A follow up to a previous post:
Eeek. Writer and narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett has kindled a little frail hope that we might one day play another brand new Discworld videogame, while responding to earlier comments from Perfect Entertainment co-founder Gregg Barnett about who exactly owns the intellectual property rights to Perfect’s old Discworld adventure titles from the 90s.
Barnett made these comments during a lengthy interview with Time Extension about the creation of the 90s games. In between the anecdotes about collaborating with Terry Pratchett and getting cussed out by John Cleese, he dangled the carrot of a potential re-release, explaining that the key problem is that half the intellectual property rights for the games have now reverted to the British monarchy under UK law. To quote Night Watch, “two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.”
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“Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the crown, which is King Charles. So that’s the two owners of the games. So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track - a rerelease or a remaster. But it’s obviously a complicated process when you’re dealing with the crown.”
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“We only have rights to the characters, not the games themselves,” Pratchett told PCGamer following Barnett’s statements. "If we did have the rights, then this would be a whole lot easier. We’re genuinely not sure who does own the rights because studios have been bought and sold over the years, along with IP.
“Last time we investigated this, they were thought to be with Sony, but that’s never been fully confirmed,” she continued. “We’d certainly love to see the old games rereleased. It’s news to us if His Majesty owns 50% of the Discworld games. Who knows what might happen if that’s really the case. Maybe he’s a fan!”
In the same interview with Time Extension, Barnett broached the ambition of making a brand new Discworld game, but suggested that this would be impossible, again due to legal obstacles. “Unfortunately, before Terry passed away, him or his agent or somebody had signed off every property to either ITV or Prime or the BBC literally across the board,” he said.
Pratchett says this is incorrect, however. “No one has signed off everything to anybody,” she told PCG. “We still own the IP rights… The reason why Gregg got the rights to do the games was that he came with solid ideas which fitted the nature of Discworld. The simple reason that there’s never been a fully fledged Discworld game since then is no one has come to us with the right ideas and the resources to actually make it happen.”
It feels weird that such superb and well-loved books hasn’t spawned a franchise of games, films and TV shows. Everything just seems to fizzle out inconclusively.
The fact that Sir Terry worked on these games does make them a bit extra special though and they should be more easily available no matter what else happens down the line. Although if there aren’t any games designers polish a killer pitch, then the world is a cold, sad place
I think that what makes the Discworld special doesn’t really translate well to other media. So it’s probably a tough balance to find between the source material and a good adaptation.
Very true. It’s Pratchett’s words that sing off the page.
But still I have this nagging feeling that with the right team and the right budget… Ah well, we’ll always have the books, and these games.
Are we just ignoring the BBC movies on purpose here? I enjoyed them and Teatime was hella scary but memorable in Hogfather.
Are we just ignoring the BBC movies on purpose here?
Not at all but they were one-offs. What I am talking about is an adaptation that gains enough momentum that it becomes a franchise. Discworld is a rich a fictional universe (or more so) than Middle Earth, Hogwarts, Narnia, etc. and it’s got a big fan base.
I used to believe that. It seems logical that humour which is so dependant on the narrative bits between the dialogue would have trouble translating to the screen. Then I saw the (IMO excellent) Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and it changed my mind. It absolutely is possible to adapt a comedy book into a TV show and preserve the author’s style of humour. You just need to really embrace the comedy style in all levels of the work.
