I know they can license *existing* IPs, but for *new* IPs, do they have a team of writers who just come up with new stuff, or do they go out looking for people with ideas? Or do people with new ideas shop their ideas around movie, TV, or game studios and hope someone is interested?
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So this is probably not the game design you were thinking of. But for Magic the gathering sets, they have 2 teams for each set. A design team and a development. The design team is the world building team, creating the theme and greater concepts from scratch ( lately they’ve been licensing a bunch of IP). Iirc, they are only minimally designing specific cards, that’s the job of development.
Not typically. Usually, they let agents know that they want to take story pitches from story writers. The offer terms, and if the author thinks the terms are reasonable, they come and pitch their original story. There might be some negotiation to get to a specific price, and then they license the story from the author.
It’s rare for a studio to hire someone and say “Come up with a new idea for us.” Big media companies are metaphorically swarmed with writers/creatives (or their agents) pitching new ideas to them. If all they want is a steady stream of new ideas of varying quality, they have that without having to pay anyone anything. There’s also the grey area of IP that started as a novel or comic book. This will be a little more expensive, but not much unless the original book was a smash hit. You’d be surprised how many seemingly-original media properties actually started as a book.
Really the only time someone is getting paid to come up with a new IP is if it was part of a larger contract. Marquee showrunners/directors sometimes get brought on to do multiple projects for the same studio without any specifics about what the later projects will be. This is mostly an incentive to get them to join that studio. The big name makes your blockbuster project now, but then they get some “fun money” to make whatever they want. As Martin Scorsese once said: “One for them; one for me.”
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