WotC D&D Gets A New Division At Hasbro

Hasbro is reorganizing and giving tabletop gaming -- Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: the Gathering -- a higher priority.

According to the Wall Street Journal, WotC's revenue last year was $816 million (a 24% increase on 2019). Brian Goldner, Hasbro's Chief Executive, says WotC is predicted to double revenue from 2019 to 2023.

Hasbro is dividing into three 'units' -- Consumer Products (toys, classic board games); Entertainment (film, TV, licensing); and Wizards & Digital (WotC plus digital licensing).

Hasbro bought WotC in 1999 for about $325M.

WSJ News Exclusive | Dungeons & Dragons Gets a Bigger Role at Hasbro

Toy maker Hasbro is reorganizing to capitalize on a pandemic-fueled boom in old-school tabletop games, creating a separate division around the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.

www.wsj.com

 

[jmartkdr2]

I strongly suspect that any revision to the PHB will be done to make it more appealing to new players, consolidating the Race/Class options from Tasha's with the addition of the more popular Race/Class/Sub-Class/Spell options from the other splat books that have come out. There will be no changes to the underlying rule system, making it 100% compatible with the entire 5e library.

It won't be a necessary purchase for existing players, and that's okay, because PHBs still sell like hot cakes with every AP and Setting release, as those stories entice new players into the game. They don't need to sell a revised PHB to all existing players, they need to keep selling it to new ones.

Hmmm - it might make more sense for them to call it "Anniversary Edition" than 6e (or gag 5.5e).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hmmm - it might make more sense for them to call it "Anniversary Edition" than 6e (or gag 5.5e).

I feel certain that it'll be branded that way, even as gamers argue about how to categorize it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

All the bars I've been to that have gaming night tend to focus on games other than RPGs. Granted, I have only been to a few, but I fail to see a bar that wants people at a table for four to six hours, especially if they don't drink. That was actually the common complaint with bar management at the place I used to frequent - gamers don't drink for four hours straight like regular patrons do.

But every place has a different take. Maybe just having butts in seats is an improvement for some.

Do those bars serve food? IME, gamers at the bar tend to eat a lot of food (my main bar i'd consider playing in serves sausage bread!) and the gamers I've seen there are quite welcome by the staff.

 

[darjr]

We have a gaming cafe here too that’s been fairly successful, pre covid

 

[Scott Christian]

You haven't met some of the gamers I have. Of course, with them, the games weren't in bars. Normally at a home so that when they got stupid drunk they could pass out and not have to worry about being at a bar or having to get home somehow safely.

I've met them and they are awesome. They just didn't frequent the game nights at this particular pub. In part because game night was on a Tuesday. There were always 50-75 people there, but very few drank, especially on a weeknight.

 

[Scott Christian]

Do those bars serve food? IME, gamers at the bar tend to eat a lot of food (my main bar i'd consider playing in serves sausage bread!) and the gamers I've seen there are quite welcome by the staff.

Yes. They have a good menu and a great special on Tuesdays (game night), $6 hamburger and fries. You cannot find that anywhere. But again, they are eating a table for four hours, and many are not eating (or drinking). Some do, but enough to warrant bringing in extra staff, that is the dilemma for the manager?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes. They have a good menu and a great special on Tuesdays (game night), $6 hamburger and fries. You cannot find that anywhere. But again, they are eating a table for four hours, and many are not eating (or drinking). Some do, but enough to warrant bringing in extra staff, that is the dilemma for the manager?

Huh. It's been totally worth it for the bars in my town. I wonder what the difference is.

 

[Zardnaar]

Er yeah no.

This shows a serious misunderstanding of the economics involved, sorry.

An AAA CRPG takes $40-100m to develop (Mass Effect 1/2/3/A all were around $40m, Skyrim/FO4 were around $100m, for example - Witcher 3 was $32-40m for the actual development, but made in Poland, if made in the US would have been about double that). And if it sells well, it'll make a number of times that. No TT RPG that isn't D&D makes anywhere near that much, no does it cost anywhere near that much to develop. D&D itself didn't make anything like that sort of money until very recently.

The idea that they're creating an even $40m budget CRPG to launch a TT RPG which is unlikely to make $40m over it's entire lifespan, even if it sells for decades, is fundamentally not tenable. It would be the tail wagging the dog.

If they weren't making an AAA game, I think what you are saying could be plausible. Spending say, $5m on an "indie"-type game to essentially promote and give a strong aesthetic to a new TT RPG could make sense for a company like WotC. But they've explicitly and repeatedly specified AAA. And you can't make an AAA RPG in the US/Canada/Western Europe (and the studio is in Austin, Texas) for less than $40m in 2021 - you probably can't even make it for that little at all - the last AAA CRPG I heard of having a budget that low released in 2017.

There absolutely is evidence that WotC, long-term, want to go digital. The evidence is extremely clear - not only have they explicitly rebranded to include digital (this announcement), but they have two AAA development studios now. To fund those AAA development studios, they're going need tens of millions, and it'll take years before they produce games, where they'll just be a drag to the tune of $10m+ per studio per year. That's a gigantic investment. It may be more than has ever been invested in D&D (almost certainly more than has been invested in any single edition of D&D). D&D is has been so low-priority for Hasbro/WotC that they haven't even been willing to splurge on artists (which is a relatively low investment), where they will for MtG. Maybe that's also changing - I hope so, maybe D&D will get more investment as a TT game too.

But the idea that they're spending $40m+ on AAA CRPG which will take multiple years to launch (they're still at the point where they have about 15% as many people as they'll need to actually make the game, and they were formed like a year or more ago, pre-pandemic), just to launch what, a sci-fi alternative to D&D, which will, if TT RPG history is anything to go by, be at most a moderate success in no way comparable to D&D? Completely backwards.

Triple AAA games I play are more like 100-200 million.

GTA5 was around $200 million iirc, Assassin's Creed not cheap I've heard $100 million for that one.

50-100 million are the cheaper ones.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Triple AAA games I play are more like 100-200 million.

GTA5 was around $200 million iirc, Assassin's Creed not cheap I've heard $100 million for that one.

50-100 million are the cheaper ones.

That's not quite right I'm afraid - you're including marketing budgets in those figures.

GTAV's dev cost was estimated at $137m - dev+marketing was $260m. RDR2 was $80-100m dev.

Destiny was somewhere north of $140m, that's probably the most anyone has ever spent on an actual game. Budget including marketing has been claimed to be north of $500m though that may be inflated (still, it is one of the people in management who claimed it). It was pretty content-light at launch for the insane amount they spent on it.

The only games with reliably-reported development budgets above Destiny are Star Citizen ($300m+ and they still don't actually have a playable game), and SWTOR ($200m but it probably includes marketing).

No-one has any costings on AC:Valhalla yet, but AC:Odyssey was likely $50-80m based on what reliable publications can find out. A couple of non-gaming newspapers claimed $500m but that was some kind of insane misunderstanding. Anyone claiming $100m for Valhalla (let alone earlier games) is likely full of it given the engine was fully developed and it's largely just Odyssey with a ton of new assets (not that that's a bad thing, Odyssey is excellent though I think it would be more excellent without the leveling and random loot), and it didn't take very long to develop (one of the big factors here is actually paying all those devs, year after year).

Very very few AAAs actually crack $100m on dev costs. Once marketing gets factored in, plenty do. CoDMW2 back in the day was like $40-60m dev, but went over $200m when marketing was included (given they were doing stuff like taking every large advertising board in entire train stations in multiple countries as well as TV spots and on the side of buses and so on this isn't surprising - that and FO4 had the most intense advertising blitzes I've ever seen in the UK).

List of most expensive video games to develop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But yeah you're also making a valid point because even if developing an AAA "only" costs WotC $50m or whatever, they then need to market it, and that's going to be another several more tens of millions (or more, if they want to go really hard).

Given WotC made $400m+ in PROFIT (not gross or turnover) last year, they can definitely afford all this though, so there's that. But it's a huge investment for sure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

SWTOR should have spent some of that money on UI design.