesda announced Wolfenstein: The New Order from Machine Games and The Evil Within from Tango Gameworks. This will be the first game for both studios.
New IP is the lifeblood of any studio. The moment you stop developing new IP, a lot of your best people are on to other things.
“If you look at the last big thing we did, Dishonored, the fun of it was talking guys like Raph and Harvey and their team at Arkane, with all of them chomping at the bit,” Hines said. “That’s maybe not a thing that most publishers would embrace, because clearly most publishers that are doing these kinds of games are moving towards really heavy action. We’re going the other way. These guys get excited about it. ‘Bethesda is going to take a chance on me doing this thing that nobody else would let me do.’ And they know it, because they’ve worked with other publishers. There is a benefit to that. Jens at Machine Games has a really funny way of putting it, based on past experiences and how that’s very different. There is just a bit of feeling untethered.”
“There’s benefit to how we publish games as opposed to other folks,” Hines continued. “When Machine Games has a build of Wolfenstein, we have points along the way where they share a build, and it’s not just me and them who are playing it. They share it with the guys at Bethesda Game Studios, or at id, or at Tango, or at Arkane, who will play it. The level designers and artists and stuff at these other studios will play it and give them feedback. It’s helpful. I don’t know of other publishers that let all of their studios see all of the other stuff – and not just see it, but play it and say what they think. That collaboration, on the surface it sounds pretty powerful, but for these guys I think it’s really meaningful that somebody else who does what they do is giving them feedback.”
Hines believes that this kind of collaboration can help a new studio along, and also helps Bethesda be more confident in new brands.
“That kind of feedback is really helpful for guys like Tango and Machine Games. They have a little bit of a safety net along the way, to kind of sanity-check what they’re doing,” he said. “We publish from a developer’s standpoint – understanding the process, how it works, where it can go sideways, how to do it better. It’s that collaboration thing. Feedback is really important, and not just focus-testing and bringing in gamers.”
We’re going to continue to pick and choose where we want to place our bets.
“We’re constantly talking with other developers, but it always has to be the right fit,” Hines said. “Who are you, what have you done, what are you trying to do now, and how does it sync up with us? We don’t have a process like ‘well, what are our 15 titles for this year? What’s our Q2 shooter?’ Because we’re smaller, we just do fewer titles and go big on all of them, rather than deciding to go big on a lot, but [saying] ‘half of them are going to fail, and the ones that succeed will pay for the ones that fail.’ We’re not built that way. We’re never going to get to 20 games a year.”
“We’re going to continue to pick and choose where we want to place our bets,” Hines added. “What’s the game and the idea and the team where we say, ‘we believe in those guys. We think they have the chops to do it. We think we can make that a success and sell everybody else on the idea that what they’re making is great.’ If that ends up being somebody external, great, but we’re not in a rush, like, ‘quick, we have to sign three more titles for next year.’ That’s not how we’re structured and it’s not our focus.”
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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