I've got to wonder...what exactly goes on in talks like these that makes them take so long? You wouldn't think that simply talking and negotiating about a game like this would take as long as it has. What else is there that goes on in something like this?
Just some general curiosity.
I presume this is all happening via email, but let's say the negotiations are happening in person. I don't send The Man to the negotiations. That's an amateur move. I send the negotiators. So you make them a proposal. They ask you a bunch of questions. Many of them you won't be able to answer off the top of your head. Good bye, let's schedule another meeting for next week Tuesday after you get those answers.
Ok, now you have those answers. We have follow up questions. See you next week.
OK, now you have questions. We'll need to review those with management and get back to you. See you after the holidays.
Ok, now we have a complete proposal. We will need to review this with management. See you after the end of the quarter.
The thing you have to realize is that you can spend hours talking about something you might naively think should just take minutes, just because of the combination of formality and ironically casual conversation that happens in such meetings (there's a formality to negotiations, and the reason why we send people instead of robots is because 90% of the talking is designed to put the other side at ease and willing to show their hand; how's the kids, crazy weather we're having, how was that concert you were going to last week?). But that's not what takes up most of the time. Its the back and forth that is all but deliberately designed to slow the pace of things so that everyone who has any sort of say or input has some say or input, and to make sure neither party can trap the other into giving a quick yes or no to anything.
I wrote a one page memo for a customer to review last month, and it took three weeks for them to get six people to read and review it. And that was for something *they* wanted me to do for them, not the other way around. Do you think that was because of their reading speed? Some guys read it that day. Some put it off until the end of the week. One guy didn't touch it until the following week. Several wanted to talk to each other about it. One guy went on vacation in the middle. One of the guys who read it on the first day forgot to respond, and had to be reminded to read it again.
How many one page memos do you think it takes to buy the intellectual property of a defunct video game from a Korean company in the middle of merger negotiations? Thirty? Fifty? How many of them will be internal, and you won't even see any activity at all while they are happening? How much time is happening between things happening that if you try to accelerate the process, you'll be perceived as impatient, and thus an annoyance?
