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

[Fifth Element]

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.

Yes, that bloody "public." What a bunch of sheep! If only they had the good taste that we do!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Apparently BG3 has been dunked on by the big fish though because of its quality and its complete and no microtransactions.

This is not true.

This is like, the tenth not true claim you've made lol. Maybe stop relying on stuff a guy on a Discord or a Youtube video told you? Just a thought.

What actually happened was an INDIE game dev (I repeat INDIE) with AAA experience made a slightly hand-wringing thread pointing out that most publishers won't allow studios to spend as much time and effort on a game as Larian did, and thus, we won't see a bunch of CRPGs of similar quality. Then a couple of AA/AAA game devs commented to agree (including Josh Sawyer, who is one of the most transparent and honest game devs out there, and who used to be an RPG.net poster in days of yore). Then "gamers", because they're absolute idiots decided to try and make this into a sort of meme-y deal. Instead of understanding the industry and being realistic, they just like to post Crying Wojaks for other AAA devs and Yes Chads for Larian and so on. What's really funny is Larian basically agrees with the indie dev and has said as much, because they're not planning on doing a game on a similar scale, maybe ever (this reminds me of Bioware saying they'd never do another interconnected trilogy of games after ME3, which has been true, sadly).

And no-one has been attacking it for not having microtransaction. That wouldn't even make sense.

We have a perfectly good PS4 and Xbox sitting right there.

Sadly it's not available on either of those, if that's an Xbox One. It's coming out on the PS5 next month and the Xbox Series X/S "later" (probably next year)

 

[Hussar]

Heh those incompetent WotC guys and their 30% growth rates year on year for the past six years or so.

They know nothing about the market. Just luck that the continuously grow year after year.

 

[Velderan]

Metacritic's main score isn't impacted by review bombing, because it only considers actual review sites/mags, not randos with an axe to grind, and it's still on 97 as of now.

No idea who you're hearing that from but they are 100% an idiot and in future you should not trust what they say re: this sort of thing.

Guessing they're confusing the critic review aspect of metacritic with user reviews. A quick skim of the user reviews shows quite a few 0/10 ratings which is clearly just people with an axe to grind.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Heh those incompetent WotC guys and their 30% growth rates year on year for the past six years or so.

They know nothing about the market. Just luck that the continuously grow year after year.

I like how you think you're being clever, but seem to be unaware of y'know, the 20th century, and the 21st so far, both of which have shown that incompetently run or poorly lead companies, in the right market circumstances, can be extremely successful despite that.

If you take success as a measure of skill and guarantee of continuing success in this sort of scenario, without asking deeper questions, then you will be lead into extreme error. But hey that just makes you like half the venture capital guys in the world, or Softbank.

Further, MtG seems to usually be relatively well-run and smart (with some recent hiccups). It's just D&D which seems to be floundering a bit in terms of leadership/direction. The OGL debacle disproves any notions that WotC is competent, and if you've forgotten that already, well jesus wept, frankly.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I like how you think you're being clever, but seem to be unaware of y'know, the 20th century, and the 21st so far, both of which have shown that incompetently run or poorly lead companies, in the right market circumstances, can be extremely successful despite that.

If you take success as a measure of skill and guarantee of continuing success in this sort of scenario, without asking deeper questions, then you will be lead into extreme error. But hey that just makes you like half the venture capital guys in the world, or Softbank.

Further, MtG seems to usually be relatively well-run and smart (with some recent hiccups). It's just D&D which seems to be floundering a bit in terms of leadership/direction. The OGL debacle disproves any notions that WotC is competent, and if you've forgotten that already, well jesus wept, frankly.

The OGL could be incompetence, but it could equally be a power struggle. I think that D&D has been the neglected step child of WoTC from the upper management perspective, operating on a relative shoe string. I read it as an attempt by some section in the background wanting to have the game studio be subordinate to them and sing their tune.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The OGL could be incompetence, but it could equally be a power struggle. I think that D&D has been the neglected step child of WoTC from the upper management perspective, operating on a relative shoe string. I read it as an attempt by some section in the background wanting to have the game studio be subordinate to them and sing their tune.

I don't think it's worth relitigating the entire OGL thing, but no, it could not "equally" be a power struggle, especially given absolutely ZERO heads rolled. The only person who left even adjacent to it was Ray Winninger, a couple of months before, who clearly must have had to be removed before it could happen. The D&D team was never "not subordinate". In fact, they cared so little about them, that if the leaks were true, they largely ignored them and didn't even really take input from them.

Given the exact same people, and I do mean exact same people are still in the same roles, there's no reason to believe there was any "power struggle" per se. Rather there was an internal debate over how to deal with the fact that their new plan seemed to be getting incredibly bad press and significantly damaging the brand.

It's not like D&D is "singing a different tune" now to what it was in say, November, either. The only thing that's changed is the tainted "One D&D" brand isn't being mentioned. But all the projects that comprised One D&D are going ahead.

 

[darjr]

I don't think it's worth relitigating the entire OGL thing, but no, it could not "equally" be a power struggle, especially given absolutely ZERO heads rolled. The only person who left even adjacent to it was Ray Winninger, a couple of months before, who clearly must have had to be removed before it could happen. The D&D team was never "not subordinate". In fact, they cared so little about them, that if the leaks were true, they largely ignored them and didn't even really take input from them.

Given the exact same people, and I do mean exact same people are still in the same roles, there's no reason to believe there was any "power struggle" per se. Rather there was an internal debate over how to deal with the fact that their new plan seemed to be getting incredibly bad press and significantly damaging the brand.

It's not like D&D is "singing a different tune" now to what it was in say, November, either. The only thing that's changed is the tainted "One D&D" brand isn't being mentioned. But all the projects that comprised One D&D are going ahead.

From many reports the D&D team has power struggles and politicking.

Though it’s in differing degrees of angst or just good natured depending on reports.

 

[Parmandur]

Larian is a private company though, and Swen Vincke has made it clear multiple times that he wants to maintain ownership of the company - because he wants it to make the kind of games that he likes to play, not be a money-printing machine. And honestly, I hope the company stays that way. Too many amazing game studios fell from grace after being acquired by a larger studios or going public, and the last thing I'd want from Larian would be having quarterly profits become their primary concern. Since, as many people kindly and repetitively pointed out in this thread, that's the only thing publicly-traded companies care about. And I want Larian to continue caring about making good games.

What would be nice would be if The Divinity Engine 4.0 (the engine they used to make BG3) became this generation's Infinity Engine: If they opened it up for modding (I know Swen said GM tools are not happening in the foreseeable future, but if they opened up their engine like they did with the earlier D:OS games, modders would learn how to make good stuff on it regardless of how difficult it is) or lended it to other studios to make their own D&D-licensed CRPGs (like how Interplay used the Infinity Engine to make Icewind Dale, or how Obsidian was always handed the scraps from other titles to make more-RPG focused sequels like Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout New Vegas), that'd be fantastic. Larian probably doesn't want to spend another 6 years making another D&D-licensed product, and they even said they wanted to return to Rivellon for their next project. But I think the gaming world would benefit hugely from having access to BG3's engine. Hell, I as someone with no gaming experience have been dreaming about remaking Baldur's Gate 1 in Divinity Engine 4.0 because it would be amazing to have that game with a properly updated-to-5E and turn-based experience.

I'm not saying it would necessarily be for the better or worse...just it would make sense for Hasbro to try. And everyone has a price, eventually.

 

[Ondath]

Heh those incompetent WotC guys and their 30% growth rates year on year for the past six years or so.

They know nothing about the market. Just luck that the continuously grow year after year.

By this line of thinking, N95 mask manufacturers in 2020 became incredibly successful not because of external circumstances but because their management consisted of epic business gurus who managed to grow their business thousandfold.

D&D is not a well managed brand. Hell, WotC makes incredibly stupid PR mistakes every month in both Magic and D&D, when all they need to do is shut up and don't rock the boat most of the time (also, don't hire the Pinkertons). There's a whole thread about Ben Riggs's presentation showing every incompetent move they made for the last 15 years. The only reason D&D 5E became successful was because external factors suddenly made D&D cool. If everything went according to the management's plan, D&D 5e would've been the mothball edition with only a skeleton crew maintaining things. But it exploded well beyond their expectations, and now they don't know how to deal with that success.