Licensing HERO?

[Yamo]

Pondering today on ways HERO might be able to draw in more new gamers.

And it occured to me, maybe a licensed game?

GURPS does it quite often with everything from Lensmen to Wild Cards to Hellboy to The Prisoner. d20 has licensed games based on Star Wars, Wheel of Time, Farscape, Everquest, and (on the way) Babylon 5, among others.

Has Hero Games ever considered going this route? It seems like an easy way to access a built-in fanbase and increase awareness of the system.

[Monolith]

Licenses have been brought up many times on the message boards. The general feeling from DOJ is that they are not worth the time and financial obligation required to make them work.

[Steve Long]

Monolith has hit it right on the nail.

We're not averse to the idea of licensed products, but we have no intention of pursuing them -- they'd have to come our way, and have very easy terms, and be worth the time and effort in our opinion, to justify. Licenses are extremely expensive and full of headaches. I've worked on a lot of high-profile game licenses -- Trek, Dune, Wheel of Time, LOTR -- so I'm quite familiar with the difficulties involved. I have no intention of bringing such difficulties down on Hero unless there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's worth it.

Someone once asked Darren and me what it would take for Hero to go after the Marvel Comics license. We responded:

1. Marvel would have to pay us to take the license (or at the very least charge us a $0 licensing fee and no royalties).
2. Marvel would have to give us free, absolutely unrestricted, and rapid access to its entire art library.
3. Marvel would have to agree that no review or approvals of the products we produce would be required.

I'm sure you can figure out for yourself how likely any single one of those points, much less all three of them, are. That about sums up our ideas on high-profile licensing. ;)

[GradonSilverton]

Originally posted by Steve Long
Monolith has hit it right on the nail.

We're not averse to the idea of licensed products, but we have no intention of pursuing them -- they'd have to come our way, and have very easy terms, and be worth the time and effort in our opinion, to justify. Licenses are extremely expensive and full of headaches. I've worked on a lot of high-profile game licenses -- Trek, Dune, Wheel of Time, LOTR -- so I'm quite familiar with the difficulties involved. I have no intention of bringing such difficulties down on Hero unless there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's worth it.

Someone once asked Darren and me what it would take for Hero to go after the Marvel Comics license. We responded:

1. Marvel would have to pay us to take the license (or at the very least charge us a $0 licensing fee and no royalties).
2. Marvel would have to give us free, absolutely unrestricted, and rapid access to its entire art library.
3. Marvel would have to agree that no review or approvals of the products we produce would be required.

I'm sure you can figure out for yourself how likely any single one of those points, much less all three of them, are. That about sums up our ideas on high-profile licensing. ;)

Wow! I can see that meeting now.....



Steve : "Ok guys here are the rules. We'll put your stuff out, but only if you give us 100% controll, access to your entire library, and, oh, lets not forget that we'll be paying you nothing in fees or royalties."

Marvel Guy : "Uh......"

Steve : "See this is the best possible deal for you. You have nothing to worry about. No money is involved for you. You dont have to 'put people on it' to look things over. Even better, you dont have to do any new art, we'll just use what you already have."

Marvel Guy : "Uuummm......"

Steve : "I know your speechless. You must be thinking 'We've never been offered a deal like this! This is the best thing for us! I better not speak so I dont screw things up and make him mad!' We understand."

Marvel Guy : "Uuhh...Security!"



....But I like it. I like the fact that Hero Games doesnt sell its soul to the Devil on a regular basis like many other companies. Give 'em HELL Steve!

[tomd1969]

I think, actually, that going the other way around and license out the Hero System for other companies to use would benefit Hero Games much more in the long run (and the fans... :) ). A good example of this is San Angelo from Gold Rush Games (an excellent setting book) and The Kandris Seal from Hartfelt Productions (another excellent and well-thought-out setting). TKS, particularly, is a unique setting that I would think would be difficult for Hero to release themselves.

[Monolith]

I am sure DOJ would be very interested in offering licenses to other companies or people to produce HERO System books. Up to this point in time we only know of Gold Rush Games and Hartfelt Productions doing this, but there might be more which have not been announced yet. The more HERO System material in the market place the better it is for all of us.

From what I have seen on the Policies page, DOJ's licensing requirements do not seem too severe. I would think there are several enterprising authors in the Hero community who could take a stab at licensing just as Lisa did. In another forum I even mentioned that I would like to see Aaron Allston acquire a license and produce his Strike Force Universe material himself. That way there is no conflict of interest with DOJ's campaign universe, Aaron gets to keep the rights to his material, and the fans benefit from having more HERO System material in the market place.

Of course with DOJ producing 12+ books this year and 18+ books next year, it remains to be seen whether or not the fanbase will be willing to spend the money for the material. They do it for d20 material, but Hero fans always seem reluctant to do it for the HERO System. I know I would buy it though. :)