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.

 

[darjr]

Not really WotC though, short of a couple random products and older stuff.

Moving goal posts? It’s WotC as much as anything they make money in.

But ok what about the playtest?

 

[Zardnaar]

Based on the comments I've seen, no, Hasbro/Wizards is not heeding anything the community is saying, and intends to plow on ahead.

Full steam ahead. Iceburg wot me worry.

 

[BovineofWar]

Moving goal posts? It’s WotC as much as anything they make money in.

But ok what about the playtest?

Wasn't D&D Next available in PDF as well? I'm mostly a digital DM these days, which means sailing the seven seas if I want a PDF version of any 5e product I own dead tree. Wizards answer is to use DDB, which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Mini's? OK maybe. But I'm not a fan of the 3d tabletop anyway. I get tokens now via avrae. Will I get the mini's for an adventure? A generic set? This area leaves me with a lot of questions.

I am all-in on theater of the mind and gave away or sold almost all of my minis during the pandemic.

But when/if the VTT happens, I will certainly give it a whirl. If it's not a giant pain the butt like the current ones tend to be, and it's not unreasonably expensive, I could be potentially upsold miniatures sets to go with adventures and sourcebooks.

(I also remember Gleemax, though, so I'm not worrying about putting money aside for the latest digital effort from WotC. They should be buying a VTT and upgrading it, not trying to start one from scratch.)

 

[overgeeked]

I mean, my players don't, but even if they did and I allowed everything, they still can't buy an advantage over anyone. They just aren't the same, man.

So the twilight and peace clerics aren't drastically OP compared to the nature cleric? That'll be news to a lot of people.

 

[darjr]

Based on the comments I've seen, no, Hasbro/Wizards is not heeding anything the community is saying, and intends to plow on ahead.

Full steam ahead. Iceburg wot me worry.

Oh yea not paying attention at all.

They didn’t even do a chat trying to address any of these issues…..

Nothing to see here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Moving goal posts? It’s WotC as much as anything they make money in.

But ok what about the playtest?

How else are they going to present a playtest?

When I say, "WotC doesn't believe in pdfs", I mean of their own content, like virtually every other game company does.

Sorry if that was unclear.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The only thing I want from WotC is to maintain the DMsGuild, and open up the rest of their settings.

 

[Clint_L]

Based on the comments I've seen, no, Hasbro/Wizards is not heeding anything the community is saying, and intends to plow on ahead.

Usually, I read comments such as this to mean "Wizkids is not heeding anything I am saying..."

Because clearly Wizkids is heeding the community. For example, the new critical roll ideas were swiftly recalled after a lot of negative feedback. Ardlings were fundamentally changed. Etc.

At the same time, you can't make design choices just based around reactions from the loudest voices on the internet. I think we tend to overstate the degree to which forums such as this or popular YouTubers are representative.

 

[darjr]

How else are they going to present a playtest?

When I say, "WotC doesn't believe in pdfs", I mean of their own content, like virtually every other game company does.

Sorry if that was unclear.

Flat out I’d rather they sold PDFs of their main books.

But WotC does make money from and works with PDFs.

I suppose if anything it makes the fact they don’t sell their current edition in pdf more stark.