The second trend I noticed at the ACD Open House was an increase in licenses, especially Cartoon Network ones but
also Munchkin. The purchase of licenses for board and card games has been quite
common in the mass market but not as much so in the specialty game market, save
for trading card games and ones closely related to our market, such as Star
Trek, Buffy and Star Wars, rather than the board and card game categories. At
both the GAMA Trade show and the ACD Open House , several different publishers
showed off games utilizing licenses from Cartoon Network properties such as
Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors and Regular Show including Looney Labs
(Regular Show) and Catalyst Game Lab (Bravest Warriors).
The licensing trend has expanded to
publishers licensing the rights to other games, specifically Munchkin and Bang
and producing their own variants. Both
Fireside Games and AEG licensed the rights to Munchkin, with AEG producing Loot Letter, a Munchkin themed
variant of their hugely popular Love Letter, and Fireside Game entering the
Munchkin market with Munchkin Panic, skinning Munchkin on top of their Castle
Panic game.
Meanwhile, USAopoly, well known for their
licensed variants of Scrabble, Monopoly and Yahtzee, announced the rights to an Adventure Time
version of Munchkin and a Walking Dead version of Bang from Mayfair Games. What
this means is that over the past 10+ years (almost 15) Munchkin itself has
developed into such a strong brand that other companies are willing to pay
Steve Jackson Games for the rights to use it, figuring that customers will see
the Munchkin name and, if fans of the original Munchkin, at least look at their
version of it.
It will prove interesting to see if this
trend continues and other game lines prove strong enough that publishers will
want to license them.
No comments:
Post a Comment