The Lord of the Rings IP Interview

IncGamers managed to corner Saul Zaentz Company’s Fredrica Drotos for an interesting interview about the licensing of The Lord of the Rings IP and some of the recent video games that have been based on the franchise.

If I’m not wrong, the Tolkien Estate isn’t involved much in the gaming side of things. How much of a free reign do you have with this? And to what extent can you influence a final product?

I think that we have pretty much free reign. We have an idea of what the Tolkien Estate likes and our opinion coincides with theirs. We feel that we have a good understanding because we’ve had a long relationship with the estate, over 30 years now. We know there are certain aspects of storytelling that would not be appropriate for this fiction. Given that our license allows for there to be some creativity, some expansion of what already exists. But we do have to be mindful that it’s consistent. It’s actually quite challenging, as you can imagine. You have to get into the mind of a great author like Tolkien, and then imagine where it may have gone and what places he wouldn’t have been comfortable with.

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OK, if I’m a small developer and I wanted to apply for the IP, what would I need to do as a small fish? And would I get the license for years and multiple titles, or would I be restricted to a short time frame?

Well we’ve gone both ways with that with some licenses being granted for years while others have gone for one game with the condition of expanding if the game meets our expectation for quality. Sometimes there is a financial component to that and there would be room for an expansion or a second game and we’d be open to negotiations on that. All the applications have been a little different even though the licensing hasn’t been around for that long. About 20 years or so. We’ve had several different t licensees and they’ve all had different agreements. As for application: we’re a pretty open company and you can come to us and say, (I have an idea) and if you could legitimately follow through with the idea, we’ll talk to you.

We met Turbine, for example, through our relationship with Vivendi. They were pitching something that they hadn’t really done before. They had done Dungeons and Dragons, sure, but we didn’t know who they were. Over a period of time you meet and talk and you see how committed they are, and then there’s a little leap of faith. It’s kind of like a marriage.

It sounds like they’re really happy with how The Lord of the Rings Online turned out. Nice work, Turbine.