By Rodney Brown

Lost in all the chatter about 38 Studios LLC accepting a $75 million loan from the Rhode Island Economic Development Council to move from its birthplace in Maynard to somewhere in the Ocean State is the set of terms the RIEDC has imposed on the company.

First is the fact that, in order to get the loan, Curt Schilling and company had to put up as collateral all of the assets of 38 Studios. While a bunch of development workstations and some office furniture may not have a ton of value to the folks in Rhode Island, the intellectual property and the publishing deals just might. And what an intellectual property it seems to be.

The world in which 38 Studios’ games — including its first game, the recently announced single-player role-playing game “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” — has been crafted by famous fantasy author and Worcester-area homeboy R.A. Salvatore. According to 38 Studios in the recent announcements about Reckoning, Salvatore has already created a 10,000-year history for the world and the races that occupy it. Among fantasy fans, Salvatore is known for having created one of the most iconic characters of recent decades, the dark elf warrior Drizzt Do’Urden, so he already has a track record of crafting some award and revenue-winning IP.

Schilling’s other launch partner at 38 Studios is famous comic book and collectable artist Todd McFarlane, who has designed all of the art elements that will be used in any game or other product based on the Amalur world. McFarlane, for those of you not geeky enough to know, cut his teeth on the Spiderman comic, helping to lift it to some of its highest readerships ever. He also created the character Spawn, which has spawned its own movie and cartoon series. Again, a man already well-established as a creator of winning IP.

Schilling certainly is known for being willing to take some big risks. As an ace pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, instead of wisely ending his season, he famously had a doctor stitch a wall of thread on his ankle to hold a tendon sheath together so he could pitch in Game 2 of the 2004 World Series after rupturing the sheath. But that put just his own career at risk. Now he is putting the efforts of his partners in 38 Studios at risk by agreeing to use their IP as collateral.

Another surprise in the loan deal is the fact that 38 Studios is committed to building up to employing 450 people in Rhode Island, and has to pay a $7,500 penalty per year for each employee in the gap between its staff and that level. As of March, 38 Studios had about 80 people in Massachusetts and about 60 people at Big Huge Games — which the company bought last year — in Baltimore. If it only brings over the Maynard staff, that leaves a gap of 370 people, for a first-year penalty fee of about $2.77 million. Even with the 140 staffers when combining the Big Huge Games staff, the first year hit would be about $2.3 million.

The number 450 itself begs the question: What will all of those people do? Westwood’s Turbine Inc., which maintains three active online games right now and provides regular content upgrades for each while developing new games for new markets, such as consoles, has about 300 people on staff. What will the 450 people at the Rhode Island version of 38 Studios do? While Schilling has made it clear that games alone are not the end of his vision for their intellectual property — books, movies, comics and collectibles have all been tossed about as ideas — it still seems like a challenge to get up to that level of staff numbers based on a single IP.

Certainly $75 million is nothing to sneeze at. And to commit the bulk of your state’s job creation special fund to one company had better allow you to attach some pretty tough requirements to it. If there is any group of people who could be said to be as close to a winning bet when it comes to geekdom, McFarlane, Salvatore and Schilling is that group. But will this new deal result in another celebrated bloody sock or just a bloody mess? What do you think about the deal?