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.

 

[Hussar]

?

Sorry, I was trying to be funny. You are not gatekeeping at all, which makes you the perfect gate keeper.

Humor is hard. So is apparently spelling "humour" the correct way for my autocorrect. Stupid autocorrect.

 

[Zardnaar]

You can spend 1000 dollars for a while in magic and get cards that heavily improve your deck. Those cards are not tournament legal. And if you play for fun, you can ask to not use cards with wrong backsides. Or you can just use proxies.

I am a bit jealous about the beadle and grim boxes and have thought a few times to buy them... but I could resist.
But if they did not exist, it would make no difference for me.
I am really buffled, why you can freak out about something that just has no effect on your personal experience.

Or did I miss something big here?

It does effect other gamers though. People here don't really get it.

For example I suspect most ENworld posters are university educated aged 30-40 on middle class or better incomes.

In my Facebook group there's some DMs who have dropped big money on stuff like terrain, custom minis etc. Thousands of dollars if one had to guess.

It raises expectations kind of like CR's Mercer Effect or even what porn is doing to say young women.

And can come across as tone deaf as well and D&D already has educated upper middle class vibes.

And yeah consider what's going on in the world if you're older and already own property for example trying to monetize it further fan be seen as tine deaf.

No one's forcing you to buy but the ol keeping up with the Joneses and expectations effect.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It does effect other gamers though. People here don't really get it.

For example I suspect most ENworld posters are university educated aged 30-40 on middle class or better incomes.

In my Facebook group there's some DMs who have dropped big money on stuff like terrain, custom minis etc. Thousands of dollars if one had to guess.

It raises expectations kind of like CR's Mercer Effect or even what porn is doing to say young women.

And can come across as tone deaf as well and D&D already has educated upper middle class vibes.

I do agree with that. Maybe I was not looking outside my bubble. Sometimes I have a hard time doing that.

Edit:
But maybe we should try being mad about people in charge of education instead of companies who make money in this system and mainly use it to bring fun to people.

 

[Oofta]

I believe the need/requirement for ever greater profit, is corporate systematic greed run amok, yes.

I simply don't see corporate greed run amok at WOTC, at least not on the D&D side of the house. It sounds like they made some stupid decisions for MtG. At the same time there's no indication of unfair business practices or malicious business behaviors of any kind. Wanting to make a profit does not necessarily lead to the dark side. They aren't a nonprofit, but neither are they charging exorbitant prices for must have items.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

“D&D is under monetized” is a terrifying thing to hear from the Hazbro CEO.

Thou shalt not Gleemax.

 

[Oofta]

You can spend 1000 dollars for a while in magic and get cards that heavily improve your deck. Those cards are not tournament legal. And if you play for fun, you can ask to not use cards with wrong backsides. Or you can just use proxies.

I am a bit jealous about the beadle and grim boxes and have thought a few times to buy them... but I could resist.
But if they did not exist, it would make no difference for me.
I am really buffled, why you can freak out about something that just has no effect on your personal experience.

Or did I miss something big here?

Yeah, it's funny that people are talking about WOTC profiteering when you can buy bits of molded plastic from Wizkids for hundreds of dollars or spend thousands of dollars on a DM screen that doesn't really do anything more than a piece of folding cardboard does. I can't imagine spending $2,000 on dwarven forge terrain pieces, but some people do. More power to them.

There are some people willing to spend far more money than I ever would, even though I could afford it if I wanted. But it's all optional, every last dime.

 

[Incenjucar]

Every business will pursue profit. As long as they gain that profit by providing desirable services in an ethical ways, that's fine.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think here are people who had loved to hear: d&d is not profitable enough, so we just let it die.

There are folks on this thread who have previously posted on this site that they'd like WotC to go broke and just let D&D go out of print rather than WotC do things they don't like with it. It's a head-scratcher.

 

[Blue]

If that was the norm, threads like this wouldn't exist. My guess is if you average out everything, the 20% number is probably about right based on groups that can't even find a DM and things like AL where you often have more people show up as players than the DM is willing or able to take on.

The thread that you linked has lots of counter-examples that there isn't a DM shortage. The OP talks about non D&D GMs desperately looking for players, the second post questions the source as looking for eyeballs, the third post is about OSR not having a DM shortage, the fourth that every player in his game is also a DM and the sixth says the same. The seventh talks about problems finding players. The eight is 3 DMs in the group. It just keeps going on. The thread doesn't seem to support there being a widespread DM shortage at all, rather the opposite.

And things like AL with more players then DM really says nothing about the ratio of DMs to players when you are talking about the larger picture of "DMs purchase more". Everyone single one of those players could also be a DM - just not the DM for this particular AL game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

There are folks on this thread who have previously posted on this site that they'd like WotC to go broke and just let D&D go out of print rather than WotC do things they don't like with it. It's a head-scratcher.

Maybe I missed this, or this are the few people I blocked before, because I am not willing to deal with such destructiveness and negativity.