In the field of hand travel, based on film, TV dramas and other brand adaptation works are very popular, these authorized IP can help a hand tour in the application store many competitors stand out, but also can help developers to reduce user purchase costs, because the brand awareness is very high, can be achieved through word-of-mouth dissemination of good results, At least that's what developers usually think.
So, a lot of similar licensing games are appearing, and it seems that current movies and TV adaptations are more popular than previous social gaming games, becoming a hot resource for developers to scramble for. In the past few weeks, we have seen the Night at the Museum Magic Night (at the Museum), Astro Boy (Astro Boy) and the Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones). Reliance Games and Kabam are all focused on making film adaptations, and many other gaming companies are buying IP from Hollywood, and even though some companies are not looking for Hollywood IP, they are also buying IP resources such as Garfield, sports teams and well-known toys.
In fact, similar scenarios are seen in almost every gaming platform, such as the 2011 Facebook and social games that have similar IP mania, but then the frantic trend towards IP starts to cool. Now, as the hand-travel market is about to break the 25 billion dollar mark this year and overtake the mainframe gaming market in 2015, Hollywood's brand has once again caught the attention of the gaming industry, and Hollywood has also noted the significance and value of entertainment across borders.
In fact, the game industry in the pursuit of film IP is very early, but the Hollywood IP in the host game platform did not appear, because the production cycle of 3A games for too long, so it is difficult and the release date of the film synchronization, and therefore can not achieve the desired publicity effect. And some host games in order to catch up in the movie schedule, and ignore the quality of the game, so also created some garbage game, such as "Aliens" (E.: the Extra-Terrestrial), James Cameron's "Avatar" (avatar:the Game Peter Jackson's "King Kong" and "Catwoman" are typical failures of film adaptation games. Even George Lucas ' Star Wars Studio LucasArts is no exception, and although Disney bought the studio at a high price, LucasArts closed last year.
But as far as we can see, the movie adaptation of the hand tour should be just the beginning. The risk of hand travel is relatively small, because a small team can be produced, the need for relatively few budget, research and development cycle is relatively short, so the game company can guarantee quality while catching the movie schedule release. It seems that if a movie is a fire, then the developers can then create a with Mingshou to swim out, and can take advantage of the film promotion cycle to get better marketing influence.
Last week, SGN CEO Chris DeWolfe, at the Global Mobile Internet Conference (Gmic), said, "In the past, Hollywood's tour of the hand was like an ad game, or a by-product of a movie's popularity." Although the current hand tour has played the same role, but now the hand travel income has been very objective, become a Hollywood brand real revenue source. ”
DeWolfe says it's not inconceivable because a hand tour can become a major source of revenue for entertainment IP, because the penetration rate is too high.
21 years ago, James Cameron established visual effects and film production company Digital Domain is one of Hollywood's most famous companies, in 2013, Hong Kong's Ao Liang Group and India's Reliance MediaWorks jointly acquired digital The controlling power of domain company, the latter company's CEO, Daniel Seah, said at the Gmic event that his company wanted to work closely with game companies to participate in the production of movie games from the beginning. Seah said, "We want to let digital domain transformation, and the game can get a lot of profits from the film IP." ”
However, Seah hopes that next year's entertainment IP will include movies, games and virtual reality experiences.
"Our most important tenet is to make games and movies better," says Peter Shiao, a trans-media entertainment company Orb Media Group company, especially in martial arts, magic and sci-fi. The Orb is a new studio with more than 60 entertainment IPs, 20 of which have been made into films, and the company hopes to bridge the playing fields of Hollywood, gaming and emerging markets.
"We can build relationships between existing user groups and IP," he said. We think the Orb will be one of the most important teams in the game industry, and the studios want to be able to earn revenue from the world and diversify their revenue streams, which is the meaning of collaboration between film and hand travel. ”
The presence of a large number of movies and TV game IP games is risky, and it's easy to annoy players. In Las Vegas Annual Licensing Expo by hand Tour studio, but the best case is, these IP do not need ' minimum security ', or let the game publishers promise what kind of income, because the film adaptation hand tour is not all can be successful.
However, even if an IP has been made a variety of hand tour, in fact, does not necessarily cause conflict, because the film is the most important story, and the game is the most important play, which is the film company and the game developers are now more closely related to the reason one. Because in the hand tour production aspect, the developer may regard the movie company as the common developer, listens to their suggestion and the opinion in the game plot aspect.
One of the problems with these brands, though, is that they may not be doing well overseas. In China, for example, people may prefer the Chinese version of the Chinese dragon, The Hobbit: The King of China, but empowering the Fanghuana brothers to control the use of Kabam's film brands may not want Kabam to do so. But Kabam has nothing to complain about, because the Hobbit has been around for nearly 2 years and is still generating a lot of revenue for the company. The company's film adaptations, "The Hobbit" and "Speed and passion", have brought Kabam more than 100 million dollars in income, and the company does not have to invest a lot of money to buy users.
Future, there will be more movie hand tour appears, but also may get a lot of income, but it must be reminded that, although there are IP can help absorb the amount, but developers still need to make innovative play, pay attention to the quality of the game to ensure long-term success, otherwise it is likely to destroy the film IP.