Thoughts on the Failure of Licensed IP in the Hobby: The Lack of Disney-fication is a Feature, not a Bug

[dragoner]

An interesting novel or film is no guarantee that Sturgeon's law doesn't apply to the rest.

 

[Umbran]

YOMV, but it seems as if Star Wars is as much of a Cheesecake Factory in the scope of its focus as D&D.

The basic metric here is likely hours of media content available.
Up until 2008, with the release of The Clone Wars animated series, Star Wars had six movies - between 12 and 18 hours of content.
By 2008, Star Trek had 683 TV episodes, and 10 feature films.

Not much of a contest, there.

...I have found that it resists the ability to play fantasy outside of that scope, which is far more than people think.

I am not sure why, among dozens and dozens of your peers in play, you would present your personal findings as an effective argument. We all have findings just as valid as yours. This may not be a scenario in which an authoritative stance is going to be terribly useful.

 

[Aldarc]

The basic metric here is likely hours of media content available.
Up until 2008, with the release of The Clone Wars animated series, Star Wars had six movies - between 12 and 18 hours of content.
By 2008, Star Trek had 683 TV episodes, and 10 feature films.

Not much of a contest, there.

I wasn't making it a contest between these two IPs, though you appear to be making it one now. My point was not aimed at your post about Star Trek, hence why it was located prior to your quote. It was presenting my general opinion that Star Wars has as broad of a scope of focus as D&D. If it was a contest or point of comparison that I was making, it was between Star Wars and D&D.

I am not sure why, among dozens and dozens of your peers in play, you would present your personal findings as an effective argument. We all have findings just as valid as yours. This may not be a scenario in which an authoritative stance is going to be terribly useful.

I think you are reading my post unfairly and harshly, Umbran, and I don't think that what I said somehow warrants snark from a mod. I am not presenting my opinion as an authoritative stance, or at least certainly no more authoritative than the opinions that others put forth in this thread, including your own. I even said "YOMV," i.e., "your opinions may vary." I liked your post because it made good points and I wanted to show good will towards what you wrote. But it is my opinion based on my experience, and I was not trying to invalidate other people's opinions or findings in my post. I thought that this was clear in my post, but evidently not.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Trying to get a group that diverse to play a more tactical game or a narrative game or an investigative game is hard. Some will be along for the ride for each of those choices, but some will jump off for each of those choices. D&D threads that needle in a way no other game I've run does. It may not be the first choice for any one of those players, but it's a game they can all make work.

The so-called "Cheesecake Factory" theory of D&D.

D&D 5E - 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

An idea I've been noodling around with for a few weeks is trying to understand not just "Why 5e," but "Why 5e?" To put it more bluntly; it would seem obvious (to me, at least) that D&D has been having a cultural moment, and capturing the zeitgeist, in a way that hasn't been seen since the prior...

www.enworld.org

ETA- I was thinking of doing a new and updated post, based partly on the following article, called the Cheesecake Factory Theory Revisited. It's on the backburner, though.

How the Cheesecake Factory became the chain restaurant of millennial dreams

The Cheesecake Factory defied the restaurant industry’s rules of success.

www.vox.com

 

[Maxperson]

@Snarf Zagyg, I find the premise in the thread's title to be fatally flawed. As I sit here looking at Disney+, I find no lack of Disney fiction.

Edit: I should give myself more time to wake up in the morning before posting. I read that as Disney fiction, not Disneyfication. Doh!

 

[dragoner]

The so-called "Cheesecake Factory" theory of D&D.

D&D 5E - 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

An idea I've been noodling around with for a few weeks is trying to understand not just "Why 5e," but "Why 5e?" To put it more bluntly; it would seem obvious (to me, at least) that D&D has been having a cultural moment, and capturing the zeitgeist, in a way that hasn't been seen since the prior...

www.enworld.org

ETA- I was thinking of doing a new and updated post, based partly on the following article, called the Cheesecake Factory Theory Revisited. It's on the backburner, though.

How the Cheesecake Factory became the chain restaurant of millennial dreams

The Cheesecake Factory defied the restaurant industry’s rules of success.

www.vox.com

A friend came back from Indy and asked "have you ever been to the Cheesecake Factory?" Which I had not gone to that one at Keystone at the Crossing, except the one at Bay Street e-ville. I think the same goes for all of it, it is a non-choice because you know what you are getting. Maybe some of this applies to D&D except modern D&D is like a lifestyle choice with people putting D&D on their profiles next to gender affiliation. It's cool, way better than other things people could be into such as meth or Taylor Swift.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I don't think that I would label licensed IP as a whole as a "failure". Games come out, they live for a while, and they die - licensed or not.

The biggest challenge with a licensed game is just that - there is a license involved and so there is an extra layer of expense added on to all the usual challenges of publishing a tabletop RPG. Those fees tend to go up, not down, and at some point even a successful line will hit a breaking point.

Not sure how FFG does it but they've had a pretty comprehensive Star Wars RPG in print for about 11 years now (12-23), same edition, consistent mechanics. WEG did it before with a roughly 12 year run (87-99) that covered everything that had been released during their time. WOTC had a similar run of about 11 years (00-11) but released 3 different versions of the game as each of the prequel movies came out. I don't think anyone publishes a game line for over a decade and calls it a failure.

I've run and played multiple short and long campaigns with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Marvel RPGs and they are a ton of fun but they are all very different from a typical D&D campaign. If you can find a group of players interested in playing the crew of a federation starship your Trek game will probably go well because that's the baseline expectation in those games. Not everyone wants to play that though. Or Star Wars. Or Marvel superheroes. Even when one or all of these have had a really strong system you have to want to invest time and money into playing them.

In fact none of these properties dominates much of anything other than being somewhat popular movies or TV shows:

• The biggest miniatures game out there is Warhammer 40K, an original IP. There have been many Star Wars games, some Trek games, and even some Marvel games, and none of them have managed to take the #1 spot.
• The biggest western MMORPG is World of Warcraft (another original IP) and has been almost since it's launch in 2004. There have been 2 Star Wars MMOs - one of them failed years ago and one never met expectations though it is still running. Star Trek has one MMO which is alive but very small. Marvel had one MMO game and it was never huge and was shut down years ago.
• Star Wars occasionally makes noise with a videogame release but the biggest ones are still things like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Dark Souls/Elden Ring, Madden, Fifa, and various racing games. Marvel has one out now that seems to be pretty popular but it's one game. Trek hasn't had a big game in some time.

I think expecting a big franchise to take over RPGs is a reasonable thing at first sight but if it isn't happening in other genres maybe it's not. Reasonably popular but not dominant seems way more likely and I'd say closer to how it has been historically.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's cool, way better than other things people could be into such as meth or Taylor Swift.

....but you repeat yourself.....

 

[payn]

I don't think that I would label licensed IP as a whole as a "failure". Games come out, they live for a while, and they die - licensed or not.

The biggest challenge with a licensed game is just that - there is a license involved and so there is an extra layer of expense added on to all the usual challenges of publishing a tabletop RPG. Those fees tend to go up, not down, and at some point even a successful line will hit a breaking point.

These are good points. It also makes me think about gamers in general. They are picky ass about their games. I mean, Gale Force Nine put out a series of incredible board games based on IPs and nobody would buy them. An absolute crime if you ask me. (Super sad too ill never get me Black Sails game...) Often cited by gamers I know, "IP games just never live up to their legend". When I dig a little deeper, I tend to find out being thematically appropriate isnt good enough. It has to be an exact emulation of whatever subject its trying sell. Which is working against IP based products in general. Yeap, even video games, which have gotten leagues better too.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One also wonders how much Chaosium would've had to pay for the Cthulhu license when it first started? It certainly couldn't have been as much as WEG paid for Star Wars, for example.

Oh, yeah, there's a big difference between the IP gatekeepers over the diffuse Cthulhu Mythos (Chaosium has agreements with a bunch of different authors or their estates) and an IP controlled by a single corporate owner looking to keep it well monitized. It means that Chaosium has managed to afford or perform sufficient upkeep for 40 years now while multiple companies have chosen to drop Star Wars/Star Trek license renewal to avoid the expense or corporate interference (which Paramount has been notorious for with respect to Star Trek RPGs).

The Cthulhu mythos is a syncretic blend of Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, R.E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, and others, in addition to Lovecraft. In some ways, it was already a shared, decentralized universe before it was an RPG, which made it particularly primed for RPG adaptation.

I definitely started reading Lovecraft after playing Call of Cthulhu. Chaosium has done a huge amount of work keeping Lovecraft in the popular consciousness. I'm not entirely comfortable that for decades that involved glossing over Lovecraft's extreme racism, but I can't argue that it wasn't a symbiotic relationship at work between them an Arkham House.

I think you are right that Call of Cthulu is a success for capturing the horror genre more than a license. Indeed, I would go a step further, and suggest that more people know Lovecraftian fiction because of Call of Cthulu, than get into Call of Cthulu because of the literature.

I just got the big CoC anniversary box set last year with a bunch of 80's modules, and ot having gotten into the game before...I was surprised by how much non-Lovecradt horror gets covered! I have star blocks for all the classic Universal Movie Monsters, and I see references to a whole bunch of non-Muthos horror literature and film...even Dark Shadows, of all things. Really is the Horror equivalent of D&D' genre omnibus approach.