Hasbro CEO: "D&D is Really on a Tear"

Harry Dresden · Apr 23, 2015

Mistwell said:
Again, this is not how it works. This is not just some PR press release, it's their official quarterly earnings call with investors. This is covered under FTC communications. If he says anything which could lead to investors reasonably mistaking his comment for important revenue for the company and it's not, it becomes a massive stockholder lawsuit. Everything he says has to be vetted by in house council. NOTHING he says can be immaterial or misleading like that. If he is mentioning it, it must be because it's material revenue increase FOR HASBRO, not relative to a prior WOTC number. And it's definitely not just "something someone put in front of him".

I think you might be a bit mistaken as to what I said.

Nobody denies D&D has made money, it's a new edition and all editions make money. A lot of this is vague speech. We don't know the expectations that were put on D&D. Shareholders are not going to necessarily going to get a breakdown of what does what. If D&D was projected to hit a specific number and they surpass that then they can praise it as much as they want to unless they start using actual figures which then leads to one having to be precise. CEO's have people who work for them and who prepare all this stuff. He himself may not know the exact figures. Ever hear CEO's claim they didn't know what was going on? Well sometimes that is true.

We don't know the ins and outs of the whole thing. He may have decided it was time for him to finally acknowledge D&D. There is no proof here that this edition's current model is working and that 5th edition is going to be a success. All it shows is what basically all the other editions have done and that is sell well in the beginning.

pemerton · Apr 23, 2015

AriochQ said:
There is a happy medium between the current scarcity of product and the saturation of prior editions.

Perhaps this current state is the happy medium! (Does anyone but WotC have a reliable supply vs demand graph for D&D books, from which the optimal rate of publication for optimal rate of return can be calculated?)

AriochQ said:
I know it sounds somewhat silly that I am complaining they won't take my money, but I would love to see some supplements specific to 5th edition.

Sure. If WotC thought that the world was full of people with similar preferences, they would probably write and publish some books (subject to second-order feedback concerns they have about flooding the market - but if there were enough people like you those concerns would be overridden too).

But maybe their data suggests that your desires aren't sufficiently widely held.

There are various products I would like to see (mostly 4e related) that I almost certainly never will, for similar reasons.

In the non-book-but-still-fantasy-related context, I would really like to see a Peter Jackson version of the Silmarillion, but it seems unlikely that I ever will. In all these cases, the cost of production is too great relative to the likely returns on the product.

Celtavian · Apr 23, 2015

Harry Dresden said:
I think you might be a bit mistaken as to what I said.

Nobody denies D&D has made money, it's a new edition and all editions make money. A lot of this is vague speech. We don't know the expectations that were put on D&D. Shareholders are not going to necessarily going to get a breakdown of what does what. If D&D was projected to hit a specific number and they surpass that then they can praise it as much as they want to unless they start using actual figures which then leads to one having to be precise. CEO's have people who work for them and who prepare all this stuff. He himself may not know the exact figures. Ever hear CEO's claim they didn't know what was going on? Well sometimes that is true.

We don't know the ins and outs of the whole thing. He may have decided it was time for him to finally acknowledge D&D. There is no proof here that this edition's current model is working and that 5th edition is going to be a success. All it shows is what basically all the other editions have done and that is sell well in the beginning.

True. 5E seems a lot more well received than 4E. I remember these boards when 4E was released. The edition warring was insane. I haven't seen much edition warring at all on the board. Everything has been relatively quiet. People seem to like this edition of D&D. Heck, I returned from years of playing Pathfinder. I despised 4E. I left the game at that time when the 4E designers told me my loyalty to the game and opinion wasn't worth a damn. Mearls finally built a game for the fans using the novel approach of actually listening to the fans. He made a ton of right decisions.

In 5E a lot of my concerns about 3E were addressed while keeping many of the things I loved about D&D. Mearls and the team made magic versatile, powerful, and fun again. They eliminated the insane crit damage that caused so many problems in 3E. They eliminated the "caster can do everything and then some" 3E caster that grew worse and worse as you leveled up, while still making casters feel like D&D casters. They condensed feats. They eliminated the ability to continually increase statistics to levels that caused problems. They incorporated the ability to create encounters with a wider threat range making for more interesting and varied options for DMs such as making an orc army still dangerous to level 20 characters. They eliminated the feel that all characters were the same that 4E introduced. Most importantly they listened to the community rather than dictated to the community like the 4E designers did. It still pisses me off when I think back to the lead 4E designer telling D&D gamers that this was now D&D and what they felt didn't much matter. Pretty disappointing stance by WotC. I'm glad Mearls didn't have that attitude when designing 5E.

5E is a great version of D&D for players and DMs. Is it going to be perfect for everyone? No one has yet made that game. I think it definitely took D&D in the right direction. I think to coin a term from Lord of the Rings, it will show its quality in the years to come.

delericho · Apr 23, 2015

MechaPilot said:
Besides, D&D doesn't have to do pure fantasy. I'd be just as happy to see a Ravenloft horror film or a Spelljammer space pirates film as I would be to see a pure fantasy D&D film.

I can't see a Ravenloft film ever happening - there's nothing you can do with that that you can't do with public-domain sources, and "Dracula" has a rather bigger draw than "Ravenloft".

I could see Spelljammer happening, maybe. Though with the failure of "John Carter", I think it's now even more unlikely than it was. (That said, the failure of "John Carter" probably led to Disney buying Lucasfilm, and thus to us getting more "Star Wars", so it's not all bad.)

delericho · Apr 23, 2015

AriochQ said:
Just my personal opinion, but I think Hasbro is missing the boat on D&D. The game is 'on a tear' yet staffing still seems inadaquate, the release schedule is abysmal, no open game license, and very few third party contracts. I am not a CEO, but if I was I would be irrate that we weren't making more money off a product that is 'on a tear'.

A few years ago (2009) they had a much larger staff, a much fuller release schedule, and a license (admittedly, it was the GSL). And 4e wasn't "on a tear".

If I were a CEO, I would look at that, and look at the way things are now, and say, "good work, carry on."

Iosue · Apr 23, 2015

I'm not especially a Ravenloft fan. But it has gobs of potential. Vampires and dark fantasy? Get a decent actor to play a layered Strahd and people would eat that up. You get your vampire fans, and your fantasy fans, and your action fans, and your horror fans -- just a whole lot of cross-demographic appeal.

delericho · Apr 23, 2015

Iosue said:
I'm not especially a Ravenloft fan. But it has gobs of potential. Vampires and dark fantasy? Get a decent actor to play a layered Strahd and people would eat that up. You get your vampire fans, and your fantasy fans, and your action fans, and your horror fans -- just a whole lot of cross-demographic appeal.

Yeah, I get the appeal for WotC. But why would a studio pay licensing fees for the rights to the name "Ravenloft" when they could make the exact same film with Dracula instead, without any license and with greater name recognition?

(Which, in fact, they've already done - it's called "Dracula Untold".)

Harry Dresden · Apr 23, 2015

delericho said:
A few years ago (2009) they had a much larger staff, a much fuller release schedule, and a license (admittedly, it was the GSL). And 4e wasn't "on a tear".

If I were a CEO, I would look at that, and look at the way things are now, and say, "good work, carry on."

How do we know 4th edition wasn't on a tear after the initial launch?

Maggan · Apr 23, 2015

Harry Dresden said:
How do we know 4th edition wasn't on a tear after the initial launch?

Probably because it wasn't singled out by WotC with a comment during earnings call at the time. This time it was singled out, which could indicate a difference in performance.

/M

delericho · Apr 23, 2015

Harry Dresden said:
How do we know 4th edition wasn't on a tear after the initial launch?

Mostly what Maggan said, but also we know that 4e was doing sufficiently well in 2009 that they would proceed to release Essentials in 2010 and then drop the release schedule to almost nothing shortly thereafter.