Game Design: Week 7 IP's

When talking about an IP or intellectual property, in the realm of games and media generally refers to a title or franchise, in reality an IP is really anything that someone thinks of and claims as their own, but in conversations discussing an IP they are generally referring two a specific game or series.
Pre-existing IP's are just games and franchises that exist already and usually have amassed some amount of popularity.
Working with established IP's has both advantages and pitfalls that can make either ridiculous amounts of money or destroy the franchise in the long run.

Working with an established and popular IP almost guarantees your game craploads of sales at launch and generally quite a decent amount of continuous sales later, for example, no matter how much everyone bitches about Call of Duty it still makes a ridiculous amount of money.
There is still one major obstacle with popular IP's and that is to keep the game popular with its fanbase. A sequel or even a spin off is supposed to remind people of why they love that game to being with and putting too much of your original flair in can and often will spoil that.
A pre-existing franchise can have years of built up history, lore and most importantly gameplay standards, and while it can be easy to create a cookie cutter sequel, people can get tired of that and the difficulty is in innovating the franchise. To change the game to much is sacrilege and to not change it enough is boring and stale, to hold you ground with a poor decision is a big fuck you to the fans, to cower and go back on the change shows a week. Are your changes your own ideas to revitalize a dying game, or put your own spin on it? Or are the changes soulless cash grabs from corporate owners of the IP?

Halo is easily one of my favourite video game titles ever, I am very biased I will admit that. I am good at it and I've put countless hours into it, I know what makes Halo, Halo, I also have common sense and can tell what destroys a games art direction and cracks the lore wide open. 343 industries though? not so much.
343 is supposedly made up of fans and former Bungie employees who worked on previous Halo's, now unless the games are built solely for money or each of these employees are selfish pricks who want to sign their name on something I am super skeptical of those credentials because 343 Halo's hit every pothole you need to avoid when you are working on an older IP.
The art style goes from a hard edge olive green not too dissimilar earth military vs foreign aliens to trippy sleek sci-fi vs trippy sleek sci-fi. The lore and the backstory of the series is re-written to events before anything in the games for the sake of slamming the series with new credits. And the gameplay and been completely re balanced for the sake of new trash players, hollowing out the game to reduce the skill gap and any achievement you feel for being skilled, all of the skills I've spent over a decade refining have been rendered mute but bullet magnetism, auto-aim and a button that lets you climb ledges of missed jumps.
Halo is the perfect example of what not to do with an IP and why it should be avoided.

But there is a reason you should use old IP's over an original title, and it's a simple one, brand recognition. Effectively it's free marketing, even if the huge name means the rich publisher is gonna pay for heaps of marketing anyway. You could have the best game in the world but if it's original then you are really relying on word of mouth to get it out there, even reviews and previews are just a bunch of internet bloggers saying "trust me, its good" but if you hear about the new toilet scrubbing sim "HALO: Shit Sticker" you think "Well Halo's a good game, so this must be good too," of course the title doesn't speak to the games quality, it never can, it can convince people to try it though, even when they know it doesn't follow the same structure as the original game.

Honestly just go with what you think the game you want to make suits best, if it can slip in as a spin off, make the pitch and see what happens. If it needs to be original make it original you just might risk the initial sales, but if you make a game withing an existing franchise, please don't make Halo 5.