The game as a franchise

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More than one game

Shard Garden is three years old. A toy company emails Kai about garden figures, and players ask for a sequel.

A franchise is a world players love across many things: sequels, new kinds of games, toys, books and shows. It works only if the studio owns the world and keeps it the same everywhere.

Own the name

Copyright protects the art, code and story from the moment they are made, as the outsourcing lesson showed. A game's name needs a trade mark.

GOV.UK: you can register one "to protect your brand", and the cost depends on "how many types of goods or services you want to protect your brand in". A UK trade mark "lasts 10 years" and can be renewed.

Check the mark

Remy registered "Shard Garden" as a trade mark for video games only. Kai now wants Shard Garden toys. What should Remy check?

  1. Whether the mark covers toys, and register it for toys too if not
  2. Nothing: one trade mark covers everything
  3. Whether the toys are fun
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Whether the mark covers toys, and register it for toys too if not

A trade mark protects the types of goods and services it is registered for. Toys are a different type from video games.

A licence, not a sale

The toy company does not buy Shard Garden. It gets a licence: permission to make garden figures for a set time, in set countries. In return it pays a royalty, a share of each sale, set in the contract.

The studio still owns the world, and approves every design before it is made.

The world bible

Partners need to know what makes Shard Garden itself: how the gardens look, what the weeds can and cannot do, the colours and the tone. Kai writes it down in a world bible that every licence includes.

A toy, a comic and a sequel then feel like the same world.

Quick check

A comic publisher wants to make a Shard Garden comic. How does the studio usually earn from it?

  1. A royalty on each copy sold, under a licence
  2. The publisher buys the game
  3. Nothing: comics are free advertising
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A royalty on each copy sold, under a licence

A licence lets a partner use the world for a set time and place, and the royalty pays the studio a share of every sale.

Sequels and spin-offs

A sequel continues the game players already love. A spin-off takes the world into a new kind of game, like a Shard Garden puzzle game.

The Plan stage showed that whoever owns the IP decides about sequels. Before starting one, the studio checks every contract it has signed.

Quick check

Once a toy company has a licence, it can change Shard Garden's characters however it likes.

Show the answer

False

The licence says what the partner may make, and the studio approves each design against its world bible, so every product feels like the same world.

What lasts

The last lesson of Course 2 looks a long way ahead.

Bolt says: Next: what lasts.

Fact-checked 12 October 2026