Task 5 Trends

Trends

Over the past few years one of the most important factors of the success of the larger game franchises is branding of IP or Intellectual Property. IP is a term for when a virtual object or story is made using the mind, it is imagined. There is a variety of methods to protect an IP, these methods are; copyright, trademark, patent and industrial rights

trademark – The name Star Wars is a trademark because a lot of its fans would by any game the words ‘Star Wars’ in it’s name. It is the same for some actors/actresses because some e.g. Will Smith, fans would go to see any movie with Will Smith in it, even if they don’t think it will be any good.

Patent – This is the right to how something works, the physical properties in it and the none physical properties in it. The method of how it works could be a unique code (such as the code the Star War Battlefront uses) or a unique physical mechanism (such as the wiring in any electrical character action figure).

Industrial Rights – This is the physical design of something such as the characters e.g. Storm Troopers. This is a physical design because the characters can be made into statues and action figures.

Franchised IP
A franchised IP is when the characters, setting and story are licenced out to other companies to make products based off of the franchise. This is extremely popular for the IP owner(s) because they get a percentage of the money earned, while having done nothing to earn it. One example of this is back to Star Wars because it was originally a movie, but George Lucas who owned the franchise (Disney now owns it) licenced the Star Wars trademark and copyright out to DICE so they could make Star Wars Battlefront 3.

Serialised IP
A serialised IP is another form of IP; except it is not an original creation, it is inspired by an original IP. One example of this is Minecraft (a Franchised IP), this game has had a long list of Serialised IPs based off of it such as: Manic Digger, Cube World, UberBlox, Cubelands, Mineblock, CubeScape, LittleDigger2D and that is just a small collection of copies. But because all of these games don’t break copyright, trademark, patent and industrial rights they are not open for any legal challange.