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.

 

[Zardnaar]

They said DMs are 20% and make most of the purchases. Nothing about age at all.

Did I miss a bit?

Point but a few articles about DM shortage have also claimed they swing older.

Anecdotally the professional ones seem to be veterans.

 

[Velderan]

In what way? I collect pets in World of Warcraft, and have bought a few of those from the store over the years, when they were for charity, but I am perfectly capable of collecting the literally thousands of in-game pets without doing so.

The only WoW shop transaction that I think severely negatively impacts the game is the paid level boost because it cuts down on people doing the lower level content for people who actually want to play through that content while leveling. Not sure if you played Classic at all, but having other players level boost your new toon absolutely destroyed the leveling experience because hardly anyone wanted to group up to run dungeons when they could just toss some gold at a mage to get them much faster exp. Same concept for the paid boost.

Otherwise I think they're a bit excessive in cost, but as you said generally harmless to the game. $25 for a mount? Waste of money imo, but again, harmless to the game's integrity. To swing this back around to WotC and D&D, I can't really imagine a microtransaction that would compromise the integrity of the game that's realistic.

 

[Incenjucar]

The nature of the game makes it almost a requirement for dedicated DMs to be more heavily invested than players. Players need a wider variety of things to blow their money on, like dice holders and D&D fidget spinners and whatnot.

 

[whimsychris123]

the CEO of hasbro was recently the president of WotC.

???

He's seen the numbers.

It was just humor. I’m making fun of the fact that while Wizards seems to be doing better than ever before, they want to make a whole lot more.

 

[Reynard]

Yes. I think a (imo legit) fear is that those sorts of things shift the baseline expectation of what it means to "play D&D" for newcomers to the game.
I know it's a little chicken little at this point, but I can envision, a generation or so from now, that the "TT" part of TTRPGing will be a long-forgotten fossil, and the idea of fully-online subscription-based RPGAAS ("Role-playing Gaming As A Service") could be the norm.
I mean, it might well be an awesome experience if/when it happens, but I do honestly believe there's a pretty good chance it will happen eventually.

The more I think about it, a more apt comparison (though still imperfect) might be Fallout 76: Bethesda chose to completely redefine the form and monetization of a beloved product. By all accounts (after a rocky start) it has been a strong financial success. But it isn't the same experience, and many people who love the previous iteration of the franchise still hate 76,while some have embraced it, and then lots of new fans have discovered it. Fallout 76 isn't inherently bad, but it is sufficiently differently monetized, produced and accessed that some portion of the broader (Bethesda) Fallout player base did not follow them there.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The only WoW shop transaction that I think severely negatively impacts the game is the paid level boost because it cuts down on people doing the lower level content for people who actually want to play through that content while leveling. Not sure if you played Classic at all, but having other players level boost your new toon absolutely destroyed the leveling experience because hardly anyone wanted to group up to run dungeons when they could just toss some gold at a mage to get them much faster exp. Same concept for the paid boost.

That's not really a store thing so much as a "please don't be scared off by having to play a zillion old expansions before reaching the current one, where all your friends are." The paid boost is not a good of a solution as Chromie time, which was introduced later, and makes all the previous expansions parallel leveling experiences instead. (I would rather cut off my hands than ever be forced to play through Cataclysm again and I'm feeling that way about 99% of Shadowlands.)

I wonder how much money they actually make from those boosts.

It should be noted that they also took away an item from the store, making changing your character's gender something that was $20 to something free to do in the in-game barber shop, which has also been made free. (It only ever cost in-game gold, of course.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Problem is, every time you or anyone else chooses to engage in a microtransaction like that, it just encourages them.

To do what? Sell me a piece of a book that I wouldn't otherwise buy and might otherwise pirate?

Good! Please do encourage ways for me to legally purchase pieces of content that I would never otherwise buy in complete form.

This also benefits Dragonlance fans, because I -- a not-Dragonlance-fan -- am making a Dragonlance product more profitable, thus encouraging WotC to make more of them.

This is an everyone wins situation.

 

[Greg Benage]

Not sure if you played Classic at all, but having other players level boost your new toon absolutely destroyed the leveling experience because hardly anyone wanted to group up to run dungeons when they could just toss some gold at a mage to get them much faster exp. Same concept for the paid boost.

And then people bought gold to buy the boosts, which tanked the in-game economy. Worse than a paid boost!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The more I think about it, a more apt comparison (though still imperfect) might be Fallout 76: Bethesda chose to completely redefine the form and monetization of a beloved product. By all accounts (after a rocky start) it has been a strong financial success. But it isn't the same experience, and many people who love the previous iteration of the franchise still hate 76,while some have embraced it, and then lots of new fans have discovered it. Fallout 76 isn't inherently bad, but it is sufficiently differently monetized, produced and accessed that some portion of the broader (Bethesda) Fallout player base did not follow them there.

There are definitely companies have done it poorly. I don't think it can be said to be a universal behavior, though.

 

[Mistwell]

Some of the same people who used to claim the sky is falling and D&D was being "run by a skeleton crew" are now claiming the sky is falling regarding a topic involving them having hired 350 additional employees for D&D just last year.

Some people will always claim the sky is falling.