What if CoG merchandised?

General
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I was thinking “It’d be cool if I could have a Creatures Such as We shirt”. Or “Man, The Sea Eternal was great! I’d love a mug with its thumbnail on it!” Anyone else think so?

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Yeah, it’d be great :slight_smile: . But I fear it’d only be feasible for the really popular games :’( . I mean I like a lot of popular games, but I think the opportunity would be limiting? I took a moment to think and the best product I could come up with was A wise use of time watch :stuck_out_tongue: .

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I know @Eric_Moser has done a couple of products for his game, but I’m not sure if the rules would be different between CoG and HG. I think it’d be up to the authors if they wanted to though? How much of the game content goes to CoG and how much stays with the author? I know there are CoG games set in the same universes as novel series by the author (Choice of the Deathless and City’s Thirst, the upcoming Welcome to Moreytown) so I think most of the ownership stays with the author? Someone more informed could definitely answer this better, but it looks to me like if there were to be products for a game it’d be up to the authors themselves

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CoG and HG treat Intellectual Property the same: The contract limits the use of the story in the form of interactive fiction, but IP rights stay with the author.

So, the author could make merchandise independent of CoG, if they wished. :slight_smile:

“Authors are welcome to use other IP that they own–such as a setting developed for pre-existing novels, short stories, comics, or games–in developing their games to be published by us, and our contracts do not threaten authors’ ownership of that IP or ability to continue using it in other formats.”

EDIT: Except for graphics which were paid for by CoG. Those images are owned by CoG.

Also, image rights may be a factor in other cases, depending upon how they were purchased/created.

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Lucid is mostly correct.

The only difference is that we don’t own the images for COG; we have license for their use to promote the games. We couldn’t, ourselves, market products with the art.

That said, the artist who did the art for Demon Mark and Avatar of the Wolf is going to make artisan prints available for those who want them. He did one for me and it’s awesome. This is his online shop, but he hasn’t put them up yet: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Monsterism

In the past, the artist for Zombies tried to sell tee shirts via CafePress or something. There were like ten or twenty sales. We haven’t really tried any commercial marketing ourselves since.

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I think CoG is a bit too niche of a market to seriously consider any widespread merchandising, but as the others have said, that doesn’t stop the authors from trying to do so themselves.

Of course, should CoG suddenly receive millions of new, active, and passionate customers, and the tides may change. Hell, maybe it could even pay for all the games that have been published, but that’s being generous.

If CoG decided to try its hand at merchandise, though, everyone would know that a picture of a League of Antar church hassar riding towarda battle would undoubtably be the shirt that everyone would want to get. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Honestly i think that it would be awesome but the logical part tell me it can make a profit if they display the thumbnail of the design of the specific object and price and produce it at that time so there would never left over.(lol don’t know anything about business worth a try)

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