D&D (2024) RPG Evolution: Where Are the Board Gamers?

Alta Fox and Hasbro both have ideas of what makes an effective Board member. But their definitions of what makes a gamer qualified for their Board of Directors varies.

Meet Hasbro's Board of Directors​

For the longest time, Hasbro's Board of Directors seemed to be more focused on managing the company financially than managing its products. On the Hasbro web site, each Board member's qualifications are listed, touting a variety of financial, brand, and business skills. Until recently, none of them had any gaming on their resume.

The question of the Board's game expertise didn't come up in financial circles, because Hasbro didn't defined itself more as a toy company than a game company. Hasbro's products encompassed board games and toys, and while board gamers are certainly a hobby, they are not necessarily playing the same board game. As Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons became ascendant, Hasbro rapidly transformed from a company that manages games to a gaming company. Most emblematic of this shift was Wizards of the Coast itself. Chris Cocks, current CEO of Hasbro, moved up the ranks as President of WOTC since 2016, and President and Chief Operating Officer of WOTC and Digital Gaming in 2021.

Digital is quite important to Hasbro, as is apparent from the word "digital" mentioned in Cocks' profile on Hasbro's site five times (three in the quote below alone):

Under Mr. Cocks’s executive leadership as President and COO of Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast grew by over 150% in global revenue, surpassing $1 billion in 2021. His bold new approach to customer segmentation unlocked numerous multi-hundred-million-dollar insights and led Wizard’s iconic brand MAGIC: THE GATHERING to multiple years of consecutive growth since 2018. Mr. Cocks was instrumental in the successful expansion into digital through MAGIC: THE GATHERING Arena for PC and mobile. Additionally, with Mr. Cocks at the helm, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS became a pop culture powerhouse with over 50M fans to date, and through innovative ideas in digital gaming and entertainment, the brand is set up for ongoing success. Prior to Hasbro, Mr. Cocks has had numerous brand management, digital marketing, technical, sales and general management experiences at companies including Microsoft, Leapfrog and Procter & Gamble, working on category-leading brands including Xbox, Halo, Fable, Leapster, Actonel, MSN and Windows.

With so much money locked up not in just games but gamers, Cocks was the leader Hasbro was looking for, but the Board he joined didn't reflect this new digital direction. It wasn't long before shareholders noticed the discrepancy.

Card Players​

We previously covered how Alta Fox proposed a slate of new board members as part of its activism to shake up Hasbro. The activist shareholder emphasized that the Board was lacking gaming and capital allocation experience. On the gaming side, Alta Fox touted Jon Finkel, the "Michael Jordan" of Magic: The Gathering "with a large following in the community":

Jon Finkel brings a unique blend of expertise in the capital markets, finance and the world of Magic: The Gathering (“Magic”) to the Alta Fox slate. He is currently a Managing Partner and Co-Chief Investment Officer at Landscape Capital Management LLC, a quantitative, market neutral investment management firm, where he specializes in overseeing the firm’s portfolio of investments and is heavily involved in strategy development and research. Prior to that, Mr. Finkel played various games professionally, including Magic. Mr. Finkel has won a myriad of accolades during his career as a professional Magic player and is widely considered to be one of the greatest players of all time.

Things didn't work out quite the way Alta Fox planned. Their proposal was rejected, but it struck a nerve.

Video Gamers​

Prior to Cocks' appointment as CEO of Hasbro, there was one board member already in the digital gaming space: Hope Cochran, appointed back in 2016. Hope Cochran is the Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, a technology-focused venture capital group.

Prior to joining Madrona in January 2017, Ms. Cochran was the Chief Financial Officer of King Digital Entertainment, the creator of Candy Crush and other successful mobile games, from 2013 to 2016. In this role, she helped drive the company’s significant employee and revenue growth, guided the Company’s IPO and successfully completed a $5.9 billion acquisition by Activision.

Shortly after Alta Fox proposed new Board members, Hasbro appointed two board members with digital gaming experience. The week after Hasbro turned down Alta Fox's proposal, two Board members stepped down and were replaced by Blake Jorgensen and Elizabeth Hamren (pictured above). Blake Jorgensen is Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of PayPal Holdings, Inc:

Prior to joining PayPal in 2022, Mr. Jorgensen spent a decade as the CFO and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Electronic Arts (EA), a video game company, helping to drive the transformation of the company, resulting in dramatic improvement in growth, profitability, and market capitalization.

Elizabeth Hamren is Chief Operating Officer at Discord, Inc.

Prior to joining Discord, Ms. Hamren served as a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Corporation from March 2017 to December 2021 running product and engineering for Xbox consumer products, including developing and launching the Xbox Series X|S and leading Xbox Game Pass. Prior to that, from August 2015 to March 2017, she led Global Marketing and Sales for Oculus at Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.), where she launched the industry-defining Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

Hasbro's Board of Directors now numbers 13. Of those, four of the Board members have gaming experience. And yet as the stewards of the D&D and M:TG brands, there's something missing.

Where's the Tabletop Gamers?​

Scott Thorne at ICv2 noted a curious discrepancy in Cocks' announcement:

One thing I do not see in Cocks’ vision of the future of Magic and Dungeons & Dragons: any mention of the physical products on which the digital versions are based. Given his background with Microsoft and digital gaming, that is not really surprising, though he does say he plays both. Hazarding a guess, I think Wizards has looked at the success Marvel and DC Entertainment have had with movies and online games based upon their comic book properties and hope to leverage the Magic and D&D IPs into success in the digital realm. The physical versions of Magic and D&D will remain important, in much the same way that Superman and Spider-Man are, important as source material but providing comparatively little revenue to the company. I think Wizards has looked at the success of Hearthstone, Marvel and Transformers and sees that as the future of the company.

It's clear that for Hasbro, the nearest analogue to dealing with tabletop gamers is the digital gaming space. That may well explain why there was so much focus on digital products in the leaked OGL:

For example, when we released OGL 1.0a, YouTube, apps, blockchain, crowdfunding, and other now every-day technologies and distribution channels didn’t really exist in the way they do today. OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.

While the Open Game License shares much in common with open licenses used in software, one place where they differ is the small, creator-owned space. D&D encourages every Dungeon Master to be their own designer, so it's not surprising that thousands of them have gone on to publish their own content on DMs Guild and DriveThruRPG. In its rush to get the bulk of fandom onto the D&D Beyond platform, it's clear Hasbro's video game-focused leadership didn't take that nuance into account.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think role-playing is a much more inherently creative exercise than engaging with any current form of digital entertainment--even for players.

 

[dbm]

Top marks for the thread title…

 

[schneeland]

I first read it as "where are the board games?" and, thought: "yeah, they should make more D&D board games that are actually good". But maybe gamers in the company board would also help with that

 

[embee]

I first read it as "where are the board games?" and, thought: "yeah, they should make more D&D board games that are actually good". But maybe gamers in the company board would also help with that

I propose a solution using intrabrand synergy.

I am, of course, referring to a 5e conversion of Monopoly. Don't get me wrong; I love Monopoly. I just think it focuses too much on exploration and not enough on combat and roleplay.

 

[BMaC]

They brought in a bunch of mobile and digital game folks. Of course they don't know how to handle physical l, actual table top games. When you are a hammer everything looks like a nail.

 

[rknop]

I think the small, creator-owned space is also pretty huge in open source software.

Yeah, what we hear about all the time are the big projects like Linux, Apache, the GNU C Library, etc. But, there are 10^7 small projects out there also licensed under the BSD or GPL licenses, either that stand alone, that link other small projects, or that link to or depend on the bigger better-known projects.

 

[Zaukrie]

I can't imagine anything less important to a board member than if they play games or have experience in games. That's not their role at all. If a board is involved in product decisions, that company is is real trouble.

 

[Jer]

I can't imagine anything less important to a board member than if they play games or have experience in games. That's not their role at all. If a board is involved in product decisions, that company is is real trouble.

I think that's the real key here. The board doesn't trust the executives that they've hired to actually run the company. A board that is involved in product decisions is a board that is micromanaging. That's not a good sign at all.

Personally I think a lot of problems at Hasbro stem from the sudden death of their CEO in 2021. He had the board's trust - he'd been the CEO since 2008 - and they were willing to go with his plans. He was the one who had the vision of Hasbro being a bigger entertainment company, he was the one who bought eOne, and generally he was the one with all of the vision.

And you can tell that he was the one with the vision by how the company basically reversed course on his vision almost immediately after his death. In retrospect it seems likely that the board trusted HIM to be able to make those changes and make them good, but they didn't trust those changes in the abstract. And now they're pushing into digital as a pivot into a new vision for the company.

I do think that Hasbro's in a bad place. They might be able to pull it out, they might also implode and start selling off assets.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can't imagine anything less important to a board member than if they play games or have experience in games. That's not their role at all. If a board is involved in product decisions, that company is is real trouble.

On the other hand, if they don't understand their product, in the end they don't understand their market, and that never goes anywhere good.