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.

 

[tetrasodium]

You're incredibly, unbelievably wrong.

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.

These seem pretty popular & I could link up a few others not quite as comprehensive

Spoiler: just saying ;)

 

[Steel_Wind]

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

You aren't wrong about that motivation, but this speaks to my cautionary note: there is no reason to believe, NONE, that any WotC 3d VTT would offer superior tech to competitors. And those competitors are well motivated to NOT lock down their software in a similar manner.

As I have mentioned, there is a VAST library of STL 3d minis as well as many models which exist from other games. You can do the same with 3d minis whipped up and textured in Heroforge. Hell, for that matter, you can turn a model from WoW into a 3d animated mini. It's trivially easy to do.

The only way you get away with closing a new VTT system without a mass exodus is if your tech advantage is huge. If it isn't? You will bleed customers, it's just a question of how many you lose. If you have any doubts about that -- the loss of Roll20 of nearly its entire base of PF2 GMs and players -- and most of their PF1 GMs and players -- was due to Foundry VTT offering things for free, with much better quality, than Roll20 made you pay for. They lost almost their entire user base of PF and SF GMs as a result in a ~year, from 2020 to 2021. And that's during the pandemic, too.

Gamers will pay for quality, but not many will pay when the same quality is available for free. And if a competing product is less expensive AND better? Good luck with all of that. You are screwed.

 

[Alzrius]

These seem pretty popular & I could link up a few others not quite as comprehensive

Those are sold by Paizo, not Foundry.

 

[tetrasodium]

Those are sold by Paizo, not Foundry.

And?
"Purchasing this product from the Paizo store will grant you an activation code which can be used through your Foundry VTT account page to activate the content for installation. Afterwards you will be able to install the “Pathfinder Token Pack: Bestiaries" module from the Foundry Virtual Tabletop setup screen."

...
"
1. the module is only available on foundry and requires a foundry license to download.
2. The module was developed by Foundry staff via their partnership with Paizo. Paizo did not produce this (only selling it on behalf of Foundry), and Roll20 would not be able to use this in any capacity.
"

I could start linking up VTT ports of various adventures too. GMs who run VTTs already buy stuff because it's useful or saves a lot of time to do so. Players almost never do.

 

[Alzrius]

1. the module is only available on foundry and requires a foundry license to download.

Only available on Foundry? The purchase link literally sends you to Paizo.com to buy it.

This is, in other words, a third-party product. It's a company which isn't Foundry selling you art assets that you can upload, which means that the money goes to them. Now admittedly, Foundry almost certainly gets a cut (since they did help develop it), which is why they've integrated the advertisement and link for purchase onto their website, but that's an entirely separate premise with regards to what WotC seems likely to do: develop their own purchasable content in-house, which will all but require them to quash personal uploads of non-purchased assets.

EDIT: There's also the technical aspect to consider, since Foundry supports more than one type of RPG. I'm not sure if it'd be worth it for them to shut down personal uploads only for games based on Paizo properties.

 

[Malmuria]

In terms of vtt competition, Wotc is in a somewhat unique position because they also make the game that most people want to play, and they could leverage that fact to close off competition in different ways. They might trade short term outcry for a stronger market share position. Just as conceivably, they might be overestimating what people want to pay and how much they are ok with being inside a walled garden; wouldn't be the first time!

 

[Steel_Wind]

Only available on Foundry? The purchase link literally sends you to Paizo.com to buy it.

This is, in other words, a third-party product. It's a company which isn't Foundry selling you art assets that you can upload, which means that the money goes to them. Now admittedly, Foundry almost certainly gets a cut (since they did help develop it), which is why they've integrated the advertisement and link for purchase onto their website, but that's an entirely separate premise with regards to what WotC seems likely to do: develop their own purchasable content in-house, which will all but require them to quash personal uploads of non-purchased assets.

Foundry VTT became an officially licensee of Paizo earlier this year. Buying the code through paizo.com and redeeming that code on Foundry's server is how all of their licensed products work, be it Adventures or Art packs.

It's not any more complicated than that.

To be fair, all of this art is available for free anyway off of Archives of Nethys already, in complete and uncropped .png format. To get ALL of that into Foundry is a bit of a chore. Others rip their .pdfs (with cropped images) and then auto-import those images into Foundry using the Compendium Image Mapper. Updates could overwrite that data, which was annoying.

The PF2 community has been asking for an official and complete art pack from Paizo for more than 2 years just to avoid some of this hoop jumping. Now they have it. I wouldn't read anymore into it than that.

 

[tetrasodium]

Only available on Foundry? The purchase link literally sends you to Paizo.com to buy it.

This is, in other words, a third-party product. It's a company which isn't Foundry selling you art assets that you can upload, which means that the money goes to them. Now admittedly, Foundry almost certainly gets a cut (since they did help develop it), which is why they've integrated the advertisement and link for purchase onto their website, but that's an entirely separate premise with regards to what WotC seems likely to do: develop their own purchasable content in-house, which will all but require them to quash personal uploads of non-purchased assets.

wotc is too far behind with vtt development & offerings to wield that kind of dominance without killing their own vtt. As to the rest... yes you need a foundry account (not free) so your foundry install will download the images in that token pack made by foundry using images found in bestiary 1/2/3 that someone could manually crop & tokenize into 1200ish individual tokens if they had those pdfs. I don't even use or own foundry and am already strongly considering buying it just so I can buy the tokens & batch import them into the vtt I do use after the holidays & associated bills are past.

 

[Alzrius]

Foundry VTT became an officially licensee of Paizo earlier this year. Buying the code through paizo.com and redeeming that code on Foundry's server is how all of their licensed products work, be it Adventures or Art packs.

It's not any more complicated than that.

I agree, but what I was indicating is that the Foundry/Paizo partnership isn't comparable to what WotC's talking about. Paizo owns the IP, and Foundry owns the platform; WotC, in the case of a D&D 3D VTT, owns both. Setting up a recurrent spending environment, and shutting down personal asset uploads (or restricting them compared to other platforms), is a different situation for them than it is for either Foundry or Paizo, since the former manages multiple games owned by multiple companies, whereas the latter only cares about how to leverage their own IP.

 

[Umbran]

You're incredibly, unbelievably wrong.

Dude, I found my own art for Roll20 tokens. I have uploaded maps and other images. The system is not closed.

Heck, Roll20 has articles to help users work with their own content
(https://help.roll20.net/hc/en-us/articles/9415169571607-Prepping-For-Print-Art-for-the-VTT)

And, here's a "How to" video for how to make tokens from your own art for Foundry VTT. )

It is unclear how I am wrong about this - these are not closed systems. These are systems that allow you to add your own content, from whatever sources you want.

You don't seem to understand that this entire premise goes out the window....

That is a separate argument. I'm not going to enter a second stream of logic with you before we resolve the first. I mean, if you were so wrong about the current functionality, why should we think your ideas on the future are based in understanding?