WotC Hasbro CEO Chris Cox, "I would say that the underlying thesis of our D&D business is all about digital,”

[darjr]

Really? Wow, my bad there, I guess. I'll swear up and down that's not how I've seen most of the community using the term though; it really seems like it's been just for next year's game rules.

I don’t think you’re wrong about its use. I have the distinct feeling that some use it derogatorily.

 

[Parmandur]

Sly Flourish says “imagine losing three billion dollars. That's three thousand million dollars That's losing twenty three D&D Beyonds.”

They haven't lost anything: part of the purchase was Peppa Pig, which h they are keeping. Peppa Pig makes over a billion dollars a year. That means they already turned a profit on the whole pur have, and are just getting rid of parts of the business that they dormant (theybare also keeping PJ Masks, so that piles on the profit side of the scale).

 

[Parmandur]

Really? Wow, my bad there, I guess. I'll swear up and down that's not how I've seen most of the community using the term though; it really seems like it's been just for next year's game rules.

It is also worth noting that "OneD&D" has been utterly and completely dropped by WotC. You won't find any mention of it from the past few months.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It is also worth noting that "OneD&D" has been utterly and completely dropped by WotC. You won't find any mention of it from the past few months.

Yes, presumably because they strongly associated that brand with the 1.1 and 2.0 OGLs and the OGL debacle in general, and thus turned what was already a kind of questionable branding choice (if you really don't want people to see it as a new edition, why are you naming it like it is one?) into an actively negative brand.

Further, they'd been calling the 3D VTT "One D&D", and they've got to have poured far, far more money into that at this point than they have into D&D itself over the last few years (given the sheer number of employees - 250+ as opposed to what, like 30? Less?), so presumably they're going to rename that as well. It was a dumb and confusing name to be calling the VTT anyway.

I do think going "all in" on digital is, really, not the best plan. And I say that as someone who pretty much only buys digital products for 5E. I get that it's technically forward-looking and so on, but this is all just a higher-budget rerun on 4E's loftier goals, but with a system and playerbase who aren't as into that approach (I think, anyway).

Also good luck convincing Larian to make any more D&D games in the foreseeable future. BG3 is beyond amazing and we'll probably see a "Definitive Edition" with a lot of QoL improvements and some revised/improved content/gameplay eventually, based on Larian's track record and the fact that a 97 Metacritic CRPG (it stayed at that when it went from 14 to 26 critic reviews, I note!) is likely to be fairly evergreen, but an expansion or the like? Seems a little unlikely based on Larian's statements (admittedly mostly made before 97% Metacritic, 800k simultaneous players on Steam and so on). Another full D&D game in the same engine? Seems extremely unlikely and would probably be pretty far out, time-wise.

And who else is going to make a game that's even like an 85-90%-type game? All the big AAAs either don't make CRPGs or exclusively use their own IPs to do so.

None of WotC's owned studios is an AAA, despite Archetype having been in recruiting mode for like, 4+ years now. They doubled in size in 2021, but have been sitting at 70 employees for about six months now, just flat. Larian has 400 employees and was able to increase from less significantly less than 100 to that number in about 3 years, I note.

I don’t think you’re wrong about its use. I have the distinct feeling that some use it derogatorily.

I don't think I've seen it used derogatorily yet, but it's certainly been used as an identifier for the new edition or whatever you want to call it.

But WotC hopelessly tainted it by using that term in associated with the OGL debacle.

 

[mamba]

Peppa Pig makes over a billion dollars a year. That means they already turned a profit on the whole pur have

that is not what it means, sales <> profit

 

[Ruin Explorer]

that is not what it means, sales <> profit

Yeah this is a pretty important distinction to make. I'm sure Peppa Pig is profitable, but it'll be a fraction of that billion that's actual profit that reaches Hasbro.

 

[Parmandur]

I do think going "all in" on digital is, really, not the best plan. And I say that as someone who pretty much only buys digital products for 5E. I get that it's technically forward-looking and so on, but this is all just a higher-budget rerun on 4E's loftier goals, but with a system and playerbase who aren't as into that approach (I think, anyway).

I'm a crotech analog only player (if I want to playbsomwthing digital, I'll fire up Fure Emblem, not play D&D), but if they pull it off it would be worth the investment. And it is worth resembling that the same leadership team in place now have pulled off the digital side with Magic, and hugely so. With enough resources and time, which they have both of, it can be done well. And if it is done well, I think people who are into that sort of thing will go for it.

Also good luck convincing Larian to make any more D&D games in the foreseeable future. BG3 is beyond amazing and we'll probably see a "Definitive Edition" with a lot of QoL improvements and some revised/improved content/gameplay eventually, based on Larian's track record and the fact that a 97 Metacritic CRPG (it stayed at that when it went from 14 to 26 critic reviews, I note!) is likely to be fairly evergreen, but an expansion or the like? Seems a little unlikely based on Larian's statements (admittedly mostly made before 97% Metacritic, 800k simultaneous players on Steam and so on). Another full D&D game in the same engine? Seems extremely unlikely and would probably be pretty far out, time-wise.

And who else is going to make a game that's even like an 85-90%-type game? All the big AAAs either don't make CRPGs or exclusively use their own IPs to do so.

None of WotC's owned studios is an AAA, despite Archetype having been in recruiting mode for like, 4+ years now. They doubled in size in 2021, but have been sitting at 70 employees for about six months now, just flat. Larian has 400 employees and was able to increase from less significantly less than 100 to that number in about 3 years, I note.

If I were Chris Cocks I'd drive a dump truck of money into Belgium and buy Larian entirely and make it an internal studio.

 

[Parmandur]

that is not what it means, sales <> profit

Yeah this is a pretty important distinction to make. I'm sure Peppa Pig is profitable, but it'll be a fraction of that billion that's actual profit that reaches Hasbro.

Fair.

Still, raking in a billion of extra revenue a year will eventually pay off the initial investment fully, even without considering the other IP theybare keeping. Hasbro is not losing money, is the point.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If I were Chris Cocks I'd drive a dump truck of money into Belgium and buy Larian entirely and make it an internal studio.

Here's the problem though.

WotC doesn't have that kind of money.

It's not at that level of profitable. Trying to buy them right now, you'd be looking at paying probably very high hundreds of millions, if not billions. And you no doubt have competition. I don't think for one second that Microsoft and Sony aren't sniffing around, which raises the asking price. Hasbro does have that kind of money, but whether it would deploy it to buy a games studio when they've had such a bad history with digital is questionable.

And ultimately, it's a private company, so you could just get told no at any price. Or you could buy it and then the talent could flee (indeed, if they any kind of profit-sharing or internal share schemes, that's not even unlikely, because a whole bunch of them will suddenly be a lot more secure financially - you can work around that by kinda locking people in for a year or three but that's very expensive too).

On top of all of that, I'm not sure Larian's brand really sits well within that of Hasbro, because BG3 is very much not a tame, PG-13 type of game, but that is part of why it's succeeding so hard - virtually every super-successful CRPG has been rather bloody and raunchy (shades of Game of Thrones).

Wanting to move into digital in this way is just genuinely a difficult move to make. And I don't think they've made the right choices so far, re: digital (which has sadly been true for the last 23 years).

 

[Parmandur]

Hasbro does have that kind of money, but whether it would deploy it to buy a games studio when they've had such a bad history with digital is questionable.

Hasbro, the company whose CEO just said that Larian put out a game that will make more for Hasbro than the prior decade of film productiona combined...? That sort of statement could be laying thebgrounswork for the investors ofa somewhat big acquisition (my Google Fu suggests thr Larian is comparatively small, for that sort of thing, not like a Bethesda or Ubisoft exactly). Hasbro has been investing a lot into video games lately, as you pointed out. Would-be shocked to see it.