Leverage is a four-person group in Sweden that’s serving to sport studios and publishers construct lasting concepts and types.
The corporate has been round for seven years and it has labored with greater than 40 shoppers and tasks. The record contains huge corporations like Bandai Namco and Plaion as properly a small “one-man show up in the arctic circle,” stated Christian Fonnesbech, CEO and head of IP at Leverage, in an interview with GamesBeat.
Typically the group consults with a studio early and generally it is available in late.
“We’ve met really arrogant teams, and we’ve met really humble teams,” he stated. “We’ve really been around. And the big challenge is how do we reach the studio? Where does the game stop, and where does the IP start?”
He brings up the instance of IO Interactive, the Denmark studio that grew to 200 folks and created the Hitman franchise. They’d created a complete of 4 completely different sport sequence, however Hitman was the most important.
“Hitman was 65% of the value of the company,” Fonnesbech stated. “You focus on gameplay and the tech and this is super necessary. But on top of that, there is a second business model. You’re building the love for your IP. With all the time people are spending with your game, they’re growing attached to your characters, and they’re getting used to that emotion and the journeys. So this is the IP part.”
And there’s a 3rd half, about the way you talk that to the market.
“How do you position yourself so you stand out and appeal to the right people?” he stated.
Origins
Fonnesbech was beforehand the top of IP at Nordisk Video games, which was owned by a giant conglomerate. He labored in gaming, leisure, promoting, and movie throughout a long time and got here to be taught the worth of IP. He labored on 30 video games over his profession.
“I’ve served my time in the trenches,” he stated. “While at Nordisk, we realized there wasn’t even a language for this talk about IP and what’s missing from games.”
The corporate has a group of 4, and it really works with others as wanted.
“We just realized nobody knows how to build an IP. They don’t even know how to figure out which is the right level of leverage. Some people are lucky they have an IP. What we do is advise on the problem we see is that most studios think like this. They just want to do a game and get it done and then they realize that what they actually needed was a lasting product.”
For that, that you must take the participant on an emotional journey and provides them a personality that they actually love. You desire a character that’s looking for revenge or looking for peace. You must design the IP in order that it’s legally ownable and protectable, he stated. It’s what you usually ask whenever you’re studying a e book or watching a film. Why do I care?
“We realized that the big problem for the entire industry is that we don’t do pre-production on the IP. Because it’s just not a tradition. Gameplay used to be enough. So all these companies have grown up with a total focus on game content,” he stated. “We produce the game. But the emotions and the characters and positioning — ah, let’s talk about something else. So a typical game development process is three to four years of development, and then it’s three months of IP.”
That turns into three months of brand name panic and IP panic, he stated, on the finish of the sport when it’s nearly too late to alter something.
“What we’ve been doing for seven years is helping people to develop a clear idea early. The sweet spot is to do it early in pre-production, but of course often we get pulled in at 80% finish or relaunch,” he stated. “We’re able to figure it out. If you do this, suddenly you’re standing out in the market because you’re not just a gameplay loop.”
That is needed as a result of there are perhaps 17,000 video games a yr popping out on Steam. To face out, you don’t have to simply have a look at gameplay opponents. Your IP needs to be memorable.
“Today, you also have to look at your emotional competitors. So it’s no use making a great hand-to-hand combat game. If your IP is exactly the same as Batman, then you’re not going to win. What is Batman doing emotionally? He’s in a big city full of corruption. He’s an orphan. Those are the central pillars of that IP. It’s not enough to compete on gameplay, you also have to compete on emotion.”
Getting buy-in
It’s not only a single author that has to perform this, Fonnesbech stated. He says the entire management group ought to become involved. Nevertheless it’s very completely different from firm to firm, as some studios are pushed by a single artistic drive and others are run by management teams. Some companies are riven by the crazies and the bean counters who don’t like working with one another.
An instance of doing it backwards is Riot Video games’ League of Legends. It constructed probably the most profitable multiplayer on-line battle enviornment (MOBA) sport with a whole lot of characters however not a lot of a narrative. Now it went again and created the again story, spending $250 million on two seasons of Arcane on Netflix. And now it constructed one thing that followers are emotionally hooked up to. And when you’ve ever been to a League of Legends championship match, you’ll see the emotion of the gang. Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega began the identical method, with a speedy character with perspective and quick gameplay. Now, with the films, Sonic’s emotional middle is coming into focus.
Fonnesbech believes corporations like Treatment, CD Projekt Pink and Naughty Canine have finished good jobs creating their IP.
“If you want to build a valuable IP, the thing is it’s not necessarily the thing that makes it a hit,” he stated. “But it’s the thing that makes you sustainable,” Fonnesbech stated. “I would recommend characters. You don’t have to have them, but it’s really good. Having a character is just a great anchor and template. You can talk about having an emotional journey. What is the emotional journey? Franchises and IPs are like cherished memories that you want to experience.”
He added, “If you’re picking up Hitman or the latest Bourne movie or so on, you’re expecting to have that emotional journey. Lara Croft is still looking for her father in the ruins, and, you know, Geralt of Rivia is still the outsider who’s trying to protect the people who actually don’t trust him. You’re coming back for that same feeling again. Then there’s having a unique world. You think of Hitman, you think of Lara Croft, you think of Superman. It’s a world and a certain tone and a certain attitude that you’re coming back to as well. So these things start adding up. The more of them you have, the more cohesive the IP becomes.”
When it really works properly
Some corporations like Skybound, maker of The Strolling Useless, will take a look at a brand new IP in comedian type. If it resonates, it places the author’s room to work on it and churns out completely different form of media. It assessments the waters and doubles down on the hits. Earlier than The Strolling Useless, the “good guys never died,” he stated.
However folks should be careful for the “transmedia fallacy,” Fonnesbech stated. “The idea that we’ll go out on six media at once and it will be a bigger hit. That doesn’t work. You have to put everything you have into going out on one medium and make it work. It’s so difficult to make one good piece of game or fiction or story.”
As for a way issues have labored in the previous few years with 34,000 layoffs within the business, Fonnesbech stated there was a delayed impact for his personal consultancy. Whereas different huge corporations have been hit earlier, the disaster arrived for him within the spring of 2024, when there was a giant sport.
“Things are booming now, and it feels like there’s a bigger need for this way of thinking because I think the publishers and the investors have become a little bit more cautious about investing in weird wonders,” he stated. “If they are going to put all this investment in, they want to see something that will last.”
