Research by the World Intellectual Property Organization has found that Batman, Dracula and Spider-Man are the top three most-used franchise characters from movies and video games in the US over the past four decades.

This is according to the first instalment of a new series of “Creative Economy Notes” called “Batman forever? Do overlapping trademark and copyright frameworks affect the franchising of comic characters?”, which looked at the usage of comic-book and other characters in US-based cinema and gaming between 1980 and 2019.

The WIPO report explores how character owners may trademark their characters in addition to protecting them under the copyright framework (commonly used to protect creative works) and what this means in economic and policy terms.

Batman, Dracula and Spider-Man have together generated some $5.89 billion in revenue over the period, WIPO’s research shows.

“Comic and other franchise characters like Batman have entertained generations of children and adults alike and are a great example of how intellectual property systems help ensure these characters can adapt and remain popular even as technologies and platforms evolve,” said WIPO Director General, Daren Tang.

“I’m really pleased to be able to launch our new ‘Creative Economy Notes’ series at the Frankfurt Book Fair, a valued WIPO partner that gathers together the world’s publishing and creative-industry sectors to celebrate the creativity that brings people together.”

The top ten characters, according to the WIPO report, are:
Batman
Dracula
Spider-Man
Darth Vader
Mickey Mouse
Medusa
Donald Duck
Superman
Beast
Iron Man

You can read the full report here.

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Our Art of Asmodee series looks at how the various studios within Asmodee tackle art direction for their games.

This week, we’re catching up with Space Cowboys, the studio behind a raft of popular tabletop titles including Splendor, Time Stories and the Unlock! series of escape room games.

We caught up with Space Cowboys’ François Doucet to find out more about why the studio enjoys working with new artists, and what went into the art direction for its popular series of Unlock! games.

How did you get started in the tabletop space?
We launched Splendor in 2014, but the majority of people in the studio had a lot of previous experience in board games; they were actually the founders of Asmodee.

How important would you say the art is to the success of a game?
It’s key, but not only for obvious marketing and aesthetic reasons. The theme of a game is mostly expressed through the art and design, and even mechanisms can be “promoted” or explained with a piece of art.

It’s a vital part of the development and commercial success. Even when we play-test a game, the initial art we choose matters, even if we change everything later on.

What guides your approach to working with artists? Do you often have someone in mind for projects, or is it a case that artists can pitch for the work?
We usually have our project managers searching everywhere; previous contacts, new artists, propositions on our Facebook page or website. We like to work with both new artists and experienced ones; we call back guys we worked with a long time ago and have artists work on their very first game with us. All of this has happened already!

Sometimes, we even create art teams with a few artists working separately on the same game. We did this with Elysium, Hit Z Road and Time Stories.

Brilliant – it’s great that you work with new artists, but where do you look to find them?
Our project managers are very attentive and keep their eyes open in many fields; comic books, video games, children’s books. We have no preconceived ideas about the kind of artists we want to work with.

Is there any attempt to create a ‘Space Cowboys’ style that spans all your games? Or it the art direction done on a purely a game-by-game basis?
Totally game-by-game. It’s very, very important to us. We don’t care about the brand; only the game matters!

Looking at the Unlock! series, how key is the artwork to the success of each scenario? And as each scenario has its own look, have these games been a great means of helping you unearth brilliant new artistic talent that you can work with on other games?
Each Unlock! scenario is different; we treat it as a new game and so, we want each scenario to have its own art direction.

We actually worked with many artists before, and some of these “old hands” have been part of the Unlock! adventure. But we also discovered many new artists for sure, and we now have a great pool of experienced Unlock! artists, and of course, we still try to find new people!

For any artists or illustrators reading this and thinking ‘I’d love to work with these guys!’, what would you say is key to creating artwork for your studio?
Be prepared for a lot of changes, a lot of attention to details, and weird stories!

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If you took a job in video games development tomorrow, you might be surprised about how closely the culture can often be intertwined with the world of tabletop gaming.

I’ve been in this industry for the best part of two decades and every single studio I’ve worked with has had its own board game club.

At first I assumed it was just for fun – a social way for us geeks to unwind after days/weeks spent toiling on a ‘crunch’ development project.

But then I took a look around at who was participating in the clubs and I realised it was always the smartest game design people in the studio. These guys were devoted to Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer, but also the likes of Backgammon or Chess.

I learned more about game design by speaking to these people than in all the game development conference sessions I’ve ever sat in. And believe me, that’s a lot of keynotes.

If you look back, the games industry has always had a close working relationship with tabletop gaming, whether that’s board games making the transition to consoles (a battleground littered with casualties), or vice versa.

But I have a sense that a confluence of a cyclical trend, plus the seismic pandemic event we’re currently enduring, will actually open up some great creative opportunities to bring our two worlds together in smart ways.

As a mobile games studio, we built up our name on ‘work for hire’ projects, and during this time we’ve been lucky enough to work on market-leading IP such as FIFA, Angry Birds and F1. Then, just over a year ago, we published the classic 1990s puzzle game Lemmings for mobile phones.

It was a big release for us, not least because it marked our transition into self-publishing – and it was, thankfully, well-received. But it also marked the fruition of a long-held theory that there’s a vastly undertapped market out there for mobile games based on what we call internally ‘heritage IP’.

Lemmings was originally published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and its mere mention generates wistful looks from 40+ year-old gamers everywhere. Crucially, the IP also scores highly in the recognition stakes among younger demographics too – almost like the knowledge of its greatness has been passed down the generations. We think this is because Lemmings is now part of a wider gaming culture, regularly referenced and much admired by those with more discernible tastes.

That nostalgia factor alone isn’t enough to guarantee a successful resurrection for a games brand, however. We absolutely had to make sure that the Lemmings gameplay was optimised for mobile and touchscreens, in this case by deploying a ‘tap to play’ mechanic that is somewhat different to the Amiga experience. That didn’t seem to matter though, something I put down capturing the essence of the original when it came to game design.

So we have a confluence of two factors: the presence of a heritage IP much loved by millions and its optimisation for a new platform 30 years after it was originally released.

As a brand it’s in a unique sweet spot that’s being amplified by the current Nineties revival, not least in the context of PlayStation’s 25th anniversary year.

Those factors have since guided our long-term strategy as a mobile game publisher with a focus on heritage IP. And this is where we come back to tabletop games.

They’ve been on our radar for 12 months in terms of IP we’d like to work with, but the current lockdown we’re enduring is showing just how vital they are to our national and international culture.

People are stocking up on puzzles and board games to make the quarantine more palatable, national media are creating lists of ‘go to’ titles and even super fussy Millennials are getting in on the act.

And all this at a time when our homes are more connected than ever and entertainment, whether it’s video games or movies, are on tap.

As a company we’ve already doubled down on our Lemmings experience in order to create welcoming, humble, focused, mass market, fun and playful games. And we think there are myriad ‘forever franchises’ out in the world of tabletop gaming that are just waiting to be brought back in 2020.

There is a whole world out there rediscovering the joys of board games they played, perhaps, 20 or 30 years ago. Wouldn’t it be great if they could carry on enjoying those experiences when we’re all allowed to get back on the train, bus or plane again?

We’d love to discuss the possibilities. Via Zoom, of course.

Julian Jones is chief publishing officer at independent games development studio Exient. He can be contacted at: julian@exient.com.

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Draw & Code, the immersive technology studio behind augmented reality video game and toy SwapBots, has welcomed a new CEO in Spencer Crossley.

Formerly of Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment, Crossley is joining the UK studio to work alongside studio co-founders Andy Cooper and John Keefe, who remain in their current roles as Creative Director and Technical Director respectively.

A founding member of Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment UK, Crossley was key to the launch of the LEGO video game franchise and will look to aid the continued growth of Draw & Code, leveraging his track record in commercialising video game and entertainment IPs.

“This opportunity to work with such an innovative team in the world of immersive technology, LBE and connected play is thrilling,” said Spencer Crossley, CEO of Draw & Code,

“Immersive location-based entertainment is an area that is already valued at $4.5bn and is growing rapidly, while connected play is a trend in games and toys that is creating opportunities to disrupt the status quo – I look forward to helping Draw & Code unlock their potential in these fast-moving markets.”

Andy Cooper, co-founder of Draw & Code, added: “Spencer’s experience of bringing interactive entertainment products to market will be invaluable to Draw & Code as we push ourselves into new markets.

“This revised company structure will also allow the existing management team to focus on production, R&D into new technologies and to continue to grow our client base.”

During 2020, SwapBots will be launching to retail after a successful Kickstarter campaign ahead of the reveal of a new LBE product.

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Pietro Righi Riva is the co-founder and director at Santa Ragione, an Italian design agency dedicated to creating experimental board games and video games.

Prior to launching video games including space adventure MirrorMoon, running experience Fotonica and driving game Wheels of Aurelia, Santa Ragione created Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space.

A game of strategy and bluff, Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space sees players secretly given a role as either a human or an alien. Playing out one of the eight maps included in the game, humans have to make their way out of a space station while aliens have to find and kill the humans before they escape.

Each time a player moves, they have to draw a card and state their position on the map. But – the card drawn may give you the option of lying about your position, a ingenuous move which allows savvy humans to lead aliens on a wild goose chase following a non-existent trail.

Deemed a “splendid, glorious liar’s convention” by Shut Up and Sit Down, the game was nominated for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming and a swanky Ultimate Edition of Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space was released by Osprey Publishing last year.

We caught up with Riva to find out more about the origins of Escape From the Aliens in Outer Space and how Studio Ragione approaches designing both board games and video games.

How did Santa Ragione come together?
Me and Nicolò met online on game forums when we very young (I was 17!). We spent a lot of time talking about what games could and should be, until we started making our first game in 2010 (the board game Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space). In 2011 we met Paolo Tajé at a Global Game Jam, and we’ve been making games together since.

How would you describe the company’s approach to design?
Nowadays it’s searching for experimental solutions for interactive narratives that are accessible to non-gamers. We have some core beliefs regarding how our video games should always be recognisable from a single screenshot and how cinematography should be guided to achieve good composition through all gameplay.

Where did the idea for Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space come from?
We were trying to see if it was possible to reproduce in tabletop form the feeling of horror movies like Alien or The Thing. The whole game is designed around sensations, rather than systems. We started this project in university; three of the authors studied communication design together for over five years.

Are there design practices that you apply to designing both card games and video games, or are the mediums too radically different?
Absolutely. First of all are the interlocked concepts of accessibility and affordance. I’m not interested in designing games that require players to have played other titles before they can enjoy mine, because I want more people to approach this medium.

Accessibility hence is designing for the minimum attrition when approaching and learning the game: reducing explanations, difficulty, control complexity, etc. Good affordance plays a big part in this; that is designing elements so that they are self-explanatory in their use.

Have you got any card or board game projects in the pipeline?
We’ve been working with multiple prototypes over the last five years, but nothing close to a full product yet. We’d love to work on more board game projects because the design and iteration process is so much more satisfying than with video games, but unfortunately the margins are way too small to be a core activity for our studio.

Last year, you published a manifesto for non-traditional game design called Rejecta. Rules in there included: ‘All video game tradition in form, style and content must be rejected’ and ‘Setting must be strictly instrumental to content and meaning’. While conceived with video games in mind, are there any elements of your Rejecta manifesto that you feel apply to designing board games?
Yes absolutely.

I wrote Rejecta trying to summarise and write into usable best practices what I have been learning while making games and struggling to reach out to a culturally diverse audience, and that of course applies to the board games I worked on.

Naturally some concepts don’t adapt well (a board game cannot progress much without player participation) but many others – from the use of existing literature to submitting rules and systems to the meaning and setting – are applicable. Oh, and board games should definitely last less than two hours.

How do you stay creative?
It’s very important to look for inspiration outside of geekdom, and stay interested in other arts. As a team, we often tour film festivals and art exhibitions. I also recently found contemporary theatre to be an incredible source of inspiration for game designers.

Do you think the world of games is in a good place creatively at present?
Not really unfortunately. It’s struggling to expand its audience to meet the increasing production due to the vertiginous rise in accessibility to tools for game creation. In other words, creators are now struggling for the attention of a very specialised audience that has come to expect increasingly higher quality for lower and lower prices.

This is negatively moving the focus of the competition between authors away from the healthy creative side to a more perilous battle for cheaper labour that lowers working conditions for people in the industry and increases burnout rates.

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