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I have 2 experiences with IPs – through a publisher and through me!
Through a publisher has always been a publisher asking us if we want to make a game based on this IP – and we say HELLS YEAH! We haven’t turned any down yet – and have been super lucky to work with some amazing IPs like Scooby-Doo, Goonies, Godfather, D&D, WWE!
Now that I’m also a publisher – I have to negotiate the IP waters myself! Yikes! For MIND MGMT – we met up with Matt at GenCon – just as a fluke. We played games together and Matt mentioned he liked Akrotiri. We mentioned we liked all his stuff. He said it would be cool if there was a MIND MGMT board game and we enthusiastically asked if we could do it. He was as excited as we were!
We designed the game and then pitched it. A publisher picked it up but then went out of business 6 months later. We got the rights back and decided to publish it ourselves. So I decided to start my own company – and since this was my first (and at the time – maybe my only??) game – and it was based on a creator-owned comic…I thought that’s what my company will do – make games based on creator owned comic books!
So after MIND MGMT – I had a game that I wanted to attach an IP to…but couldn’t figure out a comic that fit. I pitched it to Chris Schweizer and asked if he’d like to write a comic set in this world that we created…he said no! Ha – he said he was so busy. But – he said he could see this game working in the Harrow County world. So I read that comic in a flash and LOVED IT! Chris connected me to Cullen and Tyler and I pitched the game – and they liked it! It’s now coming out later this year. Wow!
For my third and fourth games – comic creators that I adore reached out to me to ask if I could make a game based on their comic! Wow…so as you can see – my story is quite a bit different than others when it comes to IPs! I will say that I am glad I am dealing with the creators instead of a company. That doesn’t interest me as a publisher at all!
