IP's that ought to have their own RPGs

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Baulderstone said:
I'm a real estate agent, so nothing can surprise me when it comes to some people having a wildly inflated idea of what their property is worth.
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What's the largest financial discrepancy between expected and approximate worth you've experienced in real estate?
 
Bunch said:
What's the largest financial discrepancy between expected and approximate worth you've experienced in real estate?
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Without resorting to hyperbole, I've seen people that wanted 100% over the value of their house. Admittedly, that's rare.

Generally, people are more unrealistic when they don't live in the house they are selling. They don't have the pressure of someone that needs to sell a house to move. Also, people living in the house they are selling start to get really tired of having to maintain perfect cleanliness and clear out whenever anyone wants to take a look.

I had a couple last year that wanted to sell higher than what I thought was reasonable. I diplomatically asked them if they were in any hurry to sell, I said that I thought it would sell soon at the price I came up with, but it might take a while at the price they wanted. They said they weren't in a hurry, so they wanted to list at their price. After only a few weeks of showings at their house, their nerves were frayed, and they were ready to lower the price.

On the other hand, I've seen people stay firm on high prices for empty houses for years. In some cases, they are rich enough to own several houses anyway, so carrying one more unused house in their pocket isn't a big deal if they don't get the price they want. Other times, the owner died and their kids are trying to get as much out of the house as possible, or arguing among themselves over every offer.
 
Bunch said:
How much could they possibly ask for?!?
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I remember the ensuing argument better than the figures-- they wanted more money than we had, upfront, and I could have dropped ten without blinking or twenty to twenty-five after losing a bitter argument. Since we never had that argument, it was more than twenty-five.

The argument we had, of course, was that if their property was worth X to us, then they're not being irrational for saying that letting us use it was worth Y to them, even if Y was substantially more than X. Just because they're not currently (actively) making money on the property doesn't mean it's in their best interests to let just anyone license it.
 
FaerieGodfather said:
I remember the ensuing argument better than the figures-- they wanted more money than we had, upfront, and I could have dropped ten without blinking or twenty to twenty-five after losing a bitter argument. Since we never had that argument, it was more than twenty-five.

The argument we had, of course, was that if their property was worth X to us, then they're not being irrational for saying that letting us use it was worth Y to them, even if Y was substantially more than X. Just because they're not currently (actively) making money on the property doesn't mean it's in their best interests to let just anyone license it.
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Sure a lot depends on what all you were licensing with what restrictions and for how long. Then there's also what does it cost them to setup and maintain whatever's been setup. Audits, reviews etc. But I can't think of anything Blackstar I've seen in 30 years.
 
Bunch said:
Sure a lot depends on what all you were licensing with what restrictions and for how long. Then there's also what does it cost them to setup and maintain whatever's been setup. Audits, reviews etc. But I can't think of anything Blackstar I've seen in 30 years.
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Well, even if they're not doing jack shit with it and they're only sitting on it until they get an offer... there's still the fact that it might be worth something to someone, someday, and there's the fear that a fly-by-night publisher who hasn't published anything yet could damage the property's eventual sale value. Or the very real possibility that a branding partner that they're incapable of vetting could damage not just the Blackstar brand, but their own brand.

You make a fair point, that even I had not considered, that having a licensing program for an IP they're not currently licensing is an expense they'd need some credible assurance would be recouped. It is not just the risk of loss, but the certainty of expense, that rationally requires them to demand an upfront deposit.

But rationality was never really a factor in this equation.
 
FaerieGodfather said:
Well, even if they're not doing jack shit with it and they're only sitting on it until they get an offer... there's still the fact that it might be worth something to someone, someday, and there's the fear that a fly-by-night publisher who hasn't published anything yet could damage the property's eventual sale value. Or the very real possibility that a branding partner that they're incapable of vetting could damage not just the Blackstar brand, but their own brand.

You make a fair point, that even I had not considered, that having a licensing program for an IP they're not currently licensing is an expense they'd need some credible assurance would be recouped. It is not just the risk of loss, but the certainty of expense, that rationally requires them to demand an upfront deposit.

But rationality was never really a factor in this equation.
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I did consider the possibility of damaging the brand but I figured that was relatively easy to mitigate. Make the license short enough with mutual renewals. Have termination clauses for brand damage. And just good PR spin. I mean it's almost a dead product. If you licensed it for Print and PDF RPG use only with oversight approvals prior to publishing you limit the damage a licensee can do. Then your concern is did you attach your product to an unknown child molester or something similar. I presume there are clauses you can add that allow for termination in those cases. Add a little PR and you could come out looking pretty good.

However all that costs money so for a sufficiently large corporation the risk reward just might not make it worth it.
 
I don't know if this has been posted already, but:

Final Fantasy XIV's Eorzea.

Most Final Fantasy worlds feel pretty closed-ended with the Protagonists already having done everything, Eorzea feels like the only world that is large enough to accommodate multiple parties of adventurers with their own stories. What we see in the game is only a small fraction of a much larger world. It's also one of the few MMORPGs that doesn't fall into the narrative trap of trying to explain Player Character immortality in the lore.

My plan would be: base it on Sword World (the Japanese answer to D&D) which is a lot closer to Final Fantasy's game mechanics than DnD is. Use that as a way to introduce a new audience to that system.

Plus it has catgirls in it, so it must be better XD.
 
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