WotC Hasbro Bets Big on D&D

During today's 'Hasbro Fireside Chat', Hasbro's Chris Cocks, chief executive officer, and Cynthia Williams, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming mentioned D&D, and about betting big on its name. This was in addition to the Magic: The Gathering discussion they held on the same call.

The following are rough notes on what they said.

D&D Beyond

• Leaning heavily on D&D Beyond
• 13 million registered users
• Give them more ways to express their fandom
• Hired 350 people last year
• Low attrition

What’s next for D&D

• Never been more popular
• Brand under-monetized
• Excited about D&D Beyond possibilities
• Empower accessibility and development of the user base.
• Data driven insight
• Window into how players are playing
• Companion app on their phone
• Start future monetization starting with D&D Beyond
• DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases
• Digital game recurrent spending for post sale revenue.
• Speed of digital can expand, yearly book model to include current digital style models.
• Reach highly engaged multigenerational fans.
• Dungeons and Dragons has recognition, 10 out of 10
• Cultural phenomenon right now.
• DND strategy is a broad four quadrant strategy
• Like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Marvel
• New books and accessories, licensed game stuff, and D&D Beyond
• Huge hopes for D&D

What is success for the D&D Movie

• First big light up oppourtunity for 4th quadrant
• Significant marketing
• They think it’ll have significant box office
• It has second most viewed trailer at Paramount, only eclipsed by Transformers
• Will be licensed video games, some on movies
• Then follow up other media, TV, other movies, etc.
• Bullish on D&D.

 

[Greg Benage]

See my post above. It’s what Chris said from the chat what the 4 quadrants are.

Okay, not a four-quadrant strategy, then, but maybe someone stumbled on a corporate buzzword they really liked.

 

[tetrasodium]

The trouble is what they'll have to do to other VTTs to get people to use theirs. They will quickly tire of the competition and pull whatever licenses are in place and force people to use OGL only content or do it themselves by hand. It's not going to be pretty.

That's like saying photoshop might pull GIMP's license to be a graphics editing bit of software with its own revenue streams... Even in cases where WotC could do things like that it would be very silly to copy 90s Microsoft rather Microsoft since.

 

[bedir than]

Them wanting to get more money out of D&D is about a year old. That's when we heard they were upping the frequency of books.

no. the t-shirt club is about a year old. The 5 books a year frequency is older than that

 

[Greg Benage]

They said this too.

Okay, but from the perspective of business strategy, that's very different from "D&D is under-monitized," right?

 

[overgeeked]

"Evergreen" brands are the proverbial golden ring for corporations today. Though personally, I'm not convinced how "evergreen" any of them truly are. I know that media access (via phones, smart TVs, streaming devices, etc.) is far, far more prevalent than ever before, but I'm still not sure if we'll have anything approaching the current amount of Star Wars or Marvel media still come out fifty years from now.

The problem with evergreen is the assumption that people will just keep buying the product. Real evergreen products are actual needs, not luxury items like game books. But the more fundamental problem with the idea of evergreen RPGs, is...

For me, part of the explicit appeal, the reason I go to this hobby over others, is that a one time purchase can create almost indefinite value. It's not a quirk, it's a feature. So a change in that is a change in the draw.

Unless that bolded bit changed, RPGs cannot be evergreen. But that bit cannot change without fundamentally destroying the hobby. What would a PHB look like if it had an explicit expiration date or required a subscription to use?

I mean, sure, company has to make money to keep existing and all, but we're getting into pretty clear "money is more important than making a good game" territory here. Is anyone going to honestly argue that things like micro-transactions are good for the game or game design rather than the pure cash grabs that they are?

 

[Xamnam]

Unless that bolded bit changed, RPGs cannot be evergreen. But that bit cannot change without fundamentally destroying the hobby. What would a PHB look like if it had an explicit expiration date or required a subscription to use?

I was responding specifically to the idea that it's weird people who buy one rulebook are resistant to spending more money, and that my mindset is pretty set against that, not that I do expect that aspect of them to change.

 

[Zaukrie]

Okay, but from the perspective of business strategy, that's very different from "D&D is under-monitized," right?

Nope. Not in corporate speak.

 

[darjr]

I have an idea. Open up dndbeyond to third parties. Not just game products but character portraits and cartography and when the vtt is open 3d assets. (oh especially dice). Boom, recurring revenue.

 

[Greg Benage]

What would a PHB look like if it had an explicit expiration date or required a subscription to use?

It could look fine if they offer ongoing improvement in exchange for the subscription.

 

[DarkCrisis]

D&D Beyond already has microtransactions and it already has cosmetic items including dice, backgrounds, and portrait frames.

Theve mentioned stuff like adding stuff to virtual minis. Like my basic mini has chainmail but I just got plate in the game! For $1 I can swap out the chain for plate! My longsword is now flaming! For $1 I can add flames to the mini! Etc