🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉

Not many can claim 25 years on the Internet! Join us in celebrating this milestone. Learn more about our history, and thank you for being a part of our community!

Forming a syfy franchise

Started by
15 comments, last by Launcher111 4 years, 2 months ago

The idea is to form a council/board of directors. This board would govern the franchise, setting up the history, and what is cannon and what is not. The board would vary in size, most having a specific role.

You would have the authors group establishing the wookieepedia of sorts, they would get submissions and proposals, and file through them, the final approval requires a majority vote by the entire council for a book or story's to be commissioned.

The game developers group would also work with granting permission to allow other devs to make games off the franchise. They than take serious offers to the council for a full vote . The same applies to music and the movie/animation group.

The idea being the franchise would not exclude fan work, or ban them from generating a profit. They would pay the council a preset portion for using the technology, characters and galaxy. With the council determining if their work merits to be made cannon.

The reason for the concept is to understand the industry. George Lucas in episode 4, contracted his work to his own company he formed, managed to gain the franchise rights and merchandise rights, these 3 things would never work again. Just try getting permission to use established franchises without an army of lawyers coming after you.

The concept is to build a new galaxy, with checks and balances, preventing jj abrams essentially.

When you look at franchises, Dune, Lotr, star wars, star gate, star trek, battlestar. When the creator dies or sells the franchise is destroyed by the corpororate buyers. The idea is allow the franchise to live after the creator/creators are gone. It leaves in place a system to perpetuate the franchises life.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

Advertisement

Launcher, you are not talking about Artificial Intelligence, so this thread is moving to a more appropriate location. I don't know why so many new threads are being posted in the A.I. forum these days.

Also, it's unclear what you are looking for with your post.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

Tom Sloper said:

Launcher, you are not talking about Artificial Intelligence, so this thread is moving to a more appropriate location. I don't know why so many new threads are being posted in the A.I. forum these days.

Also, it's unclear what you are looking for with your post.

Probably because, when you go to “Forums” on the left and “Create a Topic”, the “Artifical Intelligence” subforum is selected by default. Sorry for OT!

Yeah for what ever reason i have issues posting in here, every sentence makes a double of the first letter. Than you try making a 2nd paragraph and refuses to happen, than other times letters are flung around and paragraphs vanish… its weird… that or automatically gives 5 to 10 spaces at top or bottom… the first post had way more content that vanished.

The idea though is to build a group of a decent size to make the next great syfy franchise. It expands beyond a game, or animation, or book. You make an empire that can sustain itself. Its also harder for outside groups to buy. If you have 20 board members, to purchase the content would require far higher offers.

If EA buys a book, maybe 3 to 5 million for exclusive rights. A group of 20 with 3 to 5 million, split 20 ways… isn't that much at all. You go from enough to retire, to might buy a new vehicle cash and pay off bills.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

I totally agree! It sucks to have something great get chopped and distorted from what it was. In the same way that the Louvre protects the Mona Lisa, we should have a group of hardcore fans of each series to protect the franchise. I bet anything if Disney could, they would add mickey mouse ears to the Mona Lisa.

Jj abrams would blow it up.

Take star wars, your not allowed to make any videos/movies/shows. You can't build a game, EA owns exclusiove rights. Neither one is doing a good job. You have the mess with cannon, cannon 2, legends, fiction, all filled with contradictions. Its a mess and getting far worse. The council as i envision it would hammer out a story line, species, technology. Most importantly safe guard the time line and franchise from… idiots… more focused on a good cgi scene than content.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

@undefined yeah, the rise of Skywalker was awful imo. The storyline was all over the place and made no orderly sense, it was visually appealing but other than that pretty garbage.

@undefined i would love the theoretical star wars council to be Drew Karpyshyn, Timothy Zahn, and Lucas. I feel like those three wrote the best star wars, I honestly felt that the prequels story wasn't bad, just poorly executed, and large studios had too much of a hand in it.

They brought back dead characters to try and help the movie at the expense of the franchise.

While so many people believe they will make one game. Believing that one game will have a dozen following it. Which maybe? But the odds are better when you have animations, original music, story back up, which works as advertising for all projects. You will get helpful fans that want to help, perhaps induct some in as board members. The board/council may grow from 8 to 20 depending on the need.

The council would elect it's leader, that breaks ties and would be the face of the franchise, help settle disagreements and issues. Not a Lucas or Roddenberry… chief justice would be a better comparison.

What works great is the overlap between groups, the writers can be brought in to help the game. The game developers may have requests for a hero with a certain personality type, of a specific species, are able to build around that character making them cannon and back story. Perhaps a short story for a few characters they invision/need for the game. The animation group may have developed a half dozen ships to add into the franchise, and would give these new characters a ship. The musician playing around comes in and says i made that character a song/background music when the character is present. Your able to add the small details that make an ok project, into a great project.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

@undefined the problem with the prequels was that the final outcome was known before hand. You know the jedi order is slaughtered, that anakin has children and becomes vader. The movies lacked surprises because they were all revealed in episode 4 for the most part. If episode 1 was the first you ever seen and watched them 1-9 you might have a different take on the movies… unfortunately cant unsee them and watch them again.

One great part is eventually when EA has destroyed more franchises and they come knocking on our door, that they want exclusive game rights or the franchise… they wouldn't have special treatment, they try doing what they want, and go rogue, they won't get the cannon seal from the council. Making it an unofficial product of the franchise… still charge them for the use of the galaxy, because they didn't follow the council guidelines they wont have a 2nd chance for a long time, if ever.

The council would play a part in all projects, fan projects would not be allowed to kill tier 1 or 2 characters without permission. Whats important to understand is we build the ultimate sand box which is used for many forms of media, the major restriction is the council makes the content (ships, characters, bureau's, alliances, factions, the science… they use the pieces but wont create the pieces only define and use them)

One aspect is money, no one here can drop 20 million dollars on the table and say you all work for me. It requires a massive group contributing to equal that output. When the group has produced a decent amount of content you draw in more people, through that content.

If you have a fun project in mind, with nontraditional and obscene characters, probably save time and message me.

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement