THQ nearly signed Respawn, but IP ownership was a deal-breaker

@xFenixKnightx haha me too. Now if they were considering partnering with thq it makes the claims of EA spying and intrigue look less likely. (Though they could have gone in half-hearted to meetings.)

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

Sometimes. Not all of the time.

what if these guys did not have the reputation they have? there's no way a company would give them millions to make a game, only to have no rights to the name. Sure the talent makes the game but the talent wouldn't survive without the millions in funding.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

then you know nothing on how the industry works

@eat it Funding is important, but how many publishers have made millions or in the case of Halo Billions on the backs of Bungie? Bungie made a mistake selling out to MS, I know they said they didn't expect the huge impact Halo would have but all indications during that period were that Halo was going to be awesome. They would have easily found a publisher, heck they had Apple after them.

@PR0F3TA Well seeing as how more and more developers ARE signing to keep their new IP's it looks like you don't either.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

just by your Halo comment above i know you know nothing. Bungie didn't "sell out" to MS, they had an agreement to make a game and it paid out. Bungie never expressed that they hated that MS owned part of the IP. They wanted to branch out from Halo. All the developers who do want to keep their IP's are new. All the best known games are owned by a much larger company

@PR0F3TA Bungie was independently owned, they sold out to MS who bought them. Do you need a dictionary to know the meaning of selling your business, they sold out to MS that doesn't mean they gave their souls away. Also if Bungie was so happy with MS why would they give up their rights to Halo just for freedom, or why didn't they resign with them if things were so peachy?

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

Lets not forget that MS played a huge part in Halo's success. Halo would have sold on it's own but MS has dumped hundreds of millions into marketing it. there is no way halo would be the household name it is if bungie had the rights to it. there is no way.

@PR0F3TA

Your point seems to be "that's how the industry works." I think the point everyone else is making is that it is NOT how it SHOULD work. The film industry has a much better system for this sort of thing, and there are a lot of safeguards to prevent the talent from getting screwed over.

As a game developer (who has seen both sides of this issue), I can tell you that the current system is not working and must change. Trust me when I say that the consumer will win if the talent is given a fair shake. Right now the talent is treated like shit.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga
It will be the end of most Devs that try to have their cake and eat it too. If they had the cash to publish, they would. Since they don't, they have to ask daddy for help. Daddy wants to get paid, don't like it...figure it out on your own. Its just business.

@eat it Again if you were gaming at the time Halo was being thrown around when it was supposed to be a Mac exclusive. The game was destined to be huge, the writing was there since it was demoed at that particular Macworld.
Would Halo be as big at it is now? There I would agree that MS has spent a huge amount of money to bring in the sheeple, but it would still be big because of word of mouth.

@AceManUSC Getting paid for investing is one thing, owning the thing "THEY(developers)" created is a whole different matter.

@eat it

It shouldn't take millions in funding for something you'll only see a good month's profit off of, but that's just the way things go.

@eat it

I work in the game industry, and it is hard for me to not get angry with your comment that Microsoft is the reason Halo was a success.

Bungie is an incredibly talented developer that really understands how the design process SHOULD work. In general, publishers do not keep pumping money into a franchise if the first game sucked and didn't sell shit. Microsoft would not have made a second Halo game if the first one had not been such a success.

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

not really... when Halo came out at E3, it was horrible. People were already talking how bad the game looked and played even. Then the game came out and you knwo the rest... LOL

@The angry pro consumer gaming ga

I've got to interject. Bungie was and still is independently owned. They were in a gaming contract with Microsoft only. If they were owned, then members from Bungie would've left to create another developing company. They didn't. They just did not renew a contract with Microsoft after the last contract was up. That's why Microsoft created 343 Industries to continue the Halo franchise.

Also, they might have wanted to keep Halo, but no developer wants to be known for only one franchise when they put hard work into other past and future games in their career. They wanted to do something other than Halo while Microsoft more than likely wanted them to continue working solely on that franchise because it's brought them so much money. If they leave, then they have the freedom to create a new IP without being nagged about returning to Halo. Plus going multi-platform nets more money which wasn't going to happen under Microsoft alone.

@GameMaker

Hey, by any chance do you work in the industry?

@eat it

And the publishers wouldn't make the millions in profits without the talent.

@Chareth Cutestory

Yes. :)

@pkpk523

Which was a total fraud, BTW. They posed like it was all about creators' rights, but at the first possible opportunity, it turned out they just wanted to be Marvel themselves.

@copa

you're assuming that not only will they churn out incredible games. but that they will make incredibly successful games.

@eat it That is the risk of doing business. EA is will to take the risk and not THQ, in the end we'll see what happens, but I will definitely have any game from Respawn on my radar.

@eat it

Yup, and EA is assuming that, too, which is why EA signed a big publishing contract with them that lets them keep their IP rights.

But teams like Respawn and Bungie are about as close to a sure thing as you can get in this industry. If those teams are too risky for you, well, then you're probably THQ and you can keep churning out your WWE Smackdown games.

@copa

If Sony, Nintendo, or MS or EA or activision or maybe even Ubisoft makes a $60 million dollar mistake they can recover. if THQ makes a $60 million dollar mistake they might have to shut down.

As was stated below they don't even have a full team yet, there is no guarantee that they will have the same chemistry as infinity ward. that's a risk they just can't take

@copa

As far as I'm concerned Relic makes games hundreds of times more quality than anything Bungie or IW spew out. Those two just cater to what's popular, not what their initial core fanbase wanted.

Let them stay a 'second-rate' developer. You know why? Because THQ is the only big publisher out there putting out NEW IPs.

@eat it

You said what everyone else seems to be incapable of realizing. THQ, as it currently stands, has a fraction of the capital big publishers like EA, Activision, and Ubisoft have at their disposal and, to my understanding, they've been operating at a loss for some time. Signing a contract with Respawn is a tremendous risk for multiple reasons.

1) While the developer does seem to have potential on paper, the reality is that they've got nothing to offer at this point in time. They don't have a proof of concept, a game in the earliest stages of development, or any technology of their own; if it weren't for, "Yeah...we were pretty big deals at Infinity Ward a short while ago", Respawn would be nothing more than a dozen guys sitting in an office and no publisher in their right mind would approach them.

2) THQ, as pointed out by you, cannot afford to shoulder the burden of an expensive flop because they're operating at a loss. Respawn might have some of Infinity Ward's top talent at work, but that doesn't guarantee financial success. Enslaved's a great game and hardly anyone bought it; the game hasn't quite yet made its budget back and Namco's having to eat those costs. If a THQ published Respawn title met a similar fate, that debt could very well sink the publisher.

3) The biggest, by far, out of the three is IP ownership. Assuming Respawn's next game is the next COD in terms of sales, THQ would be unable to counter rival publishers' lucrative offers to poach their new golden goose; if Sony can't keep Insomniac from pursuing a relationship with EA and Microsoft couldn't keep a newly independent Bungie from hopping into bed with Activision, THQ would be unable to keep Respawn unless they bought them out (something unlikely given Zampella and West's experience with Activision after they were bought out). By owning the game's IP, THQ could lose Respawn without essentially handing over a franchise already worth hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars to their competitors.

@King Johngie the Fourth

How about this? You're a street vendor running a kolache stand in Brooklyn. Beyonce loves your kolaches and she's out of cash. She tells you that if you give her some kolaches, she'll take you down the block to her penthouse and get freaky with you, and let you tape it if you want.

You reply, "NO, IF I GIVE YOU A FREE KOLACHE THEN EVERYONE WILL WANT A FREE KOLACHE AND BESIDES I HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO MY INVESTORS TO SELL MY KOLACHES FOR FULL RETAIL PRICE AND... where did she go?"

@copa

Hmmmm not too shabby. Liked the dramatic use off ALL CAPS

@PR0F3TA Those handful of IW guys made a billion dollar franchise. >_> The smart option would be to give them whatever they wanted and stay out of their way.

@PR0F3TA

Those guys at Infinity Ward were the creators of Medal of Honor games. In my book, they're great developers.

@bones8677

it looks to be a billion dollar franchise even without them... upsetting i know. THQ just wants something, this isn't EA, THQ needs a IP

@PR0F3TA

I said they "made" a billion dollar franchise. Treyarch doing well doesn't change that.

@PR0F3TA

You seem to be telling a lot of people on here that they don't know what they're talking about... and then you say that Modern Warfare 2 wasn't a great game (even though it still is wildly popular on Xbox Live) and that Infinity Ward wasn't a great studio (even though they, and not Treyarch, were always the ones that made the better Call of Duty games).

Based on everything I've read on here, I would not be surprised if you worked for a publisher. You clearly do not see the benefit of supporting the talent, or care about all the ways publishers screw over developers.

Not exactly on topic but Treyarc sucks. I can't wait to see how they do when they can't take an IW game and reskin it and sell it as their own (I'm looking at you World at War).

@eat it

This is one of the problems with the fact that the talent is not made visible to the public (when it comes to video games). The public does not know when the developer changes on them.

The team that worked on RE4 had a lot of changes made to it before the start of RE5.

Also, you have to understand how often the publisher intrudes on the creative process. Because Capcom was the publisher AND the developer on RE5, I would wager that it is even worse in this case. it is quite possible that the publishing side of Capcom changed, and because of that they interfered with development a lot more.

I work in the game industry. Trust me when I say that publishers too often ruin a game because they try to control the creative process too much.

@RonnocoMail Ugh, reply fail. That was supposed to be to Copa above.

@RonnocoMail

That's OK. I actually like your comment a lot better completely out of context.