WotC Brand New D&D Video Game from WotC's New Acquisition Tuque Games

Tuque Games has announced it's working on a brand new D&/D video game. "We're developing a brand-new game based in the widely celebrated, enduring, and immensely popular Dungeons & Dragons universe. This yet to be announced title is steepled in classic D&D lore. We aspire to push this game to new heights for the genre. It’s an honour and a privilege to begin a new chapter for Dungeons & Dragons video games."

Not only that, but the company has been purchased by WotC! The press release went out earlier today:

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RENTON, Wash., Oct. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS), today announced that it has acquired Tuque Games, a digital game development studio based in Montreal. Tuque is led by veterans of the game industry with experience working for leading publishers. Tuque will continue the development of games for Wizards of the Coast's best-known brands, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons.

"At Wizards, we're continuing our commitment to creating new ways to bring our fan favorite brands to life," said Chris Cocks, President, Wizards of the Coast. "Our unique approach of connecting fans around the tabletop as well as through our expanding portfolio of digital games is redefining what it means to be a games company."

Founded in 2012 by Jeff Hattem, Tuque Games released their first title, Livelock, to critical acclaim in 2016. Now with over 55 full-time employees, Tuque will focus on the development of digital games based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

"Tuque is thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of the Wizards of the Coast team," said Jeff Hattem, Founder, Tuque Games. "By working more closely together, we can accelerate our joint vision and bring to life new games, characters and worlds in Wizards of the Coast's roster of franchises."

"In Tuque, we believe we have found a unique partner that pairs the nimbleness of an indie studio with the veteran leadership and scale required to deliver complex AAA games for our largest franchises," said David Schwartz, VP of Digital Publishing, Wizards of the Coast. "We are excited to bring Jeff and the Tuque team to the Wizards of the Coast family, which we believe will allow us to continue to meet the needs of our fans while enabling us to scale our digital games development capabilities even faster."

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It seems there's a bit of a D&D video game renaissance going on. Baldur's Gate 3 is coming, as is Solasta: Crown of the Magister.

 

[Stilvan]

Like a lot of you I'm a bit skeptical but I think we should give these guys a fair shake. IMO the CRPG genre (assuming that is what they are making) is in desperate need of new ideas. I'd expect them to play it safe on their first release but with some success who knows. I'll be following this from here in any case

 

[BookBarbarian]

They laid the marketing spin on real think in this story.

At the core this will only succeed if the folks at Tuque are passionate about making high quality D&D games, not trying to push out a AAA game.

Which in all fairness could be the case, but I've no way of knowing for sure.

After all CDProjektred didn't start out making AAA games, but goddamn did they pull it off after a couple of tries. And they did it in no small part because they understood that nobody remembers if a game shipped on time, only if it was good or not.

Bean counters that want to see profits in a certain quarter will always be at odds with such a philosophy.

 

[Dausuul]

Bean counters that want to see profits in a certain quarter will always be at odds with such a philosophy.

In fairness, sometimes the bean counters come to you and say "We are going to run out of money unless we ship this thing." And then you damn well ship, reap what profit you can, and hope it's enough to pay for fixing the game post-launch.

As long as the studio is not facing an imminent cash crunch, good studios are willing to let the schedule slip in order to deliver a quality product. Of course, the trick is figuring out whether the delay will in fact result in a quality product. A good game that ships late is better than a bad game that ships on time... but a bad game that ships late is worse than either.

 

[BookBarbarian]

In fairness, sometimes the bean counters come to you and say "We are going to run out of money unless we ship this thing." And then you damn well ship, reap what profit you can, and hope it's enough to pay for fixing the game post-launch.

As long as the studio is not facing an imminent cash crunch, good studios are willing to let the schedule slip in order to deliver a quality product. Of course, the trick is figuring out whether the delay will in fact result in a quality product. A good game that ships late is better than a bad game that ships on time... but a bad game that ships late is worse than either.

True, true.

What irks me is when the development studio with a record of making great games is now owned by a parent company with deep pockets that's running things by artificial deadlines. But I admit that is far from every situation.

Edit: and I sincerely hope not this situation. Hasbro seems to be letting the geeks passionately run the show at WotC and it seems to be continually improving to me.

 

[Bohandas]

You mean Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, right? Because that's verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry different Baldur's Gate, and Dark Alliance is the one that's a Diablo-style game (and I had great fun with friends and my wife on).

No I mean Baldur's Gate. Specifically the combat encounters in Baldur's Gate. The combat in Baldur's Gate is basically just Diablo reworked in such a way that most of the damage suffered by the player comes from friendly fire.

And they did it in no small part because they understood that nobody remembers if a game shipped on time, only if it was good or not.

Nobody remembers that it didn't ship on time if its good. If people don't like it they'll remember not liking it and they'll still also remember that it was late. Like when Duke Nukem Forever bombed

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No I mean Baldur's Gate. Specifically the combat encounters in Baldur's Gate. The combat in Baldur's Gate is basically just Diablo reworked in such a way that most of the damage suffered by the player comes from friendly fire.

Hahaha no, no it isn't. The mechanics are totally unlike Diablo in virtually every single possible way. I say that as someone who a great deal of knowledge of the mechanics of both games. I can go on about this at some length if you like, and really totally debunk what you're saying. I guess you're going on the fact that both have to-hit rolls or something? Totally bizarre.

That's like saying ME1 is "basically the same as Call of Duty" or something.

 

[Bohandas]

Despite the underlaying mechanics being based on 2e AD&D in terms of specific spells, hit points thac0 rolls, etc, it nevertheless plays more similarly to Diablo than to something like Dark Queen of Krynn or Temple of Elemental Evil in terms of combat.

It's a realtime fighting game, like Diablo. Although you can pause the action, like Diablo.

Again this is just in regard to the combat. BG definitely differs strongly from Diablo in that Baldur's Gate has an actual plot and character interactions and choices and a pretty open world whereas Diablo is on rails the whole time

 

[Dausuul]

Nobody remembers that it didn't ship on time if its good. If people don't like it they'll remember not liking it and they'll still also remember that it was late. Like when Duke Nukem Forever bombed

Duke Nukem Forever is a special case. That game was epically, fantastically, apocalyptically late. The schedule for DNF did not slip; it fell down a flight of stairs and off a mountaintop into the deepest pits of hell. At that point, it doesn't matter how good the game is. Its lateness will be remembered when the game itself is but a decaying pattern of electrons on a hard disk buried in the ruins of civilization.

 

[gyor]

I wouldn't be surprised if they just had this studio pump out mobile microtransaction games for the next while. Those have a tendency to make a ton of money relative to their budget. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms seems to be pretty successful so maybe Wizards wants to start collecting more than just the licensing fees for such a venture. The press release mentions AAA but it's just a buzz word. With only around 50 employees they would have to radically grow which anyone should be able to understand is incredibly risky.

If they wanted to do that, it would make more sense to buy the company that made idle Champions instead of Tuque Studios

 

[generic]

Hahaha no, no it isn't. The mechanics are totally unlike Diablo in virtually every single possible way. I say that as someone who a great deal of knowledge of the mechanics of both games. I can go on about this at some length if you like, and really totally debunk what you're saying. I guess you're going on the fact that both have to-hit rolls or something? Totally bizarre.

That's like saying ME1 is "basically the same as Call of Duty" or something.

Wait. You're saying that ME1 isn't part of the Call of Duty franchise?

My world has been shattered.