Trying A New Model

Announcing Wicked Loom, my new creative studio

I have a pretty solid resume when it comes to licensed games. I, alongside Brian Kirk, led the design team on the original Disney Villainous game and its early expansions, which is probably the thing I’m most well known for, but I have worked on games with licenses like Marvel, Star Wars, The Golden Girls, Fast & Furious, Squid Game, Jaws, Scream, Godzilla, Parks & Rec, DC Comics, Indiana Jones and a bunch I’m not remembering right now (Plus a bunch that were shelved during development that I’m probably still not supposed to talk about). I know that licensed games seem like a total cash grab to many people, but I’d like to think that the team at Prospero Hall and Funko Games, did something to change that perception. I was a key part of that team for several years, as was my friend Korby Sears, and we want to create great licensed games again.

So today we officially announced the creation of Wicked Loom, a new type of creative studio that will work on tabletop games, puzzles, events and collectibles. While we offer several services, the main one is a new business model that we want to try, that has us working directly with licensors.

The normal method for creating a great licensed game is that a publisher reaches out to a licensor to see if there’s interest or vice versa. They then sign a contract for the publisher to create a game, with oversight by the licensor to protect their IP, and the publisher then finds a designer to make the game (most publishers don’t have designers on staff). They might even sign a game on the market that they can adapt around the license. On the financial end, the publisher makes most of the profit, with an agreed upon royalty paid to the licensor. This license will be something like 7-15% based on the prominence of the license. There are other complicating factors like minimum guarantees and such that certain bigger licenses require, but this is how most of it works.

We see an opportunity to do something different here, especially when it comes to smaller licensors that have dedicated online fanbases. Thanks to the rise of Direct-To-Consumer sales, and services that can handle warehousing and distribution, it’s very common that licensors have their own way to sell merchandise directly to their fans. So Wicked Loom will work with licensors directly. We will create a game or puzzle or collectible from the ground up tailored specifically to that license. We will handle game design, art, graphic design, and playtesting. We will connect them with a manufacturer and work with that manufacturer through the QA process. We will connect them with partners to facilitate crowdfunding or traditional retail if that’s something that makes sense for their product. For payment we take a development fee and a small royalty, letting the licensor keep the bigger portion that would traditionally go to a publisher. We think this approach will make sense for a lot of licensors that thrive via a cult fanbase as opposed to mainstream appeal.

With any new approach, there is a possibility of failure. The market could reject this idea entirely. We could find out no licensors are interested in this service. We could find out that the margins don’t end up making financial sense once we start working with real numbers rather than our theoretical models. There are a myriad of ways that this could fail, but I’m comfortable taking the risk.

One way we are mitigating that risk though, is also providing other services that are more traditional. We are very good at working to specifications, and we want to bring that service to work for publishers who may not be finding the games they want through traditional inventor relations. Is the publisher looking for something that sells to the same consumers as Flip 7 but isn’t finding anything that they have confidence in out on the open market? Then they can hire us to design that game specifically for them. We also have experience in events and gamification that we can bring to work for corporations looking to add gamification to a team building event or an incentive program. We even have games that we’re pitching traditionally at Gen Con this year. These more tried-and-true models will hopefully allow us the breathing room we need to get our new model off the ground.

Hopefully, in a few years, our primary model is our main income source, and we understand how to go and acquire new partners. In the mean time, we’re out exploring the unknown. I am going to Licensing Expo for the first time ever, on a scouting mission to see if it’s a good place to make contact with perspective clients. I’m sending some cold emails, which I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable doing. I’ve built the website to have a contact form in case interested licensors or publishers find us. It’s uncertain but it’s exciting, and I can’t wait to work on cool new licensed games!