[casual_games] Business Models

Wed Aug 31 23:29:53 EDT 2005

Hi Brent, Kevin and all

Thank you very much for your time and comments.  This has already given me more insight into a path forward for our merchandising plans.

Hoping you all manage to move forward successfully with your projects.

Mal.

Mal Cumpston
Director
Inventive Entertainment
mal at inventive-entertainment.com

Brent Lowrie <brent.lowrie at raremethod.com> wrote:
Hi Mal

I agree with Kevin and this is the approach we are taking in conceptualizing all our IP for games and animation. Our senior animator worked on the original Toy Story at Pixar (having graduated Cal Arts a year behind John Lasseter and Tim Burton) and I came from Walt Disney Animation Canada, when there was such a thing, so we're approaching our IP to have as much marketing reach as possible - game, TV, DVD, toys and other merchandising. We hope to produce as much of it as possible in-house as well. These are the aspirations of our creative team and not necessarily that of management. Although they have expressed interest in exploring it all further and like the idea, it's all foreign to them so I am tasked with making my case. 

We were nearly there with Wonderville (www.wonderville.ca), having pitched it at Pitchfest in Banff and securing verbals from a producer and distributor. Unfortunately, the copyright holder (our client) backed out for now, putting an end to that. 

If you have budget, you may consider speaking with a developer to produce an entertainment website with a small game to help pitch the show's marketability in the U.S. We are currently doing this with a feature production here to help them secure "new media" funding.

Brent Lowrie
Games and Animation
RARE METHOD

500, 1812 4th Street S.W. Calgary AB T2S 1W1
P. 403.543.4500 x341 F. 403.532.3004
www.raremethod.com
games.raremethod.com

Strategic Interactive Marketing
Provoke Thought Direct Action Get Results 

________________________________

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org on behalf of Mal Cumpston
Sent: Wed 8/31/2005 5:59 PM
To: wade at largeanimal.com; IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Business Models

G'day everyone.

I apologise if this is the wrong environment in which to post this, but it seemed right. 

My name is Mal Cumpston, and I represent Inventive Entertainment (www.inventive-entertainment.com ), an Australian television production company specialising in high concept sci-fi and fantasy products.

Right now we're at the "boot strapping" stage of start up, having collected the IP for products, we've built our prototype (a short film length trailer of one of the products) and are positioning ourselves for an approach to Sci-Fi Channel in the US, with scripts, TV Concept Documents and all such.

My fellow directors are very focussed on putting everything in place for making the TV shows. I'm pushing REALLY hard on the marketing front with everything from music to computer games, but I don't know much at all about how the computer game world works.

I THINK maybe that the involvement of game developers should be early, when we do our "animatic" for the episodes so that the game developers can use all the CGI stuff we're using to build into the game, and even incorporate the same music from the tv show and beyond.

You're all talking about the business models for building games. I'm trying to build a document that describes how we'd make the computer game a reality as an integrated part of our tv production process. I'd really like to talk to someone about how this might work. I know there's on-line gaming, and that's presumably different to other kinds of gaming...can you tell yet that I have a LOT to learn?

I've got ideas on how the "deal" might be constructed, but I don't know if there are already existing standards in place... in fact I have a lot of questions.

Is anyone able to comment?

Thanks.

Mal

Mal Cumpston

Director

Inventive Entertainment

mal at inventive-entertainment.com

Wade Tinney wrote: 

Hi Brent-

I see other developers as competitors only in the weakest sense of the word. Perhaps in the same way that one musical group *might* see other groups as competition for the ears and music budget (which is to say, piracy time) of a particular demographic. Frankly, I don't think many music groups think like this and I don't see why developers in this space should either. Obviously, there are limits to what can be shared, but generally speaking, I think we all benefit from sharing information. In fact, that is really an the central purpose of the IGDA and therefore this group.

As for the business model question, my company spent 4 years doing contract development of web-based promotional games for consumer brands. We built a dozen games a year, on average, honing our production process and socking away dollars to spend on internally funded projects. We've never received, or sought, any type of external investment. Using that strategy, we were able to fund (and find the time for) about 1 downloadable game per year. As of about a year ago, we are no longer doing straight work-for-hire work; all of our projects are partnerships in which we share the revenues from the game in an on-going way. There are two reasons why we were able to switch over to this way of working; 1) revenues from our existing titles started to account for a meaningful percentage of our monthly operating costs; and 2) we began partnering with publishers or other IP owners who were interested in download able, casual games. These partners have money and we have talent; its a match 
 made in
 heaven. 

Currently, we are working on a combination of internally-funded projects and partner-funded projects. This mix gives us a comfortable level of stability. 

We've done some licensing of the flash and shockwave game engines we developed in those first 4 years, but its not a primary business model for us. We also generate some revenue from licensing our downloadable titles to developers who port and distribute them on other platforms. We also distribute the games of other developers on largeanimal.com

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have other questions. 

Wade

Wade Tinney
partner, game designer
Large Animal Games
http://www.largeanimal.com 
wade at largeanimal.com

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Brent Lowrie
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 10:45 AM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: [casual_games] Business Models

I know this is a topic that many are interested in but few are really willing to talk about. We are all competitors after all.

We are a relatively small game development group fighting to establish some independence within an interactive marketing firm. As the group leader, I have been putting together a business plan of sorts and would like to field some questions for those established developers with many games in their portfolio. How did you go about producing so many games? That is, was it self-funded internal development in the hopes of licensing them? Were they games developed for clients that you retained rights too and now offer a non-branded version for licensing? A combination?

Thanks in advance...

Brent Lowrie
Games & Animation

RARE METHOD 
500, 1812 4th Street S.W. Calgary AB T2S 1W1
P. 403.543.4500 x341 F. 403.532.3004
www.raremethod.com
games.raremethod.com

Strategic Interactive Marketing
Provoke Thought Direct Action Get Results

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