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阐述手机游戏市场的IP授权方法及其可行性

发布时间:2012-08-23 15:58:04 Tags:,,,

作者:Shawn Foust

当我谈及之前从事的娱乐律师工作时,我的朋友总会问我对于手机游戏品牌有何看法。这是个非常复杂的问题。让我们着眼于现在的App Store,品牌的作用已经大不如前了。也就是知识产权(以下简称IP)不再像人们所期待的那样影响着应用的排名。人们不禁开始思考原因所在。

spongebob(from mmorpg.com)

spongebob(from mmorpg.com)

方法

高质量的IP主要是通过三种途径进入游戏中:(1)第一方开发,(2)授权,或(3)代工承揽。这三种方法都具有不同的回报和优势,但是考虑到当前应用市场的结构,每一种方法的吸引力都不强。

第一方开发

当IP持有者(如电影工作室)决定创建自己的团队并内部开发游戏,这便属于第一方开发。如此IP持有者便能够保留游戏的所有控制权,并更好地平衡开发者与IP持有者间的奖励分配。一般来看,这种优势具有非常大的吸引力,但是如果提到手机市场,问题就多了。特别是关于用户获取问题。

经过验证的IP所具有的最大优势便在于能够将现有的用户转移到手机平台上。在手机生态圈(也就是一个忠实的在线社区)之外创建一个稳定的应用以及具有影响力的社区并不容易。说服任何人去浏览你的论坛,拿起手机(假设他们拥有正确的平台)搜索并下载你的应用,注册帐号并反复回到应用中是件非常困难的事。

这就意味着IP持有者必须完全致力于手机平台业务,可以说对于大多数传统IP持有者(书籍,电影,电视等)来说这是一种投机性投资。单是开发一款应用还不够,你还需要将更多资源投入游戏的市场营销中,想办法获取更多用户,并在设计中进行多次迭代等等。所以要想获得回报还是得付出更多努力才行。

代工承揽

这是许多IP持有者所采取的妥协方法。代工承揽意味着外部开发者将承担起游戏开发工作,并以此获得相关费用或收益分红。这种方法的优势便在于IP所有者拥有主要控制权,并且无需承担组建内部开发团队所需要的费用。而缺点则在于开发者和IP持有者间有时候会出现摩擦,从而会影响游戏的质量。

如今,找到一个愿意接受代工承揽工作的外部开发者已经是件非常困难的事了。大多数有名的开发者宁愿开发自己的IP,也不愿意去为别的IP持有者卖力。虽然现在的手机应用商店的准入门槛正在逐渐提高,但总体看来还是处在较低水平,所以大多数工程师很容易聚集一个小团队去实现自己的游戏开发梦想。

授权

根据相关条款,在授权条件下外部开发者将获得稳定的IP并能够使用它。IP持有者将以审查和否决权(当开发者的工作偏离正轨时)来代替繁琐的每日管理和监管工作。

不幸的是,当提到品牌的认知价值时我们会发现IP持有者和开发者间存在着一条巨大的鸿沟。IP持有者总是希望从授权中获取巨额利益,但是手机开发者却不愿意在不可补偿的优势或者提成费等方面让步。老实说我们总是很难确保双方利益的平衡。开发者在平台抽成后只剩下70%的收益,并且还要将其中的20-30%收益出让给IP持有者,这一点确实是令人难以接受(尤其还要考虑到用户获取成本已经提高)。

实际上,开发者若同意签署这种合约,一般也是建立在由IP持有者负责营销及确保安装量的前提下(这个条款常被开发者所忽略)。但不幸的是,IP持有者并不愿意接受这一条款,因为他们认为自己提供这种IP使用权,已经出让了足够多的利益。坦白说我并不认为这种交易会有成效,除非开发者已经解决了用户获取问题(游戏邦注:即拥有大量的现有用户基础,就像Zynga那样)。但如果是这样,开发者并不需要依靠外部IP的支持,也不愿意签订那些不可能给现有手机用户带来价值的合约。

欲望

手机品牌中还存在着一些关于欲望的更广泛的问题。并不存在任何明显的迹象可以表明手机用户非常重视品牌内容。可以说手机成了人们尝试新内容的平台。基于免费模式,人们便可以更轻松地尝试任何新内容。但是如果尝试成本过高(如电影票那样),玩家尝试新事物的积极性便会被大大削弱,而已知产品的价值(如已经建立起来的IP)便会大大提升。但因为如今的应用市场的结构倾向于推动用户去体验各种应用,所以IP便很难在此突显其真正价值。

另外一个问题便是手机游戏都较简单,不足以套上IP框架。就像《愤怒的小鸟》或《涂鸦跳跃》便都不足以作为IP的载体。如果手机应用不能够体现出IP的深度,那么再讲品牌的重要性又有何意义呢。实际上如果我们强行在这里添加IP并进行一些肤浅的处理,最终只会遭来原游戏社区的各种谩骂。

我只想到一个关于品牌整合具有直接且明显价值的例子:面向儿童的IP。主要有两大原因:信任和低期待值。就像“家长购买应用,并将手机递给孩子们让他们能够安静下来”便是公认的最佳手机应用使用例子。当家长在思考该让自己的小孩接触哪种类型的应用并做出购买决定时,信任便是一大重要标准。结果便是,可辨识的IP便是儿童玩家们的最佳选择。《蓝精灵村庄》的成功便是一大典例。

smurfs_village(from maclife.com)

smurfs_village(from maclife.com)

除此之外儿童玩家还会考虑到其它因素。老实说,如果一款游戏中出现了“海绵宝宝”,儿童玩家们便会非常开心。沉浸感很大程度上还是取决于游戏机制所包裹着的图像。

未来

我想随着准入门槛的不断提升以及游戏空间的不断巩固,我们的一些估算方式将发生改变。随着越来越多初具规模的开发者的出现,用户获取问题将会逐步得到解决,而IP也终将成为开发者从玩家身上盈利的最佳方法。我同样也认为随着市场的进一步发展,开发者和IP持有者将能够更精确地预测一个特殊IP的价值,以及他们能从一种特殊应用身上获得多少收益等内容。而随着这种估算越来越精确,我想我们利用外部IP的机会也将越来越多。

JM:的确,我们很难去争辩这2亿美元的支出是否值得。但是比起开发者面向App Store所创造出的大量游戏,这一数值真的不算什么。有时候开发者做出一个策略型决策并与一个可行的品牌合作去树立自己的身份具有非常深刻的意义。而当你的应用获得一个平台的推荐,你便很容易再次得到它的推荐,因为你的应用已经获得该平台的关注了。

尽管我承认品牌正在逐渐衰退,但是我们也不能忽视整体的周期性现象。当平台刚刚起步时,原创IP会非常强大。而随着平台日趋成熟以及游戏开发和市场营销竞争逐渐加剧,品牌对于游戏发展的作用也将越来越重要。另外,外部IP并不受这种季节性行为的影响,即它们并不需要现在的电影,电视剧或书籍等媒体的支持,而是会永久地存在于大众文化之中。这种外部IP拥有足够强大的品牌能量,它能够帮助我们克服双重税收问题。

但是更有趣的是双重税收似乎只是发生在新兴开发者身上。商品成本,制造费,制造授权费,分销费,退款费,回扣以及减价等费用都将从你所获得的总收益中扣除。所以当你看到最终收益时你可能根本就感觉不到自己是在销售一款60美元的产品。

外部IP和AAA级IP开始呈现出更多意义只是一个时间早晚的问题。而对于这两种IP持有者,我认为他们需要做的便是把握游戏开发质量和用户获取环节。

游戏邦注:原文发表于2012年5月3日,所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。(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

Licensed IP & Mobile Games

May 3, 2012 by Shawn Foust

When talking to my friends from my entertainment lawyering days, I often get asked about my thoughts on the place for brands in mobile gaming. Tough question. Looking at the App Store now, one would think there really isn’t much to be done on the brand front. “Name” intellectual property just hasn’t had the impact on the rankings one might hope. One cannot help but wonder why.

Allow me to opine at length.

A Matter of Approach

High quality intellectual property makes it way into games through a three primary means: (1) first party development, (2) license, or (3) work-for-hire. Each of these has very different incentives and advantages to it, and each scenario isn’t particularly appealing given the current structure of the app marketplace.

First Party Development

First Party Development occurs when the owner of the intellectual property, say a movie studio, decides to build out its own team and develop the game internally. This has the advantage of retaining total control and aligning incentives between the developer and the IP holder. Normally, these advantages would all be very attractive, but there are some problems when it comes to the mobile marketplace. Well, only one really big one. User acquisition.

The biggest advantage of a recognized intellectual property, a pre-existing audience, is largely erased on the mobile platform. The simple fact is that building a solid application and leveraging a community outside of the mobile ecosystem (say a devoted online community) is tough work. There’s simply too much friction in the process of convincing a person idly browsing your forums to cease that activity, pick up their mobile phone (assuming they have the right platform), search for your app, download your app, sign up for it, and return to the app regularly.

This means the intellectual property holder must fully commit to mobile, which is a speculative investment for the more traditional intellectual property holders (books, movies, television, etc.). Simply developing the application will not be enough, you’ll need to put significant resources into marketing and acquiring users, iterating on design and so forth. It’s a lot of work for a hard to quantify reward.

Work-For-Hire

This is the compromise a lot of intellectual property holders seek to make. A work-for-hire arrangement means an external developer will undertake the development of the game in exchange for a specified payment or revenue share. This has the advantage of permitting the intellectual property holder significant control without undertaking the significant expenditure of building out an internal developer. The natural downside is the occasional friction between developer and IP holder and potential decreases in quality.

Finding a solid outside developer willing to undertake work-for-hire contracts is hard work these days. Not impossible, just pretty damn tough. Most reputable developers are knee-deep in their own intellectual property and have little desire to undertake the misery of an overbearing IP holder. The barriers to entering the mobile app store, while rising, are still low enough that most engineers can get together a small team and take a whack at the American Dream. The financial upside on work-for-hire pales in comparison to a 200 million dollar exit.

I’d say I get asked about whether I know of a good mobile team working on a contract about once a month.

License

Depending on the terms, a license can potentially give an external developer the opportunity to take a solid IP and run with it. The IP holder forgoes the hassle of daily management and oversight in favor of a check and a veto vote (exercised when the developer goes off the deep end).

Unfortunately, there’s a massive gulf between the IP holder and the developers when it comes to the perceived value of the brand. IP holders are accustomed the receiving significant sums for a license, but mobile developers are generally unwilling to part with things like non-recoupable advances and or generous royalties. Frankly, it’s pretty tough to make the math work for both sides. If a developer is getting 70 cents on the dollar due to the platform cut, then another 20-30% going to the IP holder is potentially crippling, particularly when one considers the rising price of user acquisition.

In fact, developers that agree to that sort of deal are generally signing up for failure under the IP holder can deliver guarantees on marketing and installs (a term generally overlooked by developers). Unfortunately, IP holders have a hard time stomaching those sorts of terms because they feel like they’re giving enough value by providing access to the intellectual property in the first place. Frankly, I don’t think these deals can really work unless the developer has already solved user acquisition by having a large pre-existing user base (à la Zynga). However, a developer in the position probably doesn’t need a boost from outside IP or wouldn’t be willing to sign a deal that didn’t give them significant consideration for the enormous value of a pre-existing mobile audience.

Appetite

There’s also the broader issue of appetite for name brands on mobile. There is little indication that mobile phone owners have a strong preference for branded content. If anything, the mobile phone has become a place for people to experiment. With the free2play model, there is little risk attached to trying new content. If the cost to try is high (like a movie ticket) then the willingness to try the unknown goes down and the value of known commodities, like established intellectual property, goes up. The structure of the app market ensures that users are predisposed to churning through apps and experimenting. It’s a rough place for IP to demonstrate value in.

Another issue is the fact that mobile games simply aren’t sophisticated enough to operate as anything more than skins for an IP. Angry Birds or Doodle Jumper just aren’t great delivery devices for narratives. If the mobile app can’t leverage the depth of the IP, then it’s really tough to make the argument for the importance of the brand (barring pre-existing audience, which we already addressed above). In fact, taking a treasured IP and giving it a superficial treatment may result in a significant lashback from the community.

I can only think of one area where the incorporation of a brand has immediate and demonstrable value: children’s IPs. There’s two reasons for this: trust and low expectations. The “Parent buys app, hands iPhone to kid to shut him up” use case is well-recognized for mobile applications. Trust is an important criteria to the buying decision when a parent is contemplating what to expose their special little butterfly to. As a result, recognizable IPs that are known to be suitable for children come at a premium. The success of things like Smurf Village is a good example.

There’s also the kid to consider. Frankly, if the game has Spongebob in it in any form, then the kid is gonna be happy. Immersion is possible with nothing more than a few pieces of art wrapped around a simple game mechanic. As a friend once put it to me following a particularly questionable encounter with someone of the opposite sex: “My standards are low, but I’m never disappointed.”

Into the Future

I suspect some of the calculations will alter as the barriers to entry go up and the space consolidates a bit more. As there are more developers of scale, then some the audience problems begin to dissolve and IP becomes a potentially attractive means to monetize those audiences. I also think further evolution in the market will permit developers and IP holders to more accurately predict the value of a particular IP and the likely revenue one might derive from a specific type of app. As those calculations become more certain, then I think the opportunities to leverage outside IP become more clear.

JM: Yes, those $200M+ exits are hard to argue with. But visible examples aside, these are few and far between, compared to the vast number of developers making games for the App Store. Sometimes it makes sense to make a strategic decision to partner with a visible brand, to build your portfolio and standing. Once you get featured by a platform, it’s easier to get featured again, since you’re on their radar.

Also, while I agree that brands have been on the ebb, these things are cyclical. When platforms are young, original IP is strong. As they mature, and the arms race for development and marketing goes up, brands become more and more important to rise above the static. Plus, outlier IPs are seemingly immune to this seasonal behavior, since they are by nature evergreen. They don’t need a current movie, TV show, or book, they are permanently embedded in popular culture. These outliers should have sufficient brand power to overcome the double taxation issue.

But the interesting thing to keep in mind, is that this seems like a double tax only to new people. The cost of goods, manufacturing, manufacturing licensing, distribution, charge-backs, rebates, and mark-downs took out so much of the gross your head would spin. You really didn’t feel you were selling a $60 product when you saw what actually came in.

It’s only a matter of time before outlier IPs and AAA IPs start making a lot more sense. For them, I agree Shawn, they must have their eye on the leaders in quality development and user acquisition. At some point, it’s going to look like a win-win, and bam. Top Grossing becomes a whole new ball game.(source:somofos


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