Thinking of buying some classic game IP

[Flojomojo]

I'm old, I like old games. The sights and sounds of old games make me feel young and happy. I buy packaged retro collections all the time. I appreciate the work of places like M2, Code Mystics, and Backbone Entertainment (and their prior incarnations). I think AtGames, Hyperkin, RetroBit, and others who have re-created old hardware are doing fun work.

 

I also see needless drama around some of these issues.

 

If I were to buy some "classic" intellectual property, what could be in it for me?

 

I could make a lot of money. Corner the market on retro gaming.

Heh, I'm thinking probably not. Any IP I could reasonably buy is probably cheap for a reason. It doesn't make much sense to try to build something new on the foundation of something that was never very popular in first place. The Atari Jaguar case molds weren't an investment, they were salvage. I wouldn't buy a salvage car, and I certainly wouldn't be able to sell a rebuild for more than a new car would be worth. I would need more money to do anything valuable with them, other than just licensing them out for "exploitation." If I wanted a rental property, a flipper house would be a better investment.

 

I could bring back some precious memories, and feel like I'm 12 again. Remember when, play again.

Remember COLECO? They made those neat little battery-powered football games with the blinking red lights. Those were awesome when I was young. Yeah, but now they're garbage. My phone has a bazillion times the resolution, processing power, potential, and usefulness. All those arcade ports are the property of someone else. Maybe some memories are better left in the past. Emulators are freely available, made with passion, not for profit. It's hard to compete with them.

 

I could use the old names to springboard some new ideas into the market!

Um, yeah. Ever heard of Atari Fit? How about KC [Munchkin] Returns! Yeah, I thought not. Apple doesn't talk about Apple II or Fat Macs when selling iPhones. Probably better to come up with a NEW idea and worry about the name later. Example: Rovio had been around for 10 years before Angry Birds hit it big. They didn't buy their way into it.

 

I could make money from copyright trolling or otherwise ruin the community for people who enjoy this stuff.

Of course I wouldn't do that. But defending a trademark seems like a real pain in the ass. Even if I do not need to tirelessly censor the internet to maintain my trademark, I think I would need to put the trademarks to good use to keep myself from suffering from buyer's remorse. What if nobody wants to license anything from me? How do I remain relevant as the old fans lose interest or die off?

 

I just love the games and don't want to see them languish.

This seems like an honorable way to keep an old brand alive. I see that Collectorvision has the rights to the Exidy games, which have languished in semi-abandonment for too long. I don't know what they're planning, but the fact that we saw licensed Venture on the ColecoVision Flashback was a good sign.

[CatPix]

There are different things going in an IP. The brand itself, the games, and the hardware (tho, most of our ols systems are more than 20 years old and doean't contain a ROM to boot, so we can ignore it).

 

You can buy games without buying the brand, or vice-versa; you can see this as early as 1982, with Astrovision buying the right to produce and sell the Bally Professionnal Arcade system and games, but keeping the name Bally for only a year (or two?) and several games originally made by Bally released uner other names (it's why the port of Wizard of Wor port on the Astrocade is called "The Incredible wizard" : the deal allowed Astrovision to release the game, but not to use Bally's arcade name.

 

You can buy a brand but it might not grant you access to the software, if it was for example licenced titles, or that it was a computer, where most, if not every program for it would be from 3rd party publishers.

 

Personnally, I think, if I could buy an IP, that I'll put it in public domain like Jay Smith did with the Vectrex.

Edited May 23, 2017 by CatPix

[Tanooki]

Making a lot of money isn't as easy as you may think.

 

Perhaps you could get those memories, but if it's something not already dumped somewhere you could do that with an INL kazoo writer and necessary board to make your own far cheaper

 

That is the best point yet, use the old game, take that IP, make something modern but not perhaps that people of the era and new would eat up, that's the best option.

 

Trolling works, but not easy and good luck with a pack of shark lawyers vs well YOU

 

Honorable, but one could argue if it just got thrown on the internet for people to use, it wouldn't languish either if you're just going after availability.

 

 

Talking to Eli (Piko) he's on here. Been doing it for a lot of years. I've helped him out in the past on a few things going back to the early stuff with the Wisdom Tree things.

[enoofu]

Has anyone made a lot of money in retrogaming???

[godslabrat]

I've pondered doing this too, but I keep getting stopped at the "why" and drawing the same list of possibilities as yourself. Just finding out who owns the more obscure titles might be just as expensive as the purchase itself!

[Flojomojo]

Geniuses: I'm not actually considering buying retro game IP, just pondering what might be motivating chuckleheads like Kennedy and Cardillo. :-)

[Reaperman]

I think the best way to do it would actually be to buy a game IP you quite dislike.

Then you don't have to worry about pissing off the fanbase--because they're just a pack of morons, amirite?

And you don't have to do anything with the IP, which is really, really easy.

But, when one of said fans tries it, you smoke them as hard as possible.

 

See, then you still *have* it, and can also enjoy the fact that nobody else ever will.

 

Perhaps the Cruis'n franchise. That comes right to mind.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Reaperman

[DuggerVideoGames]

Geniuses: I'm not actually considering buying retro game IP, just pondering what might be motivating chuckleheads like Kennedy and Cardillo. :-)

If I were wealthy and money were no object to me, I'd do it. I'd do it simply for the sake of avoiding confusion and unnecessary drama in regards to copyright/trademarks/etc. If I owned everything, it would avoid confusion in the laws and in regards to ownership; I'd also make it easy for anybody to contact me about dealings together (whether it be today's game companies or the homebrew community, especially the homebrew community to help them find success in their passions as well).

 

Can anybody give me the upcoming PowerBall numbers so we can make this a reality?

[DuggerVideoGames]

I think the best way to do it would actually be to buy a game IP you quite dislike.

Then you don't have to worry about pissing off the fanbase--because they're just a pack of morons, amirite?

And you don't have to do anything with the IP, which is really, really easy.

But, when one of said fans tries it, you smoke them as hard as possible.

 

See, then you still *have* it, and can also enjoy the fact that nobody else ever will.

 

Perhaps the Cruis'n franchise. That comes right to mind.

You forgot the part where Cardillo probably said "They can blow it out their banjo kazooie"