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What about the licencing?

KrumelurKrumelur
edited June 2009 in Tales of Monkey Island
Hi all!

What news this morning! MOnkey Island from Telltalegames AND form Lucasarts! But, hang on? How is that possible?
Lucasasrts has announced remakes of MI and Indiana Jones and TTG is presenting a new MI. Who holds the rights for Guybrush? I'd realy like to get some background information.

René

Comments

  • xChri5xxChri5x
    edited June 2009
    From the FAQ

    UM… DOES LUCASARTS KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?
    Of course they do! (Monkey Island is a LucasArts property, after all.) We licensed the Monkey Island rights from LucasArts, the same way we've licensed other franchises from their owners—like Sam & Max from Steve Purcell, Strong Bad from the Brothers Chaps, and Wallace & Gromit from Aardman—and now we're working closely with them to bring you this new chapter in Guybrush's adventures.
  • LuigiHannLuigiHann
    edited June 2009
    What they don't tell you is that they settled on this agreement (each company making their own MI game) after coming to a stalemate in a breakdance fight.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited June 2009
    You can license the rights to something while the rights holder themselves are still allowed to make things. I don't know the details of our arrangement with LEC, but this is like being shocked that George Lucas can still make the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon even though Travelers Tales is making a Lego Star Wars game at the same time. It would be a fairly extremely exclusive licensing agreement that would prevent something like that from being allowed!
  • KrumelurKrumelur
    edited June 2009
    It's really new to me. I thought TTG would be holding all the rights of Sam & Max and MI now. I did not know that you have some sort of agreement with LEC. I'm still wondering why LEC does that. They should know by now that adventure games can be successful, so they could create their own ones. But hey, that's okay; I just love games from TTG :-)
    I've got to check the FAQ now to see if Ron Gilbert is somehow involved in TOMI or to figure out what he thinks about it.

    Thanks.

    René
  • demonfoodemonfoo
    edited June 2009
    Krumelur wrote: »
    It's really new to me. I thought TTG would be holding all the rights of Sam & Max and MI now.

    Sam and Max is a different ball of wax. As it's the creation of Steve Purcell, he can license it out as he wishes; the original game was (and Sam and Max: Freelance Police was going to be) produced under license from Steve. Monkey Island, however, is LucasArts' creation. Telltale didn't magically "get" the rights from LucasArts because they closed their eyes and wished for it. :) I'm sure there were negotiations of some sort involved.
    Krumelur wrote: »
    I did not know that you have some sort of agreement with LEC. I'm still wondering why LEC does that. They should know by now that adventure games can be successful, so they could create their own ones.

    Well, they decided that no one wanted adventure games, and they'd rather just make a million Star Wars games. Then they decided to slash their dev staff and farm all the actual development work out. I guess such is the nature of corporations. Fortunately, many of the good people from the olden days of LucasArts are now at Telltale, and can carry on that legacy.
  • HoppyDragonHoppyDragon
    edited June 2009
    Personally I'd rather LucasArts not fiddle with their old adventure game IPs much themselves. Licensing them to the company that is comprised of quite a few of the people that made the originals is the absolute best way to go. I will still be getting the special edition of SOMI, however.

    So maybe the entire original Monkey Island team isn't making TMI, but I have faith in the original MI team members that are working on it. The way I look at it is like this; imagine if the people that own the rights to The Lord of the Rings decided to bring in an outside author to start writing completely new books. Just because the owner of the IP is the same doesn't mean the game (or book in my example) is going to feel the same.

    I have more faith in a new LucasArts adventure game with the Telltale logo on the box than I do with one that just has LucasArts. Enough said. ;)
  • doom saberdoom saber
    edited June 2009
    Licensin games to other companies is a common pratice

    A lot of games you have probably played were not probably not developed by the publisher. For instance, the upcommin Castlevania title is being outsourced by a western company. Even Contra 4, which was released some time ago, wasn't made by Konami but by Wayforward games.
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