WotC Hasbro CEO Chris Cox, "I would say that the underlying thesis of our D&D business is all about digital,”

[darjr]

First seen in Sly Flourishes discord.

Baldur's Gate 3 Is the Beginning of Big Plans for Dungeons & Dragons Video Games

Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to be the beginning of a new era of Dungeons & Dragons video games. Last week, Hasbro held its quarterly investors call, which featured a question and answer section. During the interview, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks was asked if a recent writedown of the Dungeons & Dragons...

comicbook.com

"I would say that the underlying thesis of our D&D business is all about digital," Cocks said.

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fortune.com

Sly Flourish says “imagine losing three billion dollars. That's three thousand million dollars That's losing twenty three D&D Beyonds.”

 

[darjr]

deleting the private discord link. It didn’t work anyway.

 

[Scribe]

I mean, as long as it's not Wizards making the content?

The IP is the value.

 

[Ondath]

All in on digital?

Goodness, they never learn do they. I love how the WotC staff keeps claiming that their sole concern is acting as the caretaker for the D&D brand. And then you get the investors' call where the cold hard truth is revealed: that they want to squeeze as much money as possible from D&D and force it to a new medium if necessary to reach that goal.

 

[Reynard]

It's no different than Marvel: the paper products are only there to maintain copyright. The real money is in the corporate engineered BS that the public laps up regardless of quality.

 

[schneeland]

So he‘s saying we get PDFs of the books again?

More seriously: I am not against good D&D video games, but IMO a lot of the appeal of RPGs is analog/people (even when played via online platforms).

 

[darjr]

It doesn’t mean the death if the game as an analog medium.

There is a part of me that hopes the analog part of the game moves out from under the corporate view anyway.

 

[darjr]

Anyways the faux D&D that is Baldur’s Gate 3 by all reports is really good. And popular. And probably already on it’s way to make more money and may already be on its way to having more time played.

Than D&D.

 

[Vaalingrade]

"I am saying the current magic words to make the stockholders pay me."

 

[darjr]

From the discord, good points and maybe a clarification of the Chris Cox quote.
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This is the full quote in context (source: Hasbro (HAS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool)

Fred Wightman

Hey, guys. I just wanted to come back to Wizards. And if we think back to the investor day last fall, and I totally recognize a lot of this change, but it felt like D&D was a big piece of the plan to double the Wizards business. And if we just think about the film impairment and the softer box office, does that put those targets at risk or is there enough traction and momentum in some other areas to offset that?

Chris Cocks -- Chief Executive Officer

No, I mean. Good morning, Fred. I would say, the underlying thesis of our D&D business was all about digital. To me, entertainment's a kicker.

It helps to enable broader audiences' exposure to what's traditionally a mid-core to hardcore gaming brand. And what digital allows us to do is kind of take that tabletop role-playing game, TAM, that we have in the world, which is probably about $80 million people who participate in those hobbies and frequent that kind of channel, and take our brand like D&D to 800 million people who play role-playing games. And so, I think Baldur's Gate 3 is just the first of several new digital initiatives you're going to see from us, that span how we can try to transform tabletop role-playing gaming to an even richer kind of theater-of-the-mind experience to more traditional video games from us and partners like Larian.

They are talking about customer acquisition strategies - Cocks is saying that they are hoping that Baldur's gate 3 will be an on-ramp for the many more people who play computer rpgs but don't play TTRPGs, and that is a route to growth of D&D as a brand