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]

I'm still kinda baffled how this is any different than what we have right now.

Right now, depending on what VTT you use, you have a massive shopping list of micro-transactions that you can make as a DM or a player. There is no end to the number of people who would just love to sell you something. Packs of character tokens? Yup. Map packs? Yup. Heck, Fantasy Grounds RIGHT NOW is selling special dice for use in games for their VTT. You can now color code (and design code) your dice for different damage types.

Never minding the absolute army of patreons, kickstarters and various others who have zero problem producing content for whatever game you happen to be playing.

Nothing that has been mentioned in this thread is not available in the VTT market right now and nothing that hasn't been available for years.

The difference I'm seeing is that people who haven't really used VTT's particularly are just now, suddenly becoming aware that there are thousands of gamers out there that do play on VTT, and have quite happily done so for many years, who have been already seen pretty much everything you could possibly think of. Animated tokens? Yup, got those. Animated maps? Yup - there's a number of VTT's that handle that.

The only thing that WotC's VTT will have over other VTT's is integration with D&D Beyond, which, to be fair, is a MASSIVE draw.

But all this doom and gloom stuff, while hilariously naive, is just not going to happen. If was going to happen, Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds would have already done it. What, you think those guys aren't in it for the bucks? Really? Come on here. But tanking your VTT by selling some sort of "cloak that waves a certain way if some sort of monster is near" is ludicrous. The amount of backlash for something like that would be insane.

You'd almost think that WotC hasn't spent the last 20 years creating games.

 

[Nikosandros]

Ah, good point.

Except the Master Sub owns the campaign? Right? Or can anyone?

Edit: just looked, yea the master sub owns the campaign but the master sub can have a character in the campaign.. OK then.

Anyone can have a master subscription and anyone can own the books being shared. For example, I DM a couple of campaigns and in both of them, one of the players has a Master subscription which allows sharing. I have a character in another campaign in which the DM has activated the sharing which allows access to all of my books to the rest of the participants.

 

[Steel_Wind]

So out of curiosity i went to check on the Foundry DNDBeyond importer persons Patreon. Holy cow!!!

Am I right, is he making nearly 40 grand a month? Minus patreon fees?

No, because probably 6-7k of those patreons are in at the prior rate of $3 per month. That tier is no longer available, but those who did enter at that rate did not have to pay more when it went up (as it typical at most patreons).

As I said though, Mr. Primate is doing very well with his DDB importer and we certainly agree on that!

I do think he pays some people now to help convert and import adventures into Foundry VTT from D&DB. That stuff doesn't happen automagically. There is extensive prep work involved in importing monsters, items and prepping DDB maps for use in Foundry.

But if the point to take away is he is making ~25k a month, net, on Patreon? Yes. He is. That's what I was referring to when I indicated he was making GOOD MONEY on it and if he had previously another full-time job, he doesn't need it now.

Forgotten Adventures does extremely well on their very inexpensive Patreon, too. They pay ~5 people with that money though. Heroic Maps does very well with their patreon, and they sell all those maps on DriveThru, too.

There are a handful of other RPG related patreons doing extremely well, too. I consider this a feature -- not a bug. I am happy as hell to pay for these niche products, delivered to me for a relatively modest ~$30ish a month in patreon fees, all-in.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ah, good point.

Except the Master Sub owns the campaign? Right? Or can anyone?

JEdit: just looked, yea the master sub owns the campaign but the master sub can have a character in the campaign.. OK then.

Nope. I am sharing my content in a friend’s campaign, an it’s still theirs.

 

[Umbran]

Except it's very different. In a VTT micro-transaction environment, there's only one market to choose from: the store which sells (or rather, lets you rent) the assets. You can shop around for minis from different publishers, the secondary market, or even tokens or tiles instead of miniatures, etc., none of which can be done in the sort of closed ecosystem that a VTT functions in.

You are astoundingly, stunningly incorrect.

VTTs are not generally closed ecosystems. They all allow you to upload your own art assets - tokens and maps and other images.

There's a basic business reason to do so - otherwise the people who run the VTT have to create massive art libraries for you, and make users wade through them. And while users may skirt copyright to turn a piece of art they find into a token, a major business venture could not afford the liability of infringement, and would have to pay for the entire library.

There is no particular reason that a 3d VTT couldn't allow you to upload 3d models of a standard format as minis, and so on.

 

[Malmuria]

I dunno. I think it's probably the single biggest thing bringing in new people actually.

Reddit regularly has a "free comapaign access" thread and it's designed for folks that need or want access but not long term. Not in the thread but I've heard lots of people got a taste for beyond in just such a way and went back and bought things after losing it.

It would make for a loud outcry if they did too.

But 5$ a month to play in the VTT? I could see that for players. Except, again, the free access for players model is working for them.

There's other ways they could offer free access though. For example, like a lot of subscriptions, they could say you get 1 month free access, and then you have to subscribe. The under-monetization and dm makes most purchases comments in the fireside chat seem to indicate that they think they are leaving money on the table on the player side of things. Turning some portion of those free accounts into pay accounts would seem a clear way to more fully monetize players. Like, when I think of monetization I think about what's happened with air travel: the experience is overall the same, but now different airlines will charge for individually for carry-on luggage etc.

 

[Malmuria]

Anyone can have a master subscription and anyone can own the books being shared. For example, I DM a couple of campaigns and in both of them, one of the players has a Master subscription which allows sharing. I have a character in another campaign in which the DM has activated the sharing which allows access to all of my books to the rest of the participants.

That's nice, and strikes me as quite permissive. Looking at it through the lens of monetization, I can see how wotc is thinking that they are leaving money on the table

 

[MonsterEnvy]

There's other ways they could offer free access though. For example, like a lot of subscriptions, they could say you get 1 month free access, and then you have to subscribe. The under-monetization and dm makes most purchases comments in the fireside chat seem to indicate that they think they are leaving money on the table on the player side of things. Turning some portion of those free accounts into pay accounts would seem a clear way to more fully monetize players. Like, when I think of monetization I think about what's happened with air travel: the experience is overall the same, but now different airlines will charge for individually for carry-on luggage etc.

Under monetization of the brand refers to things like merchandise, toys, tv, and games.

Which I largely agree with.

 

[Alzrius]

You are astoundingly, stunningly incorrect.

You're incredibly, unbelievably wrong.

VTTs are not generally closed ecosystems. They all allow you to upload your own art assets - tokens and maps and other images.

You don't seem to understand that this entire premise goes out the window when the assets in question make up a large portion of the marketplace of what's for sale. I'm not sure why this needs to be explained, but the basic business reason is that people won't pay for things if they can upload those same things for free. It undercuts the entire idea of a recurrent spending environment, which is their stated goal.

That's the particular reason that a 3D VTT that's made to serve that goal wouldn't allow for those types of uploads.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Other than the lack of a physical object, there is still no difference to me between someone buying a model on a VTT and buying a mini.

Though once again I don’t think they are going to charge you for minis, the DM and or player owning the PHB should be enough to unlock its options on the VTT.