Chris Cocks says it makes sense to move D&D to a "live service" model, but Hasbro will always make physical books

Chris Cocks isn't shy about plans to move Dungeons & Dragons to a more live service model of gaming. In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Cocks explicitly said that "it makes sense" for players to shift their mindset towards a live service due to the high amount of players using digital services, but assured the interviewer that books will still be produced by Hasbro. When asked if Wizards was moving away from books in favor of a more piecemeal release schedule, following the announcement of D&D Beyond's new Drops service. "Books will always be an important part of D&D," Cocks said. "It will always be kind of like a special totem that you can collect. I have a big bookshelf of D&D books myself."

"But we see what's happening – almost everyone who plays D&D uses D&D Beyond, like a super high percentage uses it," Cocks continued. "A very high percentage use Foundry VTT or Roll20, and so it just makes sense that you should start to migrate your thinking about the way you play to more of a live service where you don't have to wait 18 months for us to build a book. We can start to release components or aspects of that book over time, and you don't have to buy everything all at once. You can buy chapters or segments of it over time. That makes a ton of sense to me. That said we will still have big moments. We will still have like, 'hey, ta da, here's a huge campaign.' You can expect there'll be more around that, both from us and from all the creators in the world that can leverage a platform like D&D Beyond to share their content as well."

Broadly speaking, Dungeons & Dragons has always been a "live service" game, as the game's core business model involves continuously releasing new content in the form of new rulebooks or campaigns. However, it seems that Cocks is principally interested in shifting this model around more frequent releases. We'll note that the business model suggested by Cocks was already rolled out in a manner of speaking. The Dhampir species rules were released as a "digital DLC" for D&D Beyond subscribers who digitally ordered a Forgotten Realms book bundle, but a physical version of the rules are being released via the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book. However, a la carte purchases were removed from D&D Beyond several years ago in order to force users to purchase entire books instead.

 

[AlViking]

Not in publishing, but i have some insight in how "profitable" traditional publishing is. I'm in residential/distributor sales for big HVAC manufacturer and unfortunately, dealing with supply chain and logistics is my daily chore. Traditional publishing and manufacturing have quite a few similarities. Like wotc, we don't sell direct to consumer, we sell to distributors and partners, business model is same, just different product. And i'm dealing with same problems. We have products that are heavy but don't take much space and products that take space but aren't heavy. There is manufacturing cost, then there is total landed cost. TLC is manufacturing plus transport to distributor's warehouse. TLC is usually 3x manufacturing cost. Then it's TLC from distributor to retailer aka your FLGS. Then your FLGS has it's TLC. And everyone in the chain adds their gross profit margin on top of it. Final nail for end customer is local sales tax/VAT. There is something called 5x rule, which is, your manufacturing cost needs to be 5x lower than retail price. So 50e ttrpg book in stores needs to be under 10e in manufacturing cost.

WOTC's biggest moneymaker is MTG. It's completely different business model, since it relies on lots of continuous repeat purchases. Also, cards are low weight and low volume, so you can pack way more boosters and decks in single shipping container than books. PHB is 45e, Commander deck is 45e. 2 Decks take same volume and half weight of 1 book. You can ship 2x more decks in single container.

Personally, i think they will sell books. Maybe they switch to limited editions, maybe to lighter smaller books, or even just starter sets. Or they just eat cost, use books as loss leader anchor product and monetize it trough DDB where they have almost 0e TLC and gross profit margins are very high.

I would agree that MtG is the cash cow, that doesn't mean books aren't making a profit. They successfully sold books for quite a while before DDB came on the scene. Meanwhile WOTC has a big leg up on other publishers because of their scale (and they do now sell directly to the consumer) over other TTRPGs. Nobody has ever gotten super wealthy selling TTRPGs, but a lot of companies make it work.

In any case it doesn't matter since we can't set up a betting pool.

 

[Scribe]

Also, the price of a video game is comparable to the price of the rulebooks; however, the video game gives you one campaign, maybe 40 hours of gaming, whereas the rulebooks give you endless hours of gaming.

Modern CRPGs in my experience are far more than 40 hours, and that's a single play through.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Really? How many?

 

[SkidAce]

In any case it doesn't matter since we can't set up a betting pool.

Can't? or shouldn't........ hehe

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Are you seriously making the argument that people have to buy computers now?

I know it sounds funny, absurd even, but it is a hidden cost for digital products, licenses, and general experiences.

It's absurd but one of the only hidden costs for books is maybe eyeglasses and a reading lamp. Of course you'd need the eyeglasses in either case.

In all seriousness though, we once sent Dungeons and Dragons to Cuba as a charitable donation (Pathfinder actually). It was a fairly big project to help gamers there because they had terrible even getting polyhedral dice.

We could have sent them digital products, or sent them links to the Archives of Nethis. Maybe everybody has a computer in Cuba.

It might be absurd, but a working computer is required to access material on Dungeons and Dragons Beyond.

 

[SothFan]

one of the only hidden costs for books is maybe eyeglasses and a reading lamp. Of course you'd need the eyeglasses in either case

Other than dice, paper, pens, pencils, etc.

 

[GrimCo]

It might be absurd, but a working computer is required to access material on Dungeons and Dragons Beyond.

Working smartphone with data plan. You would be surprised how good mobile internet infrastructure is in some of the 3rd world countries. Poster child for this is Somalia. You can get better 4g/5g signal coverage in Somalia then in some parts of Germany ( autobahn has notorious no signal zones) and price for mobile data is dirt cheap. Somalia isn't unique, some other African countries have same dirt cheap, reliable and widespread mobile coverage that can put to shame parts of EU and USA. Belt and road initiative and DIgital silk road initiative contributed to infrastructure and dirt cheap phones (most phones are under 100$ with massive batteries and multiple sim slots, specially designed for African markets). I don't know situation in Central and South America, but Africa and Middle East, that i know.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Other than dice, paper, pens, pencils, etc.

I don't even think you would need the pens.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't have a crystal ball either. No-one does. But I do seem to remember some higher-up of WotC/Hasbro (Chris Cocks ? Cynthia Williams ? can't recall) stating that D&D was 'under monetized'. Things like these seem to be a commercial/financially attempt to monetize D&D more than it currently is.

IMHO, when an executive says "under monetized", they see it as producing less than 110% income.

 

[Zardnaar]

We'll wake up to this someday, just like we woke up to it some two decades ago when we realized that video games are not the same experience as tabletop roleplaying games.

Digitizing Dungeons and Dragons is fun and it is responsible for what video games are today, either directly or indirectly, from Doom, to World of Warcraft, to Baldur's Gate. Video games in many ways are a better roleplaying experience, but in many ways they are not.

For instance, digitized Dungeons and Dragons has a much higher entry level cost for players when you consider the computer you will need to buy to play it. Also, the price of a video game is comparable to the price of the rulebooks; however, the video game gives you one campaign, maybe 40 hours of gaming, whereas the rulebooks give you endless hours of gaming.

That was all in the 1st Great Digitization of the Game. We are currently digitizing the game a 2nd time and we will wake up someday and think, "I wonder if people still play Dungeons and Dragons?"

RPGs were 40 hours almost 25 years ago.

Alot are 100-200+ hours now first play through. With multiple endings and side quests.

BG3 took us over 100 hours, we can speed run it in about 40 odd without exploits. Haven't tried to do it as fast as possible.

With replays over 1000.

Assassins Creed Odyssey was 200+ hours with DLC, Fallout 4 has multiple ending and is another huge game and its a decade old.

If you already own the PC or console anyway its cheaper than pen and paper if you dont have an established group.