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.

 

[Alzrius]

The "Young Adventurers Guides" are licensed. The only remaining novels, Salvatore's "Dark Elf" series are also now licensed, although they used to be directly published first by TSR and then later by WotC.

Don't forget the new Dragonlance trilogy by Weis and Hickman, which is also licensed out.

 

[Alzrius]

And yet, unsold novels were what killed TSR. Well, that's a mite unfair. Perhaps better to say that unsold novels dealt TSR its death blow, but it was already pretty low on hp.

There is some anecdotal evidence that an attempted increase to push hardcover sales hurt TSR towards the end of the company's life, but I don't know if that was hardcover novels or hardcover game books (I suspect the latter, though). Insofar as particular products (or types of products) goes, I seem to recall that it was Dragon Dice that did the most damage to the company.

 

[FrozenNorth]

What’s next for D&D
DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases

Definitely hope this leads to a campaign to encourage more people to DM.

 

[Oofta]

There is some anecdotal evidence that an attempted increase to push hardcover sales hurt TSR towards the end of the company's life, but I don't know if that was hardcover novels or hardcover game books (I suspect the latter, though). Insofar as particular products (or types of products) goes, I seem to recall that it was Dragon Dice that did the most damage to the company.

The financial mistakes were quite numerous and clear signs that they really had no idea how to run a business. From not really keeping track of what products were successful to getting money for printing, but not selling, books. It's pretty much luck that WOTC bought D&D, otherwise I suspect the game could have just disappeared into the dustbin of history except for a handful of old school gamers here and there.

You could write a book (and people have) about all of their mistakes and why the company failed.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

'Right ... and your post was that enough will never be enough. That they will always want more.

to be fair, that is literally true of all publicly traded companies. That’s the fundamental nature of the system by which they operate. The owners of the company are people who only make money from owning the company if the company makes more money than it did last year.

Personally I like the DDB model where I can just buy what I want. I'm not that interested in modules, but I'm a sucker for new monsters. The ability to buy just the monsters is a win-win in my book.

I agree. The ability to purchase special character sheet backgrounds is just gravy.

If I were them, I’d be creating a marketplace on DDB where users can buy each other’s stuff and wizards gets a cut of every sale. Everything from character sheet backgrounds to digital dice to actual content like classes and monsters.

Let everyone from Kobold Press to Bob the rando DM put their IP on DDB for sale, and take 20%.

Then I’d also build character builders and sheets for past editions, and include them free, let people purchase supplements to unlock options, all on server shards so you’re never searching for mithral breastplate and get results from multiple editions.

Why? Because that is a perfect test for what I’d do after that, which is to allow different creators to create thier own space with thier own builder and sheets, for a fee.

Basically merge DDB and DMsGuild.

 

[Oofta]

to be fair, that is literally true of all publicly traded companies. That’s the fundamental nature of the system by which they operate. The owners of the company are people who only make money from owning the company if the company makes more money than it did last year.

I get that corporations are lawful neutral. They don't really "care" about me as a customer as long as I'm happy to buy their product. But they've also learned what doesn't work, such as over-publication and diluting the brand.

I agree. The ability to purchase special character sheet backgrounds is just gravy.

If I were them, I’d be creating a marketplace on DDB where users can buy each other’s stuff and wizards gets a cut of every sale. Everything from character sheet backgrounds to digital dice to actual content like classes and monsters.

Let everyone from Kobold Press to Bob the rando DM put their IP on DDB for sale, and take 20%.

Then I’d also build character builders and sheets for past editions, and include them free, let people purchase supplements to unlock options, all on server shards so you’re never searching for mithral breastplate and get results from multiple editions.

Why? Because that is a perfect test for what I’d do after that, which is to allow different creators to create thier own space with thier own builder and sheets, for a fee.

Basically merge DDB and DMsGuild.

I think merging DmsGuild with DDB and the potential VTT would be a good thing, I think it's probably in the works. Let people publish mods, possibly with custom monster and maps that can be used to run a game. If (and this may be a big if) they can create an interface to better build custom items, classes and subclasses, let people sell them as well.

There are technical and IP hurdles of course, you don't want to hurt the core business but I think there's real options there. The main push for additional profits seems to be in non-game-related opportunities, but that just means that they'll still want to keep the core game healthy and thriving. I just don't see this as a push to publish ever more books hopefully they learned their lesson by now on that.

 

[Dire Bare]

And yet, unsold novels were what killed TSR. Well, that's a mite unfair. Perhaps better to say that unsold novels dealt TSR its death blow, but it was already pretty low on hp.

Sigh. Not quite. The demise of TSR was death by a thousand cuts . . . or a thousand bad business decisions, some with the novel line. Doesn't change the fact that the novel line was highly successful for decades.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I see Hasbro's strategy is to be the onwer of cash-cow franchises, and then making money with the licenced products created by third parties.

If DMGuild and D&D-Beyond merger, then we could see 3PP creating content for the VTT. I guess the next step would be D&D-One not only as a VTT but a game-plataform, something like Roblox, Little Big Planet, Sony's Dreams, Fortnite: Creative Mode or Manticore's Core. But here they will not want to start from zero, but they are going to hire and acquire more videogame studios.

And something where fandom can publish their fanfiction, but with different levels: child-friendly, teenage, young adult and NSFW (nothing only+18 but like 3rd Ed or Book of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds).

Maybe even Hasbro dares to acquires some comic publisher to publisher licenced comics of those super-famous superheroes.

 

[darjr]

Definitely hope this leads to a campaign to encourage more people to DM.

I hope so to. It definitely is as far as media goes, the push to support the starter set with instructional YouTube and articles.

There is a teachers kit you can get for free that includes some things in it that I’d like to see that I think hew close to the idea. I do wonder if they are going to do something like it for won stores.

 

[Staffan]

Sigh. Not quite. The demise of TSR was death by a thousand cuts . . . or a thousand bad business decisions, some with the novel line. Doesn't change the fact that the novel line was highly successful for decades.

That's why I said it was the death blow, not the sole cause.

Random House had a contract with TSR that allowed them (and book stores) to pulp unsold books and get reimbursed for them. This, I believe, is fairly standard for mass market books. For a long time, they allowed that reimbursement to be in the form of credit toward new books, but eventually they said "No, we don't want more of your unsellable books, we want actual money, thank you." And that left TSR unable to service any of its other debts, such as paying their printer.

Now, had TSR been in better financial shape to begin with, e.g. by not churning out dozens of unsellable sourcebooks each month and splitting their customer base over a dozen settings, they could probably have weathered that blow. But they weren't, and so they didn't.

It's like if you're fighting a giant with a hundred hp, and the fighter and rogue together deal it like 85 points of damage. If you then magic missile it for 15, that's still your death blow.