D&D General Hasbro activist begins proxy fight, urges Dungeons & Dragons spinoff

[Myrdin Potter]

Finkel as in Jon Finkel, pro Magic player and original face of Shadowmage Infiltrator?

Yes.

There is a small cadre of Magic players in the fund universe in the NYC area. And fairly common for CFOs to play board games or D&D. Looking at the Board slate, you can see that.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Wait a minute; if enough Enworlders buy Hasbro stock and pool their votes together, could we form a block that influences policy?

Think of what an Enworld activist investor group can do!!!

 

[éxypnos]

WSJ News Exclusive | Hasbro Activist Begins Proxy Fight, Urges Wizards Unit Spinoff

Alta Fox Capital Management has nominated five directors to the toy company’s board, saying its stock has been trailing the broader market.

www.wsj.com

I can't imagine people here are too nuts about financial news, but this caught my eye. It's behind a paywall, so I'll try to summarize.

From what I can tell, an activist investor is trying to make Hasbro spin off Wizards, claiming it'll double its valuation (apparently Wizards is making so much money off D&D and M:tG the company would do better on its own).

Would this be good for gamers, since Wizards would be free to focus on D&D and Magic, or is there something I'm missing?

It was pressure from Hasbro management that caused the debacle of 4e. So would probably be better to spin off. It is Ironic that WotC used to be the red headed step-child of Hasbro. Now it is the 8,000 pound gorilla tearing apart the playpen

 

[Umbran]

Hasbro is not going to do it because they know the future of the entertaiment are the multimedia franchise.

So, current Hasbro leadership wouldn't do this on their own, no.

But the activist investors are hoping to change who is on the Board of Directors - different leadership might do things differently, if there's gain for them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Wait a minute; if enough Enworlders buy Hasbro stock and pool their votes together, could we form a block that influences policy?

Think of what an Enworld activist investor group can do!!!

…Argue with itself too much to get anything done?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Wait a minute; if enough Enworlders buy Hasbro stock and pool their votes together, could we form a block that influences policy?

Think of what an Enworld activist investor group can do!!!

We can't agree on what Hit Points mean.

 

[Smackpixi]

This is first about increasing the value of Alta Fox’s and everyone else’s Hasbro stock, and second, selling more Magic and D&D stuff. They see both as unexploited opportunities, stock is currently undervalued (so they bought a bunch) and are now pushing selling more stuff.

You take $100 of Hasbro and get $50 of Hasbro and $50 of WotC, or some such ratio. Now, everyone can see that these Wizards are buying cardboard and printing Gold because no distractions, D&D movie good, unencumbered stock to buyto get in on hype. Crazy margins, great investment, stock goes up and up in anticipation of growth driving more incredible margins. Haven’t even done anything yet, already increased value. Now, crabby shareholders who purchased at values based on future sales, want the future now. Flood market with shovel ware, Sales great at first. Sell stock, count money. Oversupplied market stagnates, brands stale, game sucks blah blah, value crashes. Great opportunity for Hasbro or someone to buy it up and repeat.

Win win for everybody?

 

[éxypnos]

Well, will be interesting to see what happens. A D&D movie franchise will NOT be great unless the Director is a long time player.

 

[Staffan]

I am responding to the following:

"I think the success of 5th edition has more to do with Hasbro backing off or adjusting to lessons learned from 4e's record."

It is unclear to me in what way in which their "backing off" could have had an impact, unless they'd had fairly direct influence over the design. There seems to me that there's an implication that Hasbro leaned in heavily on design for them to "back off" of, and I'm asking for more direct support for that implication.

I mean, if you find Mearls had said somewhere, "Yeah, Hasbro had a lot of design goals for us to fulfill," then you'd have a great point. But otherwise, it seems an unsupported assertion that Hasbro was forward, to have to "back off".

I've never heard about Hasbro having any creative input into D&D. The stories that have been told have been that Hasbro execs said, essentially: "This D&D thing seems like small potatoes. We like big potatoes. Like Mr. Potato-Head. Can you get D&D to make more money? Because if you don't, we might mothball it because even if it's profitable it doesn't seem worth keeping around." WOTC folks then sat down and figured "What can we do to meet Hasbro's benchmarks?" This is what then lead to the initially aggressive release schedule for 4e combined with D&D Insider.

So Hasbro didn't directly tell WOTC to make 4th edition and D&D Insider, but they did tell them to make more money and that's what Wizards came up with. When that didn't work, the initial roll-out of 5e was plan B: Keep D&D around at a low but profitable level and use it as an IP generator, similar to how Marvel Comics generates IP that Marvel Studios then makes blockbuster movies from. Except that the stars aligned and now D&D has started to make the big bucks Hasbro wanted in the first place.

 

[éxypnos]

I've never heard about Hasbro having any creative input into D&D. The stories that have been told have been that Hasbro execs said, essentially: "This D&D thing seems like small potatoes. We like big potatoes. Like Mr. Potato-Head. Can you get D&D to make more money? Because if you don't, we might mothball it because even if it's profitable it doesn't seem worth keeping around." WOTC folks then sat down and figured "What can we do to meet Hasbro's benchmarks?"

Yes, that IS what happened. Then the designers thought maybe making D&D more like a computer game would attract more players. One model looked at by design was Gauntlet () And 4E was hatched...