Intellectual property in games

Richard Garriott, Executive Producer NCSoft America gave a talk on making intellectual property in games using examples from ultima online. There are three ways to sell great games: cutting edge technology, game mechanics and, intellectual property. Types of IP in games include compelling characters, settings, stories. Examples Lara Croft, Myst, Oddworld or Ultima (story) IP is the best differentiator it's the only thing that is protected, everything else others can compete against you. At the end of the talk he gave a statement about the use of MMOGs for cooperative learning environments.

"On the good side, role playing is probably one of the most powerful teaching tools that exists. As a tool I believe it is very powerful and people should be looking at it....The down side is putting these kinds of systems together is horrifically complicatied. It's horrifically complicated to do when you're results are 10s of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. If you are doing it as a teaching tool you are not going to get that kind of revenue. ...If you want to do something similiar with customer service or supply and demand chains. The expense to pull it off well enough to be useful will commonly outstript the ability to do it."

This was part of the second online IBM MMOG conference.