WIPOD – Make IP Your Business: Transcript of Episode 2

Videogame Development: A Quest for IP
Level 1 - Translating Creative Works into Videogames

Jan Rosner: They watched it on Netflix and all of a sudden, boom, they realized there is an awesome videogame to check out.

Allison Mages: Today we “Make IP Your Business”. It’s a podcast that explores how intellectual property positions a company to succeed or stumble. I’m Allison Mages, Head of the IP Commercialization Section at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). We call this season “Videogame Development: A Quest for IP”. Join our adventure through five levels of game development, where you'll hear from industry experts about how these rights can help your business level up or reach "game over".

Micaela Mantegna: Hi everyone, I'm Micaela Mantegna, a videogame lawyer and scholar. We are today on Level 1: IP in the concept phase. Today we will hear more about the difference between original and licensed content when developing a new title and talk about the consequences in cross-media expansion.

Allison Mages: Our guest today is Jan Rosner. Working at CD PROJEKT RED (CDPR) for the last seven years, Jan now oversees distribution, licensing, and partnerships at the company. For the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, he's helped secure music licenses with artists like Run The Jewels, Grimes, and A$AP Rocky for the game's soundtrack. He's also worked on the incredibly popular The Witcher series. It's a pleasure to have you, Jan.

Jan Rosner: It’s a pleasure to be here, thank you for having me.

Allison Mages: So Jan, tell us, how did you get your start in the videogame industry?

Jan Rosner: A while back, so over like about seven and a half years ago, I was, actually, you know, I mean first off, I am a gamer for as long as I can remember of and then all of a sudden, you know, since I was looking for a career change all of a sudden, I noticed this like job listing on CD PROJEKT RED that spoke to my needs, to my career needs and what I was looking for. So I just decided to apply and then here I am.

And when it comes to the career change, well, you know I was, I would say maybe I was actually fresh out of college and or out of university. I was more in a public relations entirely different industry, actually in the music industry, and then sort of, you know, I was looking for something more business oriented to some extent. So since I was, you know, playing so many games in my spare time then sort of everything just came together and then I realized that's a very good opportunity which I just cannot pass on so, yeah.

Micaela Mantegna: I love that you said that. Because it's a good advice for some people that are thinking about career changes and that was also my path. So, it's always good to hear from another person experience on how to get, how to decide to get into the industry.

You have been working in business development at CD PROJEKT RED for over 7 years. Can you tell us a bit more about what your day-to-day role is about?

Jan Rosner: Sure. So you know I'm a Business Director at CDPR these days, so I'm overseeing, I would say quite a lot of business related efforts on behalf of the company. First off, we're, you know, running all the sales - so physical, digital, distribution, we are overseeing the business relationships in our distribution partners all around the globe, as well as handling everything that happens on digital front on every possible platform.

Secondly, we're doing all the licensing as well. So, all the things you can see in the background behind me are actually sort of also a result of that, of the licensing on our side because, you know, we have a lot of partners on the very different product categories and, you know, we sort of have this like, we already have a proof that, you know, getting as many collectibles, artifacts as possible works very well. Finally, that we have also procurement within our business development. So procurement is the department which helps, to put it short, purchasing a lot of stuff for our company, whether that's, you know, licenses. So basically, everything we could potentially look for at CDPR as a company.

And then we have of course, like let's say, custom/special projects which we do, which maybe do not fall under that neither of those categories; one of them could be, you know, we do all the talent deals on behalf of the company, so for, you know, working with Keanu Reeves or mostly recently announced Idris Elba, that sort of was everything was on us to reach out, to make sure that, you know, we have a trusted partner who helps us with that, to establish the relationship and then convince them to star in our game.

Micaela Mantegna: But I wanted to circle back a bit because you were talking about “The Witcher” and licensing and seeing something that's really core to the games that you are developing and, how did “The Witcher” series and Cyberpunk [2077] started in terms of licensing? How do you approach these projects?

Jan Rosner: First off, I need to state that we have, we do have this approach of rather transferring all the rights to us as opposed to like making a sort of videogame license which would allow us to make a videogame. And that's the approach we are trying to apply to every, I think, avenue on videogame developments.

So both, that's the case with both The Witcher and Cyberpunk [2077], and that's basically because that's gives us a lot more security and then also creative freedom with of course we need to maintain a lot of respect to the original work by original authors, but at the same time we always want to make sure that we have not only creative, but also sort of IP/licensing freedom on our site.

We are trying to secure all those rights upfront, however, when it comes to what we are doing outside videogames and licensing to other media and to other products, first off I'd say we differ in quality, so videogames will always be the center of our business and that's the same approach that applies here. Every product we do or we license, we make sure that it is as high quality as possible because we also cater our funds with high quality and that's it. And that applies to not only videogames, but as I mentioned, to the figurines, the comic books, the board games; they go through I would say a lot of rounds of approvals which in the end, you know, results in the best possible product.

Allison Mages: So Jan, I mean, it sounds like there's a ton of respect that goes into using this other, someone else's creation and turning it into a videogame. For our listeners, our viewers, who are thinking about whether to make a game based on original content or something that they're licensing, someone else's creation from someone else. What's the benefit of using that inspiration from another creator?

Jan Rosner: So I'd say of course, you know, one obvious thing that comes to mind is that both The Witcher and Cyberpunk [2077] so both IPs which we have developed our videogames where to some extent already established on the market and were well-known. The Witcher especially, you know, here in Poland it was like a phenomenon, not only in Poland but, you know, to some extent also worldwide. Cyberpunk [2077] was more of a “Western IP”, like a classic in US, especially in North America. So, there is a huge benefit on that. If you if you already have an established fan base then you are sort of speaking to already to the crowd which loves the IP.

I'd say it's all about striking a power balance in between, you know, having huge respect to the original material because that's something that was created by the original author and, you know, the material in which people fell in love with, but also, you know, you also need to like have some sort of creative freedom in order to tell the stories within that universe which we want to tell; there is no like one recipe on how to do this properly.

Allison Mages: So Jan, once you get that balance in, what's the process? So if you are thinking about using someone else's IP to create something, how do you go about it? Do you reach out to the original creator? And, what do you reach out to them with?

Jan Rosner: Every time we talk to the author, you know, we have to always show a genuine, especially genuine and honest respect to his or her work. We basically approach them with, you know, a general idea that we would love to make a videogame after out of your IP. Sometimes it takes more, sometimes less, convincing. But I think we already have a proven track record of making an awesome product out of the already established material which also benefits the original authors because all of a sudden, they, you know, we have this opportunity to speak to entirely new crowd which, you know, maybe was not familiar with their IP before and therefore they are also reaching for the original content which is also is like a source for their newly beloved IP. At the same time, you know, we do want to tell our own stories within that universe. So, it's all about finding or creating ones that are not only respecting the original IP or respecting the Lore and the world which was established by the original authors. But also about, you know, telling something compelling with like a bigger message, which also fans will love.

Micaela Mantegna: I think it's really interesting what you were saying about respecting the Lore, respecting the very things that drawn you in the first place into choosing that IP. But at the same time, having the creative freedom to expand that Lore and create new stories and tell new stories within “Night City” (Cyberpunk 2077) or The Witcher environment. And I think it's, it must be really tough and I wanted to ask like more like the inside process of this, it would be really tough like balancing the legal aspects of this with the creative freedoms. Sometimes these are two worlds that are not speaking to each other, and I have friends in the development industry that say “oh, here come the lawyers”. So how do you balance that? How do you get right from the concept phase of choosing an IP and negotiating this, to kind of give that creative freedom and securing that freedom moving forward?

Jan Rosner: So first off, I think I would say, maybe I will start from the business perspective and then how we do it. Which again sort of maybe I don't want to say to avoid the lawyer problem, but basically to make sure that we have as much freedom as possible. We try to secure the ownership of the IP upfront and this is not because we want to like violate it or just make it something entirely different. It's more about having that creative freedom, so I'd say that this is  the very start and this is something we also always try to secure in order to so that our development, our dev guys and our development team have as much freedom as possible. Again, at the same time, whenever we talk to the author, we try to keep the relationship healthy and then make sure that we would never do nothing that would, to put it bluntly, like violate the very basic rights of the very basic rules of their IP. And then, of course, finally we have a very, very big and talented team behind the stories which we tell within our games. There, it's a very, very lengthy and very complicated process within the dev team to make sure that the stories and quests we write internally, feel organic to the world in which we are working, we are sort of operating.

Micaela Mantegna: And I was thinking you were mentioning the business side of this. And I know that “The Witcher” has a huge impact in your country and the lore, but how do you think about how is the research you do when trying to find a new IP?

Jan Rosner: So first off, the creative exercise, of course, you know, I've already said that at first, we have to be in love with IP ourselves because that's just easier to make games of pieces which you love, but of course, you know, we always try to look on the sort of commercial like potential of it. So how well is it now and in which markets? There is no secret that especially for example, North America it's a big part of the equation here because as one of the, you know, or maybe if or maybe even the biggest market when it comes to cultural impact of which videogames make, so we always look at that, for example. We always, you know, look for, of course, I would say maybe, I don’t want to say controversies, but if there are any potential obstacles which will not allow us to do the kind of game which we are also looking to make. You know, we specialize, especially in big AAA RPGs of which, you know, take hundreds of hours to complete. And I bet there are a lot of IP which simply does not fit that that type of game.

Allison Mages: A lot of people who are watching now are just starting out in the videogame business. If they don’t have that big legal department to go on, do you have any advice to help get started and understand what they have that’s valuable and protect it?

Jan Rosner: At first, make sure that your IP and the content that you're creating, and that may sound obvious, but as original as possible and stand out from different content whether that's games or different media. At some point if your IP becomes successful, you definitely see some either copycats or counterfeits. We've seen a lot of those in the in the past, not only for our games, but I've seen a lot of very small and very successful games, for example on especially on mobile and then all of a sudden, the either you know Apple Store or Google Play store are suddenly flooded with copycats, right?

So it takes a lot of effort and while there is maybe no one universal recipe to combat those, especially in the early stage, but I'd say it's definitely worth taking a look at. Especially in the very beginning, because once it's out and once it starts rolling, then the further you get without the proper protection then the more difficult it will be to fight it.

Allison Mages: Jan, switching gears a little bit, when you're building a game, you have an opportunity not just to make money from the game itself, but also from cross-media expansion. I know you've got a record coming out on vinyl later this year, novel adaptation, I mean, there's these really cool things, there's the Netflix series out there. How does when you're thinking about this cross-media expansion, how does it affect the way that you negotiate for rights to the underlying content?

Jan Rosner: So basically, we always look at the IP and it's cross-media potential that's the very first step we have to take from the very get go. I think we knew from the start that Cyberpunk, for example, or also The Witcher have a lot of potential to not only do videogames, which again will be always the center of our business, but also to do comic books, novels, as you said, a lot of music. Especially following the Cyberpunk example I think the music was crucial to it because we had the opportunity to show to the world how we envision music in 2077.

There was, of course, a lot of legal sort of framework behind it because we had to license it in this in a very specific way and also ask our artists who agreed to collaborate with us to provide us with entirely new content. The cultural impact of it was of course very compelling, but then there was a lot of legal framework behind it. But it is entirely true that, you know, we always try to look at that first. You always have to try to look at the cross-media potential of it, because while, again, the videogames will always be the center of our business, there is a lot of sort of products which you can you can either release or just have out there which will speak to a different crowd and then attract your new audiences to your videogame.

Think of comic books, novels, anime series, even board games. These are places where our fans can look for the new lore within our IPs and simply learn more about the world, especially in case with the Netflix series. That's actually The Witcher and Cyberpunk genres are both good examples, even though we were not directly involved in The Witcher, the genre was purely created by CD PROJEKT in collaboration with Studio Trigger. Both of those series showed us how new audience, how they bring new audiences to your games.

To put it frankly, actually I'm pretty sure there were a lot of non-gamers out there who found out about both of our, you know, all of our games through those series. They watched it on Netflix and all of a sudden boom, they realized there is there is an awesome videogame to check out and I think it's always like super important again to look at the cross-media potential because while you may start out with the videogame, you may end up with doing a lot more outside it. We call it the “franchise flywheel”, to make sure that the IP is growing not only within videogames, but also within other media.

Micaela Mantegna: And I think it's super interesting that you mentioned all the time the fans or how the fans are at the core of the projects you are thinking. Because it could be also a complicated relationship in terms of how the fans are using the products. And I was thinking I have been looking for a lot of cosplay about the animated series on Netflix and how do we approach fan and content creation from fans?

Jan Rosner: We love it. That's I think the shortest answer I can give. It makes our hearts warm when we see, you know, awesome cosplays out there because, you know, I was certainly not aware how talented people can be or how creative them be with their cosplays when I was sort of entering this industry, uh, but uh, those things tend to go viral and I love them seeing going viral and I love to see people loving what we also come up with when it comes to our characters and how people bring them to life.

Micaela Mantegna: And I love because the videogame industry has a very different approach with this from other creative industries. I remember before the launching of Cyberpunk 2077 that you also sponsored a cosplay competition around the world and you also hired cosplay cosplayers to recreate the suits of V and the characters. So that's a really good, I think it's a good example for other industries to follow, that you have to have this kind of dialogue back and forth with your audience.

Allison Mages: So Jan, if you could give based on your experience, a CD PROJEKT, read one piece of advice to a new developer, what would it be at this stage?

Jan Rosner: I'd say always differ in quality of, basically this should be your like number one benchmark when it comes to you know creating your own IP and always also think of the potential within the content you are creating. Of course, you may be doing a videogame today, but you may end up doing something entirely different like in a couple of years. So always think of when creating new stuff, you think of how this could, for example, always be turned into a book, a board game, even a TV series, you know, how do you go about those things? So, I think this is very important these days especially with, you know, even the most recent example, right? So, the Last of Us, which was just released on HBO, excellent show, this is also one of my very, very favorite videogames. You know, HBO has done, and of course with Naughty Dog, have done a terrific job on bringing this story to life through HBO and there is that much I can say. Always think of how we can also bring your content to other media outside videogames.

Allison Mages: Jan, thank you so much. I mean, I think that there's so much to videogames that you've opened up for us, not just the game itself, but where it can go beyond. Thanks for sharing your insights, and really super to have you on the podcast.

Jan Rosner: Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Allison Mages: Whether you're being inspired by someone else's creation or making your own, IP couldn't be more important. To break it down for us, we have Professor Gaetano Dimita and his PowerUP. Over to you, Gaetano.

Gaetano Dimita: So, you got an idea for a videogame. I know it is a very early stage, but intellectual property can still play a major role. At this stage, I think it's important you focus on building your team, learn how to keep good records and understanding the difference between what entails creating original content and what entails using license code. Don't even start working on your game before having an agreement between your team members to clarify the ownership of the IP. They will save you so much time and money down the line.

Imagine, it’s the time of launch in few years ahead, the designer of the main character left the team and never licensed you the right to use that particular character. Now you have to redesign it or trace back the designer and negotiate with them for a license. You might not be even in good terms anymore. You really don't want to find yourself in that situation. But now that you have the agreement, the team is sorted. Let's focus on the game.

Your game could be entirely based on your original content, content that you create yourself, or it could be based on someone else's intellectual property rights, and in which case you will need permission to do that. The creation process itself is going to be extremely fluid, so it's really important in both scenarios to keep records on both what you're creating and what you want to use. As soon as you have an idea of for a character, for a mechanics, for a level, just write it down. Keep track of who is participating in the creative process, where the ideas come from, be careful in tracing whether you're using or you're inspired by others, and from where you're taking all this content and inspiration from. This is going to save you a lot of headaches later when you're trying to remember whether you can actually use or not that particular asset. When assets belong to others, from a software code to an assets to a character design, you will probably need a license.

A license is the contract that will specify what you cannot and what you can do with the IP, for how long, where, when as well as determining the financial implication. There are always pros and cons in developing a videogame based on original content or licensed content. For instance, you might think that using a famous character or story might help you write the profile of your game by reaching the preexisting fans. However, it might also increase your upfront cost when you license the right. On the other hand, creating original content might yes, take more time, but can give you more control in the future and let you build your own brand. These two scenarios are not mutually exclusive as most videogames will include both original and licensed content.

Micaela Mantegna: And that's a wrap for level 1. Stay tuned for the next episode of “Videogame Development: A Quest for IP”. We are going to talk about the role of IP in the development phase. We will hear more from Macula and discuss the challenges and opportunities of building new worlds as an indie studio.

Allison Mages: Thanks for listening to “Make IP your Business”, this podcast is brought to you by WIPO, the UN Agency for IP that enables innovation and creativity for everyone, everywhere. You can find all the episodes, download the PowerUPs, and join the community on our website. Check out the show notes for the links. See you on the next level!