WotC Hasbro Bets Big on D&D

During today's 'Hasbro Fireside Chat', Hasbro's Chris Cocks, chief executive officer, and Cynthia Williams, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming mentioned D&D, and about betting big on its name. This was in addition to the Magic: The Gathering discussion they held on the same call.

The following are rough notes on what they said.

D&D Beyond

• Leaning heavily on D&D Beyond
• 13 million registered users
• Give them more ways to express their fandom
• Hired 350 people last year
• Low attrition

What’s next for D&D

• Never been more popular
• Brand under-monetized
• Excited about D&D Beyond possibilities
• Empower accessibility and development of the user base.
• Data driven insight
• Window into how players are playing
• Companion app on their phone
• Start future monetization starting with D&D Beyond
• DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases
• Digital game recurrent spending for post sale revenue.
• Speed of digital can expand, yearly book model to include current digital style models.
• Reach highly engaged multigenerational fans.
• Dungeons and Dragons has recognition, 10 out of 10
• Cultural phenomenon right now.
• DND strategy is a broad four quadrant strategy
• Like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Marvel
• New books and accessories, licensed game stuff, and D&D Beyond
• Huge hopes for D&D

What is success for the D&D Movie

• First big light up oppourtunity for 4th quadrant
• Significant marketing
• They think it’ll have significant box office
• It has second most viewed trailer at Paramount, only eclipsed by Transformers
• Will be licensed video games, some on movies
• Then follow up other media, TV, other movies, etc.
• Bullish on D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And then people bought gold to buy the boosts, which tanked the in-game economy. Worse than a paid boost!

Does Classic have the in-game token available from the store? That basically ruined third parties selling gold in the retail version, which was ultimately a good thing. (They found other ways to make their money, of course, but they stopped disrupting much of the game, as they previously had.)

 

[Velderan]

Does Classic have the in-game token available from the store? That basically ruined third parties selling gold in the retail version, which was ultimately a good thing. (They found other ways to make their money, of course, but they stopped disrupting much of the game, as they previously had.)

It doesn't. The usual doom and gloom rumors keep saying they're considering it, but nothing official yet.

 

[Greg Benage]

Does Classic have the in-game token available from the store? That basically ruined third parties selling gold in the retail version, which was ultimately a good thing. (They found other ways to make their money, of course, but they stopped disrupting much of the game, as they previously had.)

I stopped playing for TBC, but they didn't while I was playing. The in-game inflation was insane.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It doesn't. The usual doom and gloom rumors keep saying they're considering it, but nothing official yet.

The in-game token does have an argument that it creates a PTW scenario, since the people doing it can, in theory, buy great gear from other players in /trade or the Auction House with it.

But since those people were often buying gold illegally anyway, I'm not sure how much of an impact there is. It's probably impossible to measure for anyone other than Blizzard.

That said, as someone who's played retail since day one, getting rid of all the gold sellers was a massive quality of life improvement for everyone.

 

[Cadence]

They've stated elsewhere that they have no intent of going online only with content.

With MtG they have a format now that is only playable online - with its own cards that you can't really do in paper.

I assume the discussion of what they can do on VTT that is (close enough to) impossible to do in paper has or will come up - even if they opt against it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As someone with a passing knowledge of the video game industry and how microtransactions have impacted it negatively . . . hearing "D&D needs to be more monetized" is a bit worrying. However, as pointed out in the past 14 pages, it could mean a variety of things, some of which they already covered in the discussion (branching into movies, toys, tv shows, etc).

D&D Beyond already has microtransactions. Most of them I could do without, like the dice and character sheet backgrounds, but the community asked for them so they made them (and they have to cost something because of the effort that went into making them). However, I am a fan of the "buy a small part of the book" microtransactions, and actually think that they're overall fan-friendly because you don't have to buy the entire book to get access to a single part that you want.

The sky isn't falling. We should have a healthy amount of caution about over-monetization, but definitely not go to far. Until we see the changes, we cannot know if the "sky is falling" for D&D. And from what was said, it mostly seemed like Hasbro was saying positive things about D&D and wanted it to branch out to a wider audience (movies, tv shows). Not that they wanted to completely drain the wallets of its fans.

 

[Scribe]

In what way? I collect pets in World of Warcraft, and have bought a few of those from the store over the years, when they were for charity, but I am perfectly capable of collecting the literally thousands of in-game pets without doing so.

Its a topic likely for elsewhere, but we would have to come to an agreement on what the driving feedback loop of the game is, and if microtransactions short out that loop.

For WoW, they certainly do, and that is damaging to the game.

 

[Xamnam]

To do what? Sell me a piece of a book that I wouldn't otherwise buy and might otherwise pirate?

Good! Please do encourage ways for me to legally purchase pieces of content that I would never otherwise buy in complete form.

This also benefits Dragonlance fans, because I -- a not-Dragonlance-fan -- am making a Dragonlance product more profitable, thus encouraging WotC to make more of them.

This is an everyone wins situation.

The potential downside that comes from this model, which to be clear I'm not arguing is inherent or likely, is that it could encourage rushing out meagre splat-books with one or two new player options apiece primarily so it can be sold as an online feature, and tanking the quality.

 

[Reynard]

There are definitely companies have done it poorly. I don't think it can be said to be a universal behavior, though.

Sure. I'm just talking about trying to understand the fears based on what folks have seen in the most applicable adjacent industry.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I disagree, I think this is exactly the right time to start assuming the worst.

Quite frankly, this news is disconcerting, but not at all surprising. I recall being at a seminar at Gen Con a year or two before the pandemic hit where James Lowder explained that WotC's take on D&D 5E was (to paraphrase his words) all about the branding, because the big money was in licensing. That's essentially what we're seeing here, along with the push towards D&D Beyond as a virtual marketplace where transactions and micro-transactions can be pushed to the forefront of the play experience.

They note, in this chat, that DMs are the smaller segment of D&D's customer base, but buy the most. That's called the Pareto principle, and it's nothing new where sales figures are concerned. What I think we're hearing here is that Hasbro wants to break this down so that they can have the rest of the group kicking in greater sums of money as well. Micro-transactions for the D&D Beyond platform align very well with this.

That's in addition to other likely contractions of the play experience, as noted in this excellent video from several weeks ago:

Didn't we already have an entirely separate thread about how that video was BS and that guy is a gatekeeping alarmist?