作者：Rampant Coyote

我将通过本篇文章陈述有关知识产权（简称IP）的相关内容，即为何它们如此重要，为何独立开发者必须重视它们等等。

让我们以早前的一家大型发行商为例。这家公司已经在10年前彻底消失在世人面前，尽管在90年代早中期它还是当时最强大的发行商之一。

早前，这家大型发行商（让我们暂时将其称为“BP”）经过了各种努力最终获得了摔跤游戏的授权。BP向摔跤联盟表示：“你的用户是来自于我们未涉及的潜在市场。这对于我们来说是一大扩展机会，你也可以利用授权而从中盈利。”

因为资金短缺，摔跤联盟接受了这笔交易——他们与BP达成了独家交易。

而这一交易结果也比他们想象中的来得有利。游戏最终真的获得巨大的反响，并为BP赚的了大量的收益。同时游戏的成功对于摔跤联盟也带来了积极的影响，特别是对于他们的业务来说。除了只是带给BP更多用户，通过授权也帮助摔跤联盟也吸引了更多玩家成为他们的观众，并推动着这些玩家开始在电视上观看摔跤比赛。

不管怎么样，这两家公司的合作都是正确的选择。

IP value(from ipfrontline.com)

多年过后，这两家公司都获取了巨大的成功，但是人们却也开始对摔跤联赛产生厌倦。所以这种维系多年的独家合作开始出现裂痕，即双方公司开始抵触这种不再有效的合作。但是BP甚至认为自己才是“造王者”，所以摔跤联盟必须报答BP。

最终他们中断了这种独家授权关系。正如我们所预想的那样，现在变得更加出名的摔跤联盟开始大幅度提升今后的授权价格。他们对BP放话道：“现在，你们必须在应有的支付价格基础上再加价。”

BP回答：“既然是我们成就了你们，所以我们也有办法帮助其他人获取成功！希望你们没有我们之后还能继续交好运！”

最终BP和摔角选手还是分道扬镳了。BP找到了一个新的且非常努力的摔跤联盟，就像他们之前的合作者那样；而之前的摔跤联盟也找到愿意支付高额授权费去发行游戏的公司。

所以到底是谁赢得了这场争辩？

在我看来，没有哪一方算得上是真正的赢家。

那时候的摔跤联盟的确达到了发展顶峰。但是我认为这只是“一时的风潮”。造成这种“风潮”没落的原因很多，并且我也不认为改变游戏发行商会带来什么不同的结果。

那这家大发行商的下场又是怎样的呢？就像我之前所提到的，他们最终也消失在世人眼前。而造成这种结果的原因也是多种多样，并且与摔跤游戏并不会扯上直接关系，更客观地来说应该要归咎于该公司未拥有每一款游戏的IP。他们既然经历了一段惨痛的授权合作纠纷，也会在今后的发展中再次遇到相同境况：也就是当他们获得更大成功之时，他们今后的发展也会变得更加困难。

新的摔跤联盟最终也遭遇了失败。因为它们也难以避免当初的摔跤联盟所经历的惨痛过程。

关于这种类型的故事比比皆是，而我们需要做便是将其当成是一种经验教训。

BP曾经在杂志上鼓吹自己是运用他人IP的核心策略。这在电子游戏授权还很廉价之时自然很有帮助，他们只需要重新塑造现有的游戏去匹配相关授权并将其推出市场便可。但是随着游戏业务的壮大，授权也变得越来越昂贵，使游戏开发不再能够以低成本快速换取高额利益了。

对于依赖于短暂的创造性作品并需要不断收集各种信息的产业来说，IP就等于生命线般的存在。不管你是租，卖还是免费分发或授权别人共同使用你的产品都没关系——IP所有者始终合法主导着产品的创造与分配。就像是共生体为了生存或生活在这个世界上就必须依赖于宿主一样。

在此我们需要注意的是“依赖”这个词。而与之相对立的便是“独立”。

也许这说来并不公平，但是共生体为了获得生存就必须有所牺牲。而BP自身使属于一种共生体，如果缺少来自宿主的这种生命线，他们很快便会衰竭并死亡。

所以IP真的至关重要。

我认为拥有自己的IP对于独立游戏开发者来说是“一个必要条件但却不是充分条件。”尽管如此，这里也存在着一些模糊区块。尽管对于某些人来说游戏是独立的，但是对于我而言却不是如此，因为我经常需要面对独立游戏的外包工作，或者有时候也需要将一款游戏移植到其它平台上。而这是否就能够将我自己定义为非独立游戏开发者？我既不是律师也不是一名优秀的商人，所以自然在阐述中会持有一些保留态度。但是不管你所思考的问题是什么，这篇文章都有可能给你一些帮助。

我想说的是，对于独立游戏开发者而言IP既是最无价值的也是最有价值的内容。

为什么说是无价值呢？如果我们放宽视线便会发现各种游戏理念比比皆是。一整天呆坐着幻想“知识产权”并不能给你带来任何帮助。尽管某些理念或所谓的属性也具有一定的参数和内在潜能，但是如果没人欣赏这种潜能，它们的价值也就体现不出来。

加之，我们必须往IP中注入各种价值，这便使得别人很难去复制或取代这种属性。让我们举个例子来说吧，就像一个只拥有3个条纹的webcomic于其它同样拥有3个条纹的webcomic相比便没有任何内在优势。尽管这三个条纹并不是完全微不足道，但的确也没有多大价值。而如果是50个条纹就不同了，这是一种伟大的成就，是别人在短短时间内难以复制的结果。

所以我认为赋予IP价值的3大元素应该是：该理念的内在潜能（大大超越于内在价值），执行与用户。我们必须重视这三大元素，但是不幸的是，甚少有游戏能够真正体现出其中的某一理念，甚至是我们的独立游戏。

所以这意味着什么？也就是IP到底具有何种价值？

如果是用金钱来计算的话，IP的价值就在于相对于做其他事情，你利用IP可赚到的收益。

但是有趣的是，这对于不同人来说也有不同价值。

这便能够解释早前的游戏工作室为何要如此依赖于发行商。对于那时候的游戏工作室来说，他们没有多少资产，专业人士和门路，所以对于他们来说IP便不可能拥有多少价值。而对于那些依赖于IP过活的发行商来说，IP便拥有巨大的价值。所以工作室将这种对他们没有多大价值的内容出售给那些重视其价值的人便也是合情合理吧？这便是典型的资本主义交易。

这并不是问题的所在。真正的问题在于，这些工作室只会通过出售IP而换取对自己来说有价值而不是发行商认为有价值的内容。而这种不合理的交易一直持续到IP的控制成了发行合同中至关重要的一大内容。

对于各个工作室来说，将自己“与生俱来的权利”卖掉并换取巨大的利益已经变成了一种习惯。

从价值范围来看这也不是一种公道的价格。我们可以通过市场营销资本去估算我们投入于游戏中的价值。我们还必须相信，发行商永远不可能斥资百万去推销一款自己甚至没有控制权的游戏（游戏邦注：即别人还可以控制并利用这款游戏的续集，移植，甚至是最初游戏而赚钱）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote

This is gonna be a multi-part article about a discussion we had last week (in comments) about Intellectual Property rights. Why are they such a big deal? Why should indies care (beyond the fact that, in the opinion of most, if you are working on someone else’s IP, you ain’t indie)?

Let’s talk about a former Big Publisher. I always feel bad talking negatively speaking ill of the dead, but this particular company has been pretty much dead-and-buried for a decade, in spite of being one of the BIG PUBLISHERS of the early-to-mid 90′s, so here goes. (I should note here that any relationship I might have had with said big company gave me very little insight into their actual workings, and much of this is based on the press of the time, plus some conjectures, rumors, and ruminations by former employees).

So once upon a time, this big publisher (A Certain Company, Loathed Am I to Mention… let’s just call ‘em BP – not British Petroleum!) struck a deal with a struggling but up-and-coming wrestling franchise. “Hey,” said BP, “Your audience represents a segment of potential market we don’t normally appeal to. This could be a great opportunity for us to expand, and for you to start, you know, leveraging your franchise and get more money.”

Said wrestling league, probably hard-up for cash, took the deal: an extended exclusive deal with BP.

Well, the deal went far better than either of them could have imagined. The games were Really Popular and made BP a lot of money. It went really well for the wrestling league too… in fact, in many ways, it made their business. Instead of simply giving the BP access to their audience, it vastly increased their audience as people played the game and then started tuning into wrestling matches on TV.

At least, that was BP’s take. I think they were correct in that they had a hand in it.

But years went by, and as both companies prospered, the wrestling league started getting annoyed. That multi-year exclusive deal was for peanuts, they protested… it would be worth a lot more now!

BP saw it differently. They were the kingmakers – if anything, the wrestlers owed THEM for their success.

Well, the time came that the exclusive license came to an end. As you’d expect, the now-big-and-famous wrestling league jacked up their price for future licenses by an almost punitive amount.

“Now,” they said to BP, “You will pay us what you should have paid us all along for our piece of awesomeness.”

“Bite me,” said BP. “We made you. We can make someone else just like you. Good luck staying awesome without us to prop you up.”

I doubt the conversation went exactly like that. But from the rumors I heard that may have suffered a little from the telephone-game effect, that was the gist of it. In the end, BP and the wrestlers went their separate ways. BP found a new, struggling wrestling league just like their former partners had once been. And the wrestlers found game publishers willing to pay through the nose to sell games with the official franchise brand that were guaranteed to make lots of sales, because they always had before.

So who won that argument?

In my opinion, nobody.

The wrestling league pretty much peaked at about that time. The “fad,” I guess, faded. Though there are innumerable reasons for their decline, I don’t think changing game publishers made that big of a difference.

And the Big Publisher? As I stated earlier, dead-and-buried.  Again, many reasons for this, most of them having little to do with wrestling games, but a lot of them having to do with it not actually owning the IP rights for most of its games. I imagine they had a tough time without being able to anchor their business on a consistently franchise, and other stories often repeated this one: the more successful they were, the more difficult life became for them later.

And the new wrestling league? Also dead-and-buried, with bits and pieces of it purchased and absorbed into the original wrestling league of this story.

There is much more to this story, but let’s just treat it as an allegory for now.

BP used to brag in magazines about its core strategy of leveraging other people’s IP. It worked out pretty well for them when video game licenses were cheap, and they didn’t have to do much more than re-texture an existing game to match the license and push it out into the stores. But as games became bigger and bigger business, the licenses got pricier, and quick-and-dirty game development got less a lot less quick (or cheap).

In an industry built on ephemeral works of creativity given form only in the collection of information, Intellectual Property rights are the lifeblood. It doesn’t matter if the product is rented, sold, or given away freely and even permits others to share a joint ownership – the holders of the IP rights have the control over their own creations and are allowed to dictate how they they will be shared with the word, insofar as legally enforceable. It is very possible for symbiotes (and their nastier, leechier cousins, the parasites) to survive or even thrive in this world, but they are always dependent upon their hosts for life.

Note the word “dependent.” As in, opposite of “independent.”

Maybe it’s unfair, but maybe it was a victim of its own success. But as much of a beneficial symbiote as BP saw itself, without enough lifeblood from hosts, it curled up and died.

IP rights matter. And yeah, they should.

IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 13, 2012

So yesterday I prefaced the whole “IP rights” thing with a story about a non-indie publisher.

My feeling – echoed by most within the indie arena, but apparently not all – is that owning your own IP is a “necessary but not sufficient” aspect of your game being indie. But even within that, there’s a lot of fuzzy areas. Maybe a game is indie to somebody, but not to me, as I’m doing contract work for an indie or porting the game to another platform for a percentage. Does that make me non-indie?  Let’s just assume right now that it’s all a big fuzzy generalization with a lot of exceptions and nits that you could pick here and hairs you can split there. And IANAL, or even a good business-person, so feel free to take this all with a grain of salt. But maybe it’s something you’ve been thinking about, and these little essays will help.

Now here’s the thing. IP rights are simultaneously the most worthless and most valuable thing you can own as an indie.

On the worthless side: Ideas are a dime a dozen if we’re feeling generous. Sitting on my butt dreaming up “intellectual property” all day long is worth pretty much nothing. While some ideas and so-called properties may have some merit and more potential all on their own, the real value doesn’t exist until the property has an audience.

Plus, it has to have had some value pumped into it so its not something easily duplicated or replaced. For example, a webcomic that only has three strips drawn probably possesses no inherent superiority to any other webcomic that is also three strips long.  While three strips isn’t trivial, there’s still not a whole lot to it, yet. Now, fifty strips… that’s history. That’s an achievement.  That’s not something someone will be able to duplicate in a caffeine-fueled three-day weekend.

So I guess there’s three factors at work here that give an IP value: The inherent potential of the concept (which is more of a multiplier than an inherent value), execution, and audience. All three need to be kicking butt, and sadly… most concepts just don’t ever get there. Yeah, even our beloved indie games.

But what does that really mean? So how much is IP really worth?

Well, to put dollars and cents on it, it’s worth something along the lines of how much money you can make exploiting it vs. doing something else.

The trick is… it’s not the same value to everybody.

This was how the game studios got themselves pretty much boned by the publishers back in the early days.  For a studio with little means, expertise, or contacts, the value of the IP rights for their game to them wasn’t all that high. But to a publisher, especially one that eats, breathes, and sleeps these things, the potential value of a property could be huge. So it makes sense for the studios to trade those rights to the guys for whom its more valuable, right? That’s capitalism ‘n stuff.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they traded those rights for something much closer to their own value than that of the value to the publishers. This persisted until taking control of the IP rights was pretty much boilerplate stuff for publishing contracts.

It’s like… who needs a soul anyway? When was the last time you did anything with it? We’ll just throw that little thing in the contract too, as a minor clause…

So studios got into the habit of selling off their birthrights for a mess of pottage.

To be fair,  the publishers don’t even bat something like .500 when it comes to picking winners, either, and it’s an expensive biz. So it’s not like a fair price is exactly in the center of the value range or anything. And a lot of that value invested into the game that I mentioned – that can be measured in marketing dollars that get poured into it. You’d better believe a publisher doesn’t want to pour millions into promoting a game series that it doesn’t control… that someone else could leverage off of and make money on the sequel. Or on the ports. Or on the original game.

Anyway – I’ve done a lot of talkin’ about a subject. And I still haven’t arrived at a direct answer to the question posed in the title. I’m working up to it. Next time. Probably.（source:part1,part2)