Victim of Culture

Future in franchising for video games

Could there be a future for franchising in video games?  No, not of the GameStop variety, but in actual games themselves.  How so?  By letting fans control games that no longer make financial sense for developers and publishers.

For example, the old Electronic Arts MMO game Earth & Beyond is currently enjoying a rebirth, but not at the hands of EA.  Instead, fans have crafted what they term an “emulator” of the original game, though how technically that term fits in this case is up for debate.  What they’ve really done is revived a once dead MMO with little to no help from the original developer or publisher.

That’s cool enough on its own, and they should be commended for their hard work for fans of the game.  But it raises a bigger question—why is EA missing out on this?  Obviously the game in its original form made no financial sense for EA, but in its new form?  The Emulator version currently (and please correct me if I am wrong) has no rights to and pays no licensing fee for the Earth & Beyond property.  One action might be for EA to shut them down no questions asked, but there is a more productive route.

Franchise the game out to interested parties.  In other words, the game may not make any sense financially for EA to support with servers and developers making content, but what if it does to someone else?  It’s doubtful another large publisher could make the game work any better, but a small, dedicated group of fans who are willing to invest their own time and money just might.

Don’t sell them the rights, but franchise them out.  You have all the necessary materials already on hand, and if someone wants to run a server of the game for their closest hundred friends, why not?  Charge them a small fee and let them get to work.  They can create their own new content, and you don’t have to do anything but collect the money from franchising.

Think of all the MMOs that fans wanted to continue, but unlike other titles where fans can easily make their own sequels, MMOs are a big undertaking especially without any of the original materials.  Sure, this might lead to fifty competing Earth &Beyond servers around the world, but how is that any different than the good old days of online computer gaming when companies weren’t running their own server farms?

This isn’t a suggestion for EA to milk the Earth & Beyond Emulator guys.  It’s a slight nudge to say before you guys shut them down, consider what opportunity they’re presenting to you.  Necessity may be the mother of invention, but stupidity is when you refuse to see opportunity in that invention.

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