Comments on: Industry Rule #4,080: Success Brings Lawsuits

By: Bradley Momberger

Bradley Momberger — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:14:00 +0000

Maybe you could correlate the expected value of losses due to lawsuit (projected value of settlement multiplied by probability of having to pay it out) with the success of the project. Is it still linear or does the cost of success increase at a faster pace?

From a financial perspective it may be a more important figure for budgetary purposes.

By: Norm

Norm — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:39:00 +0000

I suppose we can assume that the coefficients are modified by the content of your game. Particularly, music-themed games like Guitar Hero must lend themselves to significantly higher lawsuit rates given the broader range of people involved in their success.

After all, you not only have to worry about publishers but potentially musicians and music labels as well! Of course, the latter we need not worry about because everyone knows the music industry has no interest in suing their customers.

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:30:00 +0000

That would only make sense if a 200% chance of being sued were any worse than a 100% chance of being sued. Since probability maxes out a 1, it entirely depends on your coefficients, and my statement is meaningless except for the “for poorly defined values of ‘pretty damn’, you have to be pretty damn successful to engender a lawsuit” part.

By: Aprotim

Aprotim — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:22:00 +0000

So probability of being sued grows as the log of success? That’s a pretty winning proposition, really…