Why IP Rights Are Important: The Story of Platypus
I hadn't seen this before, but in case you are interested, here is a link to the story of the making of Platypus, a popular indie shoot-em-up. That story leaves out some of the jucier recent developments.

As a summary:

* Anthony Flack made a unique shooter with clay-modeled art called Platypus. Nearly broke and lacking any knowledge of the "indie community" (which was much smaller than it is now), he sold the rights - lock, stock, and barrel - to a publisher for about $3000. They did almost nothing with it, and the game quickly sank into obscurity.

* Mike Boeh of Retro64 purchased the online sales rights to the game. And, apparently, the right to modify it for online sales. He cleaned it up to make it more sellable, actually marketed the thing, and turned it into an online hit game.

* Since they owned the rights to a "hit game", the publisher got the game ported to the PSP, where it's now selling (apparently) pretty well. And they've got a sequel in the works. However, they've since scrubbed out any and all reference to the original author, even though it's still his artwork (and possibly even his code... who knows?) in the game

* They have also announced a sequel, which is apparently using a lot of Anthony's original artwork, though some of it has been color swapped. It's unlikely his name will be on the sequel, either.

* To add insult to injury, according to this account, an affiliate even tried to sell Platypus listing Anthony Flack's company, Squashy Software, as the author. They received an email demanding that they remove the developer's name from the byline, and replace it with the name of the publisher. Now that they have a hot property, they want full credit and attention.

So I guess there are two schools of thought on this one.

One is, "Wow, great investment!" $3000 got them a hit property (eventually) that they had to do practically NOTHING on. One guy made the game. Another guy perfected it and did the marketing. All the publisher did, after the first CD run (which, to be fair here, sounds like it didn't really make them money), was to parcel out its rights and let other people make them money. AND they are able to position themselves as the creators of this hit game, which can help them leverage new titles.

Another is, "Wow, those greedy unethical jerks!" Not the fact that they aren't paying Anthony (or Mike) a dime from the profits of the title (other than what they make in commissions for selling it themselves). I'm sure it was well-understood by both parties that the $2000 flat fee plus $1000 completion bonus was in lieu of future profits of the game. But while it was certainly their right to remove his name from the credits, they were under no obligation to do so - and certainly not their obligation to police their affiliates to make sure his company is not mentioned as the developer.

The lack of giving credit where credit is due is the issue, though it's hardly unique. After all, a big element of Activision's early success was that they were willing to give credit to game developers, something that Atari eschewed. (Curiously enough, Activision is now in the position of being the IP owner now for Guitar Hero, and has also cut the original developer out of the loop...) And it's not even remotely unique to the games biz. Maybe the ethics of taking advantage of the young and naive they could sucker into a deal like that - but in all honesty, I don't know if they could have predicted seven years ago that they could have made a large profit on even that small of an investment. I'd be unsurprised to hear that there are some games that they have purchased the rights for in the same manner on which they still haven't recouped their initial investment.

Whatever your take on the issue, the message should be crystal clear: IP rights are totally where it's at. Although technically this goes beyond just IP rights, but the truth of the matter is that those rights are the rights for you to have other people make you money.

I'm not saying those rights are so valuable that you should never let them go. That'd silly. But I do think developers as a whole (both indie and mainstream) greatly undervalue them, to the point that they are pretty much a "given" in any mainstream publishing deal. The developer undervalues them because they lack the resources and expertise to exploit them. The publishers wisely acquire the rights for the value the developers place on them, not the value the publishers themselves place on the them.

Another thing I'd take away from this is how Platypus was an unrecognized gem in the rough on its initial release. He altered the presentation, polished it a bit, shrank the download size, added much-needed skill levels and mouse support, and --- oh, he left the original developer's name in the credits. That and a little bit of marketing push was "all" it needed to go from being an obscure game that nobody played or remembered to a hit download that spawned a portable console version and an upcoming sequel several years after its initial release. I jokingly say "all" because I'm sure it wasn't a trivial amount of work, and Mike applied a lot of expertise to polish the game to its modern state.

But those little things count. A LOT.


(Vaguely) related delusions of adequacy:
* Is $42,000 All You Can Make With Indie Games?
* Avoiding Target Fixation: How NinjaBee Got It Right
* How to Avoid Making Money Making Indie Games
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Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:38 AM (Permalink)