you loved the... BOOK
MOVIE
TV SERIES
VIDEO GAME
ROLE-PLAYING
GAME
BREAKFAST CEREAL
- now play the CCG!

THE HOWS AND WHYS OF LICENSING A CARD GAME
By Allen Varney

It's a simple formula: Take a popu-
lar, recognizable entertainment fig-
ure. Slap his or her image onto a
poster, action figure, or cereal box.
And watch the product fly off shelves.

It's called licensing, and most of us
have seen it in action since we were kids.
Even the gaming industry has been
touched by licensing for decades. Still, in
all that time, probably no licensed games
have gotten as much attention as the
licensed collectible card games that have
arisen in the past few years.

Thanks to product licensing, popular
movies and TV shows (Star Wars, Star

Trek, James Bond films), comics (Marvel,
DC, Image), and literary works (J.R.R.
Tolkien's Middle-earth tales) are provid-
ing the fodder for equally popular CCGs.
Licensing translates major-league sports
into card games like "Red Zone" and "Top
of the Order." Licensing even makes it
possible to create CCGs out of other types
of games. Consider the BattleTech board
game, the Vampire: The Masquerade and
Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing games, as
well as the video/computer classics Killer
Instinct, Mortal Kombat, SimCity, and
Wing Commander. All of these spun off
into CCGs because of product licensing.

Why? Because licensing sells.

Picture this: You, a James Bond fan,
see both an unfamiliar super-spy espio-
nage CCG and Heartbreaker's "James
Bond 007 GoldenEye" in your local game
store. Which do you pick up? Or imagine
a store owner ordering games. One cata-
log entry lists a generic science-fiction
CCG; another, a game based on Star Trek
or Babylon 5. Which gets shelf space? The
obvious answer shows why the future
promises many more licensed games.