WotC Brand New D&D Video Game from WotC's New Acquisition Tuque Games

Tuque Games has announced it's working on a brand new D&/D video game. "We're developing a brand-new game based in the widely celebrated, enduring, and immensely popular Dungeons & Dragons universe. This yet to be announced title is steepled in classic D&D lore. We aspire to push this game to new heights for the genre. It’s an honour and a privilege to begin a new chapter for Dungeons & Dragons video games."

Not only that, but the company has been purchased by WotC! The press release went out earlier today:

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RENTON, Wash., Oct. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS), today announced that it has acquired Tuque Games, a digital game development studio based in Montreal. Tuque is led by veterans of the game industry with experience working for leading publishers. Tuque will continue the development of games for Wizards of the Coast's best-known brands, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons.

"At Wizards, we're continuing our commitment to creating new ways to bring our fan favorite brands to life," said Chris Cocks, President, Wizards of the Coast. "Our unique approach of connecting fans around the tabletop as well as through our expanding portfolio of digital games is redefining what it means to be a games company."

Founded in 2012 by Jeff Hattem, Tuque Games released their first title, Livelock, to critical acclaim in 2016. Now with over 55 full-time employees, Tuque will focus on the development of digital games based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

"Tuque is thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of the Wizards of the Coast team," said Jeff Hattem, Founder, Tuque Games. "By working more closely together, we can accelerate our joint vision and bring to life new games, characters and worlds in Wizards of the Coast's roster of franchises."

"In Tuque, we believe we have found a unique partner that pairs the nimbleness of an indie studio with the veteran leadership and scale required to deliver complex AAA games for our largest franchises," said David Schwartz, VP of Digital Publishing, Wizards of the Coast. "We are excited to bring Jeff and the Tuque team to the Wizards of the Coast family, which we believe will allow us to continue to meet the needs of our fans while enabling us to scale our digital games development capabilities even faster."

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It seems there's a bit of a D&D video game renaissance going on. Baldur's Gate 3 is coming, as is Solasta: Crown of the Magister.

 

[gyor]

That is an interesting possibility. They did say that they were deep in pre-production for their next game a year ago, so it might well have been that they were in early production of the game when WotC started talking to them, and thus might have had a sufficiently interesting prototype. It's certainly happened with a number of studios before.

I think it's more likely they build a very basic prototype with the intention of using it as part of their pitch to WotC intially for a D&D game. I don't see Tuque Games having anywhere near the rep for WotC to have courted them, so it makes more sense for TG to have gone to WotC with something to wet their appetites as a pitch.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it's more likely they build a very basic prototype with the intention of using it as part of their pitch to WotC intially for a D&D game. I don't see Tuque Games having anywhere near the rep for WotC to have courted them, so it makes more sense for TG to have gone to WotC with something to wet their appetites as a pitch.

That's possible. However, in the previous instances I can think of where something like this happened, the situation was generally more that a studio was prototyping a game, realized they had something exciting, told someone with contacts, and that person told someone and eventually the right person heard, got it demo'd, and they got bought.

The end effect is identical though so it hardly matters.

 

[gyor]

But we can, that's the issue I think. Here's my armchair expert analysis p), I follow the game industry for about two decades now, twelve as a game "journalist".

The acquired company only released a so-so game when it was a 12 people team. They are now recruiting people, 50+ people, freelancers or not, no way to know. I don't how it is in other countries but in the Quebec province (Montréal) right now it's reallllly difficult to recruit, but IT is even worse. The owner of the studio is claiming is doing AAA games but only released one real game. It's difficult to think they are serious.

I would be genuinely curious on how/why WotC decided to purchase that company. It feels like they 5M to purchase one game developer and they learned quickly that they cannot purchase Larian with some pennies (!!). Why that one? Maybe the Tuque founder is an accointance of some people at WotC or there's something amiss here.

I would rather be totally offside and that Tuque offering being a new DnD landmark but considering the DnD track record on videogame endeavors, it's easy to be skeptic.

Yeah in the last say decade WotC has backed a lot of stinkers, but they didn't buy the whole company, and most of those bad deals were done under the previous CEOs.

And Livelock has good reviews, an interesting story line that is unique, and above expected graphics (from what I have seen, I don't own the game). Its seems like a good game for it's genre, not so so.

And with this major investment/purchase I expect they will be able to expanding faster. If recruiting is that difficult, maybe they can tap into the temporary foreign workers program, and pull in international talent. Or WotC just buys more indie studios and merges them with TG.

And why buy TG instead of another indie game studio is likely related to whatever convinced WotC to grant TG a D&D licience in the first place, but more so. I honestly think TG approached WotC with an impressive prototype, and they made it even better and so WotC wanted a bigger piece of that.

That WotC has made such a huge commitment, not just liciencing the use of IPs, like for previous games, but out right buying TG makes this very different from Swordcoast Legends, because SCL was low risk for WotC, its failure cost WotC nothing ir nearly so, same with Heroes of Neverwinter, this time WotC has been so impressed with the liciencee that they bought the company straight up, assuming all the risks. That changes everything. It also means you really can't compare it to SCLs or other rescent D&D licience games. Also Chris Cocks has already shown much better instincts on Digital Products including video games then his predecessor.

WotC would not do something this extremely merely for a friend of the company.

 

[gyor]

That's possible. However, in the previous instances I can think of where something like this happened, the situation was generally more that a studio was prototyping a game, realized they had something exciting, told someone with contacts, and that person told someone and eventually the right person heard, got it demo'd, and they got bought.

The end effect is identical though so it hardly matters.

The Prototype could have been something similar to Solasta originally, a SRD D&D 5e game, but TG demo'd it for WotC and WotC liked it so much, that they gave TG a full licience to make a D&D game, not just SRD material and possibly a D&D IP to set it in, say somewhere in the Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, or Ravnica.

Which reminds me, I would not be surprised if Tactical Studios is the next purchase for WotC. TS got the seal of WotCs approval for Solasta during it's kickstarter, given WotCs newly revealed ambitions in Video game Studios, I can't think of a more perfect Video Game Studio to poach. If I was CEO Chris Cocks, I'd already be starting negotiations for buying TS.

 

[Bohandas]

There are turn based games on consoles.

Yeah but they're less popular because
1.) They're more complicated to play with a controller than with a keyboard and mouse
2.) a lot of console owners are philistines

 

[Undrave]

Yeah but they're less popular because
1.) They're more complicated to play with a controller than with a keyboard and mouse
2.) a lot of console owners are philistines

Fire Emblem seems to be working well and is turned based...I bet folks who enjoyed the Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactic Ogre and Advanced War of the past would like a TRPG from WOTC.

 

[Undrave]

If they're going REALLY classic, maybe it'll be a Beat 'em up like the old Capcom games

 

[Ravenbrook]

Should Tuque ever decide to create a D&D-themed MMORPG it wouldn't be any worse than what's already out there.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now it is not the best time for a new MMO nor online multiplayer. There were too much in the market and they are fighting for the audience index. Better a title to play solo offline but with online multiplayer as option.

Have you thought about a open-source software version of the OGL?

Will we see a tactical turn-based videogame with warbands and skirmishes like X-Com, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, Mordheim: City of Danmen or the comingsoon Necromunda Underhive Wars? Now players would rather more style Action-RPG and RTS. I like the idea of starting with a little gang and you are hire more people until create a true army.

What if they want to add the martial adepts as new classes, but the playtest experience forces to new changes in the gameplay?

Other idea is a game about collectable monsters battle arena, as Pokemon or Digimon. But this would need a lot of time.

 

[Ravenbrook]

Now it is not the best time for a new MMO nor online multiplayer. There were too much in the market and they are fighting for the audience index. Better a title to play solo offline but with online multiplayer as option.

I agree with you. I merely wanted to point out that the previous forays into a D&D-themed MMO were not exactly overwhelming, to say the least.