Hasbro Confirms New Unannounced Dungeons & Dragons Video Game in Development

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has confirmed that an in-house studio is developing an unannounced Dungeons & Dragons video game. In a feature posted today on Bloomberg News, Cocks stated that Hasbro was actively developing a Dungeons & Dragons video game via one of its in-house studios. No further details were provided about the video game, nor was any timeline given about its release. Hasbro plans to release one to two video games a year by 2026, not including third party licensed games.

Hasbro is actively pivoting into a video game developer, having purchased or created several in-house studios in recent years. One of the most high-profile ventures is Exodus, a sci-fi RPG created by several BioWare veterans. A GI Joe video game focused on Snake-Eyes is also in development at a Hasbro-owned studio.

Hasbro is also actively working with several third party studios on new D&D video games. Gameloft, the maker of Disney Dreamlight Valley, is making a survival-life sim set in the Forgotten Realms, while Starbreeze Entertainment is also actively working on a D&D video game. Hasbro also cancelled several video game projects, including several Dungeons & Dragons-themed games back in 2023 as part of a strategic realignment.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are very few studios that have the track records, experience and toolset of Larian. You can't just magically get some people together and start a new studio, or take another studio and just pivot them to make this type of game. You can do it, but it very rarely work.

To be fair, that's kind of what Larian did, actually.

As of DOS2's launch, Larian was like, 80 people or something, definitely an AA company size and budget-wise.

Shortly before DOS2 was released, WotC had given Larian the contract to develop BG3 (though as far as we know, WotC never financially supported Larian), so Larian had a very clear idea of what they were doing next.

DOS2 made crazy money, way more than previous Larian games, and this together with knowing what they were doing, allowed Larian to start hiring people really rapidly, and to start new locations for their company, including, importantly, one in English-speaking, Britain-adjacent, Ireland. This mattered because Swen had recognised writing was their biggest weakness, and they needed a lot of good primary English speaking writers.

Whilst they continued to hire people and work on pre-production for BG3, they got the new writers to re-write and re-voice all of DOS2 (as well as improving the areas it was weak in), which acted as good practice for them.

They launched BG3 into Early Access once they could, to keep money flowing in, and later allowed Tencent (the Chinese media giant) to take a 30% stake in Larian, for an undisclosed but probably significant sum. All this together kept them going for six years until the game released (already having sold 2.5m copies in EA, IIRC!).

But they went from 80 people to 400 people over that time period, which is insane growth. You might think, well the same people remained in charge, with all their experience, right? But actually no. Aside from Swen, many of the leads for BG3 were new hires, with the people who'd occupied those positions previously sitting under them in the new hierarchy. They also added a ton of new tech they'd never used before, including motion capture and heavy use of cutscenes.

What they did have though was an engine - so that was one significant advantage.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In the right hands a Ravenloft videogame could be a new "Resident Evil".

BG4 will be a studio Hasbro/WotC could trust, and this enough prestige earned now, not later.

Other possible point is Hasbro producing videogames based in 3PP licences. Not yet, maybe in the future.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I understand the appeal of the massive scope that BG 3 had as far as options and alternatives, but I really wonder what percentage of the gaming community really cares that much. A lot of AAA games are quite linear but still engaging because of gameplay and story. The protagonist(s) can take multiple approaches, but the goals and end results are often the same. Sometimes even when the game pretend the player's actions are going to have huge impact the endings are really basically the same. Like Mass Effect where you got an ending that was almost completely cosmetic . Sometimes there's just not a great way to have as much branching as some people would want without hundreds of hours of content that 95% of the player base will never see.

You definitely don't need to go as hard as BG3 did, but this is actually a pretty major issue that people who play and buy RPGs are sensitive to.

To some extent it's absolutely an illusion - but you need to make that illusion convincing - you need to have at least some choices with consequences within the game, and if you screw up the ending, people may well be very mad at you for a very long time - c.f. Mass Effect 3, where the ending debacle absolutely impacted longer-tail sales.

And that's a big issue too - RPG have very long tails, sales-wise. A lot of games sell a ton in the first few months, then basically trickle off to nothing. But RPGs are different - they're selling significant numbers of copies years, even sometimes a decade later. BG3 is still frequently in the Steam top 10 sellers list (which is by revenue, not by units), well over a year after release - right now it's like at 15, but it comes and goes, and was as high as 4 or 5 quite recently. That's insane. Other RPGs have similar sales patterns - they might not go as high, but they keep on selling and selling.

So perceptions about your game matter much more than you might think with other genres - if it was a reputation as being "no choices", that's damaging years of sales, not just initial sales before people might realize that.

So I think the reality is you need to do a good job giving the impression of choices, of paths, whether they're really there in a meaningful way or not. And if you do go crazy like BG3, so long as the game is fundamentally a good game, RPG audiences will reward you by buying your game for a very long time to come.

 

[Oofta]

You definitely don't need to go as hard as BG3 did, but this is actually a pretty major issue that people who play and buy RPGs are sensitive to.

To some extent it's absolutely an illusion - but you need to make that illusion convincing - you need to have at least some choices with consequences within the game, and if you screw up the ending, people may well be very mad at you for a very long time - c.f. Mass Effect 3, where the ending debacle absolutely impacted longer-tail sales.

And that's a big issue too - RPG have very long tails, sales-wise. A lot of games sell a ton in the first few months, then basically trickle off to nothing. But RPGs are different - they're selling significant numbers of copies years, even sometimes a decade later. BG3 is still frequently in the Steam top 10 sellers list (which is by revenue, not by units), well over a year after release - right now it's like at 15, but it comes and goes, and was as high as 4 or 5 quite recently. That's insane. Other RPGs have similar sales patterns - they might not go as high, but they keep on selling and selling.

So perceptions about your game matter much more than you might think with other genres - if it was a reputation as being "no choices", that's damaging years of sales, not just initial sales before people might realize that.

So I think the reality is you need to do a good job giving the impression of choices, of paths, whether they're really there in a meaningful way or not. And if you do go crazy like BG3, so long as the game is fundamentally a good game, RPG audiences will reward you by buying your game for a very long time to come.

To a large degree it depends on your target experience. Are the Horizon (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West) games an RPG? They're certainly AAA games with detailed character animations, interactions with a lot of PCs, various conversations and a largely open world. But it is still a linear game. Same with BG 1 and 2, all of the old Gold Box games. The details of how you proceed through the linear story are left up to you until you come to the boxed text or cut scene.

Very few games actually have a truly significant number of possible branches. I mean, BG 3 is amazing but it also took, what 6 years of development that really stretched into 8 with all the patches and modifications? At a certain point the long tail doesn't pay for the massive investment of time, if not manpower.

I just don't think many games will be able to replicate BG 3's scope. Yes, it has a long tail of people playing the game. But how much does that add to actual sales?

 

[Scribe]

I just don't think many games will be able to replicate BG 3's scope. Yes, it has a long tail of people playing the game. But how much does that add to actual sales?

If we got some solid DLC, people would jump at it, many many people bought the game.

 

[Oofta]

If we got some solid DLC, people would jump at it, many many people bought the game.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game immensely. But having a DLC or not doesn't have much to do with the extreme branching structure of BG 3. I bought the DLC for Horizon Forbidden West even though it's outcomes are very linear because I enjoyed the story the designers were telling.

On a related note, I just looked up the top CRPGs and while BG 3 is at the top of the list, other games that are on the list that I recognize have some minor branching but nothing at all like BG 3.

 

[Parmandur]

To a large degree it depends on your target experience. Are the Horizon (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West) games an RPG? They're certainly AAA games with detailed character animations, interactions with a lot of PCs, various conversations and a largely open world. But it is still a linear game. Same with BG 1 and 2, all of the old Gold Box games. The details of how you proceed through the linear story are left up to you until you come to the boxed text or cut scene.

Very few games actually have a truly significant number of possible branches. I mean, BG 3 is amazing but it also took, what 6 years of development that really stretched into 8 with all the patches and modifications? At a certain point the long tail doesn't pay for the massive investment of time, if not manpower.

I just don't think many games will be able to replicate BG 3's scope. Yes, it has a long tail of people playing the game. But how much does that add to actual sales?

Already in the history of D&D games, there have been all sorts of genres in play.

Beyond what WotC does internally, the GameSpot D&D project is a survival open world game, so like Minecraft or Ark, not a CRPG strictly speaking.

 

[Oofta]

Already in the history of D&D games, there have been all sorts of genres in play.

Beyond what WotC does internally, the GameSpot D&D project is a survival open world game, so like Minecraft or Ark, not a CRPG strictly speaking.

Yeah, I'll just be somewhat surprised if they make BG 4, or if it is made that it will be a continuation of the story. If there is another FR game I don't expect it to have anything to do with BG 3. Even if I would have liked to have a DLC so I can help save Karlach.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, I'll just be somewhat surprised if they make BG 4, or if it is made that it will be a continuation of the story. If there is another FR game I don't expect it to have anything to do with BG 3. Even if I would have liked to have a DLC so I can help save Karlach.

I would like that DLC also and one that perhaps gave a different path in the beginning of Act III

 

[SteveC]

While this is interesting news, I'd say it's barely 50/50 that any product discussed here even comes out. I have several friends in the video game industry and they all tell me that making a good game is frightfully hard, and it's getting harder.