I.P. Freely

There are three specific games in my portfolio of work that I consider to be the most prominent - Candy Raid: The Factory, Potion School and Egg Trainer. While these are far from the only games I’ve ever made, these are the ones that have taken the most time, and have reached a commercial release.

While I was chatting with a friend earlier today, I realized that these three share something else: Each of these have interestingly convoluted IP ownership.

Firstly, Candy Raid began as an entry to Ludum Dare 41, and was developed into a full release because we scored in the top 100 for “fun”. The IP, code and asset ownership was split 50/50 between me and LogicMonkey, but with some caveats:

• Candy the Witch, the main character, remains 100% LogicMonkey’s property.
• The music is licensed to us in perpetuity, but not the copyright to it.
• A certain percentage of the net profit is owned by the audio guy.

While we do own the sound effects (classified under “assets”), the compromise on the music was the only way we could afford to actually commission custom music. The “net profit” is after platform fees and taxes, as well.

Secondly, Potion School had at least a dozen people helping here and there, either as casual play testers, or feedback, or commissioned for tasks like typesetting and layout. The IP itself is all mine, but the art used was produced via commission for a 50/50 split of the net profits.

Potion School was released on 17th March 2020, just in time for the print-on-demand services to be shut down due to the first COVID restrictions. I should write about the cosmic jokes that I suffer sometime…

Finally, Egg Trainer’s art was commissioned from a few artists over the years, in exchange for rev-share for the duration of their work. This was a bad idea, as I ended up hurting one of the artists due to the lack of actual income during their run, and the illustration quality suffered as well. The copyright of all the illustrations was transferred to me, but I still feel guilty - I hope I can make amends one day, but that won’t be for a long time.

I eventually sold Egg Trainer to a friend, but the engine it was built on, that was developed as open source, remained my own - the custom code, assets, databases and IP was all handed off, and while I’m proud of that game, I’m very much done with it.

Each of these games has taught me something important, but there’s a common thread running through them all: anything worthwhile takes more than one person.