Key licensing tips from working with big brands

gamesindustry.biz:

Working on a licensed property can be a dream come true for many, especially if it’s for a franchise you have a strong emotional connection to. I’ve been truly blessed that at ClockStone Studio I’ve gotten to work on titles like Bridge Constructor: Portal, Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead, and most recently Lego Bricktales.

Naturally, I was thrilled to be a part of all of these projects. But working on a licensed game isn’t easy, as these partnerships are difficult to acquire and at least as challenging to make good on. There’s a lot of work that goes into a collaboration with a major IP holder, and we’ve learned a lot about how to keep our corporate partners proud while having fun doing it. Here’s some of the best practices I’ve learned from my time at ClockStone.

Arguably the most important part of working on a licensed property is to find the right licence for your game. The first piece of advice I would give here is to be sure that you are always open to what’s going on, not only in the gaming industry, but beyond it. It’s very easy to be inwardly focused on your own studio’s work and this means missing out on opportunities that could overlap with what your studio is doing. Keeping your eyes and ears open and trying to foster an ongoing process of idea generation when it comes to potential partners is a pre-requisite of finding the right partner.

Let’s get more specific and talk about how you identify if any potential collaboration is a good fit. There needs to be some conceptual angle that ties the licence and what you are able to offer together. To give a concrete example, in the case of Portal and Bridge Constructor, we had the meeting point of physics-based puzzles and the Aperture Science setting that