IP Matching for Existing Games
We review your catalog, prototypes, and evergreen systems to identify entertainment, creator, character, and consumer brands that could create a natural licensed edition or line extension.
For Publishers
More products. Better fits. Less overhead.
Best in Play acts as an extension of your publishing team, finding intellectual properties for games you already own, bringing you packaged licensed products with approvals in place, sourcing outside designs, and stepping into leadership gaps when you need experienced games executives now.
Think of us as the games team you can turn on when you need it.
IP SourcingFind the right brands and properties for games already in your catalog
Packaged ProductsEvaluate opportunities with design, IP fit, and approvals already moving together
Executive SupportInterim leadership, consulting, and experienced decision-making without a permanent hire
Your next licensed hit may already be sitting on your shelf.
Publishers often have strong game systems that could reach a larger audience with the right property attached. We work in both directions: identifying IPs that can elevate an existing design, and building licensed opportunities that arrive much closer to a publishable product. The goal is simple: reduce the distance between a good idea and a deal you can actually make.
Services for publishers
Use Best in Play for a single opportunity or as an embedded extension of your product, licensing, inventor relations, or executive team.
Packaged Licensed Products
We can bring opportunities where the game concept and IP are already aligned, with licensor conversations and approvals advanced before the project reaches your acquisition team, reducing friction and uncertainty.
Inventor Relations as a Service
Replace or supplement a traditional inventor-relations department with an experienced external team that sources, evaluates, filters, develops, and presents outside game concepts against your actual acquisition needs.
Targeted Game Sourcing
Tell us the audience, format, price point, category, mechanism, or brand need. We can search our designer network for projects that fit the brief instead of asking your team to sort through an open submission funnel.
Interim Executive Leadership
When a senior games role is vacant or temporarily overloaded, Best in Play can step in with experienced leadership across product strategy, licensing, development, operations, team management, and partner relationships.
Executive & Product Consulting
For shorter engagements, we provide senior-level guidance on portfolio strategy, acquisitions, licensing, crowdfunding, product roadmaps, organizational structure, development pipelines, and go-to-market decisions.
You do not always need another department. Sometimes you need the right people plugged into the problem.
Why Best in Play
We understand the publisher side because we have lived the whole pipeline.
Our team brings experience in game design, publishing, licensing, manufacturing, crowdfunding, retail, business development, and company leadership. That lets us evaluate opportunities not just for creative merit, but for whether they make sense as products, fit a catalog, can survive production, and have a realistic path to market.
Curated opportunities
We bring you projects against a defined need, rather than adding more noise to the submission pile.
Two-sided licensing
We can start with your game and find an IP, or start with an IP and bring you a product that fits it.
Variable capacity
Add senior expertise or acquisition bandwidth when you need it without immediately adding permanent headcount.
Commercial perspective
Creative, operational, licensing, manufacturing, and market considerations are evaluated together.
Use us where the gap is.
The relationship can be opportunity-specific or fully embedded. We can solve one sourcing problem, support an ongoing pipeline, or temporarily take responsibility for a function or leadership role.
Bring us a specific need.
Looking for an IP for an existing title? Need a game for a particular category, audience, or license? We source and package opportunities around the brief.
Extend your team.
Use Best in Play as an ongoing external resource for inventor relations, designer sourcing, licensing opportunities, development support, or portfolio-building work.
Fill the seat while you find the person.
We can assume temporary executive or departmental responsibility, stabilize the work, keep projects moving, and help bridge the organization to its permanent solution.
Start with the business need, not a generic pitch deck.
We work backward from your catalog, strategy, resources, and market goals. That gives us a much better filter for what we source, package, recommend, or take ownership of.
1
Define
Understand the gap: product, IP, acquisition pipeline, leadership, bandwidth, or strategy.
2
Map
Review your catalog, audience, commercial constraints, internal resources, and decision criteria.
3
Source
Identify games, designers, IP, partners, or executive solutions that fit the actual brief.
4
Package
Develop the opportunity far enough that your team can evaluate it quickly and intelligently.
5
Execute
Support the deal, development, function, or interim role through the point where you want ownership back.
We can enter at almost any point in your pipeline.
Some publisher relationships begin with a single licensed edition. Others begin because the company needs more inventor-relations capacity or an experienced executive in a vacant seat. The model is deliberately flexible.
CatalogFind new IP and line-extension opportunities for games you already own.
PipelineSource and curate outside designs against your specific acquisition strategy.
LicensedEvaluate packaged product opportunities where game and property are already aligned.
LeadershipAdd interim executive capacity and senior consulting when the organization needs it.
Where could your publishing team use more leverage?
Show us the catalog, the brief, the open role, or the problem you are trying to solve. We can usually tell pretty quickly where Best in Play can create useful capacity.