 | Games Based on Licensed Properties |  |
David Mullich originally presented this lecture at the 1995 Game Developers Conference.
 | Introduction |  |
 |  |  "You don't know the POWER of a licensed property." |
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Interactive entertainment is the hot place to be these days, and it seems everyone wants a piece of the action. It is difficult to read a newspaper or magazine today without encountering an article peppered with buzzwords like "multimedia," "information superhighway," and "interactive television" and forecasting a bright and lucrative interactive future ahead. Licensing is a already a $90 billion business, but with the phenomenal press our industry is receiving, content right holders are jumping onto the multimedia bandwagon in the belief that their properties could be worth additional billions of dollars if adapted to new forms of media.
Until recently, film studios licensed their properties to interactive entertainment publishers in the same way that they licensed to manufactures of stuffed animals and T -shirts. However, the studios are now keeping interactive product closer to home. In the past year, most of the major film studios announced plans to create division to develop interactive games: Disney Interactive, MGM Interactive, Time Warner Interactive, Fox Interactive, Viacom (Paramount), Sony Imagesoft. Why is Hollywood suddenly so bullish on multimedia? Money, of course. Interactive entertainment did a bigger business than movies last year, grossing more than $17 billion compared to $5.4 billion in box office receipts.
Even book and magazine publishers are getting into the act. Science fiction authors like Roger Zelazny, Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison are participating in the development of interactive products based on their works. HarperCollins Interactive is publishing Paddington Bear products, while Living Books, owned by Random House and Brøderbund, are featuring Dr. Seuss. Even Playboy Enterprises is publishing an interactive version of the Playboy interviews.
Almost any recognizable property that could conceivably be turned into an interactive product is up for grabs: movies, television shows, books, celebrities, you name it. If you are in the interactive entertainment industry, it is almost inevitable that you will eventually work with a licensed property.
