I just thought of somthing that may save sierra, you guys at phoenix online studios could buy sierra! I think you guys would do great with sierra. :)
Yeah, but the thing about buying things...you kinda need money. :P
.....Well they could do a bake sale. XD
Cedric could do all the cooking (http://www.postudios.com/blog/forum/index.php?topic=3715.msg183417#msg183417)
XB
I suppose if POS goes commercial and is successful it could be a hypothetical possibility. Not any time soon though. :-\
They could raise money by having a donation button on this site.
Quote from: noaheugene20 on August 05, 2006, 07:57:52 PM
They could raise money by having a donation button on this site.
No, we couldn't. We can't profit in any way from the use of someone else's intellectual property, even if that IP is being used under license.
Well, your right, but how could they make money without breaking there contract? Any Ideas? ???
POS cannot make money on any Seirra IP. If they go commercial and release their own games with their own IP, then nothing is stopping them from making money on those. :) In theory, if POS does well with other games it might be able to buy Sierra or at least some of the Seirra trademarks (Kings quet, Space quest etc.) It probably won't happen, certianly not anytime soon, but it is hypothetically possible. :)
Your probably right, just tell them that I think they should buy Sierra or one of it's trademarks, such as king's quest or space quest sometime in the future. :)
only is POS had millions, and millions of dollars vivendi and sierra are the godfathers of adventure, and to buy them out of it. that would cost a LOT!!
not to mention that if you bought sierre wats the big deal? your just buying the company not the catalog. the catalog alone is worth millions..millions and millions.
thats about...hmm lets se... 9000000000000 cookies, 45000 muffins, 999000 danishes..
poor cedric
Yeah, I think buying Sierra would cost a little more than the revenue of your average bake sale. ;D But if you just looking at KQ and SQ and maybe a few other old games VU might be willing to let it go for a cheap price by the standards of such things. I really have no idea what the going price for 10-year old game IP is, it would be a lot less that Halo or
Civ to be sure, but still hundreds of thousands at the least I suspect.
Considering VG had a net income of 641 million euros in 2005 and we had 0, I don't see us buying them out anytime soon (not that we would want to either). ;P
I don't think anyone is talking about buying VU lock stock and barrel. I was thinking more along the lines of the KQ and SQ trademarks, which can't be the hottest things on the IP market. ;)
$1 million per game title, perhaps... ::)
$20 million extra for the 20 year warranty.
Imagine if it was the reverse that VU wanted to purchase POS and make The Silver Lining game the next official King's Quest -- now that would make things interesting
Definitely more interesting. If VU is listening, you can make that huge cheque payable to Neil Rodrigues. :)
;-D
Either one is possible I suppose, but a distant possbility at best I'm afraid. :-\
Would that be the Neil Rodrigues retirement fund? ;D :P
Quote from: dew7 on August 07, 2006, 07:27:30 PM
Would that be the Neil Rodrigues retirement fund? ;D :P
LOL! :suffer: You bet. ;D
If you bought the king's quest series or the space quest series you guys would probably make a lot of money off it.....hopefully enough to cover the costs to buy the rights.
What's more likely to happen is Vivendi granting us the rights to use the King's Quest trademark in commercial projects, through the use of royalty fees or something. They've already granted us permission for non-commercial use of Sierra intellectual property. 8)
However, we are more interested in creating our original IP than constantly borrowing Sierra's. :P
Well, actually its more likely that if vivendi gave permission to use the King's Quest trademark, that they would probably retain the right to produce the game commercially, and probably put the Sierra and Vivendi logos into the game's startup video as well.
They'd probably end up getting payed majority, and your company end up getting a portion of the profits.
As for getting hte Space Quest trademark? That would be more difficult since Sierra didn't even own the rights to the term "Space Quest" and had to get permission from some musuem that held the rights to the term.
Quote from: Baggins on August 09, 2006, 12:43:05 PM
Well, actually its more likely that if vivendi gave permission to use the King's Quest trademark, that they would probably retain the right to produce the game commercially, and probably put the Sierra and Vivendi logos into the game's startup video as well.
They'd probably end up getting payed majority, and your company end up getting a portion of the profits.
That all sounds more or less plausible, except for the part about "majority". The majority of the game isn't their IP, it's derived from theirs (meaning it's not 1:1 replication), and even then, it's the storyline we used, which they have not trademarked (nor is it even possible to) but have already allowed us permission to use their IP. Anyway that's all I can say publicly on this subject without discussion negotiations. The rest of you are free to discuss. :)
Game publishers usually take the vast majority of the profits from any game. Unless you guys would go the self-publishing route, which doesn't seem too plausible, since VU probably wants to make a killing off the game if it's released commercially. Then again, there's always the possibility that you guys could score a sweet deal and take in a huge share of the profits! :P
At this point in time, VU has no expressed interest in publishing our game, nor compensating our team for past and/or future development. But, we'll see about that. ;D
Ya, I'm referring to the fact that the company that owns the I.P, retains the rights to most of the profit. Even if the other company came up with most of the new material.
This isn't in refrence to your game in particular (even if you could get VU to publish it) but just how the world works... Most companies are extremely protective of their IPs, and don't want other people making more money off of them than they do.
Quote from: Baggins on August 09, 2006, 08:12:24 PM
Most companies are extremely protective of their IPs, and don't want other people making more money off of them than they do.
Yep. And believe it or not, ours is no exception. 8)
Except that King's Quest isn't your IP, you are just borrowing Vivendi's IP essentially.
But if you are referring to a future game with a brand new IP, quite understandable, and quite true.
Quote from: Baggins on August 09, 2006, 08:54:09 PM
Except that King's Quest isn't your IP, you are just borrowing Vivendi's IP essentially.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. The exact amount and use of Sierra IP is not the legal equivalent to copyright/trademark infringement, and it would be
very difficult for VU to prove in court that it is and/or how it results in past/present/future financial damages to their company.
Just keep in mind that if things worked out differently back in October/November, I could have easily defended our game in court, regardless of us not having legal permission at the time. :)
once TSL is completely released and you have atleast 3 games and a few little game sunder your belt, POS is worth a lot more. just make alot of flash related games, and a few more games, sell the rights to the unofficial TSL game, and release a different adventure series. ontop of that buying sierra
Quote from: Stones Of Stealth on August 15, 2006, 01:19:38 PM
once TSL is completely released and you have atleast 3 games and a few little game sunder your belt, POS is worth a lot more. just make alot of flash related games, and a few more games, sell the rights to the unofficial TSL game, and release a different adventure series. ontop of that buying sierra
What the... when did you become a business prodigy? XD
Apart from the last sentence, I would say the rest is actually very possible. 8) It's not the most ideal path that we're planning, but it's certainly much closer than the "ZOMGBUYSIERRAPLZKTHX" comments I usually hear from people. :)
XD
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2006, 01:26:45 PM
Quote from: Stones Of Stealth on August 15, 2006, 01:19:38 PM
once TSL is completely released and you have atleast 3 games and a few little game sunder your belt, POS is worth a lot more. just make alot of flash related games, and a few more games, sell the rights to the unofficial TSL game, and release a different adventure series. ontop of that buying sierra
What the... when did you become a business prodigy? XD
Apart from the last sentence, I would say the rest is actually very possible. 8) It's not the most ideal path that we're planning, but it's certainly much closer than the "ZOMGBUYSIERRAPLZKTHX" comments I usually hear from people. :)
XD
Ahh... but if POS went that route and had successful games under it's belt, it's value as a development house would put the possibility of being purchased by another company (be it VU or EA or whoever) very likely... especially if the POS brand became synonomous with quality gaming.
And if that happened... well let's just say it's a mixed bag...
Mixed bag indeed. But considering the majority of our staff is hardworking and have made it this far for free, I can't see money affecting things negatively.
We are currently seeking investors for some capital to begin on our commercial products. :deal: I can't really see anyone interested in a buy-out right now when there's nothing to buy. ;P In the future, who knows.
Personally, my price is quite high. :jafar: I'm not the kind of person to stop working hard just because someone waves a cheque in front of my face. There is a difference between ownership and investment, and our team prefers publishers choosing the latter, since we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what we're capable of yet. 8)
Quote from: Yonkey on August 15, 2006, 11:08:24 PM
Mixed bag indeed. But considering the majority of our staff is hardworking and have made it this far for free, I can't see money affecting things negatively.
We are currently seeking investors for some capital to begin on our commercial products. :deal: I can't really see anyone interested in a buy-out right now when there's nothing to buy. ;P In the future, who knows.
Personally, my price is quite high. :jafar: I'm not the kind of person to stop working hard just because someone waves a cheque in front of my face. There is a difference between ownership and investment, and our team prefer publishers choosing the latter, since we haven't even scratched the surface of what we're capable of yet. 8)
Amen Neil... Amen.
It's been my experience that people who make games for the money typically don't come up with very compelling stuff. It's the people who make games for the pleasure of making games that really come up with the good stuff. You need look no further than any of the industry legends to see the proof of this. People like Richard Garriott, Will Wright, and Peter Molyneoux all fit the profile. You take away all the money and they'd still be making games that are fun to play.
That's why I love the fan-development and modding scenes. There is so much untapped potential in these areas of the industry it's not even funny. When you got people coming up with mods and games that rival commercial games in their market saturation and gameplay... that says a great deal. In fact... it's history in the making.
Yeah, when some fangames start exceeding the quality of all the commercial games, companies will have to start reevaluating their priorities... especially when sales plummet. ;)
TSL is on par with The Longest Journey (1+2), I would say, and hopefully it will be just as long. ;) The graphics in the TSL demo alone are astounding, and although they aren't as high in the polygon count, their hand-drawn quality *more* than makes up for it. The perfect blend for the casual adventure gamer since it's low resource and high quality.
Quote from: Oldbushie on August 15, 2006, 11:34:04 PM
Yeah, when some fangames start exceeding the quality of all the commercial games, companies will have to start reevaluating their priorities... especially when sales plummet. ;)
Definitely. There are both advantages and disadvantages to being non-commercial, just as there are to being commercial. However, one thing's for sure: once publishers start considering fan-game development as valid and competitive, we'll definitely see a change in industry. 8)
Vivendi is starting to make money off of Sierra name again, so they might not be willing to sell it.
If they would be willing to sell individual IPs in the future who knows?
Quote from: Baggins on August 16, 2006, 08:46:04 AM
If they would be willing to sell individual IPs in the future who knows?
Not sell, more like license. 8) The same way how artists allow people to license their IP. You just have to pay the copyright owner for use of it. :)
Sierra has actually already sold a few of their IPs to other companies.
They sold the Goldrush IP back to the designers that made the game.
Apparently Mark Seibert was able to gain the rights to Pepper's Adventures in Time IP as he offers the game for free on his site.
They sold the IP to the online game "The Realm" to another company that keeps it alive.
As a side note there are certain games that Sierra never owned the IP's for so they can't rerelease the games(black cauldron for example).
Really? In that case VU, feel free to sell me the KQ IP. :) I accept VISA, MasterCard and Paypal. 8)
;P
Oh, ya valve was able to buy the rights to the Half-Life IP from Sierra. But then again that might be because they are the designers that came up with the IP.
QuoteI accept VISA, MasterCard and Paypal.
What you want Vivendi to pay you to take the King's Quest IP off their hands?
I think you meant, "I can pay with Visa, Mastercard and Paypal". :suffer: :suffer:
Quote from: Baggins on August 16, 2006, 10:18:45 AM
What you want Vivendi to pay you to take the King's Quest IP off their hands?
Why not? I'll be sure to make good use of it. ;P
XD
The money or the IP? :P Besides, I thought you all were going to be done with KQ after TSL. And so many people are used to TSL, that changing it back to KQIX: ECHASL might not be the best thing to do. :P
Yeah, I was just joking. :P Still, it would be fun to own. XD