#3 - Choose the wrong license

The right license can mean 50,000 extra copies of a pretty good game, or in some cases 200,000 extra copies of a great one.  But not every license is created equal.  Buy a license to a fad, let the product slip two years behind schedule, and you'll have a worthless product on your hands.  Spend $100K on the rights to a box office bomb, and you'll kick yourself all the way to the soup kitchen.

A while ago, I was approached to design a game based on a superhero.  The character is very cool, and I had no trouble coming up with numerous ideas for a kick-ass game.  However, the intellectual property holder insisted that we add absolutely NO content to the hero's universe and not contradict anything that had been published in the comic book (which made all of the interesting bad guys, long dead in the series, off-limits).  I was almost glad we didn't get the assignment, because the game we would have been able to turn out in these circumstances would have been a disgrace to the character's legacy.  What little I heard about the project that was finally approved confirmed my worst fears.

Step #4