Interesting. I look forward to seeing what comes of this - some thrilling ideas, no doubt, but I'm keeping myself reserved so as not to be let down should those thrilling ideas be brought into less-than-thrilling existence.
Well... most of the past games were mediocre because they were done by small studios who were still untested and trying to break into the market and make their names. Companies going from doing sequels or ports to making their own games with their own stories.
This is the same, except with a team that doesn't even have the experience making someone else's products.
There's no way this means we're getting a new AAA D&D RPG video game. A game like that requires a TON of money and years of development time. We're likely going to see some small stuff first (apps, a D&D version of Pokemon Go, freemium time wasters, etc) and then, maybe in three or four years, and actual video game.
Making a D&D game with AAA production values is too expensive. Do something like Pillars of Eternity...
https://eternity.obsidian.net/
BeamDog hired a bunch of new support writers, explicitly to work on a new D&D project. So... it's coming. But that takes time. Siege of Dragonspear took a couple years, and it was running off an existing game. It's cool, but I'd prefer a non-2nd Edition game.They could probably do a good DnD game if they subcontracted. BeamDog is proving adept at handling the Baldur's Gate series, and Harebrained Schemes is increasingly proving capable of delivering games massively above the quality standard you'd expect from a studio so small and has proven themselves adept at using Kickstarter to fund their projects.
I would definitely suggest they add Harebrained and do more with BeamDog.
But if I were them, I'd definitely nix their own games department. Hasbro just doesn't understand video game development.
BeamDog hired a bunch of new support writers, explicitly to work on a new D&D project. So... it's coming. But that takes time. Siege of Dragonspear took a couple years, and it was running off an existing game. It's cool, but I'd prefer a non-2nd Edition game.
I wouldn't be surprised if a new one is coming that is 5E. It shouldn't take that much to modify the existing engine to be 5E ruleset.
You'd be surprised at how many quirks a game engine might develop over the coding process. It's theoretically possible to develop 5e's system on it, but I'm not familiar with the engine to say how many workarounds and other idiosyncrasies would need to be overhauled.
Yeah, that's what I meant: in the 90's, the environment for making games was different, and TSR got lucky a couple times even in that more Wild West environment.
Doesn't mean we'll get a good game, or a AAA game: but it's the only way they will get games for D&D with serious long term investment of any sort in the long run.
It took three years, a $3,900,000 on Kickstarter, and an established team of experiences game designers to make that happen.
I doubt WotC is going to throw that much money at a completely untested group of people to make a D&D game in the hopes it turns a profit...
That is dirt cheap for a game and PoE is good.
Games used to cost somehting like $4 on the PS2, less in the 90's. These days a cheap game is more like $20 million with something like GTAV 200 million.