GamesBeat: An interesting thing about video games — sequels can be bigger. Grand Theft Auto V is much bigger than Grand Theft Auto IV. That gives you an interesting opportunity as far as how and when to approach it. Ubisoft has said that they like starting a brand at the beginning of a new platform. Even though there aren’t many units of that platform out, it’s a good time to introduce something new, like ZombiU on the Wii U. After that the idea sinks in with people and it seems like it was a big deal — it made a big splash on the new platform, so maybe they’ll try the second game that comes out, and the second game has a chance to be much bigger. Ubisoft might expect to make more money on Watch Dogs 2 than Watch Dogs.
If we look at mobile games, where we are now, mobile games seem to be migrating toward brands now, but they didn’t start that way. They started out with original titles. What do you think of the idea of that cycle? Is that the right way to plan your brand introductions, when you find a new platform?
Auclair: It’s a great strategy. When you launch a new platform, whether it’s a new phone or a new console, the consumers who are getting that in the beginning are aggressive purchasers. They’re trendsetters. They want everything first. It’s a great time to start a new brand because these people consume more content. They want to try everything.
You’ll rarely make a profit on those first games, though. That’s why you see games like the first Assassins’ Creed or the first Watch Dogs — Watch Dogs was more expensive, much bigger in scope, but still, it was there to get the brand out there. You’re first to the market, a market that’s hungry for content. You can create that brand and then make a profit over the longer period of time.
In mobile, the problem right now is that with the dominance of Google Play and the iTunes store, you’re not going to see a new device that comes with a new store and new users. Because of that, because of the competition, the cost of marketing has increased, and that takes us back to brands. That’s what makes it easier, even though it’s extremely expensive. EA probably forked over $20 million to do the Simpsons game before they wrote one line of code.
It’s about that balance in the market. New consoles bring new players who are hungry for content. But now, in the mobile world, we’re fighting against 100,000 games a year. It’s very different. You have to set yourself apart by adding an IP or having a huge marketing budget to create your IP.
GamesBeat: Talking to the president of Jam City yesterday, he said the thing they liked about Harry Potter is that on mobile, it wasn’t really that big a deal. Nobody had exhausted the brand on mobile yet. Maybe they had those memories of the console games. On mobile, sometimes these older brands can make a comeback. Maybe that’s something to think about as a strategy. A brand that’s lain fallow for a while, or a retro brand, does that make sense?
Eger: In this case, with Harry Potter, it could be interesting to know if they have an exclusive or not.
GamesBeat: They don’t. They’re going to compete against Harry Potter Go from Niantic. But that’s going to be very different from Jam City’s RPG. That’s kind of like Marvel. When you make a game with Marvel, you’re competing against many different kinds of Marvel mobile games.
Eger: You definitely need to have good app store optimization. If you start doing TV campaigns, or campaigns in general, and people start searching for your game and then they download a game from another developer, that’s a waste of money. That’s one reason it’s important to not have too many people working on the same IP.
Leopold: At the same time, I think it’s important to have that diversity of mechanics when the IP is first coming to the platform. You’re never really going to know which mechanic is going to do well for the project. Take Transformers for instance. We published Earth Wars in China, launching it right at the time when Kabam’s Forged to Fight came out. The mechanics, for the Chinese audience, just worked much better for Earth Wars. Forged to Fight slowly started dropping off the charts, simply because the mechanics weren’t as popular in that specific region.
GamesBeat: If you’re a new developer shopping for a brand or wanting to help something with a brand, how do you go about it? Do you go to the franchise expo and hang out and see what’s for sale?
Auclair: The licensing expo, there’s a lot of big IPs selling to you. They have 60 meetings that week and they’re only trying to get the biggest NG possible. In my opinion, to get a license, it’s all about relationships. You have to work on those all the time. You have to talk to them and see what’s important. You’re going to go to Disney and you expect to have a presentation about Star Wars and Marvel, and then they talk about Muppets for half an hour. Speaking from experience. I love the Muppets, but they don’t have lightsabers.
GamesBeat: Can you put lightsabers in the Muppets game?
Auclair: Poor Kermit. [laughs] I think it’s important to know what’s hot and what’s not, not only in the market, but in the publisher’s mind. There’s a market for almost every IP. Figure out if it’s evergreen. You should get something evergreen. But then listen. Pay attention to what they say. If they’re pitching an IP hard, maybe they can’t get a very big deal on it, because they have some sort of request to find a game for that specific IP. That’s when you can do something out of the ordinary.
We did that at Hybernum for Beauty and the Beast. We went to the presentation. They showed all their IPs. Beauty and the Beast was a big focus. People were unsure of it, because they didn’t know how it would work in live action. It turned out to be the biggest movie of 2017.
GamesBeat: What was the context for that meeting?
Auclair: That one was at Disney. They invited all their licensees and partners and presented their full catalog. You go in and try to make a deal, try to get some love from them. Like I say, people weren’t sure about Beauty and the Beast. That was right when Star Wars and Marvel were still doing gangbusters business on the app stores. We went for Beauty and the Beast and it served us well. So pay attention to what they tell you, but also do your homework. Don’t get fooled by taking Independence Day 2 and getting screwed because no on watches the movie.
GamesBeat: How does a Disney go and find new developers that they haven’t worked with before?
Auclair: Like pretty much any biz dev, they can go to shows and — everyone wants to work with Disney. It’s easy for them. Their biggest issue right now is internal turmoil. They’re not licensing. They don’t know what they want to do. They may move full-blown into licensing out of co-development, but that also results — in licensing, because people pay NGs, the only thing people want to talk about is Star Wars and Marvel. Disney wants to move the rest of their portfolio, which is a lot more difficult, because if you do games for kids, for instance, that just doesn’t work. They’re having a tough fight over there.
GamesBeat: I think a lot of people here are interested in how you start out on this whole journey. How do you find what IPs are out there, what’s ripe for exploitation?
Leopoldo: Like Louis said, it’s really about building a relationship. When we were talking to Hasbro about Transformers, we’d known those guys for a number of years. We’d looked a lot of their IPs. This was the one we saw as a good fit for the Chinese market. We’d been waiting for them to work on this IP and this mechanic, and it all really clicked. That’s when we started establishing that. But it’s really about building a relationship, starting to reach out to the guys on the ground when you’re at those expos. They’re always looking for people to meet with as far as finding developers to publish their IP.
GamesBeat: How often does a brand check in with you to see whether you’re on track, whether you’re making the right game, whether your loot crates are too expensive?
Leopoldo: That really depends on the publishing relationship. For a developer that’s just looking for publishing in China, sometimes they’re a bit more hands-off than if you’re doing a really global project. With the Hasbro guys, they’ll check in every couple months. We’ll have weekly emails, sending weekly reports, but in terms of marketing and road maps, we’ll just do every couple of months.
Auclair: Some IP owners are very hands-on. Disney is one that’s very hands-on. They care for their brands extremely well. They’re going to check everything. They have approvals in the contract that say they’ll check everything and they own everything. They basically own you. You’re going to be talking to them almost every day. Our producer on Beauty and the Beast I think talked to the guy there every day before he went to bed, when he woke up in the morning — he’s always on a call with them.
Some are going to be more hands-off. We worked with Wizards of the Coast on Magic: The Gathering. They wanted an update once a month. They wanted to make sure we treated the cards right. But they’re not hands-on. They trust you. That’s another thing to think of when you’re going for an IP. Go for a brand that you’re passionate about. Don’t go for a brand just because you want the marketing that comes with it. If you’re not passionate about the brand, the game that comes out of it is going to suck. If the game sucks you’re dead. So be passionate about your IP. Learn about it. Get to know it. Really go for that one, and that’s how you’ll stand out.
Eger: What’s also important when you’re publishing an IP is your flexibility. Like you said, you’re waking up and calling them. Before you go to sleep, you’re calling them. When you run into things that you have to discuss in detail, discussion is losing time, losing flexibility. You need to know in advance if your team can manage this.
If you’re planning a new in-game event because it’s important for retention — day 10 retention is going down, day 30, whatever — you’re in trouble if you have to spend weeks discussing how to put this event together. You’re still losing retention, losing players, and losing money. You need to know whether you’re willing to take a risk before you sign a contract.
GamesBeat: Your company’s argument is that it doesn’t take as long to build a brand as you might think, that that’s the right way to go.
Eger: The main reason we’ve never wanted to do an IP game — we’ve discussed this a lot before. The problem was always the contract. When an IP is getting really big, and you always want to go for big IP, the contract gets more and more difficult. You lose your flexibility. If you go for a smaller IP, why are you going for IP at all? You end up negotiating for weeks or months and in the end nothing is moving forward, because they think, sometimes, that they can make a game better than a game developer can.
With your own IP, like I say, you’re flexible. You can do events in the game however you want to. You invest the money you’d spend on a license in marketing to grow your own IP.