This was, perhaps, inevitable, but I’m still surprised at the lack of discussion of Cryptic selling the rights of City of Heroes to NCSoft, including handing them a shake and bake live team of Cryptic employees.

This is an interesting next (final?) chapter in the Cryptic-NCSoft history, which includes the launch of a tight, successful (if a little niche) MMO, which drew the interest of the major hitters in the comics industry, namely DC and Marvel. Marvel tried to sue Cryptic, and NCSoft helped provide a legal defense. The matter was settled quietly eventually, but then Marvel attempted the ‘can’t beat em, join ‘em’ strategy, handing Cryptic the keys to the elusive Marvel ghost ship.

Two observations: First, NCSoft effectively had to do this, in order to protect their revenue stream. While I’m sure Cryptic would always have said that CoH/CoV would never suffer for Marvel’s sake, there’s no doubt that a newer, shinier product with a major license attached to it would get the lion’s share of attention. Having a direct competitor in the building had to make lawyers inside all three companies a little nervous. Can Cryptic prove that they weren’t taking the CoH’s teams best ideas and putting them into Marvel? Would you want to be forced to argue that in court?

Secondly, Cryptic appears to have managed to ‘cash in’ on the one way that developers can hope to do so in our industry – by holding onto the IP rights of the game when they signed their initial contract. It’s become harder and harder to do so, as publishers are getting wise, but as years have passed, I’ve come to agree heartily with Scott Miller on the subject of IP rights – if your studio can’t sign a contract without holding onto the IP rights if it’s invented, you really have to question whether or not its worth making the game. It’s exceedingly hard to build value for your company if you don’t.

So anyway, kudos for Cryptic, and also kudos to the fans of the CoH license. I think this will be very good for them. Meanwhile, we still await word as to how Cryptic is going to solve the batman/spiderman problem on Marvel.

Original comments thread is here.