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.

 

[Cadence]

My suggestion is D&D-Beyond should allow some space for fan-fiction and fan-art. The webcomics has got a potential to promote the brand.

One difficulty there is the moderation.

Fan fiction in some places seems to quickly devolve into inter species relations and minimalist armor, for example. And that doesn't feel like what Hasbro would want on their site appropriate for 13yo in as much of the world as they can get it.

Fan fiction also seems to commonly involve not caring one bit about IP law. I'm not sure the hoe various companies that spend a lot to license Tolkien, Conan, MCU, etc... would feel if the official Hasbro D&D site ended up with a ton of that IP adapted for games.

Saying that, I'm now kind of scared to check out what one can find on the current homebrew section of DnDBeyond.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

* I don't disagree about the potential menace of NSFW content. Why not anything like "Dark Pack" by White Wolf/Onyx Path?

* Hasbro wants D&D to be cash-cow, a Pokemon not only family-friendly, but also interesting for teens and young adults, and mature playing with younger generations.

Other factor is the power of this "brand" is more focused into the setting than certain characters. This could be important in the action-live adaptations because they aren't too linked with any characters, and then the producers shouldn't worry too much about the much.

Ravenloft is perfect for a survival horror vieogame style Resident Evil VIII.

If Hasbro makes money with D&D as a multimedia franchise, then they could be interested into other IPs from the TTRPG industry to follow the same steps. Here players of World/Chronicle of Darkness and other games by White Wolf/Onyx Path could find reasons to be worried.

Hasbro doesn't need a new "Call of Chulhu d20" when Lovecraftian monsters are public domain now (and added to the bestiary of Pahtfinder) and they have got their own setting "Dark*Matter".

* I suspect if Hasbro could, they would want to create a monster-tamer class for a D&D version of Pokemon/Digimon.

* Halflings are perfect for a D&D farming simulation videogame.

* The VTT D&D-One should get ready for other options, for example about managing a stronghold, a kingdom, or a mercenary squad.

 

[Cadence]

* Halflings are perfect for a D&D farming simulation videogame.

Based on some long ago threads, I'm now picturing the "Gnoll Attack" part of the simulation that takes the new players by surprise...

 

[DarkCrisis]

They also aren't coming to your house and extorting you for everything your worth at gunpoint. For now.

I don’t know what my personal collection has to do with possible online only stuff but rage on, I guess.

And if you want to believe that WotC or any other For Profit Company has your best interests at heart and would never lie and/or change their minds about ways to get more profit, well more power to you.

 

[MockingBird]

I'd definitely be game for D&D licensed STL subscription so I can print official monsters

 

[Cadence]

On the plus side, unless I missed it, no mention of doing NFTs at least.

 

[Blue]

Wow. 20%? So for every 1 DM there's 5 players, not 10. That does not track. Maybe they're basing this off something they have, like D&D Beyond data that doesn't actually include the whole fan base.

My personal experience is that a lot more than 1 in 5 are DMs, but I realize that's anecdotal. In one group I play with 3 of the 6 people around the table are DMs, just one is DMing with that group at a time. In another group all 7 people are DMs. (I have another group, but it's heavy overlap with players in those two groups.) Heck, I run a game for my kids, niece and nephew, and my eldest and my nephew are both DMs running their own games so that's 3 DM with only 5 people around the table.

I'm trying to picture 1 DM for every 10 players, it's pretty far outside my experience.

 

[jmartkdr2]

They can. But it's not a requirement.

World of Warcraft has had microtransactions for years, with a similar reaction from fans when they were first introduced.

And none of it is required.

Do you want a really cool animated costume element (a baby murloc on a papoose, a set of robes with animated stars and constellations floating around it)? Great! It has no stats and is not, by any means, required.

Do you want a fancy mount, in a game that is constantly giving out fancy mounts? (The fanciest mounts ever are at the heart of the latest expansion.) Go for it! They offer no advantage over other mounts, other than the fact that you get to ride around on a pretty flying dog or pig or space cat.

And in-game play has not changed at all as a result. Yes, Activision/Blizzard (and soon, Microsoft) rely on this as an additional stream of revenue, but the in-game shop has in no way ruined or impacted the actual game play through new manipulative designs. (I mean, MMOs in general are already pretty "sticky" in that regard, but the store isn't part of it here.)

Flip side: done poorly, even purely cosmetic dlc can mess with the game experience. I played Wizard 101 for a while, when all the costumes were witchy or wizardy - these days you can get a fursuit or a mech or a fireman's coat - each individually doesn't mean much (and doesn't impact stats) but the whole look of the game is now "spilled out toy box" rather than "wizard school."

But since the real money is in costumes, they keep making more costumes. Some dm's struggle with blocking mechanical options that are printed in books, could you imagine them trying to block purely cosmetic ones? But if they don't, the brand identity is ruined. Which is a problem for next year or the year after, and investors don't care about anything beyond next quarter.

 

[tetrasodium]

My personal experience is that a lot more than 1 in 5 are DMs, but I realize that's anecdotal. In one group I play with 3 of the 6 people around the table are DMs, just one is DMing with that group at a time. In another group all 7 people are DMs. (I have another group, but it's heavy overlap with players in those two groups.) Heck, I run a game for my kids, niece and nephew, and my eldest and my nephew are both DMs running their own games so that's 3 DM with only 5 people around the table.

I'm trying to picture 1 DM for every 10 players, it's pretty far outside my experience.

Add all of the AL players. A much smaller percentage of them are GMs or former compared to experienced ttrpg regulars in private groups.

 

[Oofta]

I don’t know what my personal collection has to do with possible online only stuff but rage on, I guess.

And if you want to believe that WotC or any other For Profit Company has your best interests at heart and would never lie and/or change their minds about ways to get more profit, well more power to you.

Stating that they're not doing something "for now" is meaningless. They're not going to abandon a large part of their customer base by refusing to print physical books in the foreseeable future. Of course WOTC wants to make a profit. That's kind of what companies do. Books are still profitable and have other knock-on benefits like stores stocking them on shelves, many people of all generations prefer a physical product. Hence they will continue printing physical campaigns and sourcebooks.

There's no logical reason for them to stop publishing books, even if that means they went to a publish-on-demand model (which isn't going to happen either with the volume they do). They're still selling tens of thousands of PHBs per month on Amazon alone.

Yes there have always been a few bonus things here and there not part of the main books and publications, in the distant past they were done in Dragon or Dungeon magazine. A tiny, tiny fraction of things will be published online now instead of in a magazine. But the core books? Campaigns and major expansions? If you want the dead tree version you'll still be able to get them. Because they're profitable.

Companies make a profit by producing products consumers want and can afford. This idea that they're going to somehow go out of their way to make the life of their customers more difficult by not producing something they make a profit on is just bizarre.