The following column represents the viewpoints of IGN's editor-at-large, Matt Casamassina.

The NPD Group, which tracks videogame software sales, released its anticipated monthly report on Monday and Warner Bros.' new DS-exclusive game, Scribblenauts, is a bona fide hit. Players bought up 194,000 copies of the title in just two weeks -- a very strong start for an untested franchise that was only six months ago also relatively unknown.

Launching an original game into a market drowning in licenses and sequels is always a gamble. Just look at September's overall biggest sellers: Halo, Madden, Beatles Rock Band, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Guitar Hero and Wii Sports Resort. Look familiar? This issue is complicated ever further on Nintendo's handheld, where the top 10 all-time best-sellers are published by -- you guessed it -- the Big N. So here at last is a handheld game that bucks the trend -- or, at least, it's come out of the gates running.

"We are very pleased with Scribblenauts' sales so far," Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's president, Martin Tremblay, tells me, adding, "We are hoping the positive word of mouth continues to translate into sales through the holiday season."

WBIE president Martin Tremblay. If you've already played Scribblenauts extensively, perhaps even relentlessly, skip this paragraph. The stylishly cute title appears at first glance to be a platformer a la Mario, but it's actually an innovative puzzler. As Maxwell, your single goal in most of the hundreds of levels is simply to retrieve a star (called a starite), but how you do so is up to you. Using an on-screen keyboard, you type whatever words come to your imagination and they appear in the game world as usable objects with realistic properties. Need to get past a tree to grab the starite? No problem. Type in chainsaw. Or flamethrower. Or termite. Or beaver. Or gasoline and then match. The game allows that kind of freedom.

Tremblay believes that Scribblenauts has been successful so far because of these compellingly fresh gameplay mechanics. "People were ready for something that changes the way games are played, and developer 5th Cell delivered a game where players of all ages are challenged to experiment and use their imagination," he says. "Scribblenauts' appeal is resonating with people on many levels. When core gamers, kids and parents all love a game, it is a good sign for success." He further calls the game complicated enough for advanced payers, but "easy enough for anyone to pick up and play."

The accessible, addictive puzzler's potential was spotted the moment it was announced, but the pre-launch hype came to a boiling point at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009, where it won numerous coveted awards including IGN's Game of the Show. Tremblay says that taking that prize and others generated excellent buzz that inevitably "grew into great consumer word of mouth [that] definitely contributed to the game's overall success."

In the 12-plus years I've been covering the industry, I've learned that early media acclaim is a leading factor in an original license's success. Maybe that's just me tooting my own horn. But I'll also be the first to admit that even if I declared the next year's Madden a carbon copy of the this year's game, it'd still sell a billion copies, so it goes both ways.

Scribblenauts is a significant win not only for 5th Cell and WBIE, but for every DS developer struggling to create an original game for Nintendo's handheld. In the last few months, I've heard from the heads of too many small DS developers to count that publishers are no longer interested in working with them on fresh concepts for Nintendo's ultra-popular portable because they simply don't know how to sell them. And yeah, that includes the burgeoning DSi scene. As a result, players will find themselves bombarded with more licenses and sequels in the months to come. But Scribblenauts represents a glimmer of light at the very end of the tunnel and perhaps more publishers will shelve their reservations and spring for innovation over familiarity.

Scribblenauts+is+off+to+a+strong+sales+start.+Will+it+have+legs? Undoubtedly excited by Scribblenauts' first-month sales, though, Warner Bros. seems a little more receptive to those fresh ideas. "I can't speak for what everyone else is doing, but at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, we are looking to be strategic in finding the best games to fit the platforms. We are open to experimenting with IP and brands we believe in as part of our casual game strategy and overall slate," explains Tremblay.

Hot on the heels of Drawn to Life, another DS best-seller, 5th Cell very likely had its choice of publishers for Scribblenauts and I get the feeling it chose WBIE because the company presented an aggressive, supportive plan -- one that's just beginning to pay off.

Tremblay isn't willing to share sales projection specifics with me, but he does say, "We'd love for Scribblenauts to be the leading third-party title on DS." Well, 200,000 down -- 1.6 million to go. The best-selling third-party DS game is Cooking Mama with 1.8 million units moved domestically. Even with its mechanical flaws -- some of the controls could've used some tightening and tweaking -- Scribblenauts is leaps and bounds superior to Majesco's casual affair. Maybe it has a chance, especially if it has strong legs through the holiday season.

"Drawn to Life sold 40,000 units its first month and went on to sell a million," says Jeremiah Slaczka, co-founder and creative director at 5th Cell. "Seeing the sales of Scribblenauts so early and so much better than Drawn to Life, it's really encouraging to us that people are genuinely receptive to innovative games and it's not just something people tout as a theoretical. WB took a chance and supported the title where others wouldn't or didn't, which I wish more publishers would do."

So what's next? Asking Warner Bros. about Scribblenauts sequels for DS and iterations for consoles is like pulling teeth. To me, it's not a question of if, but when. 5th Cell has invested a lot of time and money into Scribblenauts and the first game is doing well. Unlike so many titles designed for one system and then made to fit on another, Scrib is platform agnostic; it'll work on any system, from DS to Xbox 360. That point cannot have escaped WB, which had the foresight to jump on the series when other publishers -- you know who you are and you should be kicking yourself -- didn't. But all Tremblay will say at this point in time is that, "Scribblenauts is a strong brand with a lot of potential. You never know what the future holds."