Why no official game?

[Morrus]

It's odd that there hasn't been an official licensed ST game in years. I wonder if nobody is interested in the license, if the license is too expensive, or if it's simply not available right now? Star Wars and Firefly are both happily licensed out. If it's good enough for Lucasfilm....

 

[HobbitFan]

What I have heard and this is only from fans and not anyone at corporate is that CBS/Viacom doesn't think that licensing a RPG is worth the hassle and also don't think it will make money.

 

[Morrus]

What I have heard and this is only from fans and not anyone at corporate is that CBS/Viacom doesn't think that licensing a RPG is worth the hassle and also don't think it will make money.

The hassle belongs to the licensee. As does the profit risk. All the studio has to do is sign a contract and take a fee. Licenses are free money and no work for the licensor.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, assuming there isn't a competing license or other legal claim out there.

 

[Deset Gled]

The hassle belongs to the licensee. As does the profit risk. All the studio has to do is sign a contract and take a fee. Licenses are free money and no work for the licensor.

Licensing is a huge risk to brand image. Even if something comes from a third party, it affects how fans view the franchise, and how they interact with the characters/plots/world in the long term. Just think about the D&D movies; how do you think that affected the public's view of the game?

If Paramount has a long term vision for Star Trek, they would have to put a ton of work into monitoring the licensed product. They would have to make sure the maturity level matches their vision, that no characters are used improperly, that no technology is described incorrectly, etc, etc.

Licenses are only free money with no work and no risk if the owner doesn't care about maintaining the IP any more.

 

[Umbran]

Licenses are free money and no work for the licensor.

As my thermodynamics teacher once told me, "There's no such thing as a free lunch."

There is no free money. There are no "zero work" efforts. They'd have to take a corporate lawyer, have him or her learn the basics of the genre to know what a license would require, write a license, have that reviewed by goodness only knows how many people....

I expect corporate lawyers are effectively much-money-per-hour employees. Those hours probably add up *fast*. And how much can you actually ask a small publisher for a license, as compared to how much money it takes you to create that license?

 

[delericho]

My best guess is that the explanation is quite simple: nobody has bothered to submit a request for the license, or hasn't offered enough for Paramount to consider it worthwhile.

 

[fredlove]

There are current board games, card games and miniatures games that use the Star Trek license. And video games too. If the right people thought there was money in it, we'd have a new rpg as well.

Maybe Abrams Trek has muddied the water a little too, and the suits aren't sure what they want Trek's identity to be going forward.

For my part, I'd happily spre-order any new official Trek rpg sight unseen.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, there's a Star Trek Attack Wing thingy from ... is that WizKids? They're not averse to licensing tabletop games, clearly.

 

[billd91]

Last I heard, working with Paramount was a bit of a pain in the ass for FASA. The wikipedia article says Paramount disapproved of some of FASA's treatment of Next Generation stuff and pulled the license. If true, I can see Paramount deciding that going into the depth of treatment that would be needed for an RPG isn't worth their time and I can see just about any RPG company deciding that Paramount's level of management would be too restrictive on interesting content.